6,000 Hear the Guess Who In Performance at SPAC

by Marilyn Nason, The Post-Star, September 5, 1970

The last rock group to appear at Saratoga Performing Arts Center for the 1970 season—The Guess Who—turned out to be one of the very best in concert last night with more than 6,000 attending. As exponents of today’s current trend in rock, heavily-guitared music and vocals, they reigned supreme by comparison with the dozens of others currently performing.

The five young men relied entirely upon the SPAC’s excellent permanent sound system last night, not choosing to augment it with tons of electronic amplifier mazes as so many previously have seen fit to do.

As a result, the sound was not at all distorted, was exceptionally clear and true, in fact, a rarity this summer. Although it was still perhaps too loud for many sitting in the amphitheatre, nearly every word sung was intelligible and each song did not sound exactly like the preceding and succeeding ones.

These young musicians from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, justly deserve the high acclaim and, even more importantly, the several million-record sales they have been enjoying the past few years. They are a most inventive, knowledgeable quintet, extremely musical, creating a blend of instruments ranging from guitars and drums to electric organ, harmonica, flute and the like with excellent results.

At times, they went to the real hard rock and then they sounded pretty much like every other professional group
heard so far this season. But when they turned their considerable talents to true arrangements, sparkling blending of instruments and voices in softer harmonies and, on several occasions, in out-and-out ballads, they were simply excellent.

Playing together for a decade now, the Guess Who members write all their own material and they offered dozens of examples last night from “Too Late” and “American Woman” to “We’re Coming To Dinner,” “Do You Miss Me, Norma?”, this still unreleased; “These Eyes” and “Hand Me Down World.”

They played without intermission, somewhat unusual in itself at SPAC and normally reserved for when the weather becomes frigid. Such was not the case last night with a surprisingly balmy evening. Their manager explained backstage they always do this sort of uninterrupted show, “because they start the show out slowly and keep building the beat and tempo deliberately. They feel if they have an intermission break it destroys the mood and music can create a variety of moods if properly structured.”

And after listening to them last night, we are inclined to agree wholeheartedly, although I certainly hope some of the other groups do not adopt this policy, too.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this group is its ability to move smoothly and well from hard rock to ballads, jazz to a drum solo of some 12-minutes duration, which was a showstopper, and then prove equally effective with a country/western tune.

Although the theatre was far from filled and many from the lawn did take seats in the house, the true grass-dwellers preferred to remain out under the stars.

Tonight singer Bobby Sherman appears at SPAC at the earlier-than-usual-time of 7:30 and tomorrow, the final regular performance of the 1970 season, which opened June 13 with Dionne Warwick, brings the much-awaited appearance of the versatile Sammy Davis Jr. at 3:30 p.m.