Just four days ago, the Rolling Stones cel­e­brat­ed the fifti­eth anniver­sary of their first con­cert, which hap­pened on July 12, 1962 at Lon­don’s Mar­quee club. Arti­cles have quot­ed lead singer Mick Jag­ger as describ­ing the crowd that evening as the kind of audi­ence they’d expect­ed as a band: “col­lege stu­dents hav­ing a night out,” an “art-school kind of crowd” who “weren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly demon­stra­tive, but they appre­ci­at­ed and enjoyed the set.” But the Stones’ demo­graph­ic would soon both shift and expand dra­mat­i­cal­ly: “A few months lat­er we were play­ing in front of 11 year olds who were scream­ing at us.” You can wit­ness this very phe­nom­e­non in the 1964 news­reel above; per­haps all of the kids lined up out­side the the­ater aren’t quite that young, but we’re def­i­nite­ly not look­ing at a col­le­giate crowd. Still, what this full house (“in fact,” the nar­ra­tor says, “it could have been filled ten times over”) lacks in matu­ri­ty, they make up for in raw enthu­si­asm.

This short film comes from British Pathé, then known as Pathé News, a pro­duc­er of news­reels from the very ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry right up to the sev­en­ties. They cap­tured the Stones per­form­ing in 1964, after they had already racked up a con­sid­er­able degree of fame, espe­cial­ly in their own coun­try. The show itself takes place in Kingston upon Hull, a medi­um-sided city in the north­east of Eng­land. Sum­mon­ing the sur­pris­ing sense of fun that mid-six­ties Eng­lish media some­times could when cov­er­ing pop­u­lar cul­ture, this news­reel, called Rolling Stones Gath­er Moss, opens with Jag­ger, Kei­th Richards, Bri­an Jones, Char­lie Watts, and Bill Wyman try­ing to hitch a ride along­side the grassy road to the venue. “Lit­tle do they know, they’re hav­ing their legs pulled,” the announc­er says of the unhesi­tat­ing motorists, “because these appar­ent hitch­hik­ers, so bland­ly ignored, are five of the most famous young men in show busi­ness, the Rolling Stones. Some of these motorists will be kick­ing them­selves when they learn they missed the chance of a life­time of get­ting to know them.” But the his­tor­i­cal moment remains cap­tured on film, as do count­less oth­ers, among the 90,000 clips in Pathé’s online archive.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

Jean-Luc Godard Films The Rolling Stones Record­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” (1968)

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Bud­dy Hol­ly

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Sat­ur­day marks the 100th anniver­sary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, the great­ly influ­en­tial folk singer whose music was insep­a­ra­ble from the hard cir­cum­stances of his life and his deep sense of social jus­tice.

“A folk song is what’s wrong and how to fix it,” Guthrie once said, “or it could be who’s hun­gry and where their mouth is or who’s out of work and where the job is or who’s broke and where the mon­ey is or who’s car­ry­ing a gun and where the peace is.”

To help mark the mile­stone we bring you rare footage, above, of Guthrie singing “The Ranger’s Com­mand” in 1945. The clip is from the 1988 BBC Are­na doc­u­men­tary, Woody Guthrie, which can be seen in its entire­ty below. The film is a vivid por­trait of the singer, with rare audio record­ings of Guthrie speak­ing, along with inter­views with Alan Lomax, Jack Elliot, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and oth­ers. As BBC Are­na edi­tor Antho­ny Wall writes of the film’s sub­ject:

“This land is your land”, sang Woody Guthrie, his mis­sion to reclaim the true Amer­i­ca from the lawyers and politi­cians and thugs and return it to the peo­ple. He said he was just try­ing ‘to tell peo­ple what they already know’. Orig­i­nal­ly from a com­fort­ably-off fam­i­ly in Okla­homa, he took to the road and rails to chron­i­cle in song the depres­sion and dust­bowl. A fab­u­lous exam­ple of Amer­i­can self-inven­tion, ‘Guthrie came with the dust and he went with the wind’

For more on the Woody Guthrie Cen­ten­ni­al, vis­it Woody100.com. The Web site fea­tures a biog­ra­phy with pho­tographs and oth­er mate­ri­als, a “song of the day,” and a 2012 cal­en­dar of events. This week­end there are sev­er­al big events in New York, includ­ing a birth­day par­ty Sat­ur­day on Coney Island, with appear­ances by Bil­ly Bragg, Steve Ear­le and Guthrie’s daugh­ter, Nora, along with a free screen­ing the film “Bound For Glo­ry” on the beach. On Sun­day, Arlo Guthrie and oth­ers in the Guthrie fam­i­ly will give a free con­cert in Cen­tral Park.

And for more Guthrie resources, go to:

• SoundPortraits.org to down­load audio of Alan Lomax’s 1940 inter­view with Guthrie, along with a tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion.
• CulturalEquity.org, host of the Alan Lomax Archives, for sev­er­al short but inter­est­ing takes of Guthrie singing polit­i­cal songs in 1948, includ­ing “If Dewey Gets Elect­ed” and “The Road is Rocky.”
• NPR.org for a 40-minute radio pro­gram, “Fresh Air Cel­e­brates Woody Guthrie at 100.” Ter­ry Gross inter­views Guthrie biog­ra­ph­er Ed Cray and Smith­son­ian Folk­ways archivist Jeff Place, who co-pro­duced the new box set Woody at 100.
• DemocracyNow.org for a one-hour tele­vi­sion spe­cial, “On Woody Guthrie’s Cen­ten­ni­al, Cel­e­brat­ing the Life, Pol­i­tics & Music of the ‘Dust Bowl Trou­ba­dour.’ ” Hosts Amy Good­man and Juan Gon­za­lez inter­view Woody’s daugh­ter Nora Guthrie, author of the new book, My Name is New York: Ram­blin’ Around Woody Guthrie’s Town, and his grand­daugh­ter Anna Canoni, along with musi­cian Steve Ear­le. The show also fea­tures rare audio record­ings of Guthrie speak­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pete Seeger: To Hear Your Ban­jo Play

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings