Come on now, you gotta have know The Ventures. Gotta.
"Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Ventures are quite a story and a very influential band on many fronts, especially on the development of the electric guitar and guitar pedals"
November 19th, Yep, I'm back! Okay, where did we leave off on The Live Vinyl Lovefest? This is a cool one for "Must Have Monday". Let's kick off the Thanksgiving weekend with The Ventures "On Stage". Now let's all cop to something here. If you grew up as a pre-teen in the 60s, and you were at all in to music, you measured every drummer by one metric and one metric only. "Yeah, but can he play Wipeout?" And you measured every school aged friend who played guitar by "Yeah, but can he play Walk Don't Run?" Am I right? Come on, admit it.
Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Ventures are quite a story and a very influential band on many fronts, especially on the development of the electric guitar and guitar pedals. It's always worth noting that they pre-dated the actual genre of "Surf Music" and they have had nearly a 60 year career with a couple of the original members in the band during their entire run. It's known by many, but actually realized by few that they are the largest selling instrumental group of all time.
This album is certainly a favorite of mine from that era and I recently found a beautiful reissue of it while on tour with Petty in 2017 while on a record shopping spree with Carly Scovill. The Heartbreakers covered a few of their tunes including "Walk Don't Run" and "Telstar" through the years that I toured with them which was a always a really fun show of guitar prowess and gave Mike a prime opportunity to show off his Mosrite collection.
The recording on this LP is very interesting. It's bright and clean as a whistle. It's offers a very polite sounding crow who sounds like they applaud at the cue of an applause light like in a television studio or at the urgency of a host. Even sounds like some canned audience possibly. But I love it none the less. Released in 1969 and engineered by "Lanky" Linstrot and Eddie Bracket.
This record always takes me back to a much more innocent time in my musical journey. Frankly I needed it this morning.