The Capitol Theatre was an entertainment venue located at the intersection of Monroe Street and Central Avenue in Passaic, New Jersey. Opened in 1921 as a vaudeville house, the Capitol later served as a movie theater, and then as a venue for rock concerts.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the 3,200-seat theatre was a popular stop on many major rock artist's tours. The venue was known for its in-house video system which resulted in a number of good quality, black and white video bootlegs. After it closed, the building fell into disrepair and it was demolished in April 1991. A shopping center known as Capitol Plaza occupies the site now.
The Capitol Theatre opened on October 7, 1921 with sold-out a concert by the U.S. Marine Band, which helped raise funds for a pipe organ in the city's high school. [1]
By the 1960s, it was known as the Capitol Cinema, and by 1970s the theater was showing adult films.
On June 27, 1971, the popular Fillmore East theater in Manhattan closed, ending owner and rock promoter Bill Graham's stipulation that acts who played at his venue were prohibited from performing at any theater within 75 miles for the following four months. John Scher, a young rock promoter from West Orange, New Jersey, seized on the closure of the Fillmore East by acquiring the Capitol Theatre and transforming it into a rock venue. [2]
The first concert at The Capitol Theatre was by The J. Geils Band and Humble Pie on December 16, 1971. [3]
The theater closed in 1989 for various reasons, including the changing music industry and the 1981 opening of Brendan Byrne Arena at the nearby Meadowlands Sports Complex. John Scher had also started to promote concerts at the arena, enabling much of the Capitol Theatre staff to obtain employment there when the theater closed. [2]
The Marshall Tucker Band concert from February 18, 1977 was released on December 4, 2007 as a 2 CD/DVD package called Carolina Dreams Tour '77, marking the 30th anniversary of the concert. This is the only known footage of a complete concert by the original members.
Pig Light Show appeared from the Opening Night in December 1971 till the end of June 1973, performing with all artists during those dates.
April Wine is a Canadian rock band formed in 1969 and based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Led by singer-guitarist-songwriter Myles Goodwyn from its inception in 1969 until his death in 2023, April Wine first experienced success with their second album, On Record (1972), which reached the top 40 in Canada and yielded two hit singles: a cover of Elton John's "Bad Side of the Moon", a top 20 hit in Canada; and a cover of Hot Chocolate's "You Could Have Been a Lady", a number 2 song in Canada.
Keith Richard Godchaux was an American pianist best known for his tenure in the rock group the Grateful Dead from 1971 to 1979. Following their departure from the Dead, he and his wife Donna formed the Heart of Gold Band in 1980, but Godchaux died from injuries sustained in a car accident shortly after their first concert.
Robert Hall Weir is an American musician and songwriter best known as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the group disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead, together with other former members of the Grateful Dead. Weir also founded and played in several other bands during and after his career with the Grateful Dead, including Kingfish, the Bob Weir Band, Bobby and the Midnites, Scaring the Children, RatDog, and Furthur, which he co-led with former Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh. In 2015, Weir, along with former Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, joined with Grammy-winning singer/guitarist John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge, and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti to form the band Dead & Company.
The Roxy Theatre is a nightclub on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California, owned by Lou Adler and his son, Nic.
The Capital Centre was an indoor arena in the eastern United States, located in Landover, Maryland, a suburb east of Washington, D.C. The seating capacity was 18,756 for basketball and 18,130 for hockey.
The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall is a historic theater building and performing arts center in Portland, Oregon, United States. Part of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, it is home to the Oregon Symphony, Portland Youth Philharmonic, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, White Bird Dance Company, and Portland Arts & Lectures. It is also a concert and film venue. Originally the Paramount Theatre, it is also locally nicknamed "The Schnitz".
The Grateful Dead Movie, released in 1977 and directed by Jerry Garcia, is a film that captures live performances from rock band the Grateful Dead during an October 1974 five-night run at Winterland in San Francisco. These concerts marked the beginning of a hiatus, with the October 20, 1974, show billed as "The Last One". The band would return to touring in 1976. The film features the "Wall of Sound" concert sound system that the Dead used for all of 1974. The movie also portrays the burgeoning Deadhead scene. Two albums have been released in conjunction with the film and the concert run: Steal Your Face and The Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack.
