Thursday, December 13, 2007

CanCon Friday - Pat Travers



Well now, if you were 'twixt teen and twenty in the latter part of the bellbottoms and pukka shells era, you may have heard these fellows leaking out of a car stereo or two...Ottawa's own Pat Travers, who caught a break early on in the guitar chair of Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins, one of the godfathers of Canadian Rock and Roll.

Here he is around '76 or so, ably backed by Nicko McBrain (who now mans the skins for Iron Maiden), and one of the most criminally unknown bassists to ever pluck the boomstick, Mr. Peter 'Mars' Cowling.

Give a listen to the bass line underpinning the more well-known version of this tune found on Live! Go For What You Know, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Boogie time!

3 comments:

Phil said...

NOW YER TALKIN!!!
I love Pat Travers!
One of my all time favorite tunes is his version of Born Under A Bad Sign.Play it loud to get the bass thumpin'.
Just awesome.
Boom Boom, out goes the lights,
I actually wore out THREE of his live albums.Jesus, there are so many to choose from.Didn't know he was Canadian though,too cool.
I have a very rare King Biscuit Flower Hour album that was for radio play only, one of my pride and joy finds years ago at a record store in Portland.One side is Pat Travers.
Saw him once. I drove from San Jose to Frisco to see him in a club and the little shit was two hours late and played a short set, I loved it though. The opener was one of those Big Hair bands of the 80's you may remember, Cinderella.
Stevie was another tune I always really liked.I really, really wish he would come out with something new that would knock the house off it's foundation like he used to.
Many a set of speakers gave their all for Pat.
Too cool dude!

darkblack said...

Indeed, Busted, PT's version of Born Under A Bad Sign almost eclipses the mighty Cream.
I was fortunate to see the classic Crash and Burn lineup blow Ted Nugent's doors off one night...what a great band.

Pat had a project with Carmine Appice a couple of years ago on SPV, It Takes A Lot Of Balls, which IMO is worth a listen.

Sadly, Mars Cowling appears to have adopted the attitude that making music isn't worth the pain of involving himself with the music business...A shame, as he was an essential foil for Pat's feats of magic.

Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein said...

That song was a huge part of my late teens. I loved it, and still do.