Wolfgang's Vault

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Wolfgang's Vault is the world's largest collection of live concert recordings and music memorabilia and home to the archive of promoter Bill Graham in addition to nine other music and memorabilia archives. It was called " the most important collection of rock memorabilia and recordings ever assembled in one business," by The Wall Street Journal, Dec 13, 2005. All concerts are streamed free, and visitors can find and purchase poster art, vintage t-shirts, rock photography, old concert tickets, and other rock music memorabilia while they listen to rare recordings of live concerts featuring Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Black Sabbath, ABC, Duran Duran, Culture Club, and many others. Wolfgang’s Vault is housed in a 27,000 square foot, state-of the art facility in San Francisco, and online at www.WolfgangsVault.com.

1 History
2 Memorabilia
3 Music
4 Concert Vault
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

Wolfgang was Bill Graham (promoter), the man whose genius for bringing performer and audience together shaped the rock concert as we have come to know it. Born Wolfgang Grajonca in Berlin in 1931, he escaped Nazi Germany to grow up in a foster home in the Bronx and anglicized his name at the age of 18.

Graham moved from New York to San Francisco in the early 1960s to be closer to his sister, Rita. Through his long standing interest in theater, Graham was introduced to and became manager of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, an avant-garde performance group. Members of the group were arrested for an outdoor production deemed "too risqué" by the San Francisco Parks and Recreation Commission.

Graham staged a benefit for the group's legal defense fund with a line-up that included Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jefferson Airplane, the Fugs, and John Handy on November 6, 1965. Bill later said, "I didn't know that night was the beginning of anything, but I knew it was the most exciting experience of my life." The Mime Troupe benefit featured rock, jazz, and poetry. Graham had hit upon an eclectic mix and not only was it popular, it made money. The people who came took their rock music in a casual atmosphere made spectacular through an LSD filter; the psychedelic ‘60s had arrived.

Graham's showcased elements of America's now legendary counterculture of the time, such as Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Country Joe and the Fish, and the Grateful Dead. His successes and popularity enabled him to become the top concert promoter in rock music. He operated the famous venues The Fillmore and Winterland (both in San Francisco) and the Fillmore East (in New York City), where the best up-and-coming acts would come to play.

Graham's creative vision led him to commission true works of art to promote his shows and, fortunately for the modern collector, his entrepreneurial instincts led him to preserve the exceptional art, photography and recordings that came from these shows. For over 30 years, his company, Bill Graham Presents, accumulated and stored this material in newly minted condition. Until Wolfgang's Vault was launched, it was incredibly difficult to find a Bill Graham poster in anything approaching mint condition because it was usually torn from a wall or telephone pole as a concert souvenir.

Graham also channeled his work in other direction, helping to raise millions of dollars for a myriad of causes. He produced the U.S. half of the 1985 Live Aid show, the 1986 Amnesty International Conspiracy of Hope tour, the American-Soviet Peace Concert for Nuclear Disarmament in Moscow, In-Concert Against AIDS and benefits for the United Farm Workers, Lighthouse for the Blind, the San Francisco Unified School District, San Francisco's Earthquake Relief and countless other organizations.

[edit] Memorabilia

The promotional art inspired by the performers, the intimacy of the venues and the energy of the audience all combined to create experiences that are indelible in the minds of those who were there. Beginning in the late 1960’s, this era was the true genesis for the years of great concert art that followed, as rock concerts evolved from their dance hall roots to the clubs, arenas, amphitheaters and stadiums of today. Under the patronage of Graham and Chet Helms, the rock poster developed into a unique, highly creative form. Informal arrangements between promoters Graham and Helms and the artists gave the poster artist more liberty than most commercial enterprises would have permitted. Between 1966 and 1971, roughly 450 poster designs were printed to advertise rock concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom alone. The posters, originally produced in small editions and hung on walls, telephone poles and lampposts, quickly became collectors' items. Wolfgang’s Vault has assembled a superb collection of this artwork and memorabilia that has been cataloged and carefully preserved in its facilities.

The company launched its website in November 2003 with an extraordinary offering of poster art that was enhanced in 2004 by the addition of vintage t-shirts, backstage passes, laminates and books shortly thereafter. Later that year, Wolfgang’s Vault released the BG Archive photography collection, and have since become the exclusive online source for five of the greatest rock photographers of all time; Jim Marshall, Baron Wolman, Michael Zagaris, Joe Sia and Gene Anthony.

[edit] Music

Beginning in the late ‘60s, Graham recorded thousands of performances by some of the greatest musicians of all time. He stored the tapes in the basement of the Bill Graham Presents headquarters, where they sat undisturbed until acquired by Wolfgang’s Vault in 2003. These aging, yet well-preserved taped archives were transferred to the highest-quality digital formats and were then carefully cataloged. In February 2006, Wolfgang’s Vault launched Vault Radio to allow fans of the music to hear some of these recordings, many for the first time since the original show. Vault Radio streamed a playlist of approximately 75 songs which changed weekly. These playlists are eclectic mixes of live recordings from classic rock, blues and soul. In an article about Wolfgang’s Vault and specifically Vault Radio, the Washington Times noted “lovers of classic rock will not find a better historical source for their favorite music anywhere on the Internet.”

In mid-2006, the archives of the King Biscuit Flower Hour were added to the collection. The Flower Hour was the nationally syndicated radio show that provided the greatest pre-MTV exposure for bands as they went on tour.

[edit] Concert Vault

The Concert Vault is one of the largest collections of live concert recordings available to the public. This unique and diverse trove of musical miscellany was amassed from mastered recordings from the archives of Bill Graham Presents, the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio show, and Silver Eagle Cross Country radio show and The Record Plant recordings archive.

The recordings of the Concert Vault were reviewed by Ethan Smith of The Wall Street Journal in December 2005, as "extremely high quality,(which) amount to a sweeping, unheard history of rock during its seminal years and beyond."

The Concert Vault currently features approximately 1000 live recordings (with two dozen added weekly) that connect music fans to historical, candid moments of rock and roll, punk, New Romantics, New Wave, country and other genres. There is nowhere else a person can go to experience legendary performances that range from Merle Haggard to Mothers of Invention to Bruce Springsteen to the Ramones to ABC^[1], all in one place.

In 2008 The Wolfgang's Vault music archives include seven different archive catalogs, with over 1,000 concerts by 848 artists, all streamed free with about four hundred available for download.

The Concert Vault is fully licensed by BMI, ASCAP and SESAC, and pays out to performance rights organizations every time a concert is listened to.