Ed Collins

Meet Ed Collins from South Lancaster, Massachusetts.

Yet another America fan writing about his favorite band. My brother Alan already has a bio on the page, and he encouraged me to write mine.

My name is Ed Collins and I moved from Maine, where I grew up, to South Lancaster, Massachusetts (north of Worcester) in 1975 to go to a small private college and have lived there most of the time since then. I teach online college courses in basic computer skills to prison inmates in several Massachusetts houses of correction, and the college is also beginning to offer online programs for us folks "on the outside" (check out www.apoed.com for more info).

I can't remember who got into America first, me or my brother. It's possible we were introduced to them by Alan's best friend Scott Swan, another fan. We were fairly poor, so we had an arrangement - Alan bought all the America albums and I bought all the Monkees! So he has all the old albums now (at least I think he still has them). This can be a tremendous advantage at an Amercia concert (I'll explain later).

Hearts was the first album we had, and the first America song I remember hearing was Sister Golden Hair. I liked this blonde girl at my church at the time, so it was perfect. We started collecting albums, and we eventually heard them in concert in the summer of 1978 at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, Maine. (Alan's bio at first said it was in Augusta, but I think it was Portland.) We were also able to see them in the summer of '98 in Connecticut. In his bio Alan gives a very detailed report of the concerts, so I won't go into them much here. It's just that last summer in Conn. we were probably about 10 feet from Mike Woods and 15 feet from Gerry! Best seats I've ever had for a concert, by far. Alan says the same thing.

This past weekend (10/8 and 10/9/99, in case you're reading this sometime down the road) we saw them at the Topsfield, Mass. fair. I saw the Friday afternoon and Saturday night shows, and Alan and his family saw the Saturday afternoon and evening shows. What a great time! After the Saturday afternoon show Alan and his family were able to go back to their trailer, meet them, get pictures with them and have them sign all kinds of stuff. He said they're the most down-to-earth, nicest guys you'd ever meet.

At the Friday aftenoon show, I had a really good seat. I was about 30-40 feet from the stage. I occasionally looked out at the crowd, and I think it was mostly a fair crowd who came because they were at the fair and knew there was a concert, not mainly because they were America fans. I think that because I didn't see many people singing along, as I always do. But as I was singing, Gerry looked right at me, saw me singing along, and smiled! That made me feel good. Was it because he saw me singing along? I like to think so.

And now about the albums. Of course, after the concerts, many people hung around hoping to get an autograph. Security came out and selected people who had old America albums and took them back to Dewey and Gerry's trailer, where they met the guys, got all their stuff signed, etc. I'm going to look for old America albums at flea markets from now on!

Right now I'm just looking forward to the next time I can see them in person again.

Feel free to send your comments or questions to Ed.