![]() A Space in Time peaked at #17 on Billboard ‘s Top 200 album sales chart, the highest of any Ten Years After album. The band utilized that momentum to negotiate a new US record deal and deliver their most popular album ever in late Summer 1971, A Space in Time, which included “ One of These Days”, “Baby Won’t You Let Me Rock’n’Roll You “, and what turned out to be their biggest hit, “ I’d Love to Change the World “. ![]() #Ten years after a space in time dvd movie“When things get put onto celluloid, they tend to get bigger than life,” the late guitarist/ singer Alvin Lee told me in this classic rock interview, explaining how Ten Years After was catapulted from the second tier of English boogie and blues by their prime spot in the Woodstock Festival movie documentary. Unarguably the band's strongest and most consistent effort since the Ssssh days, A Space In Time continues the line of Watt in its heavy use of synthesizers and special effects, but this time the members probably took out some time to make these thingamajigs actually work.Alvin Lee never hesitated to credit fate and dumb luck for first putting him and the band Ten Years After on the bill of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, and then documentary film director Michael Wadleigh for choosing to include their closer, “ I’m Going Home“, in the final cut of the Woodstock movie. Still, if there ever was a period in which they were real close to embodying some "progressive" tendencies, it was this fall of 1971, with this extremely strange, un-Ten Years After-like album, and this really great bunch of songs, with hardly a major stinker in among all the melodies. #Ten years after a space in time dvd macIt is indeed a classic.ĭespite all the hype, Ten Years After could never have earned the title of a "prog-rock" band: sometimes they are mistakenly lumped in with the movement, but Alvin and Co.'s ambitions never really amounted that high - for the most part, they were just hardcore blues rockers with a slight experimental edge, to distinguish them from colleagues like early Fleetwood Mac or Free. It's good to see this digitized CD being released. But what can absolutely be said with authority is that A Space In Time cemented Ten Years After as Rock Music giants of their time. That album was also the sign-off signature for the band, as Lee left to seek a solo career and the music public could only look forward to numerous "best of" albums the studios would release to line their own pockets. And as unusual was the fact that fans also enjoyed most of the songs on that album, not just the feature cut. ![]() ![]() While some critics and fans sniffed that the band "sold out" to commercialism, the feature song of that album, "I'd Love To Change The World" made every one of them comfortably wealthy. While they did experience success during the middle of their musical careers, the album "A Space In Time" went gold in a hurry. It cannot be ignored that their appearance at Woodstock might had a lot to do with their relative success It was Ssssh that launched them into their successful period. Lee's comment about the material on the Shhhh album cover was indeed prophetic. Caught between the "British Invasion" and the Haight Ashbury culture, Ten Years After finally found their niche within the Acid Rock crowd. In fact, the original album cover back side of "Ssssh" had Lee's comment on it, describing just how difficult it had been to cut that album. He often held that this difficulty was the primary reason that Ten Years After had not "made it" on the commercial music scene. ![]() Alvin Lee, the premiere Rock and Blues guitar player of his time often lamented how hard it was to get their third album cut. The Rock and Blues band, Ten Years After paid their dues three times over, playing the dockside bars and dives all over England. ![]()
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