1969. It was a time of love and a time of war, a time of cultural upheaval and a time of hardline traditions, a time of free-flowing music of all kinds but the biggest doses were dispensed by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
CCR put out three albums in that one year, and wrote two more that came out in 1970. All of them produced massive chart hits, and the kind of songs that linger in roadhouse juke boxes, classic rock radio playlists, and record and CD collections passed down through the generations.
John Fogerty, the man who was the voice and the public persona of CCR all those years ago before going on to a simply spectacular solo career as well, brought 1969 to Prince George on Sunday night.
This was no quiet retrospective.
Showers of pyro-sparks, pillars of fire, showers of confetti, and towering infernos of instrumental solos covered hours of fun. Fogerty used no opening act and he did no encore.
He stood like Hank Aaron in a batting cage and just hit long-balls all night long.
The crowd came with their mitts on, ready to haul in those homers.
It was a much larger crowd than I anticipated would be there, for a man who has been to P.G. before and hasn't had a hit in decades.
I think he was impressed, too, because all night long you couldn't have knocked the grin off his face with a tire iron. He was energetic, ready to rumble, and he let the crowd feel his appreciation time after time. He got a standing ovation just for walking on stage with his shiny golden Gibson guitar.
He gave that up for an acoustic Fender for song number two, then on song three went to a two-tone red-yellow Gibson for the clanging unmistakable intro to Up Around The Bend.
After a long rock 'n' roll accordion solo (you don't see that every day), he hit into Lookin' Out My Back Door on a red Fender Telecaster, his fourth guitar in less than 20 minutes.
He eventually told some jokes about how many guitars he has versus how many pairs of shoes his wife Julie has, and as he talked the audience through those guitars, and a piano that rolled out at one point, he showed how the songs were created.
In almost every instance, however, he was not talking about the great hits CCR had at that time, he demonstrated songs be the great contributors to the modern music songbook - like showing his custom Les Paul and talking about how that model of guitar led him to work with some licks by the great bluesman Leadbelly who wrote The Midnight Special, a CCR cover hit.
Or the architecturally gorgeous Rickenbacker, which Fogerty spotted in the hands of John Lennon when The Beatles first played The Ed Sullivan Show. That appearance inspired him to get the same model and that led to kicking around an old Dale Hawkins song that gave CCR their first Top 20 hit, Suzie Q.
There were many examples of this - Fogerty playing his own hit list, but always reminding the audience where the origins lay, in the great blues, soul, rockabilly, country and boogie-woogie acts that came before him.
And then it was on to his solo material. 1969 gave way to 1985 and when it did, I swear, the roof of CN Centre sustained concussion damage when the telltale tap-tap-taptaptap drum-clap crackled through the night telling everyone Centrefield was about to begin.
When The Old Man Is Down The Road came along, with Fogerty's son Shane wailing on guitar next to his old man, both of them were grinning like school boys in a candy shop.
Shane was a constant presence on the Fogerty stage, displaying fine guitar chops on a number of occasions. Another guitarist got plenty of spotlight, too, Devon Pangle. Bassman James Lomenzo got some solo love, as did keyboardist Bob Malone who shined particularly during Heard It Through The Grapevine.
It was worth the ticket price, for me, just to see drummer Kenny Aronoff. Fogerty singled him out on Sunday as "the greatest rock 'n' roll drummer in the whole world" and I won't argue.
I had seen him play before, the last time being in my friend Patricia Conroy's band the night she stunned the nation and won the Canadian Country Music Award for Best Female Vocalist in underdog fashion. It was a giddy night and nobody in that Calgary theatre was unaware that she had the great Kenny Aronoff on drums, the man who got famous in John Mellencamp's band and has played for everyone from Bob Seger to Smashing Pumpkins to Meatloaf to Melissa Etheridge along the way.
After seeing Omar Hakim play for Journey only a week ago, it is the best one-two drum punch P.G. has ever experienced.
With all the good-time party hits made famous on your granddad's eight-track player, there was still room for raw emotion, too.
Fogerty isn't known for his ballads and love songs, but he is known for looking America in the eye on the toughest issues. In 1969 that was the Vietnam War and social equality for black Americans.
As the crowd roared for his song protesting privilege, Fortunate Son, and the screens blazed with scenes of soldiers dying for a weak political cause and civilian victims left in the wake, I couldn't help but think about the news item I saw only five minutes before walking out the door of my lovely house in my safe neighbourhood, driving my practical vehicle down smooth roads to a warm gathering of my community's people.
I learned that Rocky Mountain Ranger soldier Kirby Tott had died during training.
One of Prince George's own had died for the flag during peacetime, and how he was no senator's son but he put on the uniform and undertook the training required to keep us all safe in our beds with a voting booth waiting for us, and a court system at the ready in times of trouble, and the ability to walk safely about our beautiful city.
My silent salute, ringing out from John Fogerty's own guitar, was to Pte. Tott, his family, and colleagues with the Rocky Mountain Rangers reserve company. It's thanks to him and his brothers and sisters in uniform that we can enjoy a wild, carefree night of legendary rock 'n' roll.
