Visuals for 1967

Doors  “Light My Fire” Ed Sullivan’s TV show 9/17/67   

Rolling Stones, “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” on TOP OF THE POPS  1967

TV Documentary about the Grateful Dead and the growing hippie scene in San Francisco 1967

The Human Be-In at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in 1967: 

The Monterey Pop Festival  1967: part I of 9  

Jimi Hendrix “Rock Me, Baby” at the Monterey Pop Fesival in 1967 introduced by Pete Townsend

Janis Joplin “Ball and Chain” at the Monterey Pop Fesival in 1967
Pink Floyd at the UFO 1967: and here 

Video Game as Ad for Rock Album ( or vice versa?)

This is not an ad. At least not for anything I wish to sell. But it is an example of the relationship between rock music and video games.(Check it out at your own risk.)

"Level 2," the Prosthetic debut from Maine progressive metallers LAST CHANCE TO REASON, is out today! To commemorate the release, the band has posted a free downloadable demo version of a companion video game, also titled "Level 2." Go to the band's official blog site

  to get instructions and download the first stage! Developed by the band itself, the game was designed by drummer Evan Sammons and noted indie video game developer Tom Vine, who also programmed the game, and features artwork from pixel artist Francis Coulombe. "Level 2"  -------

Concept Albums

We spoke about the development of concept albums, in the mid-1960s, when the audience began to consume music in album-sized chunks, rather than singles (45s). There have been several well known concept albums, like those by the Kinks (try Muswell Hillbillies) Pink Floyd (try Animals) and Rush (2112) in the 1970s, a few metal-related ones like Queensrÿche's Operation Mindcrime in the 1980s and 1990s.  But in the current century there are many more, and more to come - not exclusively for reasons of creativity. In an era of downloading singles rather than full albums, a concept album will induce fans to go for more than the single.

cover songs

During the 1950s there were a variety of cover songs. One important type was those released nearly at the same time as the original, and there are two varieties of these nearly simultaneous covers:

1-those released by indie labels, generally by negro (now black or African American) performers which were covered by white performers on major labels, generally modifying the original with more, often a lot more, pop in the musical mix, and sometimes “cleaning up” the lyrics too.

An example was The Spaniels’ “Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight” — covered by the McGuire Sisters, who had a hit with the song. Another was Fats Domino's “Ain't That a Shame,” — covered by Pat Boone (who did many such covers, and had many hits doing just that).

2- Another type of simultaneous covers was where a song released by indie labels is only heard by, and bought by, a regional audience, and other indie label artists released the same song in another region. Most of these covers, in first half of the 1950s, were by black performers and tended to be what later became known as doowop.

In both of these types of covers, the original artists did not benefit when their record was covered. Theoretically, if one or more of the original performers also wrote the song, they would benefit financially. But theory and practice are not identical. Indie label owners somehow became the owner of the song, and it is they, not the actual songwriter, who would profit from a hit cover on a major label.