Bill Haley & the Comets (FD-133, final night)
FD-133 · George Hunter, Jerry Wainwright
San Francisco
The Drifters
The Flamin’ Groovies
Sunday, August 18, 1968 closed the Avalon's three-night FD-133 stand — Bill Haley and the Comets, the Drifters, and the Flamin' Groovies, the last of the run that Wolfgang's brackets August 16 through 18.
Of the three acts on that poster, the one with the future was printed smallest. The Flamin' Groovies had formed in 1965 — earlier, as it happens, than the Grateful Dead — and by this Sunday they were three years old with exactly one record to their name: Sneakers, a seven-song ten-inch they had pressed themselves on their own Snazz label earlier that year, in a small run, a decade before self-releasing was a thing bands did. No label, no album. Supersnazz would not arrive until September 1969, and Shake Some Action, the record their reputation now rests on, was eight years off. Critics today routinely name them among the forerunners of punk and power pop; in August 1968 they opened for a fifties bandleader and a soul group, and closed out the weekend at the Avalon.
At Fillmore West the same night, Creedence finished their own bracket of BG-133, and both rooms went dark.
Research Sources
FD-133 NARRATIVES REWRITTEN + FACT-CHECKED at human gate 2026-08-11. The run wrote ONE day-level narrative covering BOTH venues and copied it onto the BG-133 and FD-133 rows, so each poster page told the other poster's story. Split: BG-133 (hero) keeps the Fillmore-side text; FD-133 got its own Avalon-side story per night. Biographical claims added in the rewrite were then independently verified, and one was WRONG: - DRIFTERS: a draft said the 1968 group was "several lineups removed" from the "Under the Boardwalk" band. FALSE. Johnny Moore sang that 1964 lead (stepping in the day after Rudy Lewis died) AND was in the mid-1968 touring lineup (Moore/Sheppard/Fredericks/Turner, per Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks). Corrected. The "Save the Last Dance for Me" (1960, Ben E. King) break IS real and is what the text now says. Also dropped an unsupported "third incarnation" ordinal -- no source supports a clean count; ~60 musicians passed through the Treadwell line with rival Drifters groups touring simultaneously. - GEORGE HUNTER: founder of the Charlatans (1964) CONFIRMED, and confirmed the SAME person as the Family Dog poster artist (V&A collections record + RR Auction both credit "George Hunter of The Charlatans"). But "invented the look of the SF scene" was OVERSTATED and is now "helped set the visual tone", with co-credit to Mike Ferguson, whose Victoriana is inseparable from Hunter's Old West interest in every source. - FLAMIN' GROOVIES: formed 1965 (predating the Grateful Dead), and by Aug 1968 had released ONLY the self-pressed Sneakers 10-inch EP on their own Snazz label -- no label deal, no LP (Supersnazz came Sept 1969; Shake Some Action 1976). All confirmed. The punk/power-pop influence claim is strong critical consensus rather than analytically demonstrated, so it is attributed to critics rather than asserted in our own voice.
Verification Notes
Antagonist (2026-08-10 headless run): corroboration via check-claims on vetted sources. FD-133 closing night. VERIFIED wolfgangs.
Were You There?
Do you have memories of this show, or an original FD-133 poster? On This Day in Art Rock History celebrates the people who lived through the psychedelic era. Your stories and collections matter to this archive.
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