The idea for WMNF’s next tribute show started with a friendly argument. “Last year, [station program director] Randy Wynne did a special on the Sixties Show making the case that 1967 was the greatest year ever in rock ’n’ roll,” says WMNF music director Lee “Flee” Courtney. “Then a week later the folks from the Sixties Show made the case that 1968 was the best year.”
The disagreement gave rise to the next installment in WMNF’s storied continuum of tribute shows – this one not honoring an artist as is most often the case, but a year.
Ten Bay area acts will perform 20-minute sets on New Year’s Eve at Skipper’s Smokehouse in a concert dubbed Rewind: The WMNF Tribute to the Music and Songs of 1968. The music ranges from the power-pop-meets-Americana of Ted Lukas and the Misled (see below) to the hard-charging rockabilly of Midnight Bowler’s League, from the trash-rock of Rancid Polecats (who will play a bubblegum show, including “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy”) to the jam-funk of Christie Lenee.
The combined set list cuts a broad swath, hitting most of the touchstone acts: The Beatles (“Revolution,” “Yer Blues”), the Rolling Stones (“Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Sympathy for the Devil”), Sly & the Family Stone (“Dance to the Music, “I Want to Take You Higher”), The Band (“Chest Fever,” “The Weight”), Jimi Hendrix (Crosstown Traffic,” “Voodoo Child”) and others, as well as one-offs and surprises like Tom Jones’ “Delilah,” Desmond Dekker’s “The Israelites,” The American Breed’s “Bend Me, Shape Me” and Small Faces’ “Song of a Baker.”
This article appears in Dec 24-30, 2008.