All-women band from San Francisco back to rocking

September 1, 2017 5:27 PM

The Ace of Cups were contemporaries of all the big late-60s bands from San Francisco's Summer of Love that you've heard of. They were an all-women band and they opened for Jimi Hendrix. They were never signed and didn't release music at the time, but there's a 2003 CD release of old recordings. Four members of the band are playing together again and recording a new CD, 50 years later, as shown in this 8-minute video from KQED.
posted by larrybob (8 comments total)

The Ace of Cups are great! "Boy What'll You Do Then" has been a staple on my mix CDs since... well, since people still made mix CDs for each other.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 6:17 PM on September 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. It's great to see something from then still now.
posted by njohnson23 at 6:20 PM on September 1, 2017

My only complaint is that the video is 10 times too short.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:53 PM on September 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

They were one of the openers at the concert that resulted in the Muddy Waters album "Fathers and Sons". The Chicago crowd didn't treat them very well, I'm afraid, and I felt a little bad for them at the time, too much machismo in the air, even at an event for the "Love Crowd". It is heartening to see this perserverence.
posted by Chitownfats at 10:54 PM on September 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

Denise Kaufman of Ace of Cups (who was also one of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters) was on a panel discussion of Women of the 60s Counterculture back in May, which I missed attending, but it's on YouTube.

Denise Kaufman also had a rare pre-Ace of Cups single, "Boy, What'll You Do Now" which is worth a lot of money.
posted by larrybob at 7:40 AM on September 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is great and they were great; how come I never heard of them? (Well, because nobody ever signed them to a record label, but why was that??) Thanks for the post!
posted by languagehat at 9:09 AM on September 2, 2017

There are a handful of live clips of Ace of Cups on YouTube. The one of them performing "Simplicity" is my favorite, in all its psychedelic sixties TV effects glory. The other really good one I could find has them performing "Gospel Song", which also goes all psychedelic-tv-effect-tastic towards the end.
posted by Kattullus at 5:22 PM on September 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

There is going to be a four-hour symposium at the San Francisco main library titled "The Gender Revolution" with four different panels, starting with one with four women who were in the same consciousness-raising group, then one on women of color with former Black Panther
Judy Juanita and Fran Beal of SNCC, then one on the counterculture which includes Denise Kaufman of Ace of Cups, then last one on underground comics with Trina Robbins and Mary Wings.
posted by larrybob at 2:07 PM on September 5, 2017 [1 favorite]