Comments for The Chet Helms Chronicles

Comment on The Freudian Slips by ponderpig

ponderpig — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:12:54 +0000

I just noticed that the Freudian Slip’s bass drum features their name plus the male symbol – you know, the shield with the spear sticking out behind it. Hmmm, as Freud would say, verry interesting.

Comment on The Freudian Slips by ponderpig

ponderpig — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:03:39 +0000

I remember William Penn and his Pals, but I thought they were an East Bay band like Peter Wheat and the Breadmen. Do you remember the Liverpool Invasion 3? They were very big in San Mateo for a short time. I wrote about them here: http://ponderingpig.wordpress.com/2007/05/07/where-are-the-liverpool-invasion-three/

Comment on The Freudian Slips by ghoff46

ghoff46 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:52:03 +0000

Haas = Levi Strauss, some sort of small-time clothing maker. A branch of the family, possibly including Wendy Haas,who may or may not be related, lived in Atherton on Monte Vista, across the street from a Woodside High friend of Teda’s. We worked on our comedy routine in her friend’s pool house. (I lived in the poolhouse for a few weeks.) Until several years ago, the Haas family owned the Oakland A’s baseball team. Another band that came out of CSM in late ‘64 was William Penn and his Pals. Greg Rollie, later of Santana and Journey was a member for a while, as was Mickey Hart. My future wife was in a couple of classes with two of the Pals.

Comment on The Freudian Slips by PonderPig

PonderPig — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:33:13 +0000

Huh. If I even knew about the Freudian Slips, I have long forgotten them. But the all-girl rock band phenomenon (shameful that it should considered a phenomenon and not just normal) is highly interesting to me and I have long wanted to contribute to its literature with a profile on The Pondering Pig of the most successful all-woman early Bay Area band, the Ace of Cups.

A couple things I remembered that you probably already know: 1. Haas is the name of one of the old big money, big power San Francisco families. 2. The Wildflower originated at the College of San Mateo, so they were a Peninsula group too, at least to start.

Comment on The Freudian Slips by Morgy

Morgy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:42:50 +0000

Great post as usual Greg, Teda sounds A-Mazing! A total WIN!! Your history with her makes me smile,I look forward to hearing her CD…I’m also glad you never broke your pencil!
I was unaware of ‘The Slip’s’ prior to your post,thank you for expanding this pedestrian mind! I’m off to ‘Big Mamma Gayle and Her Sugar Daddies’ web site to see where they play, as they are in my neck of the woods! How lucky is that?

Comment on Artifacts II (FD-26) by ponderpig

ponderpig — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:21:33 +0000

This is too amazing. I am speechless. You are doing all us old freaks and the entire western world a service by posting this stuff. Post more.

Comment on Artifacts by PonderPig

PonderPig — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:02:07 +0000

I remember John Carpenter, but not well. I knew him as part of the scruffy street scene we were all involved in. Don’t remember his business arrangement with Chet at all. He lived in an apartment or room on 20th Street and was nice to my young cousin, who had recently come to SF and didn’t know her way around the bad city yet. Didn’t try to get over on her. Seems to me he later got into trouble and died young in LA.

Comment on Searching for Huey M. by sandrar

sandrar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:13:03 +0000

Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. Cheers! Sandra. R.

Comment on Denver ‘67 by Ross Hannan

Ross Hannan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:29:53 +0000

You wrote: “I never know where following the trail of Chet Helms is going to take me, but I ain’t jumping off this train any time soon.”

Glad to hear the quest will continue – and please don’t forget the Family Dog’s short-live London venture.

Ross – Wokingham, England

Comment on Let Us Digress For a Moment…. by Ross Hannan

Ross Hannan — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:22:58 +0000

Although a little over a year has passed since this entry was posted, the confusion and potential misinformation of the date of Ms Joplin’s first show with Big Brother rages, well I guess, smolders on. Pretty much all of the records show the date as June 10 – but not with a Big Brother & the Holding Company show, but with BBHC sitting in at the Avalon playing maybe a handful of tunes on the kit of either the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service or the New Tweedy Brothers. Maybe it was just the basic backline kit – I don’t know. I have always considered the listings marking this as the first JJ show to be erroneous – and in all probability perpetuating the same simple error, that now seems to have passed in to “legend”. This matter has recently come to the fore in an effort being made to document the summer of 1966 for Wildflower – a popular music combo from the East Bay. As the focus switched to the Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City handbills have been unearthed and newspaper ads discovered. On May 13, 1966 Big Brother began a six week series of alternating weekend (Friday & Saturday) shows at the Red Dog Saloon, Virginia City, NV – the shows alternating, nominally weekly, with the Wildflower. This would put Big Brother in Virginia City the day Janis Joplin (who had at that point only been in The City less than a week) made her debut. Between the June 10 weekend and the scheduled June 24 shows Big Brother had only one scheduled engagement – at the St Francis Hotel playing a Timothy Leary Benefit with the Sopwith Camel on June 19. Reviews of this event are abound but there is no mention of Big Brother’s “groovy new chick singer” or anything else that implies the band were anything but a foursome. Years of caring too much about such matters led me to conclude the first Janis Joplin show as June 24 – there now appears to be some support of this. Ross