It’s another Friday night in 2020 during a pandemic. It is almost 9:00 Eastern Standard Time and time to fire up the power supply to my home studio gear and tune my favorite Gibson guitar. For the last 20 Friday nights I have sat in front of my 27 inch Mac computer surrounded by studio speakers and cranked up the You Tube stream. I have not missed a single episode. The first stream I saw almost half a year ago hooked me. What am I talking about? Bachman and Bachman!
Let’s start with the personal connection that makes me get excited when this stream goes live each Friday. My first two record albums were The Guess Who’s “Greatest Hits” and Carole King “Tapestry.” I bought them on the same day having walked to the store long before I could drive. They were the products of my toll pushing a lawnmower through over-grown grass in the Mississippi delta on a 100 degree day and was I proud of them. You bet I was. I still have them decades later. I still follow the Guess Who and anything Randy Bachman does. I am going to fly across North America to see them perform next year. I love to hear stories and tell stories about music. I love the music and own everything he has ever recorded. Yes, everything in multiple formats. I am listening to “Not Fragile” as I write this.
I could write pages about all the times BTO music blared from my car stereo in the 1970’s. I could tell you that my best friend from elementary school who without exaggeration was an electronics genius and virtuoso musican once told me in the mid-1970’s that he thought “Taking Care of Business” was likely the greatest rock song ever. I remember him saying that all that time ago. I will say that there is a long listing of great rock songs and BTO has several that hold their own with the best.
So more on why this stream is the thing to do for me and many others. It is a father son cool thing. Tal had his huge hit “She’s So High” in 1999. You may say “what?” Then you go listen to the song and you know it. You heard it played during that time period twenty years ago. I have even heard this one in elevators and grocery store aisles.
I like the father son connection that is so obvious. I like the positivity of the whole show during these tough times of little to no live music. When you watch the interactions it is like the times when you are with your friends exchanging stories of people you have met and all the cool things you know about music. Tal and Randy have had so much experience in music traveling and touring with people they have spent 20 weeks and are still telling fresh stories and have never repeated a song they play. Let’s talk about the songs they pick. They told you in episode 20 that they lean on late 1950’s – 1970’s rock and other cool pieces they throw in. Here is the catch. There is no rehearsal. Tal quickly prints some lyrics on sheets with no chords and calls the key out to his Dad. They will sometimes even talk about what they are doing as they do it. They look at each other and one will say to the other “solo.” Sometimes it is absolute magic. Sometimes it can be a “train wreck.” They call the show the Friday Night Train Wreck” sometimes and that just makes it even more cool that they are humble and unafraid. This could be the best thing about this stream. No perfection just raw talent and spontaneous entertainment. They take turns playing and get sidetracked talking about all kind of things. The whole time the smiles are infectious and most of the time I am beaming and laughing with them. Sometimes they hit a chord and I know what they are going to play. My guitar always stays an arm length away.
The chat stream is rolling and you can see people from everywhere in fact all over the world. Everyone is having a good time and making comments on everything that going on. These people are the “Bachmanians.” I am one of them.
One of the support group is Koko. Koko is Tal’s long-time gal as he says and she mostly works the camera and behind the scenes work. She is very popular with the chat crowd always getting shout outs. Lately she has sat in on several songs during each show and played the cajon. The photo above is one I just took as she was introduced on episode 20.
Every episode always has a story that ends up being my favorite. Tonight was no exception. Randy told the story of touring with the Guess Who and the Allman Brothers. This happens at the 41 minute mark in the video. He explained that Duane gave him a Coricidin bottle in a leather pouch as a gift given they both had 1959 Gibson Les Paul guitars. The story is cool and you should check that out.
On to the next thing that caught my ear this week. Tal gets to the 1:00 hour mark on episode 20 and reads my question. “I have all the Bachman Turner Overdrive and Guess Who records. Many of them are very old original presses. Do you have a plan to release a box set of re-press vinyl?” So I am sitting there on the edge of my chair as Randy looks me right in the eye on the video stream and says “Yes but it delayed a bit due to COVID as is the tour but it will be a massive box set with all the BTO, Guess Who, and solo records from Randy and Burton Cummings.” I was thrilled to hear that and I will be signing up for the day of release on that one. Indeed. Thank you to all that are working on that project.
One other quick story ends up being the one that came from an audience question about the “Not Fragile” album title. I will not spoil the story as you need to watch the video stream. But I did fish a copy out this morning and crank it up to shake the listening room a bit with some serious bass notes.
On another note from this show Randy and Tal are going to be hosting a weekly segment on the Sirius XM “Beatles” channel to de-construct Beatles music as they do almost weekly on this Bachman and Bachman stream. The segment starts on August 3 on Sirius XM channel 18. The show will be called the “Musical Mystery Tour.”
https://www.siriusxm.ca/channels/the-beatles-channel/
I could keep on telling stories from this on-going six month adventure but the video is out there for you to explore. I really do appreciate the weekly fun that this Bachman and Bachman You Tube channel provides. I encourage everyone to go out and subscribe to it. Until next time, I’ll see you, down the road.
To listen to my companion podcast click below!