Act at The End

In aftermath of their successful American debut at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 18, 1967, San Francisco promoter Bill Graham offered the Experience an extended, five show booking at the Fillmore Auditorium. The gigs were critical to the group, as they had come to Monterey with nothing booked in the U.S. apart from their festival appearance. The Experience initially came on the bill as a support act, along with Gabor Szabo, for the Jefferson Airplane. That arrangement unraveled when the Jefferson Airplane backed out of the gig after one show and let the Experience take over. During the week-long stint in June when the Experience were performing at the Fillmore in San Francisco, co-manager Michael Jeffery had secured a position for the Experience to serve as an opening act for the Monkees on their summer U.S. tour.

Toronto has long played a sizable role in the myth-making of The Rolling Stones. It’s been a home away from home for the group for decades, a place where they’ve set up shop to prep before hitting the road since at least as far back as 1989’s Steel Wheels tour. And during those months-long rehearsal stays, they’ve regularly held secret shows around town at small venues, such as the Horseshoe Tavern, RPM, and The Phoenix Concert Theatre. But the Stones’ Toronto club stint that started it all was a pair of shows at Spadina Avenue’s El Mocambo Tavern that took place March 4-5, 1977.

Increasingly, and especially in a day and age where music is so widely and readily available thanks to advanced technologies, when a company or act wants to make a good box set, it had better deliver. To its credit, Beggars Banquet did just that with Rare Cult, an astoundingly comprehensive and entertaining collection that packs in 90 tracks over the course of six discs…

Stone the Crows was a tough-luck, working class, progressive soul band that came out of the pubs of Scotland in the early '70s. They had everything going for them at the start: not one, but two gritty singers, a talented guitarist, a rhythm section that had played with John Mayall, and the name recognition of having Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant as their producer. Despite favorable reviews by the critics, however, they never managed to sell their hybridized soul music to a large audience. In addition, they lost two of their key members early on, one of whom was tragically electrocuted, and the group broke up after four albums. Their biggest contribution to rock was the immense vocal talent of one Maggie Bell. Winner of several Top Girl Singer awards in Britain, Bell had a raunchy, gutbucket voice that, although it fell short of the naked emotion and range of Janis Joplin's, came probably closer to her style than any other female singer.

After two decades, the Smithereens were no longer in step with the times and they no longer cared – they do what they do because they love it, not because it's fashionable. They were at that point with 1994's A Date With the Smithereens, but that record was hurt by a weird undercurrent of bitterness and Pat DiNizio's songwriting slump…

The early days of the Kinks saw a band run ragged by the onset of newfound superstardom. The Kinks hit the ground running at an exhausting pace in 1964, with a relentless schedule of touring, recording, and various on-air interviews and performances that would keep them in the charts and jet-lagged until an eventual slowing down into the '70s and '80s…