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AMERICA, Thanks For The Trip
The New Paper
By Toh Paik Choo
March 5th, 2002
Last Saturday, I heard America sing. And on one lick of that distinctive guitar I am on Ventura Highway, then in a time tunnel, and out on Orchard Road. Orchard Road - when it was dual carriageway, bus stop number 92, Wisma Indonesia and the Treetops bar in Holiday Inn (yah,yah that was Scotts Road. When every hotel bar (Pebbles Bar) and every shopping complex lounge (Peyton Place) had A Horse With No Name, or at least some mother's son who tried his darndest to sing and play it. It was pre-disco "70s and you and your classmates may have gone into Robert Piano Company and asked to see an Eko guitar (a staggering $340 then), stroke and strum her, and left before you woke from the dream. The American Dream.).
For 90 vintage minutes, America stirred those present with that '70s belief that any guitar-playing guy can form a band. Dewey Bunnel and Gerry Beckley (and Dan Peek who quit early on to record Christian music) formed in the early '70s the acoustic-based soft-rock group America whose debut single A Horse With No Name quickly hit number one. A stable of top 10 hits followed - I Need You, Tin Man, Lonely People, You Can Do Magic - enough songs to keep America looking back for years ahead.
America's 30th Anniversary Tour was Blondie's night out -the American community was out in force, perchance to relive their James Taylor-Carole King days. And the local crowd of a certain age (If you saw Mark Richmond, he could only have been there because he needed to speak to his father, Brian, urgently), well I suppose we too were reliving our Eagles and Neil Young Days. The droll humoured and now clean cut duo opened with Ventura Highway, then picked and dood-do-dood for a good half hour before they did the magic, and sent the not-quite full house fans right back into the '70s. From Sandman to their California Dreamin' to George Harrison's I Need You to the expected encore A Horse With No Name, their trademark harmonies and pure, clear strumming on no less than eight accoustic guitars.
Or, as my friend from Kentucky put it: Before, I was a fan of America. Now I'm a HUGE fan of America. Here's an honest to God band to shame all the boybands - boy bands who wouldn't know if a guitar came and smacked them on their....
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