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Splatt Gallery's History of Michigan Concert Posters
Volume Five - 1969 - Page Seventeen
Another show missing from the timeline, so perhaps it was cancelled, for the MC5, with Country Joe & the Fish and Tyrannosaurus Rex, at the Kinetic Playground in Chicago, August 22-23, 1969.
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In the drought of posters coming from the Grande Ballroom, the next best concert announcements were promo ads from the record company which were used generically around the country with space to add the date and venue information. Here is the Elektra Records ad with the August 22-23, 1969 shows at the Grande Ballroom.
Two weeks earlier, Elektra had released the Stooges second single, but only in France. We already have “1969” on the soundtrack, it was released as the B-side to the first single, “I Wanna Be Your Dog”. So here’s the flip side of what they were listening to in Paris.
The Stooges – Real Cool Time (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psm9m5xLCQo
The Stooges show at the Grande Ballroom, August 22, 1969 also saw “the return of Stoney & the Jagged Edge”, another ad called it their “(debut)”. The band had crashed and burned seemingly at the height of success in late 1968, but they were giving it another go.
An ad for the Grande Ballroom, August 22-30, 1969, with the additional listings for Rock & Roll Picnic at Benedictine Stadium on August 31, and the Fifth Estate Benefit show on September 1st. Keef Hartley appeared on August 29th and 30th with Third Power opening on the first night and Orange Crush for the show on August 30.
Poster for the Kinetic Playground in Chicago with the MC5 appearing with Country Joe & the Fish and Tyrannosaurus Rex on August 22-23, 1969.
Poster for the Vancouver Pop Festival in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada, August 22-24, 1969 with a wide array of acts including Alice Cooper who were named the best band of the festival in a review in the Squamish Times newspaper.
And yet another entry onto the list of the various misspellings of Bob Seger’s last name, a non-database show in Van Wert, Ohio, August 23, 1969, sharing the bill with Third Power, including future Silver Bullet guitarist Drew Abbott.
A Vanguard Records company ad in the August 23, 1969 issue of Billboard magazine, promoting two new groups signed to the label, Michigan’s own Frost and from Indianapolis, the Masters of Deceit, who fared even worse than Frost with the misplaced label, they only had a single album released.
The Masters of Deceit – The Grand Illusion (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82h-61s7K5w
A Hot Wax record company ad for the single “Mind, Body & Soul” by The Flaming Embers. Their previous records were released by Jack and Devora Brown’s Fortune Records, and on Ed Wingate’s Ric-Tic label, this was their first record on the Hot Wax label, one of three labels set up by Holland-Dozier-Holland after leaving Motown, the other two being Invictus and Music Merchant.
This also must have been the group’s favorite song, they renamed the band to Mind, Body & Soul near the end of their run (the Hot Wax ad is also incorrect as they had dropped the “s” off their name by the time of this release).
The Flaming Ember – Mind, Body & Soul (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M91JHi3gZc
The awesome label artwork for Hot Wax.
The front and back cover of the self-titled debut album by the Stooges which entered the Billboard Top LP’s chart at #131 on August 23, 1969, peaking at #106 seven weeks later.
The Stooges – The Stooges (album) (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmkfdYvXznM&list=PLMxy067kbpQjCZaATEzi6m-WS_PZ4gNOF
An ad for the Grande Ballroom with Dave Baker’s logo that lists a benefit show for the Midwest Printing Co-Op on Sunday, August 24, 1969, that featured All The Lonely People, Fuchia, Girls Inc., Sky, and the UP. It also has the shows for the 149th weekend at the Grande, August 29-30, with the Keef Hartley Band and Colosseum performing two nights. Third Power opened on the first night.
The thirteenth Michigan music festival of 1969, on August 26, 1969, changed its name to the 1st Michigan Pop Festival after these posters by an unknown artist had already been made. One reason was that there had already been a Saginaw Pop Festival in April and to have the “Second Annual” merely four months later belied the definition of “annual”. Furthermore, it wasn’t even going to take place in Saginaw, but rather in Bay City at the Roll-Air skate park. There don’t appear to have been any posters made with the name 1st Michigan Pop Festival for this event.
