Monday, November 6, 2017

The Ventures

The song of the day is 1962's Telstar by instrumental rock band The Ventures. This song is a cover of the original Telstar by The Tornadoes.

The Encyclopædia Britannica states that The Ventures "served as a prototype for guitar-based rock groups." Wikipedia states “with over 110 million albums sold worldwide, the group remains the best selling instrumental rock group of all time.”

The band’s musical style inspired a rock genre: surf music. While the band never considered themselves a surf rock band, “they were a major building block of surf music, if not the first to play the style.” The Ventures have been called “the band that launched a thousand bands.” The band still performs and records music and is very popular in Japan, where they still tour.

The name of this song is derived from an experimental satellite communications system called Telstar. Two Telstar satellites were built by Bell Labs. The launch of Telstar 1 in 1962 was the first privately-funded space launch. Telstar 1 became the first satellite to relay transatlantic television.

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