Paul says: Here's a great Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks concert bootleg that wasn't in the public domain until today - as I write this on October 7, 2026. It was made public as part of the Bob Matthews collection that I talked about previously.In late September 2026, I posted a handful of concerts from the Bob Matthews collection. Since then, new bootlegs have continued to become public from that collection, at roughly one per day. But I haven't posted any in a while for one reason or another. For instance, there has been a big stretch of releases of Youngbloods concerts - nine of them in the last two weeks. They're all pretty similar, so I was good with posting just one. Some others were only partial concerts. But whenever I come across one I like, such as this one, I'll try to make posting it a priority.
The venue of this concert confused me at first: "The New Old Fillmore." The history of venues in San Francisco with the name Fillmore in it is confusing. At first, there was "The Fillmore," which was run by promoter Bill Graham from 1966 to 1968. But the neighborhood was getting dangerous and the place was rather small, so he moved to a new location (previously known as the Carousel Ballroom) in the summer of 1968. He opened up another venue in New York City at the same time, so these two places became known as the Fillmore West (San Francisco) and Fillmore East (New York City).
What happened to the old Fillmore though? I didn't know this until putting this album together today, but from about mid-1969 to mid-1970 it was taken over by new management and renamed "The New Old Fillmore." So that's where this concert took place. This new management was associated with the band the Flamin' Groovies, so I presume they played there a lot. And, in fact, the Bob Matthews collection has already released a Flamin' Groovies concert at this venue from the day after this, April 11, 1970, but I didn't post it because it's partial recording consisting of two and a half songs. However, I managed to find out that on at least April 10th and 11th, there were four acts on the bill each night: the Amboy Dukes, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, the Flamin' Groovies, and the headliners, Hot Tuna. Since this has been posted and that partial Flamin' Groovies one has been posted too, I'm hopeful we'll get the other sets from those days as well. We'll see.
By the way, the Fillmore West and Fillmore East closed down in the summer of 1971. The original Fillmore eventually reopened in 1994 and has stayed open ever since. Once again, it's just called "The Fillmore." (Although, given that it's technically the successor to the "New Old Fillmore," maybe it should be called the "New New Old Fillmore!")
This is a fun set. I wasn't familiar with Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks until recently, but I'm liking them more and more. The sound quality is fantastic, like most of the Bob Matthews collection so far. There was some background noise on the talking tracks, but I got rid of most of that with the help of the MVSEP program.
This album is 45 minutes long.
01 talk
02 How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away
03 talk
04 By Hook or by Crook
05 talk
06 Canned Music
07 talk
08 Cheaters Don't Win
09 talk
10 Shorty Falls in Love
11 News from Up the Street
12 talk
13 Milk Shakin' Mama
14 I Scare Myself
15 talk by emcee
All tracks Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks
Paul also notes:
The cover image comes from a TV show appearance from around this time. It might be the Flip Wilson show, since I found a low-res video of the band performing there with the same clothes and background, but they might have used that background and wore those same clothes as a regular thing at the time, I don't know. Anyway, the photo was in color but rather small and low quality. I improved it with the use of the Gemini program.
