Happy Birthday Blair Thornton!

Blair Thornton, gutiarist for Bachman-Turner Overdrive is 61 years old today.  I suspect that he still looks 20+ years younger than he is.  I've met him on a few occasions and is approachable.  However, he was never one to seek the spotlight during his time with BTO and we know very little about him.

We do know that he still lives in the same neighborhood in west Vancouver where he grew up.  He's an avid golfer, and I'd guess that he's a fixture on one of the golf courses in the Vancouver area.  His guitars of choice in the 70s were the Gibson models, particularly the SG and the Les Pauls.  Later on he switched to a customized Fender Strat.  When I asked him why he switched, he told me that the Gibsons weren't holding up on the road as well as he would have liked, and that he had a couple of them break on him.  He then went into a detailed technical description of the how he had his Strat customized.

Any BTO fan will readily acknowledge that he's one of the top guitarists, and I can personally attest to that.  One time when he was playing in Tucson, he was ripping out the solo for the song "Gimme Your Money Please" and he broke a string.  He never broke stride, he stayed true to that solo (which I'd seen him do before) and did NOT miss a note.  It was like he didn't need that string after all.  After the song guitarist Randy Murray loaned him one of his guitars, and Randy played his backup while Blair did the next song with Randy's #1 guitar.  Then with the song after that, one of the techs handed back Blair the strat with the string replaced.

One other anecdote is worthy of passing along.

After a show that they did in Las Vegas, I was hanging around the band after their "meet and greet".  They were delighted that three of us had come all the way up from Tucson to see them, and we were invited to stay and chat with them a while.  I was telling Blair that a song that he co-wrote, "Four Wheel Drive", was the first song that I played in my truck when I got my CD player put in....after all, it's a 4WD truck and I felt that no other song could be the first one played in it.

He liked hearing that, and as we were conversing a drunken fan then came up to us.

This drunken fan had mistaken *me* for a member of BTO!  He started shaking my hand, telling me that I had played really well that night, and that he had followed us for a long time.  Ole Blair went right along with that, saying "Oh yeah.....I haven't heard him play that good for several years now.  He hasn't played that well since 1997".  The fan thanked me again, and left, and probably was bragging to his friends the next day that he had gotten to shake hands with one of the guitarists from Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

So......can I say that for a brief moment, that I was a member of BTO?

Happy Birthday, Blair!  And thanks for memories that will last me a lifetime!

Here's a YouTube video of "Four Wheel Drive", live in 2004.  Blair's the one with the sunglasses.

Four Wheel Drive

Some catching up to do.......

Life had been something of a whirlwind during the first ten days of this month.  When things slowed down I did some much-needed goofing off, or maybe I should say that I decided that I needed some "down" time.  Well, I've had my down time, but I am behind in my emails and there are a few folks out there who I need to call.  I also realized that I needed to catch up here, so I'm here.

Let's get started.

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I was not the only one who came across the burning bush last month.  After seeking out some counsel and asking lots of questions, I decided to respond to the call.  What this means is that I am going to be giving up some free time, but I feel that the need that I'm being asked to fill is important.  And, I'm not going in this alone.  Ten of us are getting involved and we'll be helping some people out, behind the scenes, who need the help.

That's all I'm going to say for now on this.

* * * * * * *

Things are changing for me at work.  When I returned to work after an extended weekend from the Fourth, well, I was made aware that things were going to change soon.  All I can say is that another project pulled some strings, and I was more or less encouraged to take this new assignment.

No, I'm in no way bitter about this.  It's just the nature of the business.

And seeing as how this is about work, that's all I'm going to say for now on this one as well.

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Here at home, I've been experimenting a lot with the barbecue.  I had a pair of hamburgers for the evening meal, but this time I did them differently.

I had them rubbed down with olive oil (that's now a standard procedure here), and after the olive oil I sprinkled some Thai seasoning on them.  I then cooked them as I usually do, but in the final five minutes of cooking I put some Thai chili paste on them.

I was really pleased with how they turned out!  The side effect that I may suffer from later on could come in the form of some absurd dreams or possibly nightmares.  We'll see.

I do know from an experience several years ago that spicy Montreal steak seasoning on hamburgers will give you nightmares!  Back when I was in the townhouse I made generous use of that seasoning; going on to blacken those burgers like I was some sort Cajun cook.

They were tasty, but later on that night I paid for it.

I still use McCormick's spicy Montreal steak seasoning in cooking, but not like that anymore.

By the way, I did some research on that Montreal steak seasoning.

People in Montreal didn't come up with it.

Instead, someone at McCormick came up with a blend of spices, and since they wanted to sell a lot of it, they called it Montreal seasoning.  There's more than one variety of Montreal seasoning that you can get, and I'm partial to their spicy steak seasoning.  It does go good on a ribeye, and on hamburgers if you don't overdo it.

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I need to catch up on some other things here, so I'm going to sign.

Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat!