The Who are an English rock band that formed in 1964. They are considered one of the most influential rock bands of the 20th century, selling over 100 million records worldwide and establishing their reputation equally on live shows and studio work. The group's fourth album, 1969's rock opera Tommy, included the single "Pinball Wizard" and was a critical and commercial success. Live appearances at Woodstock and the Isle of Wight Festival, along with the live album Live at Leeds, cemented their reputation as a respected rock act. Songs from a planned follow-up to Tommy made up 1971's Who's Next, which included the hit "Won't Get Fooled Again". The group released the album Quadrophenia in 1973 as a celebration of their mod roots, and oversaw the film adaptation of Tommy in 1975. Their songs still receive regular exposure, and they continue to play live regularly. (More from Wikipedia)
Link Wray's influence is front and center on a good 50% of the records that I play, because he is credited with introducing the "power chord" on electric guitar to rock and roll, a technique whose effect is often enhanced by distortion.
Writing for Allmusic, Cub Koda calls the power chord "the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarists". I will spare you the technical details – not least because I don't really understand them myself – but Ray Davies of the Kinks (in their classic "You Really Got Me") and Pete Townshend of the Who (in "My Generation") helped popularize the power chord in the early years of the British Invasion. When Townshend is performing his famous windmill guitar technique, he is typically playing power chords.
(February 2013)
The next album by Les Sinners (though with the name shortened to just Sinners) for Jupiter, Vox Populi (Latin for "Voice of the People") came out in 1968 and is among the crush of "concept albums" that followed in the wake of the Beatles' 1967 masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album has acquired legendary status among fans of Quebec's musical scene. The album is entirely in French and is probably the first and certainly one of the best French Canadian concept albums ever released. A whole barrel of musical influences are present: the Beatles, the Monkees, the Byrds, the Who, Indian music, etc. The cover appears to show Jesus speaking in a snowy cemetery.
(April 2013)
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The Rolling Stones were from London, as were the Kinks, the Who and the Yardbirds. The Animals came from Newcastle, an industrial backwater like Liverpool, though on the opposite coast. The Hollies were formed in Manchester, though the bandmembers came from East Lancashire. The Moody Blues were from the Birmingham area; Birmingham, Alabama (one of the first major industrialized cities in the American South) is named for the British city.
(July 2013)
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First on the agenda for Mick Farren as the Sixties came to a close was to fulfill his recording contract after he was thrown out of his own band. In March 1970, Farren released Mona – The Carnivorous Circus; essentially, this was Mick Farren's first solo album, although the album is often credited to the Deviants. The album is bookended by the great Bo Diddley song "Mona", though the largest part of the album was the meandering two-part "Carnivorous Circus". There is also a rendition of the great Eddie Cochran song that was later made famous by the Who, "Summertime Blues"; their first release of "Summertime Blues" was on their 1970 Live at Leeds album.
In 1969, Mick Farren "liberated" the earliest large-scale rock concert in the U.K., the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival by encouraging the fences to be torn down. This concert – which took place the month after Woodstock (and with many of the same acts) – featured the Who, the Band, Free, Joe Cocker, and the Moody Blues. But the real excitement was caused by the inclusion on the bill of Bob Dylan, who had been little seen since his near-fatal motorcycle accident in July 1966. When Dylan took the stage, audience members included three of the Beatles, three of the Beatle wives, three of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Jane Fonda, Roger Vadim, Syd Barrett, and Elton John.
One of the main reasons for the location of the original Woodstock was to lure Bob Dylan out of hiding – the idea was to throw a huge party practically on his doorstep that surely he couldn't resist attending. Woodstock is the name of the town where Dylan lived (and also members of the Band); the festival itself was in Bethel. But resist he did; Bob Dylan instead signed up to appear at the Isle of Wight Festival and set sail for England on August 15, 1969, the day that Woodstock opened.
By the time the Faces album Ooh La La came out in 1973, Rod Stewart's superstar status was wearing on the other bandmembers; Ronnie Lane left the band right after that. Ron Wood was lured to the Rolling Stones, drummer Kenney Jones eventually joined the Who, and Ian McLagan became a sought-after session keyboard player.
(April 2014)
After appearing only at the Concert for Bangladesh that George Harrison organized in 1972, Pete Townshend of the Who brought together an allstar line-up for a 1973 concert intended to bring Eric Clapton out of hiding and to help him kick his habit. Known as the Rainbow Concert, musicians on hand include Rick Grech and Stevie Winwood from Blind Faith, Jim Capaldi (who had co-founded Traffic with Winwood), Anthony "Reebop" Kwaku Baah (a percussionist from Ghana who played with Traffic and also the German band Can), Ron Wood (then in Faces), and drummer Jimmy Karstein (who was on hand for the final album by Buffalo Springfield).
(May 2014)
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Manfred Mann always had a chameleon quality and, unlike the top-flight British Invasion bands like the Beatles, the Who and the Rolling Stones, had frequent changes in their line-up. As I noted last month, Jack Bruce, later of Cream was a member in the mid-1960's.
(June 2014)
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Masquerading as the Wonder Who? – at the same time that the Who and the Guess Who were current – the Four Seasons released a version of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" with Frankie Valli singing an exaggerated falsetto. And there is the excellent cover by the Jimi Hendrix Experience of "All Along the Watchtower", which seems to be on everyone's short list of the greatest Bob Dylan covers of all time.
(March 2015)
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The October 1964 single by the Beatles, "I Feel Fine" (included on their album Beatles '65) is credited as the first song to use feedback in a rock recording. The band was about to leave the recording studio when John Lennon left his guitar resting against his amplifier, only to be greeted by a whine of sound. A feedback note was then added to the very beginning of the song. In one of his last interviews, John Lennon spoke proudly of this musical innovation: "I defy anybody to find a record . . . unless it is some old blues record from 1922 . . . that uses feedback that way. So I claim it for the Beatles. Before [Jimi] Hendrix, before the Who, before anybody. The first feedback on record."
(July 2015)
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