The Youngbloods - Family Dog on the Great Highway, San Francisco, CA, 3-29-1970

Here's another concert from the great Bob Matthews collection I've been raving about recently. To quickly review, a sound engineer mostly working for the Grateful Dead for decades recorded many hundreds of concerts without anyone knowing, and now they're getting publicly released almost on a daily basis. So far, they are soundboards with excellent sound quality. This 1970 concert by the Youngbloods follows that same pattern.

I'm still trying to figure out the contours of the Matthews collection. The person who has it and is releasing it to the public, Charlie Miller, isn't giving many advance hints, but we can start to surmise some things from the concerts posted so far. One thing I'm learning is there are many very similar concerts getting posted. For instance, in the last week (writing this on September 27, 2026), all the posts have been of 1970 concerts by the Youngbloods. There were concerts from this venue on March 27th, 28th, and 29th. But there's also a Youngbloods concert at Santa Clara University, one from Berkeley Community Theater, and one from a club called Euphoria in San Rafael. Out of those six concerts, I only plan on posting this one, because they all have very similar set lists and this one is the longest, with the most songs performed. But it's interesting in that it suggests there are recordings from many venues, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 1969, the band released the album "Elephant Mountain." In my opinion, it's their best album. It's got a lot of critical praise. For instance, it was included in the popular book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die." Naturally, a lot of songs performed here are from that, as well as unreleased songs that would come out on their next albums. In late 1970, they would release a live album called "Rock Festival." The songs from that come from five different Bay Area venues. It's not clear which songs were from which venue, but at least one song came from this exact concert. So this could explain why this and other Youngbloods concerts are in the Bob Matthews collection, because the band was recording a lot of concerts with the intention of making a live album.

Weirdly, though, for this concert as well as the ones on the two previous nights at this venue, the song "Darkness, Darkness" wasn't performed. That was their biggest original hit song, which was released as a single in 1969 and then again in 1970. (It did better the second time.)

I've included all the songs and banter from this concert. However, there was a fair amount of dead air between songs, consisting either of guitar tuning or just near silence. I removed about ten minutes total of that.  

This album is an hour and 28 minutes long.

01 On Beautiful Lake Spenard [Instrumental] (Youngbloods)
02 Josiane (Youngbloods)
03 talk (Youngbloods)
04 Sugar Babe (Youngbloods)
05 Interlude [Instrumental] (Youngbloods)
06 It's a Lovely Day (Youngbloods)
07 Sweet Little Sixteen (Youngbloods)
08 talk (Youngbloods)
09 Hippie from Olema (Youngbloods)
10 talk (Youngbloods)
11 Quicksand (Youngbloods)
12 On Sir Francis Drake (Youngbloods)
13 Peepin' 'n' Hidin' [Baby What You Want Me to Do] (Youngbloods)
14 talk (Youngbloods)
15 Lovesick Blues (Youngbloods)
16 She's Long, She's Tall [She Weeps like a Willow Tree] (Youngbloods)
17 talk (Youngbloods)
18 Good Times (Youngbloods)
19 talk (Youngbloods)
20 Peace Song (Youngbloods)
21 Beautiful (Youngbloods)
22 Let's Get Together (Youngbloods)
23 talk (Youngbloods)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BkdWkG7o

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/O05zchQobMARyuo/file

The cover image of lead singer Jesse Colin Young is a screenshot I took from a video of the band performing on an unknown TV show around 1969.