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| A
Canadian saint among us: Pat Travers at Revolution Hall. |
His
Love Kicks Our Asses
By
Bill Ketzer
Pat Travers
Revolution
Hall, June 23
Like
disciples on the road to Emmaus, we are so often incapable
of seeing that you, O Patrick Henry Travers, were our companion
all along the way. But when our eyes were opened, we realized
that you were speaking to us, even though perhaps we had forgotten
you from the years of approximately 1986 to 1999. And now
the sign of our trust in you is that, in our turn, we prioritize
Putting It Straight on vinyl over the new Nickelback
CD any old day of the week, whether we mow lawns or blow glass
or show houses to families of four. Independent of our doubts
or even our faith, O Canadian One, you are always there: Your
magnanimous and scorching hot licks burn in our heart of hearts,
revealing these four basic truths:
Pat Travers is patient. Lo, for three numbers immediately
following your humble appearance before the faithful, you
were made to endure great personal suffering at the hands
of soundboard and its overseers, depriving your drummer Eric
Frates of a working monitor and assassinating the stage mix
with a persistent low-end moan from the microphones comparable
to a Brachiosaurus giving birth to a Volkswagen. Eventually,
you were caused to remind those in your service that perhaps
a better knowledge of frequency response curves would be helpful,
and that surely with a few hundred thousand dollars worth
of equipment on stage some benevolent act of competence could
be undertaken to assuage his plight. But you never lost faith.
And this was of great consequence because despite these matters:
Pat Travers is ass-kicking. Of the four truths, this is perhaps
the most vital to our nourishment. All of us who live by vows,
whether in the passion or love or the sorrow of vengeance,
know that rock stardom can be an inadequate image for personal
commitment. Like our lives, this eternal quest for greatness
and longevity can be biting and fraught with peril, sometimes
richer, sometimes more pitifully peculiar and decrepit (sort
of like Keith Richards) than when we took our vows. Praise
be to you for your vision, for being one of the few who can
indeed continue to kick the rosy white ass of your aging target
demographic with refreshing new material like “I Don’t Care”
and “Elijiah.” Sunday evening’s jubilee revealed, in retrospect,
that it was your plan, not ours, that counted when we were
preoccupied, dabbling as a people with the odious and bedraggled
likes of Bush and Our Lady Peace. You did not call us to help
you. When the time was right, you called us instead because
you still loved us and wanted to kick our asses, and perhaps
ass-kicking looks bad on paper but is actually of great merit
because:
Pat Travers is kind. My worshipful guitar master, if I were
to gather a list of all the songs I would implore you to play
at top volume in a small club in Troy on a Sunday night for
250 lovers and madmen, you couldn’t have read my mind any
more accurately. Surrounded by youthful craftsmen (one of
which nailed Pat Thrall’s “Heat in the Street” guitar solo
note-for-note no less) and with boots planted firmly in middle
age, you deftly delivered “Life in London,” “Stevie,” “Hooked
on Music” and the pugnacious “Crash and Burn.” You had mercy
upon our errant and attention deficit souls and anointed our
ears with the cool, cool water of “Snortin’ Whiskey” and “Boom,
Boom (Out Go the Lights).” O, how fortunate to bear witness
to the glory of your 20-minute encore rendition of “Born Under
a Bad Sign.” One can derive no other conclusion from such
howling fury than the conviction that:
Pat Travers is loving. Indeed, there is nothing you, Pat Travers,
cannot face. You can even face the Capital Region working
class after any number of them have ingested enough bourbon
to kill an Irish yeti, emerging post-gig from the confines
of your dressing room (also, used, I suspect as extra storage
space for the in-house Mr. Subb) to pose for digital photos
and sign copies of Blues Magnet. There is no limit
to your capacity for faith, hope, and endurance. There is
no finer use of electricity, not this night, not ever, until
I arise one morning without the ability to grind coffee for
my espresso machine. Until then however, godspeed my good
captain! Amen.
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