Northern California Folk-Rock Festival, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, San Jose, CA, 5-19-1968, Part 1 - The Electric Flag

This is the sixth album out of seven albums I'm posting from the 1968 Northern California Folk-Rock Festival. This set features the Electric Flag.

Up until now, all of the albums I've posted from this festival took place on May 18, 1968. But this one (and the last one I'll be posting) took place on May 19th. That's why I'm calling this "Part 1" in the title, instead of "Part 6," because it's Part 1 of May 19th.

I said quite a lot in my write-up for the first album I posted from this festival, the Youngbloods set. I recommend you read that, because most of that applies to this set too. Most importantly, note that this is sourced from an audience bootleg, so the sound quality isn't up to my usual standards. I had to do a lot of work to fix all sorts of flaws. The final results sounds pretty decent for a 1968 concert, in my opinion, but you need to be tolerant about the flaws that still remain.

In some previous write-ups I've done for this festival, I extensively quoted a review of this concert from the San Francisco Examiner. It didn't say much about the music, but the reviewer highlighted a few favorite performers. In addition to calling the Steve Miller Band "astonishing", it said "Mike Bloomfield and Buddy Miles in the Electric Flag, Jerry Garcia's guitar with the Grateful Dead, and the blues of Taj Mahal were also outstanding over the weekend." 

I couldn't find much written about this festival on the Internet. However, I found a now defunct website that had some commentary about this performance. It starts with an extensive quote by an unnamed person who attended the concert: 

"In the mid-afternoon onstage came the Electric Flag, a group I was aware of but had never heard. I didn't know what to expect as the bunch of them hemmed and hawed and fumbled around the stage for a bit, distractedly looking around and mumbling with each other. After a few minutes of this, [Nick Gravenites] came downstage and announced from a vocal mic, ‘Hey, Mike, if you can hear me, come on, man! It’s time to play. Drop the chick and get your ass up here ... now!’ Another minute went by [and] all of a sudden this lanky, frizzy-haired freak came running onstage, laughing and grabbing up his guitar. He then proceeded to burn his memory into my head forever."

Here's an archival link of the whole article: 

Electric Flag: An American Music Band 

This band was talented, but maybe too talented, because different creative members wanted to go in different directions. It turned out this was one of the band's last concerts. The band's stellar lead guitarist Mike Bloomfield quit the band about a week later. However, the band still had more concerts they had already booked. Bloomfield played a few more shows into early June before quitting for good. The rest of the band broke up not long after that.

As I've mentioned previously, I did extensive work trying to rescue these songs from poor sound quality. Two of the songs in this set had special problems, which is why they have "[Edit]" in their titles. In the original version, there was a short gap in the middle of "Hey Joe." I patched it up. And about the last minute of "Texas" was missing. So I filled that in with another version from a different bootleg.

 This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 Soul Searchin' [Instrumental] (Electric Flag)
02 Groovin' Is Easy (Electric Flag)
03 Hey Joe [Edit] (Electric Flag)
04 Sweet Home Chicago (Electric Flag)
05 Killin' Floor (Electric Flag)
06 Texas [Edit] (Electric Flag)
07 Another Country (Electric Flag)
08 Wine (Electric Flag)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Eqw8pS64

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/48IWSe0AjgAPFKL/file

The cover photo of Mike Bloomfield is from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.  

Various Artists - Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA, 6-17-1967, Afternoon Show

Here's the second out of five albums I'm posting that make up the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. As I mentioned in the first album, the festival was broken up into five parts, and one had to buy tickets for each part. This part consisted of the afternoon show on June 17th, the second day of the festival.

Generally speaking, the different parts didn't really have musical themes, except for this one, because most of the musical acts in this part were heavily influenced by the blues.

As I mentioned in the write-up for the first part, I'm mostly just posting what a person named Simon put together in 2022, with some additions based on material made available since then. As with all the parts, I'm including a PDF Simon made that explains the different sourcing for each of the songs.

Also in my write-up for the first part, I mentioned a Wikipedia link that lists the known songs from the festival, including the ones where there's no publicly available recording. It's worth mentioning that link again:

Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia 

Let's review what's still missing. Canned Heat is known to have played the three songs included here, but also an unknown number of additional songs. The Big Brother and the Holding Company set is complete. This was the concert that turned that band's main lead singer, Janis Joplin, into a big star. In fact, they're the only band to play two sets in the festival. That's because their set here was one of the highlights, but a documentary film crew headed by D.A. Pennebaker failed to record any good footage of the band. So they were brought back to play a few songs on the third and final day.

Al Kooper had been a keyboardist for the Blues Project since 1965, but he quit that band shortly before this festival. The Blues Project got their own spot later in the festival, but Kooper got a solo spot too. (He would go on to form Blood, Sweat and Tears a year later.) According to the Wikipedia set list above, he only played two songs, and one of them is here. But according to a Newsweek article I linked to in the first part, Kooper's set lasted about half an hour, so he probably played more.

There are eight songs here performed by the Butterfield Blues Band, led by Paul Butterfield. Apparently there did more songs. But each act was allowed to up to 40 minutes, and their set already totaled 33 minutes, so there's probably just one or two missing songs. There are just two songs here by the Quicksilver Messenger Service, and they played five. One of the missing ones is a cover of "Who Do You Love," which they usually ended with a long jam.  There are two Steve Miller Band songs here, but they played at least one more, "Living in the U.S.A." 