A Mike Quatro presentation featuring Bob Seger, MC5, Frost, Rationals, Wilson Mower Pursuit, Frijid Pink, Popcorn Blizzard, Frut, Rush, “and others”.
The band Rush is not the future-famous Canadian band, nor is it the Warren, Michigan band of the same name that we saw earlier at the Mt. Clemons Pop Festival, but rather a second Michigan band named Rush, from Flint that included Mark Farner’s brother Ricky.
The MC5 apparently were a no-show for the festival while they worked on finishing up the recording for their second album.
Sometime earlier in the year, the Bob Seger System had added a second guitar player to the band named Tom Neme, perhaps due to Seger’s growing lack of confidence in his own singing while also playing guitar. Neme brought his own song-writing and in many ways, brought on by Seger’s self-doubt and increasing dis-interest, he began to supplant Seger in the band baring his Seger’s own name. The one album that resulted from this five-piece line-up was released in September, 1969, shortly after this festival. Seger had written only four of the ten songs on “Noah” and Neme was the lead vocalist on most of the tracks. It’s been postulated that manager Punch Andrews and Capitol Records may have envisioned a Lennon-McCartney partnership between the two singer-songwriters.
Seger reportedly hated the record and it is the one album in his catalog that has never been officially re-released. He allegedly quit the band after the album’s release and enrolled in college, although the list of shows do not have any gaps during this period, and at some point, maybe quickly after, Seger returned and fired Neme.
Picture sleeve for the German issue of the “Noah” single by the Bob Seger System (misspelled), in September 1969.
Bob Seger System – Noah (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A6baqqjh4c
Yet another “festival”, on the same day as the Saginaw/Michigan Pop Festival, August 26, 1969. The Royal Oak Pop Festival featured All The Lonely People, Third Power, Girls, Inc., and Bobby Franklin Insanity.
Terry Sharbach poster for Grandmother’s in East Lansing, Michigan, August 27-30, 1969, adding Count Basie and Fats Domino to his growing list of all-star caricatures.
Dreary times without posters for the Grande Ballroom, two years earlier a benefit show for the Mid-West Printing Co-Op would generated two or three, but the August 24, 1969 benefit show was merely a listing in a Detroit Free Press events calendar.
We do, however, have a live recording from that night, from the set by the band Sky, a trio formed by Doug Fieger after his older brother Geoffrey left the band they had together, The New Spirit.
Also of note in the events listing, there was yet another festival, the Royal Oak Pop Festival on the same Tuesday, August 26, 1969 as 1st Michigan Pop Festival at the Roll-Air in Bay City. Also, Parliament Funkadelic at the 20 Grand, Friend & Lover at the Raven Gallery, and Alice Cooper at the Flat Rock Speedway.
And one last point of interest, the band Girls Inc. are listed as performing at both the Mid-West Printing Co-Op Benefit at the Grande Ballroom and at the Royal Oak Pop Festival. This is the only known photograph of the band (just kidding).
Sky – Live at the Grande Ballroom (8/24/69)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRtoh2v6iuM
If you’ve been following along for a while, you know we’ve subscribed to Stuart Cosgrove’s trilogy of soul music; Detroit – 67, Memphis – 68, and Harlem – 69 (still yet to be published, we anxiously await), and with all the interaction we’ve seen between Detroit and Memphis from Martha Jean “The Queen” Steinberg to Hot Buttered Soul, there is no more explicit example than this last-ditch shot by Mitch Ryder, specifically titled “The Detroit – Memphis Experiment”, released in August 1969.
Ryder was at the end of his rope with the Bob Crew driven, Las Vegas big band act, depressed and financially broke. He took a sabbatical in England and when he returned the states he went to Memphis and recorded the Detroit – Memphis Experiment album at Stax with Steve Cropper and backing band, Booker T & the MG’s. The album went nowhere, distribution may have been hampered by Ryder’s vitriolic liner notes wherein he complained of being “raped by the music machine”, and has become nearly forgotten in his catalog, which is a shame because it’s actually a pretty good record.
