Paul Simon
This Day in Music History — December 7
1956 : Rock! Rock! Rock!, one of the earliest Rock and Roll movies, opens in theaters. The film features the popular disc jockey Alan Freed along with Chuck Berry, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers and Lavern Baker.
1956 : Britain’s Tommy Steele makes his concert debut at Finsbury Park, Astoria, London. Reviews proclaim him “Britain’s answer to Elvis.”
1964 : Brian Wilson suffers a nervous breakdown while on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston. He would stop touring with The Beach Boys soon after.
1987 : Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, and Judy Collins (among others) appear onstage at Carnegie Hall to pay tribute to Harry Chapin, who would have been celebrating his 45th birthday.
2011 : 30 Seconds to Mars breaks the record for most shows performed during a single album cycle when they play their 300th concert in support of their album This Is War at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City.
This Day in Music History — November 29
1959 : The GRAMMY Awards show is televised nationally for the first time.
1966 : Elvis hears Tom Jones’ version of Green Green Grass Of Home on the radio just outside Little Rock, and calls the radio station to hear it several times. Elvis would eventually cover the song.
1979 : Paul Simon hits his record label, CBS, with two lawsuits in an attempt to break his contract.
2001 : George Harrison succumbs to lung cancer at age 58. His final hours are spent with his wife, son, and musician Ravi Shankar at his side.
2003 : In front of a crowd of 40,000+ at Greenpoint Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa, The Corrs make their first concert appearance as part of Nelson Mandela’s 46664 campaign to raise AIDS awareness in Africa. Alongside artist like Bono, Beyonce and Peter Gabriel they help raise money for the Nelson Mandela Foundation for AIDS.
This Day in Music History — November 6
1975 : The Sex Pistols play their first ever gig, opening for the band Bazooka Joe at St. Martin’s School of Art in London. Bazooka Joe’s lead singer is Stuart Goddard, who is so inspired by the set that he drops out of art school and takes the name Adam Ant.
1979 : Paul Simon kicks off his latest British tour at London’s Hammersmith Odeon by offering to buy everyone in the audience a drink. The tab comes to about $2,000.
1998 : Shock rocker-turned-glam poster-boy Marilyn Manson is the top winner at the 1998 Billboard Music Video Awards, nailing two for The Dope Show, the first single and video from the group’s latest release, Mechanical Animals. “Dope Show” also wins best hard rock/metal clip.
2005 : The Four Seasons musical Jersey Boys opens on Broadway to rave reviews.
This Day in Music History — September 26
1975 : The Rocky Horror Picture Show opens in Westwood, California. Featuring a young Meat Loaf along with Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon, the movie tanks but later becomes a cult classic, with audience members shouting back at the screen and bringing toast, toilet paper, and other assorted items to enhance the viewing experience.
1992 : Gloria Estefan headlines a show featuring Paul Simon, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Jimmy Buffett at a Miami concert to raise money for Hurricane Andrew relief.
2008 : In some very unshocking news, Clay Aiken announces that he is gay in People magazine, saying: “It was the first decision I made as a father. I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn’t raised that way, and I’m not going to raise a child to do that.”
2012 : Artist Pink, aka “P!nk,” scores her first #1 album on Billboard’s album charts with The Truth About Love. The album had sold 280,000 copies at the time.
Good Music. Good Life. 