Photo by Jim Summaria – Contact us/Photo submission, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5574716

This year we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Who’s pioneering rock opera, Tommy.

The Who were a re-working of an earlier band, the Detours. With their classic lineup in place and a new name, The Who — Pete Townsend, John Entwistle, Keith Moon and Roger Daltrey — became an instant hit. The band’s first single, “I Can’t Explain,” hit the top 10, and “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” managed similar success while also introducing radio audiences to new sounds like guitar pick scratching and toggle switching courtesy of Townsend’s inventive approach to rhythm guitar. By the time the band released “My Generation” in the fall of 1965 they scored their biggest hit ever and cemented their place among the best bands in rock’s greatest era.

For me, Live at Leeds is the definitive The Who platter. That said, Tommy is a truly unique project and one of the most ambitious albums ever made. It boasts a wide-ranging song cycle by one of rock’s most ambitious tunesmiths including classics like the title song and “Pinball Wizard.” Playing the character Tommy also gave Roger Daltrey the inspiration he needed to push past his stage fright and become one of the most dynamic front men of the rock era.

Check out this long interview of Pete Townsend talking about Tommy…

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I’m very excited to take my wife to go see a preview for The Disaster Artist next week — we both love The Room and she read the book the film is based on. I’m a Franco fan and he looks like he looks great in the trailers. I also like the use of Traffic’s “Dear Mister Fantasy” in the film. The almost-title song from the band’s 1967 debut album, Mister Fantasy and Traffic both celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2017.

Here’s Traffic Live in Santa Monica in 1972…

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Back in May I wrote a bunch of posts about the 50th anniversary of the Velvet Underground’s debut album. Here’s another Velvety post, celebrating the great John Cale. Here’s the word from a recent Rolling Stone interview celebrating the anniversary…

The way John Cale tells it, he had a revelation one day in the mid-Sixties. He’d dedicated the majority of his first two decades to classical and avant-garde music, to such an extent that, he says dryly, “I may have missed out on my puberty.

“I woke up one day and said, ‘Wait a minute, there are people running around singing Beatles songs,’” he recalls. “The Beatles Invasion was going on. All the enjoyment that I’d gotten as a kid out of rock & roll was receding, and I thought, ‘Let’s put something together that blends the two.’ I wanted to cross-pollinate rock with the avant-garde, and then I met Lou Reed, and that was the solution.”

The union of Cale’s musical wanderlust, spurred on by collaborating with minimalist composer La Monte Young, and Reed’s rock-steady songwriting, which he had been exercising as an in-house songwriter at Pickwick Records, became the soul of the Velvet Underground. This weekend will mark the 50th anniversary of their most daring experiment – their debut, The Velvet Underground and Nico – the Andy Warhol–produced LP that found Cale, Reed, guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker fusing gritty garage rock with overdriven viola noise and, on some songs, the lilting, expressionistic vocals of German chanteuse Nico.

The record, whose songs vividly described drug abuse and sexual deviance at a time when the Beatles were dominating the charts with a gentler, more whimsical countercultural vision, was far from a commercial hit, but its influence over the past half century has been undeniable. Artists ranging from David Bowie to Duran Duran have covered its songs, and Brian Eno is fabled to have once said, “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.”

Read the whole article at the link above and watch this documentary to find out more about Cale’s extraordinary career in the Velvets and beyond…

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Earlier today I saw a tweet about the 50th anniversary of The Doors first gig at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles. Of course I immediately thought “Oh, perfect — I can blog about that.” Turns out it’s the 51st anniversary of The Doors debut at the club, and while it’s not an auspicious remembrance, I’m always up for The Doors.

Here’s a 1997 documentary exploring The Doors, their music, and the story behind Oliver Stone’s eponymous film about the band. Here’s The Road of Excess…

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This weekend we opened the Pikes Project 1 exhibition at Red Arrow gallery in Nashville, capping-off about 5 months of work and organizing with a great opening reception. I recently told a reporter I hoped the show of photography, paintings and video art focusing on Nashville’s historic roadways and the communities they connect would make people cry. I didn’t see any tears on Saturday night, but there were lots of rave reactions to the show’s iconic images and plenty of folks talking about what these sometimes overlooked spaces mean to them and their relationship with Nashville.

