I saw Alan Holdsworth at the legendary Keystone Korner in North Beach. It was some kind of electric fusion band with a killin' keyboard player. I remembered that he was blazing straight eighth or sixteenth notes like a horn player, except that he didn't have to breath and ran the lines right through the phrases. I just remember him smoking. Hey man, that was a long time ago and I saw so much stuff that It all kind of runs together.

EJ, At the time we all took this stuff for granted. Who knew? One of my friends talked me into going to see the Who. I was like, well OK. He was a big Pete Townshend fan and between the sets he dragged me back stage. There was no security or anything, these guys weren't stars or anything. We found Pete sitting with a guitar on his lap. My friend went up and started talking to him, then my friend pulls out a big fattie and and asks him if he wanted to smoke. We sat there getting ripped.

You have to understand that there was no music business per se as we know it today. Rolling Stone was a little rag of a newspaper printed on Haight Street and cost fifty cents or something. Bill Graham almost invented the modern music business as we know it. We weren't that far removed from black and white TV and no stations on the FM dial. Top 40 music on the radio was pop music, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Cash, John Coltrane made the charts with My Favorite things, Dave Brubeck's Take Five still get airplay, surf music, soul music, Motown, Byrds, Beatles Stones and Psychedelic Furs, Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Louie Louie. You get the picture? It was all pop music in heavy rotation. Elvis and Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Polka Dot Bikini, The Monster Mash... There wasn't a music business like today where every thing is categorized.

I'm sure Billiam and I went to different high schools together! I be if we talked that we know the some of the same people.

Maybe he could correct me if my memory is bad. Most of the shows that I went to were at Fillmore West. The ticket price was $2.75 on Friday and Sunday nights and like $3.00 or $3.25 on Saturday and Sunday. When the ticket price went up to $3.50 we were shocked. Go look at the ticket prices on the posters.

In high school, my whole bedroom wall was papered with posters handbills and postcards from the Family Dog, Winterland and Fillmore. Once my mom found a big bag of weed in my room. She called the cops and they wouldn't do anything because they didn't find it, couldn't prove it was mine. She was so angry that she tore them up. AHHHH!

I remember Bill Graham and "The Fillmore Cop" handing out posters and post cards out at the top of the stairs after the gig with Greensleves playing on the PA in the background. That security cop worked there for years trying to keep us from cutting in the line right as they opened the doors. What was his name? He was famous. He would go, All right chillun', bee careful, take it easy and see 'ya next time. Watch the stairs!

In the late '60s and early '70s there was so much heavy stuff going on in our society that most of this was flying under the radar. Who knew?

I have to give Bill Graham much thanks for turning me on to jazz. We went to see the Dead, Jr. Walker and the All Stars sometime in '68. Miles Davis was on the bill but not the headliner. Miles, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Jack JeJohnette, Airto Morieria and Steve Grossman on Sax. Right before ***'s Brew came out and won a Grammy.

The Dead were so toasted that they couldn't remember the words to songs, their acoustic first set was unbearable and we were big Garcia and Dead fans. Jr. Walker had come right off the Chittlin' Circuit wearing tuxes and playing their showcase.

In those days the first two bands played two sets and Miles played just one set in the middle. That set was so mind bending that it changed the way that I looked at music forever in the same way that Hendrix had. The experience is etched into my memory.

Jr. Walker played the same songs and same "show" for the second set and the Dead sounded so freakin' lame after Miles that it was ridiculous.

My best friend called me a year back and said that he was reading Bill Graham's biography and we were in it. He wouldn't tell me and made me read the book. Bill was ask what he thought the most important part of his legacy was or something like that. He explained how he grew up listening to dance music and was heavily influenced by Latin dance bands and jazz. He thought that jazz and the blues masters were the real thing and these young bands were OK as entertainment, but not real good music. He hoped that he could turn the kids on to some real music.

Bill said that he was standing at the head of the stairs at the Fillmore West handing out posters after the Miles show and two white suburban kids come walking out. One kid asks the other kid what he thought of Miles and the other kid says, "Man, That was the most incredible thing that I have ever heard in my life".

Swear on my stack of Coltane records that I remember Paul asking me that as we walked out. That was us.