The Jerry Garcia Band was a San Francisco Bay Area rock band led by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Garcia founded the band in 1975; it remained the most important of his various side projects until his death in 1995. The band regularly toured and recorded sporadically throughout its twenty-year existence, generally, but not always, during breaks in the Grateful Dead's schedule.
The Great American Music Hall is a concert hall in San Francisco, California. It is located on O'Farrell Street in the Tenderloin neighborhood on the same block as the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre. It is known for its decorative balconies, columns, and frescoes and for its history of unique entertainment, which has included burlesque dancing as well as jazz, folk music, and rock and roll concerts. The capacity of the hall is 470 people.
The discography of the rock band the Grateful Dead includes more than 200 albums, the majority of them recorded live in concert. The band has also released more than two dozen singles and a number of videos.
Download Series Volume 4 is a live album by the rock band Grateful Dead. It was released as a digital download on August 2, 2005, and is a three disc set featuring virtually all of the June 18, 1976 show from the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey. The song "Tennessee Jed" was omitted due to technical problems on the master tape that could not be resolved during mastering. To compensate for this omission, the third disc includes highlights from concerts later in June 1976 in Philadelphia and Chicago.
Donna Jean Thatcher Godchaux-MacKay is an American singer best known as a member of the rock band the Grateful Dead from 1972 to 1979. In addition to the Dead, she performed with the Jerry Garcia Band and the short-lived Heart of Gold Band, all alongside her first husband, Keith Godchaux. She formed the Donna Jean Godchaux Band in 2006.
So Many Roads (1965–1995) is a five-disc box set by the Grateful Dead. Primarily consisting of concert recordings from different periods of the band's history, it also contains several songs recorded in the studio. All but one of the forty-two tracks were previously unreleased. The album was released on November 7, 1999. It was certified a gold record by the RIAA on April 12, 2000.
John Joseph Kelson Jr., known professionally as Jackie Kelso, was an American jazz saxophonist, flautist, and clarinetist.
The Rainbow Theatre, originally known as the Finsbury Park Astoria, then the Finsbury Park Paramount Astoria, and then the Finsbury Park Odeon, is a Grade II*-listed building in Finsbury Park, London. The theatre was built in 1930 as an "atmospheric cinema", to house entertainment extravaganzas which included a film show. It later became an ordinary cinema, then a music venue, as which it is best known, and then an occasional unlicensed boxing venue. Today, the building is used by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, an Evangelical church.
The Capitol Theatre is a historic theatre located in the village of Port Chester, Westchester County, New York. It was designed by noted theater architect Thomas W. Lamb (1871–1942) and built in 1926. The 1,800-seat facility operates as a concert venue, hosting musicians and occasionally comedians, as owned and operated by NYC-based concert promoter Peter Shapiro. The Capitol Theatre has had a long history, with tenures as a movie theater and catering hall, in addition to hosting concerts.
Garcia Live Volume One is an album by the Jerry Garcia Band. It contains the complete early show and late show performed on March 1, 1980, at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey. It was released on February 19, 2013, by ATO Records, in two formats – as a three-disc CD, and as a digital download. The album is the first of a series of archival concert releases called Garcia Live.
Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, 4/25/77 is a live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains the complete concert recorded at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey on April 25, 1977. It was produced as a four-disc vinyl LP, in a limited edition of 7,700 copies, and released on April 16, 2016, in conjunction with Record Store Day.
Dave's Picks Volume 28 is a three-CD live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains the complete concert recorded on June 17, 1976, at Capitol Theatre, in Passaic, New Jersey and two bonus tracks from June 23, 1976 and June 28, 1976. It was produced as a limited edition of 18,000 copies, and released on October 26, 2018.
June 1976 is a live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. Packaged as a box set, it comprises five complete concerts on 15 CDs. It was recorded from June 10 to June 19, 1976 at the Boston Music Hall in Boston, the Beacon Theatre in New York City, and the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey. It was released on March 20, 2020 in a limited edition of 12,000 copies.