Mitch Ryder – The Detroit – Memphis Experiment (album) (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p52aiQLGcrY&list=PLvl86IzJ4X7FfUsyhwSzB0_uYAtZ3zalv
And yet another 1969 festival, although not billed as such, a multi-act event on a Thursday, no less, August 28, 1969, we’ll count it as number fourteen. An A-Squared production, good to see Jeep Holland still active although his booking role at the Grande Ballroom seems to have been taken over by Mike Quatro by this time. Unknown poster artist.
Bands were the Wilson Mower Pursuit, Plain Brown Wrapper, All The Lonely People, Savage Grace, Frost, Double Yellow Line, Rationals, Stooges, Woolies, Third Power, Sun, and Grand Funk Railroad.
Promoter Peter C. Cavanaugh called it a “monumental flop”, Terry Knight had told him that Grand Funk Railroad would attract 15,000 kids from Flint alone, he was about 14,000 short.
An ad by Verne for The Family Dog on the Great Highway in San Francisco, California, with Commander Cody opening for the Grateful Dead, August 28-30, 1969.
A very interesting ad by an unknown artist for the Family Dog on the Great Highway in San Francisco, California, with an appearance by Commander Cody on August 29-30, 1969.
Alice Cooper, finding themselves comfortable in Michigan, followed up their Eastown Theater debut with a trip to the Carrawee Ballroom in Flat Rock, and then this appearance at the Silverbell Hideout in Auburn Hills, August 30, 1969, now officially “formally with” Frank Zappa. Poster artist unknown.
A fabulous poster by Jas. R. Hounshell Art Studio for another one-day festival at Aquinas High School in Southgate, Michigan on August 30, 1969, with Frost, Third Power, Savage Grace, Frijid Pink, Wilson Mower Pursuit, Red, White & Blues Band, All The Lonely People, Underground Wall, Catfish,and incredibly, “many others too!” Talent was organized by Jerry Patlow in the fifteenth Michigan music festival of the year.
Does a “Rock & Roll Picnic” count as a festival? If so, this event at Benedictine High School in Detroit, August 31, 1969 was the sixteenth Michigan music festival of the year. A team effort by Russ Gibb, Punch Andrews, Jeep Holland, and George Goulson who had opened Wampler’s Lake Pavilion, sixty miles west of Detroit, in the tiny town of Onsted, Michigan, for Saturday night summer concerts.
British drummer Keef Hartley kept his band over an extra day following their Grande Ballroom shows, and this was also the first Michigan appearance of the Canadian band Lighthouse, formed by The Plagues drummer Skip Prekop.
The poster artist is named Wiktor, which may have been the artist’s nod to the father of Poland’s movie posters, graphic designer Wiktor Gorka, but more likely, it was Ken Victor.
Lighthouse – Mountain Man (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7SGZBtyU30
A second poster for the Rock & Roll Picnic at Benedictine High School in Detroit, August 31, 1969, by an unknown artist, and the cover of the school’s 1970 Yearbook with a cover by an unknown artist who has poster potential.
SRC at Indiana Beach in Monticello, Indiana for the Pop Festival Labor Day Weekend, SRC performed on August 31, 1969. Looks like an awesome place, with dancing on the roof!
A pair of ads from Billboard magazine in August 1969, showing Tommy James & the Shondells on top of the world. Their album “Crimson & Clover” had spawned a #1 hit with the title track and a #2 hit with the song “Crystal Blue Persuasion”, and James had been named Composer of the Year by the Big Seven Music Corporation.
In the summer of 1969, a movie was released that was just too tempting for a thirteen-year old boy not to sneak into, and to discover a new crush in Karen Black. The inset illustration is by Gary Grimshaw that accompanied a movie review of "Easy Rider" in The Berkeley Tribe newspaper later in the year.
Steppenwolf – Born to be Wild (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egMWlD3fLJ8
One of Gilbert Shelton’s “Scenes from the Revolution”, The Legendary Dope Famine of ’69, published in September 1969 and showing the freaks thinking of taking drastic measures.
Post-Woodstock issue of the Ann Arbor Argus with cover art by Al Shamie (Bad Dog).
September 1969 calendar from the Fifth Estate newspaper in Detroit, Michigan.
A photo of Rob Tyner, which is credited to Wayne Kramer, on the front cover of the ninth issue of CREEM magazine, which is numbered as Vol 2, No. 4, published in September 1969. The events calendar had events that ran from August 29 through September 20.
