Listening to Ten Years After... and digging it

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by dnuggett, Oct 29, 2014.

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  1. Sax-son

    Sax-son Forum Resident

    Location:
    Three Rivers, CA
    I respectfully disagree with that assessment. If you mean "making it" is equivalent to selling out 7 nights at the LA Forum or NY Madison Square Garden, then yes they did fall short of that. However I did go to see them twice, once at the LA Forum and the Long Beach Arena in the early seventies. The venues are close to 17,000 seats each and there were very few seats left if any.

    What happened to bands like TYA, Free, and Savoy Brown, is that they did have their day in the sun. The music changed along the way and some of them evolved and some did not. Free actually evolved into Bad Company as they created harder rock sound and we all know how successful they were. TYA sort of lost steam once Alvin Lee decided on a solo career. This happens to great bands all the time. That does not mean that they weren't successful at one time.
     
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  2. John Fell

    John Fell Forum Survivor

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    I don't think it is as bad as it's reputation either.
     
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  3. old school

    old school Senior Member

    Ten Years After were big back in the day and have aged well! They toured the USA 28 times that is damn big to me!
     
  4. Sax-son

    Sax-son Forum Resident

    Location:
    Three Rivers, CA
    Well said!
     
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  5. John Fell

    John Fell Forum Survivor

    Location:
    Undisclosed
    I think part of the problem with them is that other than I'd Love To Change The World, they aren't really played on classic rock radio these days so people have forgotten about them and younger listeners aren't really aware of them.
     
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  6. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Paramount! The MFSL Ssssh/Cricklewood Green Gold CD!
     
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  7. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    If you really want to know which albums are the favorites from this band, you could have done a quick search and brought up dozens of threads on Ten Years After. If this one sputters out fast it's because we have gone over this already plenty of times. I would in the future add to an existing thread after you read all of it. Some really great comments from long term members, plus rare picture sleeves and rare alternate import album covers.

    By the way, I do see that you are new around here, welcome to the club!

    http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/searc...ost&o=relevance&g=1&c[title_only]=1&c[node]=2
     
  8. slipkid

    slipkid Senior Member

    Studio-wise I would have to say A Space In Time and Cricklewood Green. Recorded Live is a fantastic live album and is what turned me onto them btw.

    Carrying on from TYA, from Alvin I have to recommend Rocket Fuel and Ride On as my favorites. Just stripped down power trio flavored stuff.

    I also like the TYA Joe Gooch lineup & their two studio albums Now and Evolution. The new band Hundred Seventy Split by Joe and Leo Lyons is great as well and carries on in that same vein - I prefer the first one The World Won't Stop; it's got some fantastic songs.

    I haven't heard the new TYA lineup yet but am curious what Ric & Chick put together. Leo Lyons to me is as much a part of their sound and live experience as Alvin was though and I'm not sure they can recover from his loss; that being said I didn't think they could do it without Alvin Lee but as it turned out I loved the JG version of TYA as well.

    I hate the "song" Going Home btw. Kind of ironic since it is kind of their trademark (or at least Alvin's).
     
  9. Dondy

    Dondy Forumaniac

    Overall, this is the best (i.e. most thoughtful and knowledgeable) compilation out there (IMHO, 'course). And even the cover atwork is pretty cool.
     
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  10. John Fell

    John Fell Forum Survivor

    Location:
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    The only bad part is that it ends at 1971.
     
  11. Dondy

    Dondy Forumaniac

    Yup, no idea why, though. Both "R&R Music To The World" and "Positive Vibrations" didn't sell too well in the US so maybe the compilers were focusing at TYA's commercial heyday, only.
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2014
  12. joepepitone

    joepepitone Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    If 1969 was in fact the year, you would have seen Martin Barre with Tull.
     
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  13. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I saw them in 1973, hard rockin' peak of the onstage show. I got the Rock and Roll Music to the World album very shortly after. So I like the album a lot.

    Grand Funk Railroad and Ten Years After were two of the first concerts I ever saw. So it really felt I had gone full circle when I get to see both bands on their '90s reunion tours with original lineups. I think TYA was '99 but can't remember for sure.
     
  14. veejaycollector

    veejaycollector Forum Resident

    Location:
    Durham, NC
    Saw Ten Years After many years ago ('71) at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Yes opened the show. Yep...it was a night to remember.

    Love all the albums, but Cricklewood Green rises to the top.
     
  15. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Tell us why Cricklewood Green is top please? Many like it as well.
     
  16. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    And yet they stuck to it till the very end, pounding those three chords into the bricks! It defined them in a way the very early albums do not.
     