All of this to say that I’m a little bit exhausted and brain dead as I’m transitioning back into my usual weekly routine and normal blogging schedule. I didn’t plan to add any new VU posts, but then I came upon this great concert video of the band’s 1993 reunion tour. Here’s the set list:

Venus in Furs
White Light/White Heat
Beginning to See the Light
Some Kinda Love
Femme Fatale
Hey Mr. Rain
I’m Sticking With You
I Heard Her Call My Name
I’ll Be Your Mirror
Rock N’Roll
(Sweet Jane)
I’m Waiting for the Man
Heroin
Pale Blue Eyes
Coyote

Once again, celebrating the 50th anniversary of their debut album The Velvet Underground and Nico, here’s The Velvet Underground’s Live MCMXIII…

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Driving home from a carnival today I caught the first bit of a public radio show shouting out the 50th anniversary of The Velvet Underground’s debut album. These cats were arguing that the record is the most influential album in the history of rock. For me that’s a stretch, but there’s no doubt that the record launched thousands of music projects — the regular anecdote is that nobody bought the record but everyone who heard it started a band, and the late 1980′s alternative music scene was sort of like one big tribute to The Velvet Underground & Nico.

Right now I’m staring down an exhibition installation and a beach somewhere in Florida. I’m not sure how much I’ll be posting here in the next ten days or so, but I’m feeling a lot of Velvet/Lou/Cale/Nico love combing on so if you’re a fan of the band be expecting several posts starting now.

Here’s a documentary about the early Velvets from MOMA film library…

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The Black Panther Party officially celebrated their 50th anniversary last October. With that remembrance in mind this Black History Month wouldn’t be complete without a look back at one of the most important civil rights organizations to ever take the streets. Here’s the word about an amazing PBS Independent Lens documentary about the power and the people…

Directed by Stanley Nelson, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution tells the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party, one of the 20th century’s most alluring and controversial organizations that captivated the world’s attention for 50 years.

If you’re new to the Panthers’ story catch up with John Blake, here. And now the documentary…

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The blog’s been on a kick this year, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Pink Floyd. This weekend my girlfriend picked up a copy of The Wall on DVD and we watched the Roger Waters commentary last night — totally hilarious! When I saw this video in my YouTube suggestions I immediately checked it out…

Between Syd and the Dark Side explores the Floyd during the late 1960′s and the 1970′s with an emphasis on the band’s fifth studio album, Meddle.

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Pink Floyd celebrated half a century over the weekend when Nick Mason and Roger Waters returned to the schoolyard where the band first came buzzing to life. Here’s Consequence of Sound with the details…

50 years ago, while students at London’s Regent Street Polytechnic, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright formed Pink Floyd. On Thursday, Waters and Mason returned to their former school to celebrate the band’s semicentennial. The pair unveiled a commemorative plaque, and also reminisced about their early years.

“Put it like this: if we’d gone up for Britain’s Got Talent, I don’t think we would have made it past the audition stage,” Mason said. “We weren’t terribly good.” Added Waters, “We were effing awful.”

Pink Floyd is the second legendary music act to receive a Regent Street Heritage Plaque. The first was hung on London’s Heddon Street in 2012, the location used in the artwork for David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

A great 2011 documentary tells the band’s epic story. Here’s Pink Floyd: Behind the Wall…

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This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Kinks debut album and we’re not the only ones. The band themselves have announced a major reissue project to celebrate their five decade birthday, and given the group’s famous inability to get along this news is like getting a gift you never even hoped for.

Here’s Uncut with the details…

To mark their 50th anniversary, The Kinks have announced details of an extensive re-release programme covering their classic 1964-1970 catalogue.

The first album in the series will be 1970’s Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One, which will be reissued on August 18.

This 2-CD reissue expanded edition comes with Mono and Stereo mixes as well as unreleased material and alternative versions, all re-mastered from original tapes by Kinks archivist Andrew Sandoval. The booklet contains rare and unreleased images from the era plus new extensive liner notes. Disc 2 features the 1971 soundtrack album Percy which is also packed with fantastic bonus content.

Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One will be followed by more titles later in the year. The reissue campaign is being masterminded by BMG, who acquired The Kinks catalogue when it bought Sanctuary Records in 2013. BMG has partnered with Sony Music for the release programme.

Here’s a Biography Channel take on the story of the band and their timeless, relentless music…

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