They didn’t boo, they didn’t walk out, and they certainly didn’t applaud. The strangest thing — and maybe the most telling sign of things to come — is that they just stared, as if aliens had landed at a high school in Northern California.don’t always agree on what constituted their first show together, but they all remember the one in Etna, California, sometime in the spring of 1967.
In recent years, four of the core members have reunited and, now in their later life, have picked up where they left off. They’ve finally been able to play outside of the Bay Area, get covered in the press, and make records, including a new EP,But their story raises a question: What if you break the glass ceiling but no one hears it?, Kaufman had already lived several different lives.
A few days later, Kaufman showed up and met the others. Hunt, who could play “Moonlight Sonata” on piano as a kid, had moved from L.A. to San Francisco the year before, where she had worked in the same donut shop with Mary Gannon. Now Mary Alfiler, Gannon was born in New York City but had relocated with her family to Carmel, California, a few years before. The two had begun making up silly songs to play together and were soon joined by Vitalich.
In Golden Gate Park, they opened for Hendrix and, as Simpson recalls, even allowed him to use some of their gear. “When we finished our set and they were getting up on the stage, he asked me, ‘Is it OK if I borrow your amp to play through? I promise I won’t blow anything up.’ I’d seen him burn up his guitar [at Monterey Pop], but I go, ‘That’s no problem — whatever you want to do is good.’ He was so humble, almost self-deprecating.
Decades later, the band members grapple with the way they were deprived of a major-label contract and how much they knew and didn’t at the time. “Maybe Capitol said, ‘Well, they stink,’ and Ron didn’t want to hurt us,” Hunt says. “Maybe he turned around and said, ‘Oh, you guys, I just couldn’t let them do it because you aren’t ready yet.’ But none of us know, because nobody was asked. Ron didn’t tell anybody what went down.
A cocktail of music-biz indifference, family responsibilities, and creative friction within the band began to chip away at their solidarity. In late 1969, Simpson left, partly to raise her child. With Kaufman stepping up to learn the solos Simpson could peel off, the quartet continued, but Hunt was the next to depart.I remember it as clear as day,” she says. “We were playing at the Matrix, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
Ace of Cups faced sexism and challenges that all-male bands (who were rewarded with lucrative record deals and media exposure) rarely had to deal with. ''Whoa, women playing guitars?' So stupid to think about that today...People were dumbfounded.'