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Ten Years After: A Space in Time and other favourites
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Of course, there's also the performance by Crosby, Stills and Nash that set the stage for one the hugest supergroups of the 1970's, CSNY – a group that still echoes hauntingly across the music landscape over 30 years after Deja Vu.
But another great performance on the Woodstock record is that by Alvin Lee and Ten Years After. Watch this high energy blues group do "Goin' Home" and watch Alvin blast out the lead on his axe and there is little doubt that this was one of the very best rock outfits in an era when there were plenty of them.
I first became aware of Ten Years After through the album, "Ssssssssh", which is a great piece of electric blues work and was one of the big albums of the late 60's blues scene. I was in Napanee, Ontario, visiting good friend, John Sweeney, who'd been the singer in our garage band in Hanover for a couple of years. We went to visit a friend of his, Alfie something, and Alfie was an Alvin Lee fanatic and that was my introduction to Ten Years After.
I've heard tunes by the group over the years, mostly the rock anthem "I'd Love to Change the World", but other stuff as well, and there was that great performance at Woodstock. But I didn't really pay that much attention until recently when I came into possession of a couple of TYA albums that hadn't been part of my personal collection. One of these was indeed the record "A Space in Time" which was likely the group's biggest seller. Wow! What great tunes!
So, I immersed myself in a little of Alvin and the boys over a few nights in the basement and I'm impressed. There's a wonderful mix of acoustic and electric stuff, some great guitar work by the main man, but the rest of the band, Chick Churchill on keys, Leo Lyons on bass and Ric Lee on drums, are also terrific. And there's some very early synthesizer work that'll really blow your socks off on some of this early work.
There are solid blues pieces like "Turned Off TV Blues" and there are some very ahead-of-their-time pieces scattered throughout the albums I listened to. Put simply, these guys will be on my must listen list from here on in and I've added the four albums I have to my blues record bin along with other great British blues rockers like Savoy Brown (maybe more on them later) and John Mayall and the rest. Terrific stuff for sure and a different approach than the American blues rockers of the era like Mike Bloomfield.
As usual, I haven't bothered to check to see whether TYA are still performing today. I'm pretty sure I heard a rumour that Alvin Lee is still kicking around, but I'm not sure if the group is together. Likely it's the old story and the big guy is solo and the rest of the guys are eking out a living using the name. Too bad these old rockers wouldn't realize that they made their best music together and keep it going.
But not many of them can do it and on the rare occasions they do, I usually wish they hadn't – read Rolling Stones here.
Anyway, sadly, I feel most of the music I was listening to over the last week hasn't made the jump to CD and is likely lost in the mists of time. TYA was big enough and some of their music survives, but likely not a lot of the good but less popular stuff. Do I recommend trying to find it and listen to it – absolutely! It's great stuff right down the line. Great tunes!
John Gardiner is a 25-year-veteran of the community newspaper business, but he is also a prolific writer of moralistic short fiction he refers to as "emotional thoughtscapes" or "adult fables". Samples of his fiction can be found at:
- Melancholy Man and Minister's Son
- Reality Check
- Grim Faerie Tale
- Once Upon a Visit
- Toward the End, Oyster Boy
- And It Was Christmas
- From Genesis to Revelations (Chapter 1) - the novel. the rest of the novel follows month by month
