van dike club

The legendary Van Dike Club, Plymouth, produced a classic line of venue posters from the late 60's progressive bands through to the punk in the late 1970's . Posters from this era are gaining ever more value by the year and this rarity from the club in 1970 showing 3 months of weekly gigs will set you back £395 (Record Collector Mag).
Through this printed ephemera there's a fascinating insight into the UK rock culture of a decade some 40+ years ago. The list here proving the year had a thriving progressive rock scene. While some bands like Humble Pie, Free and Yes went on to major success the others were the backbone to the college circuit for the next few years.

Here's one of the lesser known groups Skin Alley, although they did gather a wider audience by the track "Living In Sin" from their first album appearing on the 1970 CBS budget sampler double album 'Fill Your Head With Rock', by 1974 the group had disbanded.
Founder Thomas Crimble was the first to move on in 1970 playing bass with Hawkwind and organising the Glastonbury Festival.

fill your head..

Compilation CD's today are in plentiful supply with most rock and music magazines giving away free copies of tracks by up and coming bands, old recordings and specialised artists.
In 1970 any compilation album was usually the rest home of mainstream and muzak productions and avoided at all costs. Rock had seen two early examples from Island and CBS which were a showcase for homegrown UK talent in their early years but by the third release from CBS came the most successful compilation of all.
"Fill Your Head With Rock" was a cut price double album of progressive and contemporary rock and folk. For a college student with little cash to outlay on full priced albums this was indeed a treasure and there was rarely a bedsit or student room without a copy. It was also possibly the first time that artists names appeared on the two discs that fans were less familiar, with them not having toured the European countries to any great extent. "Fill Your Head With Rock" virtually amounted to a festival on a double album of mostly US artists.
The audience was introduced to exotic and odd names like Moondog, Trees, Amory Kane, Pacific Gas and Electric, The Flock, Steamhammer and more. Even the album cover  convinced many to buy with the wild sight of Flock violinist on the front cover. Such was the success of the album some enthusiastic fans who had the cash went on to buy the album of each artist featured.
In 1970 there was little chance of ever seeing most of the bands listed.
This was the "underground rock" of the new day and began the progression that was to change the approach to even making an album. It evolved into improvised soloing, and experimental compositions.
Here's a rare appearance of Steamhammer playing the Beat Club (German television) in 1969 with their long and ambling psychedelic stoner rock.