Today we celebrate The Beatles landmark performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. There’s been nothing before or since that had the kind of impact like The Beatles appearance on TV that night. It was the A Bomb going off in Music that night and it changed the World for generations to come.
It’s always been Ground Zero for me. I’d been listening to their Meet The Beatles record for a month previous to their arrival. I listened to that record so many times that it created my love for listening to new music and going to actual Record Stores to find and sift through all the releases to bring new music home to devour. I even remember looking at their names on the back cover of the LP, trying to figure out how they were so great. How was it that these guys, who nobody had ever heard of a month ago, had this kind of greatness in them?
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Did their names portend greatness? The names seemed average, except maybe Ringo, but the music was anything but average. I was transported by it. And it only got better the more I listened! And it got better with every new album! I would call my local record store when they expected delivery of the new Beatles album and go down to buy it the minute I found out it was in.
So 50 years later I’m creating new music and releasing it. I wonder if there’s a connection. 🙂 I’ve always felt that The Beatles were creating and changing so much with each new release that they created whole musical areas that could still be mined for new material today.
One of the reasons that I like the Americana genre is because it allows for all the kinds of music that The Beatles introduced me to—Rock’n’Roll, Folk & Country. Americana allows for even more styles than that, which kind of reminds me of how the 60s felt and how FM Radio sounded. All that’s changed now, with every musical genre having its own Radio Format.
So I stick to my own style and follow the format I belong to, but I still look to find and hear new music within it. My 1st Americana release was Standing Still and one of the great things that happened in promoting it to Radio was discovering the Band of Heathens. Sha-La Music was sponsoring the Alt/Country genre on an internet station. I would go on to listen to hear how my song sounded with the other songs, and I would hear these songs about the LA County Jail and Jackson Station. After a few times of hearing a song that caught my attention, I would wonder, who is that? So I checked the playlist every time and kept finding the song’s artist name was Band of Heathens. Who?
Because of discovering and listening to The Beatles growing up, I can hear when something is fully there or not. And when it’s there, I know I’m listening to the “real deal”. Listening to The Heathens brought me back to the 1st time I heard The Band or Little Feat. This was very exciting for me to discover something new that was good and “old school” in this day and age! I really liked Robert Plant’s Band of Joy too, mainly because of discovering the venerable Buddy Miller. 🙂
With the recent release of DownTown Mystic, I got to discover a whole slew of new artists to my ears. With the recent success of Mumford & Sons, it was so great to hear Country, Folk & Bluegrass being played in a new exciting way. Being on the Americana Charts with this new release has led to my discovery of Sarah Jarosz and her brand of Folk & Acoustic. Brings me back to my college days when I was touring Coffee Houses with a 3 vocal/3 acoustic guitar band.
It does my soul good to hear a new generation of Artists who take their writing and craft seriously. There was a great Austin City Limits show recently with Sarah and The Milk Carton Kids, who are also a new discovery that I enjoy. Of course, being more of a rocker, I’m interested in listening to things that reflect my taste in sound and style. In that regards, I just discovered a new band called The Wild Feathers.
They were near DownTown Mystic on the AMA Radio Chart, so I checked them out, which turned out to be very interesting. Interesting to hear, because it sounded like The Everly Bros. rocking out in 2014! But it was their PR/Bio that caught my eye, because if I didn’t know better, I would have thought they were talking about and describing DownTown Mystic! 🙂
What caught my eye was the line “cosmic melodies with vintage roots and modern tones”. Outside of that, the comparison ends. I think they should embrace the Americana genre because it’s perfect for them. And just like hearing Band of Heathens, The Wild Feathers put a new spin on “old school”, which is where I work. Good to hear and have some up-tempo rocking music to keep me company! 🙂
Hard to believe that The Beatles were here 50 years ago to start a revolution and become an inspiration for generations to come. No time like the present to pay it forward. 🙂