I found out last night that Alvin Lee passed away.
I don't think I've mentioned it before but I loved Alvin Lee and Ten Years After for a long time. The first time I really heard him is when my Grade 8 teacher lent me Ssssh and Cricklewood Green. At the time, it was near impossible to find any Ten Years After in my neighbourhood. I found a cassette of Undead by sheer luck and found a used copy of Greatest Hits that had I'm Going Home and Woodchopper's Ball on the same side. Undead is a great album. If you ever heard Black Sabbath do Blue Suede Shoes, they sound a little too close to something off of Undead.
Then CDs came out and they finally got reissued. I know A Space In Time is usually the album that gets praise but Recorded Live is by far the overall best CD/LP you can get. And if you can get the yellow Live At The Fillmore, so much the better.
I learned a lot from Alvin and if I have any dexterity, it's from trying to keep up with his solos. I still play along with Undead and Recorded Live. Even when I was playing in the full band, we learned I May Be Wrong and Stoned Woman. Lenny Kravitz wouldn't have had Are You Gonna Go My way without ripping off Bad Scene from TYA.
Anyways, we lost a great guitar player and I lost another hero.
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