Steve Miller Band. I bought their first album in the basement record department of the JJ Newberry's in Plymouth, New Hampshire. I'm not sure why. It could have been a lark, or it could have been the cover, one of the first of the psychedelic era, and I was fifteen. The five-man Steve Miller Band, with Moby Grape are still the only Hashbury era rock bands I can tolerate over repeated listenings. Miller broke up that band, in favor of a trio, at the musical instant when trios went totally out of fashion. He rode back into the mainstream of rock music, Steve Miller's remains as little known as his five-man band did. I fact, though, this is rumored to be a new Steve Miller Band, and no one seems to know who's in it, besides Steve, and how many there are, but it's for sure that the quality's fallen off over the years. Miller's got a good, mild blues voice, and I imagine he's maintained a following, but I sure wish I could've seem him five years ago.

Allman Brothers. 20,000 tickets. I four hours. And half the band is dead. I never even saw an ad, for Chrissake, and I'm still not sure whether this thing is for real or not. The Brothers are starting a metamorphosis into the kind of cult phenomenon the Dead have been for so long. Before this tour started, there were even rumors that the Dead and the Allmans would play a string of nine hour marathons across America. I think it's all too bad, because I genuinely love the Allman Brothers. I once got close enough to Dicky Betts to tell him I'd wade through a river of shit to hear him play a hockey rink. Oh well, it happens to the best of them.