Exceptional Zero - Today in History 3-18-1987

The artwork was a collaboration of Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, and Wes Wilson 

So bear with me while I reminisce a tad .. in the mid 80s I was a transplanted East Coast Deadhead living in San Francisco and the Old Fillmore Auditorium had pretty much just re-opned as a full fledged music venue again after almost 20 years of neglect. So it was very cool to walk up those steps, get warmly greeted by a staffperson (who's job that was), maybe grab an apple from the barrel at the top of the stairs, enter the poster covered hallway and enter the ballroom -- to hear Jerry play again in that "sacred" room. 

I remember it was like hippie central in there at this show-- with a "new" Jerry band to be unveiled -- and  crowded. I wasn't a young kid then but still felt like one, as this show brought out all the old-timers.

At that time the Bay area musicians (besides Jerry) weren't cherished vintage public icons yet -- they were more like struggling middle-aged guys scrapping by reliving their glory days. And there was no jamband audience scene in SF (or anywhere, really) then -- just a bunch of local Deadheads like me who appreciated all the local "Dinosaurs." You could still see many of the "old" musicians at any number of local bars almost any weekend. Cipollina played in like, 5 bands regularly. Zero (with Cipollina) was our local go-to when the Dead weren't in town, so it was cool to hear them in that room, too. Especially with Merl.

I remember bailing on the line to get my poster (i got one) signed by all the artists -- I regret it to this day. I did take a cheap camera and still have pics, somewhere.

But what was especially cool was, you could take the Geary bus (' cause you were likely to have your car broken into in that neighborhood while you were in the show, which was a bummer cause you just walked out and were happily-psyched to receive a free poster of the show you were just at ), and the bus door would open directly in front of the Fillmore's entrance.  Just cross the sidewalk and walk right up for a night of delight!

The brick building was damaged in the 89 earthquake and closed until 94. In its first month back we got to see the Pranksters (Kesey and crew were doing a play sort of thing), and then the Starship (with a Todd Rundgren guest appearance) with Merl 's RainForest(? )band opening. Good times.

^ Before the earthquake damaged the building in Oct 89, we were at the Fillmore at a Neville Brothers show in Feb, and the first act had finished. Gradually, you could smell smoke - - like wood smoke. No one knew what was going on. And the smoke smell kept getting stronger. We eventually walked over into the upstairs bar where there were some windows overlooking the street and all you could see were red flashing lights illuminating the room. But people were still partying full on, as it was a "New Orleans"  leaning crowd and the Nevilles were quite popular at that time.

Peeked out and saw fire trucks -- lots of them. Lots - hook and ladders and the whole enchilada. Turns out there was a raging four alarm fire right next door!  That dilapidated building was housing lots of theatrical props or something at the time and the place just went up like tinder. I think it was the former Jim Jones Temple.

The Fillmore was eventually fully evacuated as this blaze was roaring -- and, thankfully the historic landmark was saved. But sustained considerable water and fire damage and was closed until the earthquake "permanently" closed it for a full retrofit.

This was the show where my contribution to rock and roll was finding Art Neville some Popeye's chicken (in San Francisco? in 89?) before the show since he didn't care for the backstage spread. I think we ended up going to the nearby sketchy Safeway for whatever looked close. Probably poisoned the poor man.

Love -- I get what you are saying...for sure there was still plenty of psychedelic dance music going on if you poked around the Pink section, even when the punk scene dominated SF. 

I can only speak to the mid 80s onward and at that point all the jamband musicians in the Bay area were mostly old. Oh sure you had the Gary Gates band and some others, of course, but mainly we were seeing  (and lovin) Thunder and Lightning, Fish and Chips, the Dinosaurs, Fish Stew,  Zero., etc. So a lot of Melton, Gravenites, Cipollina, Albin, Dryden, Kilmer, Saunders configurations -- but the Dead and any offshoots were the predominate local bands around.

