Dan Brusseau

The reality for war survivors is that it rewires you in very fundamental ways. Whatever your expectations were going in bear little relation to the way you feel about yourself and the world around you when you get out. If you can't process it, deal with it and move on, you can very easily become that poor soul dressed in rags standing on the street corner screaming at the sky. If you can - which I think I have with the lifesaving help of my wife Patty - then you can make a life and, for the most part…

Sometime in the summer of '67 we landed at the Fillmore following an afternoon of well-lubricated, chemically-enhanced fun at a seemingly unknown beach in Santa Cruz. We were going to see The Who, a show I'd been eagerly anticipating for 2 years. In 1965 Dave Ferguson was over my house to watch one of the pop music TV shows ("Shindig" or something) and at some point they cut to film of a rock festival in England. It was The Who ("...who?" we both said). It was grainy and the sound was poor but what was…

Although Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle, did a stint in the U.S. Army and toured extensively in the U.S. as a back-up musician in the early to mid 60's, I consider him as much a part of the British invasion as any of the U.K. artists that formed the core of that great rock renaissance. When Chas Chandler, bassist for the Animals, told him he needed to go to England to get the recognition he deserved, Hendrix wisely agreed and the rest, as they say, is history.

I saw Jimi Hendrix twice in 1968 - once at…

Oct. 23, 1966 at the Fillmore Auditorium was billed "One Sunday Afternoon - The Yardbirds". Jeff Beck, fully recovered from the tonsillitis that put him on the shelf for the August Carousel Ballroom show would appear along with along with Jimmy Page in a blazing sonic blast of guitar hero heaven. At least that's how I imagined it in my fevered 15 year old brain in the weeks leading up to the show. I was not disappointed.

Beck stage left, Page stage right and center stage, Keith Relf, the Yardbirds lead…

There are no real clear records, audio or visual, of The Beatles at Candlestick Park. My memory of that night is no better. I think this is mainly because the meager (considering the venue) sound system was no match for thousands of screaming girls. I could recognize what song was bring played but that was about it - like you might recognize a song floating on the air coming from a neighbor's garage down the street or a pair of ear buds on the passenger sitting next to you on the BART train. My Fillmore…

For me, 1966 was the year of the Yardbirds. Two albums, "Rave Up", "Over Under Sideways Down" and two shows - one at the Carousel Ballroom in August and one at the Fillmore in October.

The Beatles changed how rock music was written, the Who, how it was performed but the Yardbirds changed forever how it was played. They smashed so many barriers and bent so many rules that it's hard to know where to begin. The Eastern flavored melodies, harmonies and arrangements were unheard of. They began in 1964 as a…

1965 - Randy Helsing bought all his fashion statement clothing at Town Squire in San Francisco. He was a mile ahead of me in that department. I could never get a handle on fashion and never will. It was some pretty wild British/Mod stuff (think Austin Powers). But the Squire sold something else that I did understand - Fillmore tickets.

We all knew we were in for something different, something new, maybe something important. It was an afternoon concert (must have been a Sunday) and the sunshine lit up the…

1964 - My live rock concert journey began not at the Fillmore, but at the Cow Palace, Berkeley Community Theatre and San Francisco Civic Auditorium. The KYA (1260 AM) "Boss of the Bay" concerts at the Cow Palace were extravaganzas. A dozen acts in 3 hours, rapid fire. My 17-year old sister Jeanne and one of her girlfriends were kind enough to allow me and my buddy, Dave Ferguson, to tag along. I was 13 years old and we were buzzing about it for days. The groups I remember were The Ronnettes, The Righteous…

When I picked up the acoustic guitar 4 years ago, I had no idea how much it would change the way I thought about and wrote music. The results of these changes in perception are now in with "Squatterville Empire." I hope that you'll check it out and, through these 12 cuts, take that journey with me.