Friday night, April 10, at the The Moore you have an excellent opportunity to hop into the wayback machine and check out two of the most important and enjoyable bands of the early 1960s: The Ventures and the Wailers

One of the most popular and prolific bands of the 1960s, The Ventures first came to wide reknown in 1960 when their hit single “Walk, Don’t Run” made it all the way up the charts to #2. Over fifty years after their founding in 1958, The Ventures are still going strong. Best known as pioneers of surf music, The Ventures aren’t just a surf band (not that there’s anything wrong with being just a surf band!) but a genuinly creative instrumental rock band of dedicated musicians who last year were deservedly inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame.

If you don’t know The Wailers, you don’t know your NW music history. Like The Ventures, The Wailers were formed in 1958. Sometimes called “the first garage rock band”, the Wailers became the pride of Tacoma, where they were founded, and an impossible to quantify influence on all the rock bands from the Northwest who would follow them, from the Kingsmen to the Sonics, Paul Revere & the Raiders and the thousands of bands that followed them.. Their first hit single, “Tall Cool One”, hit the national charts, peaking at #36, in 1959 while the band members were still in high school. After playing both the Alan Freed Show and American Bandstand, the Wailers came back to the Northwest where they remained a huge focal point of the local music scene for years to come.

Unlike so many acts that go on the “Hey, didn’t you used to be…?” nostalgia circuit, both the Ventures and the Wailers remain exciting bands whose performances are equally fun for the folks who were around to see them from the get go and their grandkids and great-grandkids of today. Seattle Metblogs is giving you a chance to check this out for yourself: E-mail your name and contact information no later than noon Wednesday, April 8, to win a pair of tickets to the show to: seattle.metblogs@gmail.com