Jim Morrison Up Close
On June 10 and 11th, 1967, the KFRC Fantasy Fair & Magic Mountain Music Festival was held at the 4,000 seat Sidney B. Cushing Memorial Amphitheater high on the South face of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, CA. Over 15,000 people attended. This was the first of several cultural events that came to be known collectively as The Summer of Love.
Admission to the festival was $2.00 and all proceeds were donated to the nearby Hunters Point Child Care Center in San Francisco. Note: The Fantasy Fair was originally scheduled for June 3 and 4 as a benefit for the Hunters Point Child Care Center, but was delayed by inclement weather. Several acts booked for the original dates were unable to perform.
KFRC 610, the RKO Bill Drake "Boss Radio" Top 40 AM station in San Francisco, had enough clout to book a wide array of counter-culture and commercial bands. This enabled the festival to present a colorful and eclectic line-up of popular acts most of which were simultaneously receiving air-time on open-ended AM and FM stations in major American cities.
Canned Heat, Every Mother's Son, The Merry-Go-Round, The Mojo Men, The 5th Dimension, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, The Seeds, The Blues Magoos, Country Joe and The Fish, The Byrds with Hugh Masakela on trumpet, Wilson Pickett, Moby Grape, Tim Hardin, Sparrow, The Grass Roots and The Loading Zone were a few acts that played alongside more established bands like Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, and Captain Beefheart. It is possible that this was the Doors' first large show, and in any case, this show happened coincidentally with the rise of "Light My Fire", the group's first major hit, to the top of the charts.
The poster for the event was designed by artist Stanley Mouse then gaining acclaim for poster-art created for Bill Graham (promoter), The Fillmore West Theater and The Grateful Dead. There were other event posters as well.
After enjoying a scenic ride up the mountain from embarkation points at the Marin County Civic Center, Mill Valley and other locations, a giant Buddha balloon greeted attendees when they arrived at the amphitheater. Transportation was provided by tongue-in-cheek-named "Trans-Love Bus Lines." Performances were on a main stage and a smaller second stage. Various art-fair type vendors sold posters, crafts and refreshments from booths scattered in the woods around the amphitheater. The festival included a large geodesic dome of pipes and fittings covered with white plastic that contained a light and sound show.
In a foreshadowing of dark events to come at the 1969 Altamont Free Concert, this festival was rumored to be the first to employ Hells Angels members as security guards. Actually, Jefferson Airplane asked the Hell's Angels to escort them from San Francisco to the venue, which they did without incident. The Hell's Angels did not provide security for the event.
Alec Palao wrote of the fair in Cream Puff War #1: "The dichotomy in Bay Area music was never so evident, as the self-proclaimed "adult" scene separated itself from the "teen/pop" scenes." Paradoxically, Greg Shaw recalls that there was not really a large gap splitting the radio preferences of the teens and the hip until Tom Donohue's free-form KMPX fully flowered in the fall of '67. "Being a KFRC event, it probably attracted some younger fans who wouldn't have minded [Every Mother's Son], with the older hippies coming for their own reasons, if only a groovy day out in the sun." A review of the bands that played indicates that most were groups that played the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms and were part of the Psychedelic scene at the time. It wasn't a teenie-bopper event.
The Magic Mountain Music Festival was remarkably mellow. There were no fights or disturbances, and at the end of the day, all trash was placed in or next to the garbage cans provided, and the crowd left the Mount Tamalpias as they found it.
While the highly documented Monterey International Pop Festival continues to be remembered as the seminal event of the 1967 Summer of Love, the KFRC Festival took place one week before and was, by all accounts, the first Rock and Roll Festival in history, although not the first Electronic Music Festival
Saturday, June 10
* The 5th Dimension
* Dionne Warwick
* Canned Heat
* Jim Kweskin Jug Band
* Moby Grape
* 13th Floor Elevators
* Spanky and Our Gang
* Roger Collins
* Blackburn & Snow
* The Sparrow
* Every Mother's Son
* Kaleidoscope (US band)
* The Chocolate Watchband
* The Mojo Men
* The Merry-Go-Round
* The Doors
Sunday, June 11
* Jefferson Airplane
* The Byrds
* P.F. Sloan
* The Seeds
* The Grass Roots
* The Loading Zone
* Tim Buckley
* Every Mother's Son
* Hugh Masekela
* Steve Miller Blues Band
* Country Joe & the Fish
* Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
* Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band
* The Sons of Champlin
* The Lamp of Childhood
* The Mystery Trend
* Penny Nichols
* The Merry-Go-Round
* New Salvation Army Band
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