Cozier 500-capacity alternativeT to the larger Fillmore Auditorium and Carousel Ballroom. Opened in September 1911 as the Puckett College of Dancing’s Assembly Hall, it became the Trianon Ballroom in the 1920s and the Avalon by 1937, another stop on the West Coast swing orchestra circuit. When Chet Helms and the Family Dog took over in 1966 after Bill Graham cut them out of the Fillmore Auditorium, the collective maintained their more counterculture-minded contrast with Graham’s polished productions, with a Family Dog commune established several blocks away. While a looser place to play, it simply couldn’t compare to a payday at either of the Fillmores.

The Dead played the Avalon numerous times in its early days (with 1966 recordings yielding the unauthorized Vintage Dead and Historic Dead LPs) and returned in late 1968. The band chose the Avalon to start serious work on what became Live/Dead in January 1969.