POSTSCRIPT: UPROAR

After the final break-up of The United Empire Loyalists, Rick Enns played with a series of Vancouver bands throughout the 1970s. Jeff Ridley and Glen Hendrickson decided to keep playing together, and the story of the resulting band, Uproar, is told here by Jeff:

"The United Empire Loyalists finally disbanded in October of 1970. Glen and I decided to find a bass player/singer and form a new band. 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. 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.

"In Dec 1970 Glen said he had found a bass player/singer who we could maybe work with. 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 (later of Cheech and Chong fame) nightclub. When Glen arrived with the bass player he'd met, I immediately recognised Tom as the guy I had seen and knew right away that here was our man.

"We jammed and had an excellent rapport and decided to form a band. 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. We wrote quite a few good songs and put 6 or 7 of them onto tape. The tape has since disappeared but two of the songs, 'Different Drummer' and 'Look Who We Are', were released as a single on GRT Records and 'Different Drummer' went into the top 10 on local radio.

"In July of 1971 Uproar opened for Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention on the Canadian leg of their 1971 summer tour. We played Ottawa, Quebec City and Montreal - 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. We shared the same dressing room with Frank and the Mothers and we hung out a bit with Flo and Eddie (formerly The Turtles) who gave us advice about not giving away our songs as they had done. For whatever reason Tom didn't want to continue working with me so replaced me with guitarist Pat Coleman in July 1971. Uproar died shortly thereafter."


Thanks to Jeff Ridley, Richard Cruickshank, Rick Enns, Glen Hendrickson, Anton Kolstee, Jerry Kruz, 'Country Joe' McDonald, Linde Zingaro, Rob Frith, Bob Masse, and Rodney Gitzel for their participation, input, and help with putting this page together.


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copyright Darren C. Gawle, esq.

July, 2000