Friday, October 17, 2008

The Warfield – A venue with history in San Francisco

It’s time to introduce a concert venue in San Francisco: The Warfield.
When we’d been in San Francisco for the first days after our arrival, we searched for the Warfield, which is placed at the Market Street, because we wanted to buy tickets for a concert of one of my favourite artists: Conor Oberst.

The Warfield is a very dark looking building, hidden behind some trees so, that you can hardly read the letters above the doors.
But the Warfield has got an interesting history and I’d like to write about it, before we will visit the concert on Friday next week.

Built in the 1920s to be a theatre, the floor seats were removed in the early 1980s to create a music venue for rock concerts.

Joe Strummer of The Clash refused to play at the Warfield, when he saw, that the seats had not been removed – he wanted his audience to dance!

The Warfield became a “home” for the famous band Grateful Dead, when they played concerts for their 15th anniversary there. They played 15 sold-out shows at the Warfield! Grateful Dead recorded their two live double-albums during the shows.

Bob Dylan played 14 shows in 1979 during his first Gospel Tour, and again, in 1980, 12 shows of his “A Musical Retrospective Tour”.

The Warfield’s musical variety is very popular in the music scene. In 2001, the trash-metal band Slayer recorded a home-video and released it under the title “War at the Warfield”.

Other famous bands, who played at the Warfield since 2001 are The Petshop Boys, Nine Inch Nails and Guns N’ Roses, who played two shows in 2006, which were sold-out.

In 2008, the management of the Warfield changed. The last show with “Bill Graham Presents” performances took place at May, 19th.
The venue was closed and renovated.

The Warfield reopened in September 2008 – we will see, if the historical atmosphere is still feelable in the music venue at the Market Street.

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