Nesta
Well-Known Member
I like the turn this thread has taken! I'm a veteran of the Fillmore East. I also used to panhandle to get money for the shows, & it didn't take much: $4.50 to $6.50 if I recall correctly. I saw some great music @ the Fillmore: The Kinks, Love, Quicksilver, Savoy Brown, the Who, Hendrix, Incredible String Band, Bonzo Bog Band, Fleetwood Mac, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention.Yea, I was at Jorma & Jack's debut, introduced by Bill Graham at Winterland (Bill managed a lot of the great bands in that scene but always got fired, he was kinda a prick). Fully electric at the start, acoustic came later. Saw them a couple times in the Park when free concerts were still happening.
[David where are you damnit, weren't you hangin' with Jack not that long ago in Tiburon?]
One night Quicksilver was so loud that my friend's younger brother started crying, his ears hurt so bad. I think maybe the loudest I heard was The Who, then maybe Lee Michaels. They had Marshall's stacked 10 ft behind them. Entwistle played the loudest bass I've ever heard. They debuted Tommy at the Fillmore, played it non-stop start-to-finish. Then Townsend says, "now how's about some rock'n'roll?" and they break into Summertime Blues. Pure heaven.
An old Berkeley bud of mine says, "you had to be there." So true. It was once in time & space, no more.
The Grateful Dead almost always killed it. I can still clearly remember, somehow, the Allman Bros. (with Duane) opening for the Dead, when no one had heard of them & they absolutely blew the roof off the place.
I went to the Woodstock festival when I was 16 years old. We went a few days early so had no traffic hassles & got a great spot to camp - close to the stage. Of course I barely spent any time @ our campsite, I was parked in front of the stage most of the weekend. Woodstock was nirvana for music fans & a bonus coming together for the counter culture which had been growing in isolated pockets around the country, not realizing our strength & power.
I was just listening to a song that taps into that era:
BTW, I'm 62
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