Grateful Dead Shrine 1968 Pigpen Handbill

John Van Hamersveld is a prominent graphic artist to this day with a career that stretched from his “The Endless Summer” movie poster in 1965 to the graphic treatment of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. In between he was a close friend of San Francisco’s “Big Five” poster artists and frequented shuttled up to San Francisco 1966-1968. Van Hammerseld and several friends formed Pinnacle Productions to produce shows akin to the Fillmore and Avalon at the Shrine Expo Hall in LA near the campus of USC. Apparently Star Wars creator George Lucas was part of their light crew in 1967-68.

The Airplane showed up at this concert on Saturday night.. It's worth noting that the Dead, Airplane and Steve Miller were all playing the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival in Santa Clara this weekend. The Dead would have played the Shrine on Friday night, flown up to San Jose, played the Fairgrounds on Saturday afternoon, and then returned to the Shrine for the Saturday night show.

“…the Grateful Dead pummelled several thousand persons with their long improvisational rock music in a show sponsored by the Pinnacle. The sound of the San Francisco sextet is heavily dependent on lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, whose brilliant playing makes it hard to realize that he is surrounded by routine musicians. They have two average drummers instead of one good one. Pigpen's organ is generally barely audible and his voice, the best in the group, is mediocre.
Garcia, however, led the group through some exciting blues-based music which roused the Shrine crowd into fervid demonstrations of appreciation.”    - Pete Johnson, Los Angeles Times