ALBUMS: The Classic Performances of Ten Years After (1975); A Space In Time (1971); Undead (Live) 1968.
MVC Rating: Classic (4.0/$$$$;) A Space in Time (4.0/$$$$); Undead (4.5/$$$$$$)
Ten Years After was a hard rock, blues band from England that had their career launched into orbit after their performance at Woodstock.
Alvin Lee played guitar like a man possessed with picking so fast that some have called him the father of the shredding style of guitar playing which emerged a decade or more later in the 1980s.
At Woodstock the group’s ‘I’m Going Home ignited the crowd.
The group’s highest charting hit was ‘I’d Love to Change the World.” It’s a nearly perfect rock songs musically with slow picking intro, segueing into power chord riffing as the vocals kick in amid it all.
The only thing that made me uncertain about the song were the lyrics.
‘Everywhere there’s/ freaks and hairies/dykes and fairies/ Tell me where is sanity .. Tax the rich/ feed the poor till there are no rich no more
I’d love to change the world … but I don’t know what to do
It’s hard to figure what the group meant by the lyrics which insinuate by these examples the world is messed up. The question surfaces in the actual examples themselves, it sounds a bit like an old, crotchety man blaming the state of the world on those long hairs. Yet the message seems slightly odd coming from a group of four musicians with hair down past their shoulders. But, hey, the music sounds good.
The third album I have is a live one cleverly called ‘Undead” and it gives us ‘Woodchopper’s Ball,’ a Woody Herman song that Alvin Lee tore the cover off of. Lee grew up listening to his father’s record collection, heavy on jazz and was pushing the group toward jazz at every turn.