Before I talk about Scaggs and this specific concert, I want to talk about the closing of the Fillmore West (in San Francisco) in general, which also took just a week after the closing of the Fillmore East (in New York City). The closing of the Fillmore East was just a one-day event. I've already posted seven albums that made up the different sets from that long concert. But the closing of the Fillmore West was a series of concerts over five nights in a row, with multiple star performers each night.
For the first album I posted from the closing of the Fillmore East, I wrote some general comments about that that also apply to the closing of the Fillmore West. So I'm copying and paste the text from that to here, to save me some time and effort. I'm only making a few minor tweaks:
The Fillmore West is closely tied to its owner, promoter Bill Graham, who was arguably the most important promoter in rock history. He was particularly instrumental in the development of the San Francisco psychedelic sound in the late 1960s. Bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane didn't have many good places to play at first. But Graham opened the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco in late 1965, and that became a haven for many new and upcoming bands. At first, this venue was just known as "the Fillmore" (named after the street it was on), but its name changed to "the Fillmore West" in 1968 when Graham moved it to a larger building about a mile away, around the same time he opened a similar venue in New York City, which he called "the Fillmore East."
Both the Fillmore West and Fillmore East were among the most important and prestigious concert venues in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They each held between 2,500 and 3,000 people, which was big enough for most of the famous rock acts of the time, but not so big to become a stadium-type show, with inevitably poorer sound quality and less of a connection between the musicians and the fans. Many great live albums were recorded at both venues. Here's the Wikipedia entry for the Fillmore West, if you want to know more:
Unfortunately, these two venues didn't last that long. In 1971, Graham decided to close both of them. Part of it seems to be that Graham seemed to be personally burned out after hosting concerts on both the East and West coasts nearly every night for three years. But also, the economics were changing. As rock music got increasingly popular and mainstream, the acts that had found success playing at both Fillmores were increasing graduating to playing in arenas and stadiums that could hold 10,000 or more spectators. Graham couldn't pay the acts nearly the same amount when his venues were much smaller. He could have continued with lesser known acts, but he decided to (temporarily) quit the business instead.
As it so happens, Graham didn't stay retired for long. Within a year, he was back to promoting rock concerts, although he wasn't as closely tied to particular venues as he'd been with the Fillmores. He arguably remained the most important concert promoter in rock music until he died in a helicopter crash in 1991. The original Fillmore in San Francisco reopened in 1994, and remains a popular venue until today.
Anyway, the closing of the Fillmore West on July 4, 1971, is well documented. There were five nights of closing concerts. This resulted in a documentary film called "Fillmore" and a triple album called "Fillmore: The Last Days," released in 1972. Better still for my purposes, all five nights were broadcast live on a local radio station, which resulted in excellent sounding bootlegs for practically all the music performed on all the nights.
Luckily though, we have the bootleg recordings. I'm calling this album series "Our Final Week," because the marquee sign in front of the Fillmore West had that written on it during that week. You can see that included in the artwork at the top of the cover art for each album.
Now, let me address this specific concert. It seems each act was allowed to performed just as long as they wanted - for instance, the Grateful Dead set a couple of days later lasted three hours. So this is the length of a typical concert at the time, about an hour and a half. Scaggs started out a member of the Steve Miller Band, but he quit to start a solo career, releasing his first solo album in 1969. This concert took place a few months after the release of his third solo album, "Moments," so naturally a lot of songs that were played came from that album.
I found an interesting article written about the concerts, especially the one on the last day, for Rolling Stone Magazine from just after when the concerts took place. Since this is the first album from this series of concerts, I've included the text of that article in the download zip. It especially has a lot of insight into promoter Bill Graham, and why he decided to close both the Fillmore East and Fillmore West. The short version is that he was burned out from working non-stop, and needed a prolonged break.
This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.
01 I Feel So Good (Boz Scaggs)
02 talk (Boz Scaggs)
03 We Were Always Sweethearts (Boz Scaggs)
04 talk (Boz Scaggs)
05 Painted Bells (Boz Scaggs)
06 talk (Boz Scaggs)
07 I Will Forever Sing the Blues (Boz Scaggs)
08 talk (Boz Scaggs)
09 We Been Away (Boz Scaggs)
10 Hollywood Blues (Boz Scaggs)
11 Baby's Calling Me Home (Boz Scaggs)
12 Stepping Stone (Boz Scaggs)
13 talk (Boz Scaggs)
14 Country Girl (Boz Scaggs)
15 Loan Me a Dime (Boz Scaggs)
16 I'll Be Long Gone (Boz Scaggs)
17 talk (Boz Scaggs)
18 I'm Easy (Boz Scaggs)
19 Near You (Boz Scaggs)
20 Sweet Release (Boz Scaggs)
21 talk (Boz Scaggs)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/PwoTb45a
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/gxoQw2PLAZVsWZb/file
The cover image comes from this exact concert. It's a screenshot I took from the "Fillmore" movie. For the top part, I found a photo of the marquee from the front of the venue. Then I manipulated it some in Photoshop, cleaning it up and stretching it to fit the space.
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