Category Archives: Music of the 60s

Music et al, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Rock venues

Bill Graham Fillmore East

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Bill Graham Fillmore East

March 8, 1968 > June 27, 1971

Bill Graham Fillmore East3 Years, 3 Months, & 20 Nights of Musical Nirvana

Bill Graham’s Fillmore East was the counterpart to his San Francisco-based Fillmore venues. Located at Second Avenue and Sixth Street in New York City’s East Village, the Fillmore East began as the Commodore Theater in 1926. Immediately before becoming the Fillmore, it was known as the Village Theater.

Bill Graham Fillmore East

Wolodia “Wolfgang” Grajonca

Graham was born Wolodia “Wolfgang” Grajonca in Berlin, Germany on January 8, 1931.  During World War II, with his father dead, the Nazi pogrom underway, and his mother gassed to death on a train to the Auschwitz concentration camp, Grajonca fortunately became part of a group of children that the International Red Cross enabled  to ultimately escape to the United States where he was placed in an upstate New York army barracks.

Later, a Bronx family brought him to live with them. Though not a citizen, he was drafted into the army and served meritoriously in the Korean War. Graham’s first experiences with entertainment came when he worked in various New York Catskill resorts, such as Grossinger’s (Liberty), the Concord Hotel (Kiamesha Lake), and the  President Hotel (Swan Lake).

Bill Graham Fillmore East

San Francisco Mime Troupe

In the mid-1960’s, Graham was drawn to concert promotion while business manager for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a radical theater group. [On November 1, 1965, Graham had presented his first show, a benefit for the San Francisco Mime Troupe.]

Graham eventually found success promoting and presenting such bands as the Jefferson Airplane, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and famously the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore Auditorium (between 1966 and 1968) and later at the Fillmore West (beginning July, 1968).

Bill Graham Fillmore East

Fillmore East

Bill Graham opened the Fillmore East on March 8, 1968 with  blues guitarist Albert King, folk singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, and Big Brother and the Holding Company.  The hall’s characteristic schedule was a two-show triple-bill concert several nights a week. Graham would regularly alternate acts between his east and west coast venues. Until early 1971, he booked bands both Friday and Saturday nights to play two shows per night–8 pm and 11 pm, The late show might not end at 3 AM or later.

Complimenting FM radio stations then recent forays into progressive rock formats whose DJs exposed rock music lovers to so-called underground bands with their extended improvisational jams, the Fillmore East fed the growing appetite for live music venues and presented those bands as well as introducing upcoming groups such as Santana and Sly and the Family Stone.  

Bill Graham made the Fillmore a safe haven where kids could experience the music they wanted without getting busted.  As he wrote in a letter published in the Village Voice just before the Fillmore’s closing:  it was my sole intention to do nothing more, or less, than present the finest contemporary artists in this country, on the best stages and in the most pleasant halls.

The list of performers who played at the Fillmore East is a “Who’s Who” of rock and roll greats. A very partial list includes: the Grateful Dead (39 shows over 28 dates); Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies; John Lennon and Yoko Ono who performed with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention; the Allman Brothers (whose double-album Live at the Fillmore East is ranked 49th amongst Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”); Jefferson Airplane; Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; Joe Cocker; Miles Davis; Derek and the Dominoes; The Chambers Brothers; Mountain; Ten Years After; and  Johnny Winter.

Bill Graham Fillmore East

Joshua Light Show

Bill Graham Fillmore EastAn integral component of each performance, the Joshua Light Show provided a psychedelic art lighting backdrop behind bands . From the summer of 1970, Joe’s Lights, made up of former members of the Joshua Light Show, became the house light show, trading duties with The Pig Light Show until the venue’s closing.

By 1971 Graham had become disenchanted with the direction of the music promotion scene and closed both Fillmores. According to Graham: The time and energy that is required for me to maintain a level of proficiency in my own work has grown so great that I have simply deprived myself of a private life. At this point I feel that I can no longer refuse myself the time, the leisure, and the privacy to which any man is rightfully entitled.

The Fillmore East closed on June 27, 1971; 1206 nights after it opened.

Bill Graham Fillmore East

Bill Graham Fillmore East

Birthdays, Music et al, Music of the 60s, Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Edward Chip Monck

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Edward Chip Monck

Celebrating his birthday, March 5, 1939
Edward Chip Monck
Chip Monck (from chipmonck.com)

The above audio clip is from an interview with Chip Monck in 2009  on the 40th Anniversary of the Woodstock Festival. Glenn A Baker interviewed Monck as part of the Ovation Channel show ‘Monday Night Legends’

The chipmonck.com site starts with these questions:

  1. Have you heard of Woodstock?
  2. Monterey Pop?
  3. The Rolling Stones Tour?
  4. Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals?
  5. The Concert for Bangladesh?

And then answers those questions with this simple answer:

He staged them all
Edward Chip Monck

Chip Monck

Edward Herbert Beresford “Chip” Monck was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He became a lighting and staging designer, but as the above references suggest, he did those things for some of the most iconic musical events of the 20th century.

