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JA Musicland Home The Ravens Home |
Welcome to The Ravens Home Page
by John Anthony Back in the fifties and sixties live music was the rage. There weren't any mp3 players, discos, or DJs spinning discs. It was live, raw music. There was an excitement surrounding the music and the live bands performing it that is hard to describe. You had to be there. The British Invasion Took America by Storm in 1964 The Ravens were a Rock and Roll band based in Danbury, Connecticut from 1964 to 1969. We were too young to catch the first wave of Rock and Roll that Bill Hailey, Elvis Presly and Chuck Berry pioneered and rode in the mid 1950's. We were fortunate to be a band when the second wave, better known as the British Invasion, came along 10 years later. It was driven by British bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Animals, The Yardbirds, and groups from America as well like The Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Doors, Chicago and many others. It Was a Simpler World Back Then Music and the world then, seemed to be simpler and more uniform, at least from our perspective. Mass communication consisted of AM radio and 3-4 major TV stations--most of them broadcast in black and white. There were about 13 channels at the time, but most of them weren't assigned to a broadcasting station. With the limited communication channels, what came out of them wasn't all that varied. We all watched the same TV shows--Batman, Leave It to Beaver, Gilligan's Island, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Monkees, Laugh In, The Flintstones, etc.--and we all listened to the same AM music--the Top 40. Finding music that the band and our audiences really liked was easy since we all listened to the same songs on the radio. They liked what we liked. So we were ready to get on board that big, second wave and we rode it to the end of the 60's! Today there are hundreds of broadcast channels in the air, and on satellite and cable. Along with the Internet, the great democratic information dispenser, they provide a cornucopia of infomation for every type, style and taste. Finding consensus in a band or an audience isn't as easy as it once was. If you'd like to ride back with The Ravens in time to the 60's, please click on the links above and hop on board. 
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