I concede. All my music listening was in California, starting in about 65, the same year I started playing guitar. The Stones in Fresno, and James Brown. Then I went to Berkeley in 66 and saw blamed near everyone until Uncle Sam offered me free haircuts and trips across the Pacific in late 68. So much for that.

My draft lottery number in 1971 was 346 (a number which, for sure, I will never forget). I can still remember sitting in my dorm room at the University of Wisconsin - Madison when they announced it over the radio. At the time my arsenal consisted of a pre-CBS Strat and an Ovation. I think I got an upgrade going to Collings on the acoustic side

Well, I got caught in the post Tet offensive "surge", and had to join the Navy in lieu of the draft a few months before the lottery was put in place. But I engineered orders to Hawaii, where I met an incredible, beautiful, and brilliant young woman from Missouri who was teaching in the Samoan ghetto on the west shore of Oahu. Within a month, we were engaged, and have now been together 37 years. I started by giving her guitar lessons. Best lessons I ever learned, or ever will. She still comes to most of my gigs. And Ovations are an abomination, like the designated hitter or astroturf. Just plain wrong. Madison was more radical than Berkeley, as I recall, and so was Columbia. But folks still hear "Berkeley" and "sixties" and assume I was an anarchistic hippie pinko. Whatever. Living well is indeed the best revenge.

Leave it to Sonoman to find love in the middle of war. Well done! As for the Mad Town (Madison, WI), can't think of a better town to live in for 6 months of the year. Can't say I miss those winters though; I hit California in 76 and said goodbye to those cold, cold winters (save for trips to Tahoe, where my daughter is a sledding legend). But I'd love to work in a trip to the Mad Town sometme soon, and hit Madison Music while I'm there. And as for the Ovations of the 70's, your comment +1. Truly an abomination that I was very pleased to part with in exchange for a vintage Gibson J-45. That Gibson had max mojo, but since finding Collings I've never looked back. Just played an hour on my OM-1A, and thinking life is good indeed. Rock on folks.

Yes, Tom, I was not a happy "volunteer" in the US Navy, but I am an American brought up to do my duty. So I did, MASH style, and I found Sue five months after I got to Wahiawa in the middle of the pineapple fields. She's the sister of a guy I was best friends with in Yellowstone and the Tetons in the mid sixties, and he wrote me to say his sister was there. He gave us six months when he found out we were engaged after such a brief period. But perfect's perfect, and I'd messed up good relationships out of immaturity earlier in my life. I wasn't gonna make that mistake again. And music was at the center of it. I played her Phil Och's Changes and the Airplane's Coming Back to Me and some early James Taylor. Bottle of Mateus, a Hawaiian sunset, and the course of the rest of our life was set as well. So the Navy was well worth enduring. Several of my friends from home can now only be found as names on the long black wall in Washington, so I'm a very, very lucky man. And a decent guitar player. And I had a J50 as my first "real" guitar after the summer of '65, when I earned 190 bucks and spent 180 on the Gibson. Still my M.O. rock on, indeed.