The dive bar that birthed the Summer of Love—and probably your parents' best stories.
This documentary pays tribute to the contributions and importance of the title watering hole in the creation of the psychedelic dancehalls that littered the West during the late '60s and helped launch such super groups as The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and The Quicksilver Messenger Service. Music by Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Charlatans is also featured. The Red Dog Saloon had its genesis in 1964 when a group of free-thinking, LSD-enhanced Northern California students and young folks had a party and began thinking about starting up a saloon that would evoke the old West. They decided to build their saloon in Virginia City, Nevada, a once prosperous town that was by then nearly empty. The ambience of the saloon blended Old West sensibilities with modern psychedelia, go-go girls and plenty of illegal drugs. The film is comprised of interviews with surviving founders, actual archival footage, and even a performance of some of the musicians who appeared there.
Production
Rare archival footage of early Dead and Airplane.
Writing
Founders' unvarnished, often hilarious oral histories.
Director
Mary Works
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Red Dog's 'WPA' (Work Projects Administration) ballot system for choosing bands was later copied by Bill Graham for the Fillmore.
The film captures a pivotal tension: these founders were simultaneously anti-capitalist and inadvertently creating the template for modern music industry infrastructure.
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