ALL DAY AND ALL OF THE NIGHT

These heavy, fuzztone riffs launched a thousand garage bands. The Kinks were a highly influential British Invasion band, and the true ancestors of punk -- and they did it with style. The Beatles may have been more creative, the Stones more bluesy, but the Kinks were a crack little outfit that blasted riffs like nobody else. They changed over the years, and created little baroque masterpieces of English life, but I prefer the early angry years. Ray Davies was something of a genius. I always expected him to grow up to be Vincent Price, but maybe it was just the Edwardian outfit. At any rate, dig this clip from Shindig, in 1965!

For Kinks 101, from the Onion, click here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KEITH

I can't believe we missed Keith Richards' birthday yesterday! The old geezer rhythm guitar player for the Stones is 64, which is about 164 of anyone else's years. Insert your own joke here about Keith's drug-fueled longevity. To celebrate, let's show an "unreleased" clip of Keith and the Rolling Stones performing on the 1972 tour, just after the release of Exile on Main Street, arguably one of the greatest rock records of all time. Keith plays with the best Stones' line-up ever. A very young and brilliant Mick Taylor plays lead guitar over a rock solid rhythm section of Bill Wyman on bass, and Charlie Watts on drums. The horns are played by Bobby Keys and Jim Horn. Oh, and the singer is Mick Jagger. 1972 tour, yeah. This is the Stones at their best.