Back in '74 I attended a Yes concert in OKC with some fellow musicians/Yes freaks along with our slick, fast-talking booking-agent/manager.  He was the only one of us who wore a suit and we didn't understand why until he came back from the floor with backstage passes.  Seems he simply walked up to the security folks at the side of the stage, patted them on the backs and told them what a great job they were doing keeping out the "riffraff" and then strolled right past them as if he was a promoter or something.  (Just shows you what business attire and balls will get you!)  He took about three of our group with him to meet the guys in the band but I deferred to my keyboardist/best friend so he could meet and chat with his all-world hero, Rick Wakeman.  He came back with polaroids of his visit for posterity and it probably remains one of his most memorable moments of all time.  Just seeing his glowing face when he came back to his seat made me never regret giving up the chance to meet Yes.

Way back when, one of my friends was at an ELP concert before the show.  Emerson's keyboard tech, Rocky, gave him two keys that he'd had to replace on Emerson's clavinet (yes, this was in the Nutrocker era).  I ended up with one of the keys, which I treasured for many years but frankly I'm not sure where it is now.

April 21, 1974 waiting to enter the Université de Montreal Genesis gig having arrived early, I am standing next to this tall quiet fellow with long hair and a velvet jacket who seems familiar and is trying to go through a security gate. “You are Mike Rutherord?!”, I blurt! Big Big smile and off he goes. During the show, I was sitting 5^th row front & center while into Suppers Ready, when I turn around to look behind me just as Gabriel states “A Flower?” and a massive white light explosion occurs (allowing Gabe 3 seconds to jettison a costume) but I remember seeing the crowd “blinded by the light”, jaws agape, eyes closed. A stunning moment imprinted in my mind. Years later, at Gabriel 2 nd album tour in Montreal, a friend and I were waiting near our seats waiting for the show to begin when a totally bald  guy passes near me,” Good evening Mister Gabriel! Any new musicians with you tonight?” He stopped, smiled, and listed the entire group and merrily waltzed away. My friend, to this day still mumbles” that was Peter Gabriel…!!!!!” whenever we meet. (I knew he was bald because I had read that his then wife had an affair and felt bad about, so she told him and she chopped her hair off. Peter had shaved his head out of forgiveness, by this time the famed Genesis masks were a thing of the past).

Met and had dinner with Eddie Jobson, Phil Manzanera and Rick Wills when touring for Roxy Music. Eddie was stunned to know that Curved Air’s Metamorphosis played more often than any Roxy tune on Montreal rock station CHOM. He immediately applied for royalties!

Met Bodin and Reingold of the Flower Kings after their 2005 gig in Montreal. Super NICE , decent guys. Bodin in particular, a sensitive (we talked about the pains of divorce) and funny dude.  A true pleasure.   Met two gents from Italian symph band CAP in Milan 2003 , long wonderful dinner and drinks, singing their songs in the drive back to my hotel. Amazing people.

Shortest prog rock story;

Once upon a time I stumbled upon a Rush track called YYZ. 15 years later, I discovered Prog Archives. And we lived happilly everafter. The end.

Got a decent one!

October, 1974.  I was a sophomore music major who lived, breathed and slept Yes/ELP/Zappa!  My roommate Mark was also a music major; a bassist who played a Ricky with a pick and was also a fan of the great music coming out of Europe at the time.  In fact, it seems like every band he turned ME onto and deemed "worthy" has over the decades turned into progressive sacred-cows:  Genesis, Gentle Giant, King Crimson & Van Der Graf Generator!  He somehow intuitively knew that these bands would stand the test of time...

Anyway, I'd very much enjoyed his Gentle Giant albums (and have since gotten the catalog on CD!) ~ and didn't hesitate when the opportunity arose to see Gentle Giant play the Whiskey on the Sunset Strip!  We drove up from the "OC" (Chapman U) to Hollywood in Mark's "bassist-sized" Econoline and got into the sizable line to get in the door.

From what I remember, we were blown away by the performance.  Gentle Giant experts, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember them playing "musical chairs" of sorts and playing super-well on each other's instruments. We happened to have attended the concert with a guy from upstate New York (not a music major, but a total FZ FREAK!), and he had brass balls compared to the rest of us laid-back Southern California surfer-musicians.  We're getting ready to leave after the last encore, when "Upstate" says, "Hey guys, I got us backstage (upstairs)...get yer' asses up here!"

We walk into the infamous upstairs room...which is covered in autographs, which as amazing in and of itself.  Janis, Hendrix, Bowie...you name it, they'd signed that wall.  The free beer is flowing...and there's the band ~ casually sitting around shooting the sh*t with anyone!  We make a bee-line first to Kerry Minnear, who was quite gracious for ten to fifteen minutes ~ I'm sure we came off as cross between pompous music-majors and the Chris Farley character where he interviews the stars..."Remember when you recorded Octopus?  That was cool, man!"

We then chatted up Derek Schulman (after Minnear broke away form our clutches!)...for another ten minutes before feeling the tap of the bouncer's finger on our collective shoulder!  As we stood on the street minutes later, we all looked at each other and said, "did that really just happen???" :)~

My buddy still plays/teaches (acoustic) semi-pro, up in the Bay Area.  I've been giving him "little tastes" of  new prog...he digs it! 

As regularly at concerts at Kingston Poly in 1970 to 1972 - regret not attending a Cream gig there a few years earlier at half crown entrance - got to meet Yes in their dressing room after a gig. A couple a weeks before, that dressing room had been used as  a cloak room for an Island Records package tour  concert (included Quintesscence), so I wonder about the guitar cases when dumped our coats in this empty room  2  or 3 weeks later. After the show discovered it was now an occupied temporary dressing room. Mumbled something like 'Oh excuse us, great show', to which Jon Anderson, in what I remember as a Lancastrian 'Alan Ball' voice , replied 'Thanks very much'. We made our embarrassed apologies and left.

So it was 1980?, Moving Pictures tour anyway and while  being a big Rush fan at the time, I was also a fan of the band opening for them named FM.  So I'm outside the sports arena in san diego after the show and I see the member of FM and I had brought one of their albums to get signed.  Now if you're opening for Rush you don't get a lot of fans who even know who you are much less bring albums, and the one I brought was a direct to disc copy.  So we talked for awhile and I told them I also had tickets for the Long Beach show in a couple of days,  they said see ya then.  So I show up early for the Long Beach show and run into FM again and they say, "Hey, We're going in to see Rush do their sound check, wanna come."   It was a lot of fun to sit there with virtually noone in the building, chatting with the band FM and watching Rush do their sound check.