Just about every time I hear Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Blue Collar" it is shiny and fresh like a new nickel. I've already written about the song in this blog but not with the depth I feel it deserves. One of it's unique features stuck me as it played in the car on the way home from work tonight -- the double echo.
Normally an echo follows a sound but this is the only song I've heard with an echo preceding it's sound. Then it follows as it should, thus the listener gets an appetizer, the main course, and a desert with every note. The whole song is not like this, just the section that BTO puts in most every song for each member to take a solo. This effect is awesome in headphones or coming from a properly balanced stereo and positively augments the riffs that would still be awesome without enhancement.
Bachman-Turner Overdrive
More than a few critics deride BTO but I'm not sure they have really given the tunes a fair shake. Sure, orchestration and arrangements tend to be formulaic (nearly every song features multple solos as I mentioned) and the lyrics lean toward the mundane and simplistic in some songs (think: "Gimme Your Money Please"). But with the lack of airplay they got in their heyday and the inability of current radio stations to buy more than one album or play more than just "Roll On Down the Highway" (the one BTO tune I really don't like) or "Takin' Care of Business" from that one album I think the band would be more well thought of in this era. Or maybe if more groups did covers of the material. And I don't mean that lame Rick Springfield hack job on "Jamaica" retitled "Kristina." Maybe hack job is too mild.
Bachman-Turner Overdrive is certainly near the top of the class as Some of My Favorite Music.