The last act for this part of the festival was the Electric Flag. This band was formed in the spring of 1967 by guitarist Mike Bloomfield, and it was led by him, Barry Goldberg, and Buddy Miles. This actually was their very first concert. They would put out a studio album in early 1968 called "A Long Time Comin'," but by then the band's sound had already changed, with founder Bloomfield having less of a role. In fact, he left the band just a couple of months after the album was released. This concert is truer to the original vision he had for the band. There are six songs by them here, which actually is two more than the ones on the Wikipedia set list, so I don't know if there are still more missing ones.

I could say a lot more about all the different performances, but I think the music is all good and generally speaks for itself. The sound quality is excellent throughout, especially considering the time period. A lot of that quality is due to the unusually good sound system. Here's what the Wikipedia article on the festival has to say about that:

"Also notable was the festival's innovative sound system, designed and built by audio engineer Abe Jacob, who started his career doing live sound for San Francisco bands and went on to become a leading sound designer for the American theater. Jacob's groundbreaking Monterey sound system was the progenitor of all the large-scale PAs that followed. It was a key factor in the festival's success and it was greatly appreciated by the artists. For instance, in the 'Monterey Pop' film, David Crosby can clearly be seen saying 'Great sound system!' to band mate Chris Hillman at the start of the Byrds' soundcheck."

Note that that, like all the parts from this festival, this sounds even better than what Simon put together, because I boosted the vocals for the songs that needed that, using the UVR5 audio editing program. About half of the songs needed the boost, though there didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to it. Some musical acts had low vocals across the board, or not, but often that was only the case for certain songs. Perhaps that's because this is a patchwork, put together from many different sources, both released and unreleased. 

By the way, here's a quote about the festival by Steve Miller: "I remember being really happy to be at Monterey, really excited. It was the first event I attended that was organized in such a really first-class way from top to bottom." 

And here are some quotes about the Big Brother and the Holding Company set, since that was the clear highlight of this part of the festival. Rock critic Keith Altham: "Janis Joplin was the staggering thing I saw on the whole show to me. Because I had never heard a woman sing like that. 'I told her afterwards, "you're the best female rock singer I've ever heard in my life.' She looked me up and down, smiled, and said, 'You get out much, honey?' I thought it was funny. She was very friendly. I liked her."

Record company executive Clive Davis: "When Janis (Joplin) took the stage, it was an unknown group to me totally, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and right from the outset it was something you could never forget. She took the stage, dominated, and was absolutely breathtaking, hypnotic, compelling, and soul shaking. You saw someone who was not only the goods but was doing something that no one else was doing. With that fervor, that intensity, and impact. So yes, that in effect, coupled with everything around me, the way people were dressing, what was going on in Haight Ashbury [the hippie district in San Francisco], the spirit in the air, and the feeling... I just said, 'You know, I am here at a very unique time. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling it in my spine. I'm feeling it in my sense of excitement. I'm feeling it in the impact. It's not only musical changes, but in societal changes.'" 

Davis immediately had the record company he was working for, Columbia Records, sign the band to a record contract, even though they had to buy out the band's existing contract with another company to do so.  

This album is two hours and 27 minutes long. 

01 talk (John Phillips)
02 talk (Canned Heat)
03 Rollin' and Tumblin' (Canned Heat)
04 talk (Canned Heat)
05 Dust My Broom (Canned Heat)
06 talk (Canned Heat)
07 Bullfrog Blues (Canned Heat)
08 talk (Chet Helms)
09 Down on Me (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
10 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
11 Harry (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
12 Roadblock (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
13 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
14 talk (Country Joe & the Fish)
15 Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine (Country Joe & the Fish)
16 talk (Country Joe & the Fish)
17 I-Feel-like-I'm-Fixin'-to Die Rag (Country Joe & the Fish)
18 talk (Country Joe & the Fish)
19 The Bomb Song (Country Joe & the Fish)
20 Section 43 [Instrumental] (Country Joe & the Fish)
21 Wake Me, Shake Me (Al Kooper)
22 Look Over Yonders Wall (Butterfield Blues Band)
23 Mystery Train (Butterfield Blues Band)
24 Born in Chicago (Butterfield Blues Band)
25 Double Trouble (Butterfield Blues Band)
26 Mary Ann (Butterfield Blues Band)
27 Driftin' Blues (Butterfield Blues Band)
28 One More Heartache (Butterfield Blues Band)
29 Droppin' Out (Butterfield Blues Band)
30 Dino's Song [All I Ever Wanted to Do] (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
31 If You Live (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
32 Mercury Blues (Steve Miller Band)
33 Super Shuffle [Instrumental] (Steve Miller Band)
34 talk (David Crosby)
35 Groovin' Is Easy (Electric Flag)
36 I'm Sick Y'All (Electric Flag)
37 Texas (Electric Flag)
38 talk (Electric Flag)
39 Over-Lovin' You (Electric Flag)
40 Night Time Is the Right Time (Electric Flag)
41 Wine [Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee] (Electric Flag)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1mXxvn3Y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/hpdZuZUHcB1hh9t/file

Like most of the cover art I've made for this festival, I had too many good options to choose from, so I broke the image into four smaller ones. From top left clockwise: Janis Joplin of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish, Mike Bloomfield of the Electric Flag, and Paul Butterfield of the Butterfield Blues Band.