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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Today marks the anniversary of the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, first held on this day in 1970 on Michael Eavis’s family farm in Pilton, Somerset.

Along with the utopian idealism of the time came an invention of the “free” music festival, a social movement based on collaboration and responsibility for one’s own expectations. Admission to these festivals was free with the idea that concert-goers would be concert-participants, helping out in some way by working, bringing equipment and/or amenities, and contributing to any number of big chores made smaller by a collective.

Eavis, a former naval officer and dairy farmer, was inspired by hippie sightings around the town (an area that has historically attracted bohemians with its “mystical vibes” since the medieval construction of a monk’s hermitage at Glastonbury Tor), his own personal Methodist ideologies, and a particularly impressive Led Zeppelin outdoor performance.

Eavis got together with friends to invest in the stage and managed to bill The Kinks as headliner, who ended up being replaced at the last minute by Tyrannosaurus Rex—both Insomnia favorites. Tickets were a nominal £1, and it was such a success that they tried a free festival the next year. Official attendance jumped from 1,500 to 12,000—an apparently less manageable volume. Prices and sales have been climbing ever since. While it’s no longer free or cheap, it’s still organized by the Eavis family who divide the profits for local and worldwide charities, and it’s still held at their aptly named Worthy Farm.

Here’s Eavis himself talking about the beginnings of the fest and his mindset at the time, along with some great (possibly NSFW at times) footage:

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