Old Enough to Forget

When I was a kid B.T.O. was synonymous with rock and roll. If there was a bigger, better and more awesome band I wasn't aware of them. The gear everything seemed to rotate around was Randy Bachman, the band's architect, producer, songwriter and occasional singer. Of course this how I saw it as a a twelve year old, who practically lived off Four Wheel Drive , and later Head On . I was of course aware of Not Fragile , how could you not be? I didn't have the album (yet) but the big hits appeared on my various K-Tel records. When Freeways dropped in 1977 I was a sophisticated teenager with slightly more refined tastes, and I was on the fence about getting the album. I had a good friend who had it, and he played it once for me, and the summary judgment was "This is shit." I wouldn't hear the album again for decades. When I found it on CD it was better than I remembered but it wasn't really a Bachman Turner Overdrive album. There were moments, but it was a Randy...

I know this is my second post about BTO, but this was a cool find for me. I had mentioned I had been looking for the B.T.O. Japan Tour album for years, and last fall my wife and I were hanging around Commercial Drive checking out the shops. She shopped for clothes and I stood around looking lost for the most part. It was a beautiful fall day, and as we made our way along the drive there on the corner was a small stall with a guy selling records. They were between five and ten bucks, which was a little high considering the condition of some of the records, but as I'd been forced to endure a few clothing shops I felt justified in stopping to see what was there. There were quite a few records I wanted, but I already had them on CD, and the general agreement was if I had it already I didn't need to get it again. I've generally stayed true to this, as frankly I spent a lot of money buying discs to replace the snap crackle and pop of my old record collection. There were three re...

Growing up a good Canadian kid, there was no band bigger or more influential than Bachman Turner Overdrive. I mean when you're a kid anything that seems to last more than a week is a long time. Heck if you can like something for more than a school year it's an eternity. I mean seriously as I got older I confuse events that happened last year, with things that happened a decade ago. But kid years? Yeah, they're like dog years - here I was listening to the radio as a kid rocking out to "Let it Ride" and a year later sitting on the floor listening to a special program on the radio playing the Not Fragile and loving "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" then in 1975 they dropped Four Wheel Drive , which would be the first record I bought with my own money. It was a dilemma too. My older cousins were playing Led Zeppelin, KISS, Nazareth, and Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies - when I told them I wanted to get Four Wheel Drive they weren't as enthu...