On This Day in Art Rock History

A DAILY CHRONICLE

SAN FRANCISCO · THE PSYCHEDELIC ERA · 1960s

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Concert Poster

September 16, 1966
Poster
Series
Bill Graham
Venue
Fillmore Auditorium
San Francisco
Date
September 16, 1966
Performers
Byrds
Wildflower

The most revealing bill of the week, and it is not a rock story. On September 16, 1966 the Fillmore Auditorium had the Byrds with Wildflower -- and between the sets, the house staged "The Dutchman," the LeRoi Jones one-act, by the writer who would later take the name Amiri Baraka. It is a short, savage play about a white woman and a Black man on a New York subway car that ends in a killing, and Bill Graham programmed it into the interval of a folk-rock dance concert. That single decision says more about the early Fillmore than any poster does: Graham had come out of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and was still running the hall on a benefit-organiser's instincts rather than a promoter's, where a theatre piece between sets was a perfectly normal thing to put in front of a paying rock audience. One catalogue note, because it trips people up: coau files this night as P-3, a P-series designation, not a BG number. It is sometimes listed as BG-28; the source does not support that.

Verification Notes

antagonist: PASS — bill/date corroborated against chickenonaunicycle per-venue list (refreshed 2026-09-07) plus a second independent source; single-source or wiki-only claims hedged in prose, not asserted. The house also staged "The Dutchman", the LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) one-act, between sets. COAU files the night as P-3 — a P-series designation, NOT a BG number; the shared-context note calling it "BG-28" is not supported by the source and was not carried through.

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