PBS was doing some fund-raising the other night, with some collection of 60's music. They were playing snippets of a lot of different 60's acts, combined with live appearances of some of the groups. One of the clips was an old video (or film?) of the Moody Blues doing Nights in White Satin, all dressed up in these ridiculous Edwardian jackets with ruffled "pirate" shirts, etc. Almost as silly looking was their synchronized swaying back and forth in time to the music, so as to not appear to be totally inert. Not the best song for a video!
The two most entertaining parts of this infomercial were:
- a brief B&W clip of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Co., doing a great live version of "Piece of My Heart". I've never known much about the Big Brother band members, but the lead guitarist was pretty good, and was really getting into the backing vocals.
- they brought out out John Kay and a reconstituted Steppenwolf to do live performances of Magic Carpet Ride and Born To Be Wild. Kay did a pretty good job with the vocals, and also plays a very unique style of slide guitar - not really as a lead, but more of shimmering sound layer on top of the lead guitar and other instruments. It's hard to say if he's a good slide guitar player in the usual sense - it was just different and unusual.
