I promised a few dissertation excerpts, and this seemed like a particularly appropriate one today. Here's a passage from my chapter on historical consciousness, after I talked about attending a concert in 2008 which re-created The Beatles' White Album to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its release in 1968.
"In fact, the period of my fieldwork found me in the midst of quite a few 40th anniversaries for some of the iconic events of the 1960s and 1970s. In 2009, the 40th anniversary of the release of the album Abbey Road was marked by a similar concert at the festival. Several Beatles tribute bands around the world also took the opportunity to recreate the Beatles’ final concert on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, in January of 2009. And the 40th anniversary of the release of the rock opera Tommy by The Who was also marked by several tribute bands playing the album in its entirety. This historical consciousness that these anniversary concerts seem to be both partaking in and helping to construct is unlikely to go away once the current spate of anniversaries passes, however. It seems all but certain that the early years of the 2010s will feature many '45th anniversary' performances of events from the late 1960s before ramping up for '50th anniversary' celebrations at the end of the decade."
The festival in question here is Abbey Road on the River, a Beatles tribute band festival held every year over Memorial Day weekend in Louisville, KY--now with a sister festival held over Labor Day weekend in the Washington, D.C. area. AROTR has a strong presence on Facebook. Here was an announcement they posted on their status today about this year's festival:
Sometimes it's nice to know that I'm not making this stuff up. Anyway, Abbey Road Live! is a phenomenal band, and they're also very nice guys--I interviewed them for my fieldwork. Sounds like it should be a great show.
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