Little Princess 109 to light up 50 years on
As a six-piece jug band, Little Princess 109 did not last six months. But as a psychedelic light show, the group passed an audition for Bill Graham’s Fillmore West and became a sixman lighting act.
As the reputation of this labor-intensive visual act grew, the words “Lights by Little Princess 109” were printed along with the musical acts on concert posters for the club on the San Francisco corner of Market and South Van Ness. But when it folded, in 1971, Little Princess 109 (LP for short) pretty much folded with it.
The 1960s flamed out, but on Friday, Aug. 4, LP’s signature images will flicker and pulsate again for its Little Princess 109 50th Anniversary Light Show at Swiss Park in Newark.
Two bands, classic rockers Eddy and Jukers, and the Grateful Dead cover band Dead Guise, will attempt to re-create the San Francisco psychedelic ballroom era in the East Bay dance hall, as the surviving members of LP — David Hillis, Kirk Linstrum, Jerry Radcliff, Gary Lawrence and Jacque Asbury Reynolds — mix the lights the way they did in 1968. This means swirling liquids inside old clock faces that are then projected onto a wall, augmented by slides moving through a separate projector and movie loops.
“We are proudly analog. You won’t find any lasers or computers,” says Hillis, folk guitarist turned color wheel specialist. “This is the 50th anniversary and our last chance. We are all 68 years old.”
They are all the same age because LP formed for the senior class talent night at James Logan High School in Union City in February 1967. The band, which had included the now late Rollin Lewis and Chris Mickey, did four or five original numbers, including one written by Hillis called “Keep Your Virginity,” and were met by charitable applause by the gathered student body in the auditorium.
That momentum petered out by graduation, but by then they had transformed into a full-on visual arts lighting outfit inspired by a double bill of Howlin’ Wolf and Country Joe and the Fish at the original Fillmore, with a light show by Headlights.
They’d piled into Linstrum’s ’55 Dodge for the hour-long drive from Hayward, and by the end of the drive home “we had seen our future,” Hillis says. “We were going to be doing light shows. There were more artists than musicians in the band anyway.”
That was the end of guitars, the single-string gut bucket bass and the microphone they all shared (when it was working). The only thing they kept from the jug band was the name Little Princess 109, which was the trademark on their washboard. LP started out on the junior high school dance circuit, but within a year they’d grown from six members to nine. Eighteen hands were operating 14 slide projectors, three movie projectors, three overhead projectors, two black lights and a strobe light.
Their big city dance hall debut was during a four-night stand by Santana in December 1968.
“We thought we’d died and gone to light show heaven,” says Hillis, who never left his regular job, making ketchup at the Hunt’s cannery in Hayward.
That was the first of 205 nights for Bill Graham Presents, more than any other lighting artist, they claim. Among those who played to a backdrop provided by LP were the Band, the Byrds, Joe Cocker, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, the Youngbloods, and Frank Zappa, according to Lillis.
After the Fillmore West closed, LP tried to transition to Winterland but there wasn’t enough work in it, and the collective finally folded after a Cow Palace gig on New Year’s Eve 1977. But the group had come full circle: The headliner for that show was Santana, just like the night LP started.
Three years ago, the lights were brought out of the dark by Radcliff, who had not been in the original jug band but was there when LP transitioned into a light show group (accepted despite being a student at rival Tennyson High School in Hayward).
“What we did was handcreated art,” says Radcliff. “We never did the same show twice.”
Now a retired electrician living near Ashland, Ore., Radcliff had not touched the colors in decades when he chanced upon Kenneth Roberts, who had done the lights for Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters.
“He had never heard of me,” says Radcliff, “but I dropped the name Little Princess 109, and he said, ‘You guys are legends.’ ”
Radcliff was authorized by the other members to act alone as Little Princess 109 and lit the 50th anniversary of the Acid Test Graduation in Eugene, Ore., last October.
“With one helper, I had five overhead projectors for the liquids, two 16mm movie projectors and eight carousel slide projectors,” he says. “It was insane.”
Expect the same insanity at Friday’s reunion; Radcliff is bringing the equipment.
There will be a one-hour rehearsal for the other five members to practice the liquid projections, which involve an upside-down glass clock face in each hand. Colored water and mineral oil are poured in and delicately swirled to form the amoeba shapes that are projected onto a screen.
“These people haven’t done it in 40 years,” Radcliff says, “but it will come back to them. We’re going to do a beautiful light show.”