by Richard Skelly » Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:22 am
What a coincidence. Just the other day, I stumbled upon a Wikipedia profile of Panorama Studios and learned of its link to Coast Records...home of assorted Vancouver groups including The Seeds Of Time.
Panorama, built around 1964, was very state of the art for its time. Mainly financed by a British lord (Folkestone) and largely designed by American audiophile Howard Tremaine, it hosted The Littlest Hobo tv series plus films such as The Trap and That Cold Day In The Park. Business dried up, bankruptcy ensued and Panorama briefly closed. But then CKLG disc jockey Steve “Wonder” Grossman and some partners renovated what had been a projection room, turning it into PBS Studios. Reportedly, it boasted the first Ampex MM-1000 8 track recorder in Canada. The conversion was made easier because original designer Tremaine—envisioning such a future use—built the room level and not on a theatre-style angle.
Coast Records became the label arm of PBS. The Seeds Of Time were a hard charging club band of the day relying on charismatic vocalist Geoff Eddington, top flight guitarist Lindsay Mitchell, drummer Rocket Norton, bassist Steve Walley and keyboardist John Hall. Mitchell wrote My Hometown complete with some divebomb guitar riffs. No info on whether it was Grossman who produced the session. The flip side bore a title that would warm the heart of any rock fan from ditch-riddled Richmond...Muskrat Ramble.
A few years later, The Seeds Of Time had largely morphed into the much more successful Prism. Fronted by a new lead singer Ron Tabak (RIP), Prism initially featured only one SOT alumnus, Lindsay Mitchell. Before long, alums Norton, bassist Al Harlow (a latter day Seed) and keyboardist John Hall were all aboard. Movingly, Prism dusted off My Hometown for an encore when they headlined at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum after bestselling album Armageddon broke them nationally in 1979...a full decade after it was first recorded.