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Uproar
Different Drummer / Look Who We Are - 7"
GRT - 1971
Michael Panontin
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Uproar formed in Vancouver in 1970 and included a couple of local alumni, Jeff Ridley (United Empire Loyalists) and Glen Hendrickson (Mock Duck, United Empire Loyalists). 'Different Drum' is the only record they ever released and is about as bottom-of-the-barrel as it gets these days. But in their brief existence (1970 - 1972), Uproar managed to nab a top-20 berth on local radio, open for the likes of Procol Harum, the Moody Blues and Captain Beefheart, and even score a coveted slot on tour with rock royalty.
Uproar trace their roots to October of that year. That was when guitarist Ridley and drummer Hendrickson got the idea to start a new band and began shopping around for a bass player. "I had seen a guy named Tom Lavin performing some months earlier and had been impressed with him - he was calling himself 'Chicago Bo' at that time," Ridley recalled. "I remember thinking I didn't care if he was not a great musician, I would like to play with him because he had great charisma on stage."
Fast forward a couple of months to December and Hendrickson was telling Ridley about a potential bassist he had in mind. "We arranged to meet at a club called The Parlour on Main St., a block or two south of Hastings. This was an upstairs club connected to Tommy Chong's nightclub." When Ridley took one look at this new prospect, he immediately recognized Lavin and, as he tells it, "knew right away that here was our man".
The three wasted no time getting down to business. "We would rehearse at Robin Spurgin's studio, starting at 10 or 11 at night, after Robin closed, and continue until 6 or 7 the next morning." It wasn't long before Uproar had recorded a half-dozen tunes and signed a deal with GRT Records to put out a seven-inch single.
'Different Drummer' came out in the late spring of '71 and by early June it was inching its way up the local charts. The song rocks...hard, and has been compared by some to the Who. Which is hardly a surprise given that their Live at Leeds LP was all over the radio that year. 'Different Drummer' ultimately reached a very impressive #19 position on the CKVN chart on June 11th followed by an equally respectable #26 at its rival station CKLG a couple of weeks later.
But to say that Uproar had a bit of momentum would be understating things considerably.
The guys soon found themselves backing up Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention on the eastern leg of their Canadian tour in early July, which is about as cool a gig as one could hope for in 1971. "We played Ottawa, Quebec City and Montreal. We shared the same dressing room with Frank and the Mothers and we hung out a bit with Flo and Eddie," Ridley remembered. "At the end of our set in Ottawa the crowd lit their lighters and wanted an encore, which we gave them. Zappa said to us something like 'looks like they like you' and seemed a bit miffed."
As was Lavin, it appears, who abruptly replaced Ridley with Ron Coleman just a few weeks after those Zappa gigs. Uproar closed up shop not long after, but Lavin would resurface a couple of times: in 1977 as a member of Prism, and then the following year fronting the Juno Award-winning Powder Blues Band.
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