I found that the "jamband" musicians -- and the audience -- got much younger with the Colorado influx (post-Jerry). Leftover Salmon, String Cheese, Yonder, Spearhead, Animal Liberation Orchestra, New Monsoon, etc. In the Bay area I attach the conventional jamband scene to the High Sierra Music Festival (and Marin Music festival, too). In the East to the Wetlands.

Hippy music -- it endures.

^ I was hoping you or another old soul would pop-in as to validate my rickety memory so I wouldn't sound (more) like a rambling fool.

I'm not kidding when I say for a long stretch there (I'll say 85-early 90s), we could see one of those "Dinosaurs" every week when the Dead weren't playing in the Bay area (which they did a lot -- in 85 they played 20 shows in the Bay area, allowing me to sleep at home every night and maybe make it to work the next day -- which was quite different than touring Virginia to Vermont.East-coast style). Then the Warfield opened and Jerry started playing there so much you just couldn't afford to go everytime. Sounds crazy, I know.

In addition to Great American Music Hall or an all-star gig at the Fillmore, the SF venues these non-Dead, 60s-survivor bands played in were tiny hole-in-the-wall venues -- the Chi Chi Club, The Saloon, Last Day Saloon, Full Moon Saloon --- lots of saloons. For someone like myself it was quite the treat, just being able to walk up to THE John Cippolina down in North beach and ask him if he needed help packing his amp into Nick's car. Or wanted to smoke a joint. (Some of the most disgusting bathrooms in the free world in these venues - and I've spent time in Balto's Fell's Point.)

Fish and Chip  (85): quality gets better as tape rolls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UEi0VxCUBI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mQ4VtXAqyI&list=PLzFFZVe6xteksLgLMGzbnM...

The younger women were mostly at the Zero shows as they swooned for Kimock, the young guitar savant, so we always would hit those shows. "Old guys" Cipollina and Martin Fierro were in the band too, plus Pete Sears or Banana or Bobby Vega, depending, Then they entered the Robert Hunter collaboration days and Judge Murphy started singing, which increased thr band's popularity. Zero moved from the sleazy bars to GAMH onwards to Maritime Hall during this period -- still playing so regularly they seemed a defacto house band there.

It wasn't the jamband scene like we know it now for sure, but a golden time for any single guy in his late 20 - early thirties. And a golden, mostly overlooked, time for hippy music.

^ The Saloon is supposedly SF's oldest bar. Barry Melton said he played there 400 - 500 times. The dance floor was as big as the stage.

[Lowell "Banana" Levinger, who was one of the founders of the Youngbloods and prefers to be called by his pulpy fruit nickname, recalls his first performance with Melton at the club at 1232 Grant Ave.

"You get up on the stage and start playing and you realize there's no back door," Banana said, who plays keyboards and guitar with the band. "If there was a fire, you'd never get out. The band would die. I said, "Great gig, Barry. "]

Typical show in those days  I think we caught the last set after the Dead show in Oakland.)

<My first Zero show was at the Chi-Chi in 1985, I went to see Cipolina and I was like who is this other guitar player?>

So funny, I had a similar experience. We had just driven across country, gone to the BG Civic for my first West Coast shows (NYE 84/85), got our van broken into in the Tenderloin, and after the NYE run, headed up to Cotati  in Sonoma County to see Kreutzmann play with Brent in Kokomo? Go Ahead? at the Cotati Cabaret . They were the main act but opened for Zero -- Zero's third gig. Cool, we just saw three powerful nights of the Dead (Parish's family had just died in a car accident right before the NY shows) and now we could see a couple band members in a bar on Jan 1? We had nowhere else to go.

After the show, they were kicking everyone out and it was sooooooo foggy on 101, we stayed til the bitter end -- the very last patrons to go as the band packed up. I distinctly remember going up to this young guy who played lead (Cipollina was surprisingly not the main guy) and asking his name. Steve Kimock. What? Kimock. Hey,,, you were good.

