Friday, November 04, 2005

Edmonton...Part 1

I know this is old news already, but most of my life works that way. Always several days behind.

Last weekend I was in Edmonton playing for the yearly Oktoberfest to Rocktoberfest at the Shaw Conference Centre. The other band was Trooper. I have to say, Trooper has got to be one of  the best rock bands in the country. Yeah, a bunch of old guys (I know, DT, what is old, anyway? Not as old as Mick Jagger maybe, but relatively speaking…old…old as rock…old as mountains, the rarefied heights of rock…brought down to earth and a picturesque valley in Alberta viewed from a glassed-in escalator winding down the side of the hill…I’ll never forgive you for denying me the use of the phrase “old guys”….)

Where was I? Oh yeah, Trooper…old guys who are masters at putting on their show…I remember seeing the Trews last year (and they were at the Halloween show this year too), watching their finale and thinking, “This is old stuff…I saw Lighthouse (or Steppenwolf or Alice Cooper or Springsteen or any number of bands) doing exactly this thing thirty years ago. For that matter, Trooper is probably doing pretty much what they did thirty years ago too…but then it was original and interesting and it was theirs. It was not Trooper imitating Spike Jones. Or even Elvis.

Anyway, these guys are great. If you get a chance to see Trooper, go go go. If you are of a certain age, you will sing along with every song.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You sounded positively poetic there - an old trooper of poetry - you old Trooper, you -

Sometimes I watch MuchMusic while on the treadmill at the Y. They have this segment where they group the "top ten" along a theme. Yesterday's theme was really bad break-up songs, well, they used an expletive that started with f. #1 was a song by that little Canadian girl of rock with the black eyes like raccoons - talented in that young angry punk way. Sheet-it, can't remember her name - lololol - must be getting ol....

Larry Keiler said...

I think you mean Avril Lavigne.

She had a song a while back called...Sk8erBoy...or somethin like that. About a year ago my cousin and her husband visited from California with their kids. I suffered a deja vu (back to childhood) because my parents asked me to play the accordion for them. Sheesh! Husband, whose name I've forgotten, is a bombastic aggressive Jewish guy from California...how is that possible? Anyway, he must have been at a loss for an appropriate response to seeing someone playing the accordion...(Arlene! Arlene! help me out here!)...because he kept asking (agressively...I'm hipper than you...I'm gonna show my kids how sarcasm works...) for songs that simply don't work on accordion. Sk8erBoy was one of them. Fact is, I don't think I've ever heard the tune, and if I have I wasn't listening.

Help! I've written and I can't get up!