Scher explained the situation and patiently whittled away the obstacles, including volunteering his older brother to pick up Monk and the band, and return them to San Francisco for their evening show. Having exchanged contracts with Monk's manager, Scher rang the man himself at the club where he was playing in nearby San Francisco on the Friday before the concert – and discovered Monk knew nothing about it. He ignored the cops who told him it was too dangerous for a white kid to be there, putting up posters beside ones advocating changing East Palo Alto's name to Nairobi in a forthcoming politically-charged vote. Scher's school was in plush Palo Alto, separated from East Palo Alto not just by a highway, but by divides of race and wealth. "I just took care of business the way that I thought it should have been done," he says modestly. With the blood of a born entrepreneur coursing through his veins (he would later work with fabled promoter Bill Graham for 24 years), he has flogged enough advertising in the concert program to pay Monk even if no tickets sell. The young Danny Scher isn't panicked, however. Now it's the Sunday afternoon of the concert, it's raining, and the school car park is full of people waiting in their cars, because you've told them to come and see for themselves, and then buy tickets. Jazz visionary Thelonious Monk spent two thirds of his career being considered ahead of his time and the rest being yesterday's man.
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