In October 1974 the dance band played a series of shows at the legendary Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, where some four years later it would also play the show to mark the venue’s closing. The 1974 performances, captured in footage that would become an eventual documentary release directed by the lead musician, were a final chapter for the band before its long hiatus. The 5-show run also coincided with the end of the Wall of Sound, the weight and complexity of which after six months of touring may have contributed to everybody’s need to call a pause.
In short, the noted Winterland performances marked the ends of eras and beginnings of transitions. The dance band returned a couple of years later, with the second drummer back and new songs that would later stand among its classics. Although the pure sound quality of the wall couldn’t be matched, the 1977 shows are considered by many to be the very peak, the band at its tightest and most polished.
“Winterland was eventually razed in 1985 and replaced by apartments.”
Speculative Fiction 