Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks - New Old Fillmore, San Francisco USA1970 | Albums That Should Exist

 Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks - New Old Fillmore, San Francisco, CA, 4-10-1970

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.

Martin Meadows

Martin says: Dan Hicks and the "classic"  lineup of his Hot Licks -  Sid Page (violin), John Girton (guitar), Jaime Leopold (bass) and Lickettes Maryann Price and Naomi Eisenberg! - performing "By Hook or by Crook" and "Shorty Falls in Love" - identified here as "Another Night”. 

I would venture that this is perhaps a rehearsal for the Flip Wilson show of 9/28/1972 - of which there is a video here    • Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks on Flip Wilson   - because the backdrop is the same. 

There is also "strange", misplaced laughter and applause, which might indicate that something else was going on at the same time.