We ended up sleeping in the parking lot and getting rousted by the police later in the light/morning. Headed down to Santa Cruz to start a new life. Worked out ok.

[Chi Chi Club was a "burlesque" house in addition to hosting rock and roll bands. One of the few places you could smoke weed pretty openly back then.)

Ths is the only Chi Chi Club show I could find that captures that era - none of this pansy String Cheesey jam band stuff:

Thunder and Lightning 1984 12 29

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaXGKWeqc-A

Nick Gravenites John Cipollina Doug Killmer Greg Elmore

< picked the string cover off the floor>

If you touched the floor in any of those places back then and lived you are safe from the Coronavirus

<Jerry played a few runs at the Orpheum Theate>

Yeah, I don't know if I was really aware of the Warfield until Jerry played there in Nov and Dec 87.

Then  it was the Orpheum  for the May 88, December 88 and the Jan 89 shows. That was a cool place.

Jerry didn't get back tt he Warfield til 12-2-89, according to my ticket stubs (whicj are certainly nt the last word).

Orpheum

May 7, 1988 Jerry Garcia Band--This was the night after the JGB show at the Fillmore Auditorium (May 6), where Howard Wales had made a surprise reappearance on a lengthy "Don't Let Go."

December 2-3, 1988 Jerry Garcia Band/Bob Weir and Rob Wasserman--The next night (December 4), Garcia, Weir and Wasserman played Neil Young's Bridge Benefit at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

January 27-28, 1989 Jerry Garcia Band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZCgxEL5hxQ

March 3-4, 1989 Jerry Garcia Band--Clarence Clemons sat in for the entire show on March 3.

http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2016/04/orpheum-theatre-san-francisco-c...

Ok - here's a historical 80's one-off San Francisco musical event: In 1989, Art Neville, Leo Nocentelli and George Porter installed Russell Batiste on drums and resurrected the Meters name.

They reunited in a tiny neighborhood bar in the Richmond District down the street from where I used to live and where we would see Zero play regularly. So for us, it was  like, what? the Meters? You got to be kiddin.

This was a big, big deal for the New Orleans crowd near (there were lots of Radiators and Nevilles fans living in SF around that time) and far.

My big memory of that one was standing next to Jack Casady as he checked out George Porter and the band (I didn't have the nerve then to talk to him).

   "...Leo had been talking back and forth to Art and said, “We ought to go do this—I can get this gig in San Francisco, it will pay a nice little piece of money. You want to come out and do it?” And Art said sure. I think that San Francisco gig was the one that catapulted us to where we are. We played a club called Last Day Saloon. We sold out the Friday and Saturday show. Saturday evening, the [club owner] came to us after the show and said, “You guys want to play a Sunday afternoon matinee? I’ve already sold it out—I’ll just give you the whole pot.” People were coming from New York and Portland to see us play."

...The first time we played the Last Day Saloon in California, our roadie at the time said, “This is a tape I took from a guy in the audience.” I listened to it, and said, “Damn! This sounds better than my tape [of the gig].” A guy sitting across the aisle from me [on the plane home] said, “Check this one out.” [laughs] You can’t stop it.

http://www.offbeat.com/articles/meter-men-an-offbeat-interview-with-art-...

Greg - Sky Band sounds familiar - He was playing all over the place with and without Zero then, and there were a lot of configurations, especially at the 4th Street tavern in San Rafael and up in Sebastopol. Give it a listen...does it have a sax and/or girl singer?

Woz - I always liked living in the Richmond district best. Felt very residential and was surrounded by parks (GG, Presidio, Legion of Honor). Easy access to GG Bridge and ocean.. Great public transportation (on all night bus lines - which were relatively safe to ride at the time). Once you got a car, street parking was the real bitch. Street cleaning mornings you'd see all your neighbors in pajamas circling around the block searching for a spot. That sucked.