Silver Laughter 1978 – Paul, Ken, Mick and Jon
In June of 1978 we were playing at The Ranch & Co. in Port Byron. This clip from our Beatles Tribute #2 features me on lead vocal and piano (plus kazoo!), Ken on bass, Jon on guitar and Paul on drums. Everyone sang backup (I think).
Updated: After I published this article, I realized I had not said much about the performance. It seems a little fast to me, but we were always hyped up thanks to the audience appreciation. To fit all the songs we did into a 50 minute tribute, we had to slice and dice the parts of the songs we thought were most relevant.
As I have mentioned before, we were a four piece band, so doing some of the later Beatles songs took some imagination. For example, on this tune the middle 8 has a distorted trumpet solo. We substituted me on a kazoo to at least try to get the feel of the recording!
It should also be noted that many of the songs we did in these edited versions were also done in their entirety. This is one of those songs. I may have it from one of the other sets and will look for it.
The photo is taken from the Rock Island shoot October 29, 1978. It is a little blurry as we were walking out of the field of focus. Notice “Rock Island” is very clear. Can anyone say Photoshop? I tried using their express editor, but it only took out the brownish tint and did not focus any of the band members.
Mick Orton
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