Psychedelic Supermarket

You know a city has a deep-rooted love and appreciation for music when it goes to the extent of converting the bottom floor of a concrete parking garage into a makeshift venue. That was the main reason for Boston club owner and music promoter George Papadopoulos to open Psychedelic Supermarket in 1967.

Another important reason was that Papadopoulos had a debut act for the club, a newly formed trio out of London called Cream. The band was scheduled to appear at The Crosstown Bus in Boston’s Allston neighborhood, but the Bus had closed suddenly after just six weeks in business, leaving the band with an open date to fill in or around the city. The ever-entrepreneurial Papadopoulos, who also owned The Unicorn Coffee House, seized the golden opportunity by converting the basement of the parking garage at 590 Commonwealth Avenue into a performance space.

NOTABLE APPEARANCES, CONTROVERSIES

The Supermarket was a no-frills, concrete-walled space with the acoustical quality of…well…a concrete-walled space. That said, it was a place to play and many notable artists of that thriving late-‘60s Boston scene did just that, with The Tom Swift Electrical Band opening for most of the best-known ones. Some of the legends that found their way through a back alley and into the garage in addition to Cream were Chuck Berry, The Grateful Dead and The Mothers of Invention, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Blood, Sweat, and Tears and Country Joe and the Fish. Two other notable performances were by New England’s own Billy Squier and Orpheus, the latter of which played to a huge crowd that overflowed outside of the club in the summer of 1969; the show was simulcast on WBZ, hosted by Boston radio icon Dick Summer.

Like many venues and club owners of that era, Psychedelic Supermarket and Papadopoulos enjoyed their fair share of controversy. There are the familiar stories of bands not being paid for multi-night stands at the club, being told that the exposure was their payday. Some accused Papadopoulos of inflating ticket prices just as shows were about to sell out. As was common in those days, promoters and managers took countless liberties with their artists.

Because Psychedelic Supermarket was put together as quickly as it was and where it was, there’s very little in the way of posters and documentation about exactly who played gigs at the place and the exact performance dates. What we do know is that by all accounts many of the most legendary artists in music performed within the Supermarket’s concrete walls between 1967 and ‘69. The site became a movie theatre in the ‘70s before being torn down and replaced with Boston University’s Metcalf Science Center, which stands at the location today.

(by Mark Turner)