- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- As the Fillmore facilities were being shut down, Bill Graham arranged for a series of farewell concerts to be performed there.Â


Fillmore / The Last Days (Various Artists) (1971):  The Fillmore concert venues were the brainchild of San Francisco rock promoter Bill Graham beginning in the mid-1960âs. Besides the original Fillmore Auditorium, there were also Fillmore West in San Francisco and Fillmore East in New York City; both were active from 1968 to 1971. As the Fillmore facilities were being shut down, Bill Graham arranged for a series of farewell concerts to be performed there, often with rock bands and artists who had played there in earlier years. A film documenting these concerts came out in 1971, called Fillmore.  Fillmore / The Last Days is a three-album box set with a large booklet and several souvenirs, such as sample tickets that were created with a reduced copy of the poster for the show in an attempt to prevent counterfeiting. Bands and artists performing on these albums include Grateful Dead, Santana, Hot Tuna, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Tower of Power, Boz Scaggs, and Elvin Bishop Group. Itâs a Beautiful Day performs a live version of their lovely psychedelic song âWhite Birdâ. I clearly remember seeing a clip of a performance by a woman singing Janis-Joplinâstyle in a flowing brown dress in the movie trailers for Fillmore, and I looked forward to seeing the whole performance in the movie. But it wasnât in the movie, and it also wasnât in this box set. Lamb (the last band listed on the cover) might have included the woman I saw, but it was a much livelier song that I saw on the trailer than the one in Fillmore / The Last Days. I still havenât gotten to the bottom of that.
