A couple of weeks ago, driving by the Simmons Sports Centre in Charlottetown, PEI, I had a flashback to a rock concert that I sneaked into sometime in the early 1970s at that unlikely venue (a small hockey arena in a mostly residential neighborhood). The band was April Wine. They were formed in Halifax in the late 1960s and eventually found not only a national but even a south-of-the-border following. Their signature sound of twin lead guitars is still catchy a full 40 years later, and I have three of their tunes—“You Could Have Been a Lady,” “Bad Side of the Moon,” and “Roller”—on my iPod.
As this old video shows, they were a tight band with a distinctive presence.
One flashback prompting another, I have to observe that today marks the 35th anniv
ersary of a “road trip” that my friend Marty and I made from Charlottetown to Moncton, New Brunswick—we took my family’s old VW Beetle on the car ferry from Borden to Cape Tormentine—to see the British blues-rockers Ten Years After perform there at the Coliseum. Listening now (
literally now) to TYA’s
Recorded Live album, I am transported back to that transporting night when Alvin Lee lived up to (if not beyond) his “guitar hero” reputation.
This video from 1975 would be pretty much what we saw and heard . . . but I remember the live show being in color!
ersary of a “road trip” that my friend Marty and I made from Charlottetown to Moncton, New Brunswick—we took my family’s old VW Beetle on the car ferry from Borden to Cape Tormentine—to see the British blues-rockers Ten Years After perform there at the Coliseum. Listening now (literally now) to TYA’s Recorded Live album, I am transported back to that transporting night when Alvin Lee lived up to (if not beyond) his “guitar hero” reputation. This video from 1975 would be pretty much what we saw and heard . . . but I remember the live show being in color!
2 comments:
I can't believe we drove home the same night, in fog, with trucks passing us, and then we were passing them... Marty
Ah, Mart--from your comment, you obviously have the same recollection of details that I have! I remember that the wipers weren't very effective and that you took to yelling out the window as we passed tractor trailers--maybe because the horn wasn't working either? Well, hey, we survived to tell the tale. . . .
Apparently Alvin Lee is still going strong, though not with TYA . . . but TYA is going strong (or strong enough) in its own right. Ah, there was a time when gods walked the earth: now everyone seems a mere mortal, with feet of clay.
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