Tag Archives: 1969
The Who’s TOMMY at 50
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 [...]
Beefheart Speaks
Nearly every Sunday evening I like to get my calendar and my to do list for the week together. These chores usually also include getting a blog post together for Monday morning. While I was getting my act together and making sure my ducks were in a row for another productive week I checked-in on [...]
Ecco Arlo
Today we celebrate the birthday of Arlo Guthrie who was born on June 10, 1947. Here’s Arlo at Woodstock singing Bob Dylan’s “Walkin’ Down the Line.” Stay Awake! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Music posts.
Austin Osman Song
Chaos magic is the emergent discipline of the occult revival of the 21st century, and chaos magic pioneer Austin Osman Spare is its spotlighted personality. Spare died in mostly-anonymous squalor in 1956, but in this new era his cult of personality is second only to Crowley, and his magical concepts and haunted art continue to [...]
Fred’s Dead
In Chicago, on December 4, 1969 police murdered Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Here’s The Murder of Fred Hampton… Stay Awake! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Counter Culture posts.
Sold On Sellers
Comic genius and all-around super strange dude, Peter Sellers was born 90 years ago on September 8, 1925, and he died 35 years ago on July 24, 1980. Now that we’re somewhere right between these auspicious dates, it seemed like a good time to remember the great jester with this bizarre film about his bizarre [...]
Vincent Price on Witchcraft
“Welcome to the world of witchcraft, to the world of magic. Magic — the very world is magic.” So begins this great collection of stories and lectures on witchcraft and the occult by suave cinema spook Vincent Price. The actor’s LP recording Witchcraft-Magic: An Adventure in Demonology was released in 1969 and its track list [...]
Gene Vincent Lives
Today we celebrate the birthday of one of rock ‘n’roll’s original madmen: Gene Vincent embodied sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll about a decade before the emergence of an American generation that would take hold of those values and recreate world culture in a new era of freedom and expression. By 1969 Vincent was a [...]
Blind Faith: Revelation
This year marks the the 45th anniversary of the debut of one the first supergroups: Blind Faith. The band boasted Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream, little Stevie Winwood from Traffic and Ric Grech, bass player for the progressive rock outfit Family and an jam session pal to both Clapton and Winwood. Blind Faith’s [...]
Medium Cool at 45
“Beyond the age of innocence…into the age of awareness,” read the caption at the top of Medium Cool‘s stylized poster when the film was released 45 years ago in 1969. The line is telling in that it speaks to the real-life events at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago that are captured in the film. [...]