When he was 20, Monck began working at the Greenwich Village nightclub The Village Gate.  While at the gate, his young friend Bobby Dylan worked in Monck’s basement apartment. Reputedly, Dylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s a’Gonna Fall” and “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” there. 

Monck recalls about Dylan,  “He spied the IBM Selectric [typewriter]. He typed while I worked at the Gate. That gave him like six hours, he’d just drift in, I gave him a key and he’d sit down and type and then I’d come back in and he’d go, or we’d go and have a drink or something. We really never spoke much.”

Edward Chip Monck

Festivals

While still working at the Village Gate, Monck also began working with the  Newport Folk Festival, and  the Newport Jazz Festival.

If those credentials aren’t enough, in 1967 he lit the Monterey International Pop Festival where Jimi Hendrix’s American coming out party occurred.

He also worked with Bill Graham in renovating Graham’s Fillmore theaters.

Edward Chip Monck

Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Woodstock Ventures hired Monck to do the lighting at their Fair. The last minute change of venue from Wallkill, NY to Bethel, NY forced Monck to eliminate much of his planned lighting. Spotlights became the primary source.

But to those who attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, Chip Monck’s voice along with John Morris’s became the reassuring threads that connected each band. Both men took turns not just introducing performers, but giving advice, recommending choices, and explaining what was going on at a time when social media didn’t exist as a term.

Perhaps the most famous quote of that weekend was Monck’s: ““The warning that I’ve received, you might take it with however many grains of salt you wish, that the brown acid that is circulating around is not specifically too good. It is suggested that you stay away from that. But it’s your own trip, be my guest. But please be advised that there’s a warning, okay?”

Edward Chip Monck

A LOT more after Woodstock

For years he helped light Rolling Stone tours and he received Tony nominations in lighting for The Rocky Horror Show and Bette Midler’s Divine Madness.

Edward Herbert Beresford Chip Monck
Playbill

He was always busy working many major venues. In 1989 he helped set up Pope John Paul’s papal mass at L.A.’s Dodger Stadium.

In the early 90s, Monck moved to Australia, his wife’s home country, where he continued in the lighting and design business. (Monck’s wife died in 2002)

Edward Chip Monck

Honors

He continues to live Melbourne, his focus mainly on corporate and retail work. In 2003, he received the  Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognizes pioneering, influential professionals and their contributions, honoring both individuals and companies. It is the Oscar of the live event industry.Here is the video that introduced that presentation.

Edward Chip Monck
Birthdays, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Who Roger Daltrey CBE

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Who Roger Daltrey CBE

Happy birthday

March 1,  1944
Who Roger Harry Daltrey CBE

Who Founded Who?

In a sense, Roger Daltrey founded the Who.  It was he who recruited  John Entwistle in 1961 to form a band.  It was Entwistles suggestion to ask Pete Townshend to join the new band, the Detours.

Who Roger Daltrey CBE

Early on…

Daltrey’s daytime job was in a sheet metal factory, even making the band’s guitars. Interesting, since Pete’s later smashing of his guitars obviously required wooden ones.

The young band went through the usual young band growing pains adding members, firing others, changing its name to The Who, then changing it to The High Numbers, before changing it back to the Who in November 1964.

By that time, Pete Townshend was the leader of the band because of his ability to compose songs, but Roger Daltrey became the front man to sing Townshend’s songs. The famous swirling mic became Daltry’s signature.

Who Roger Daltrey CBE

1965 Who released

On December 3, 1965, the Who released their first album, “My Generation.”

Who Roger Harry Daltrey CBE
My Generation album cover
Who Roger Daltrey CBE

1967 breakout

1967 was a break-out year in the US where they appeared for the first time. One of their performance was well-timed. On June 18 they appeared at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival and were included on both its movie and soundtrack album.

Having said that, during a July – August tour that year, they opened for Herman’s Hermits.

In 1968 they began to headline and in 1969 Pete Townshends “Tommy” with Roger Daltrey embodying the character on stage, put them among the elite of rock groups.

Who Roger Daltrey CBE

Who Woodstock

Invited to perform at Woodstock, the band wasn’t certain whether to, but finally did. Like Monterey, it became a huge piece of that famous festival.

The Who’s Woodstock encore: My Generation

Who Roger Daltrey CBE

Roger Daltrey

Like many groups, members began to release solo albums, and Daltry released his first, Daltrey,  in 1973.  He has released eight solo albums, but others in collaboration as well as a children album, The Wheels on the Bus.

The Who continued, sometimes sporadically,  despite the death of Keith Moon in 1978 and John Entwistle in 2002.

The Who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

Who Roger Daltrey CBE

Teenage Cancer Trust

Since 2000 he has been a patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust, a charity that builds specialized wards for teenagers with cancer in the UK and in   November 2010, Roger and Pete Townshend launched Teen Cancer America.