Steve Mackay, saxophonist with the band Carnal Kitchen, and future member of the Stooges, created a comic strip called “Death City” that ran for at least five issues in CREEM magazine. Here is the opening installment, from CREEM magazine Vol 2, No. 4, published in September 1969.
An ad for the Plum Pit by Dennis Garascia in the September 1969 issue of CREEM magazine.
The British band Savoy Brown released their fourth album “A Step Further” in September 1969. Side One was comprised of studio tracks while Side Two was a live recording. The inside gatefold cover was a photo from the stage of the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan, although the live tracks on the album were from a concert in England. The liner notes read:
"Those of you who bought this album and are residents of the city of Detroit - this side of the record is for you, with love from Savoy Brown. We all wish we could have recorded the band 'live' over there, but it was not to be: maybe one day.”
A killer full-page poster/ad by an unknown artist in The Fifth Estate newspaper in Detroit for their own benefit show at the Grande Ballroom, September 1, 1969, featuring MC5, the Stooges, and the Gold Brothers.
East Lansing, Michigan’s underground newspaper, The Paper, one of the original five newspapers that formed the Underground Press Syndicate in 1966 (along with The Fifth Estate in Detroit, the East Village Other in NYC, and the Berkeley Barb and the Los Angeles Free Press in California) was sputtering towards an ignoble end.
There had been a four-month absence in publication since the May 1969 issue when this issue of Goob Yeak Gergibal hit the streets in September 1969. In November, The Paper returned, explaining that “Goob Yeak Gergibal died a horrible death when it strangled in its own name; so The Paper is back!!”, but unfortunately, after that issue, it was never published again.
A small ad found in that same issue of The Fifth Estate for an appearance by the Rance Allen Singers at a church in Farmington, Michigan. Not quite what we’d call “hard rock gospel”, Allen and his two brothers from Monroe, Michigan, would soon win a talent show that would get them signed to Stax Record’s Gospel Truth label and they remain among the leading figures in gospel soul to this day.
The Rance Allen Group – Let the Music get Down in your Soul (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THIMmyOBmug
Poster by Doug Huston as reproduced in the September 1, 1969 issue of the State News newspaper in East Lansing, Michigan.
Illustration by Doug Huston from the September 1, 1969 issue of the State News newspaper in East Lansing, Michigan, to recruit members for ASMSU, the Associated Students of Michigan State University, which included the concert promotion arm of the organization, Pop Entertainment.
A nicely-done poster from the Grand Valley State Colleges in Allendale, Michigan, for recruitment to the Thomas Jefferson College in September 1969.
The MC5 made the cover of the September 1969 issue of Circus magazine.
There’s some question as to whether The Stooges played a club date at Ungano’s in New York City when they were in NYC recording their album in April, as we had shown on a previous poster, but this September 3, 1969 show at The Pavilion is billed as, and widely considered as, their New York debut.
Two additional posters for the September 3, 1969 show in Flushing, New York, although the previously posted Elektra Records ad was promoting the New York debut of The Stooges, The MC5 were still the headliners.
Artist Peter Max on the cover of the September 5, 1969 issue of LIFE magazine – “Portrait of the artist as a very rich man”.
The Beatles - Baby, You're A Rich Man (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5m-sgtwFck
Steve Miller and Butterfield blues bands at Meadowbrook, September 5, 1969.
Things were getting heavy by mid-September 1969, less than a full year into the Richard Nixon presidency.
“Unreal? Well maybe you’re not hip to what’s been going down lately. The Law and Order apes and this senile dinosaur we call a government have flipped out. Preventive detention, the no-knock clause in the new drug laws, the appointment of Burger to the Supreme Court…”
The petition listed on long list of musical acts, The MC5, Hendrix, the Dead, Creedence, The Fugs, Ray Charles, Joan Baez, and even The Turtles, who had recently been arrested for one offense or another and was a rally call about an anti-riot act that had just been passed by the US Congress that made it illegal to urge people to go to an event at which a riot later occurs.
Another Gary Grimshaw – Carl Lundgren collaboration from the September 5, 1969 issue of The Berkeley Tribe newspaper.
Volume Five - 1969 - continues - HERE