  17. Dondy

    Dondy Forumaniac

    Yep, indeed - and not necessarily in a positive way. From a certain point (c. 1972) they got written off as a boogie-till-you-drop combo. I imagine "R & R Music to the World" was the crucial point as it was generelly considered a setback in comparison to its predecessor...
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2015
  18. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Only in this forum have I ever read that they boogied themselves into forgotten unknowns. This was stated (a while back) just as Audio Fidelity issued "A Space in Time" and "R&R Music to the World" on gold disc, and Chrysalis Records issued "A Space in Time on vinyl and a quadraphonic DVD". And an expanded reissue of the double "Live" album was released. Hard for me to see them as written off or forgotten dropped off into obscurity.

    They actually lasted much longer and produced more albums than other acts of the same era. They simply quit before they dropped. Left a better legacy due to not playing county fairs.
     
  19. blackdograilroad

    blackdograilroad Forum Resident

    Location:
    Devon, UK
    Stonedhenge arrived in our house when I was about 9, courtesy of one of my sister's long-haired great-coated boyfriends, and got played to death, mainly because it was something other than the Beatles and Stones (records must have been comparatively expensive in the 60s, people didn't have that many, two dozen LPs would have been a big collection).

    We had a big walnut-veneered radiogram with a pickup head that I'm sure had lead in it, and a six-inch nail for a stylus, so it probably hacked the record to death, and it was a mono player, so I didn't know about the stereo panning til much later........

    ............but a great album..........wonderfully quirky..........3 Blind Mice played on the drumkit................
     
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  20. Dondy

    Dondy Forumaniac

    Well, reviewers embraced them early on for their heavy Jazz leanings - in fact TYA was the first band to incorporate Jazz into Pop/Rock music. Mind we're talking the 60's when Jazz was considered the pinnacle of musical evolution, at least among "serious" critics. When TYA dropped their jazzy elements (or at least reduced them considerably) from "Sssssh" on, and started to play and record out-and-out R&R and -Boogie numbers by 1972, I think that those critics felt the band let them down because they seemingly traded high-standard music for mumb-minded R&R and Boogie for the masses (and even the album title "R&R Music to the World" sounds like a confirmation of that approach). And what's worse than unrequited love?
     
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  21. Anachronist

    Anachronist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Merseyside, UK
    Ten Years After played at my high school dance in 1967 .... and I missed it because I had gone to see the Move at another venue. I did get to see them a lot between 68-71. Always a fabulous live act.
    Favourite album is Cricklewood Green, but we regard all their albums from that era as essential.
     
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  22. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I agree with everything you are saying, except that TYA were not called a "Boogie" band in any of the circles I hung around in. They were a solid Rock & Roll group period. I mean if you have vintage reviews and links please provide. This forum is the first I heard about the TYA "boogie band" and how it "boogied itself to extinction". Perhaps your mentioned "reviewers" were hip to the boogie element before I was?

    Canned Heat were more a boogie type thing, I think.
     
  23. slipkid

    slipkid Senior Member

    Actually they are still going - and have been on the club circuit for a while (including what I guess some might call "county fairs"?), perhaps damaging their reputation in some people's eyes (not mine).

    They ceased originally after Alvin left in the mid-70's, but then reformed (with Alvin) around 1988, and even released a new album with him in 1989. He left again after a couple years but the band didn't actually breakup, they continued on a couple years later replacing Alvin with singer guitarist Joe Gooch.

    Most people here I'm afraid do not give the Joe Gooch lineup the time of day but I love(d) it. I use past tense because Joe left TYA in 2014 and took Leo Lyons with him. They have a new band called Hundred-Seventy Split which carries on where they left off in TYA (they're great!). The remaining TYA members (Ric Lee and Chick Churchill) have not thrown in the towel though. They (supposedly) are keeping TYA going with two new members. I have not heard anything by that new TYA lineup yet though.

    HSS just released a double live album btw (to go along with their 2 studio ones that I may have mentioned earlier in this thread). It's fantastic.
    http://www.hundredseventysplit.com/
     
  24. John Fell

    John Fell Forum Survivor

    Location:
    Undisclosed
    The new line up of Ten Years After has a live album coming out in the next month. The new bass player is the overlooked Colin "The Bomber" Hodgkinson of Back Door and Whitesnake fame among others.
     
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  25. John Fell

    John Fell Forum Survivor

    Location:
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    However, I don't think those albums are as bad as some people make them out to be. I quite like Rock And Roll Music To The World. Another point is that they were still improvising in a live setting even if they were not as much on the later records.
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2015
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