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Featured Events
1994Mariah Carey's album Merry Christmas is released. By the end of the year, it has sold over 3 million copies.More
1994Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York album, taken from a performance a year earlier, is finally released. The album tops the charts in many countries, including the US, UK and Australia.
1992Pearl Jam play Neil Young's Bridge School benefit concert for the first time. The event takes place at the Shoreline Amphitheater outside of San Francisco.
1988Slick Rick releases his debut album, The Great Adventures Of Slick Rick, featuring the influential rap hit "Children's Story."More
1979Bob Dylan debuts the songs from his new album, a Christian polemic called Slow Train Coming, on the first night of his new tour in San Francisco, California. A shocked audience boos the new material throughout the set.
1969Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" hits #1 in America, giving him his first chart-topper since "Good Luck Charm" in 1962. It's his last #1 in the US.
1968George Harrison releases Wonderwall Music, becoming the first member of The Beatles to release a solo album.
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In Music History
2008Jimmy Carl Black (drummer, vocalist for Mothers Of Invention) dies of lung cancer at age 70.
2008R&B singer Nathaniel Mayer, whose first hit was 1962's "Village Of Love," dies at age 64 in Detroit, Michigan, after suffering a series of strokes.
2008Yma Sumac, a Peruvian soprano who rose to fame in the '50s, dies of colon cancer at age 86. The spotlight shone on her again when her song "Ataypura" was featured in the 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski.
2008Def Jam executive Shakir Stewart dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 34.
2006Apple Computer launches a new mini-store within the US version of the iTunes Music Store dedicated to Latin music and entertainment. iTunes Latino features top Latin music, music videos, television shows, audiobooks and podcasts.
2005Black Sabbath is inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame by Brian May of Queen. The band plays "Paranoid" at the ceremony and Ozzy moons the crowd, feeling that they aren't rocking hard enough.
2005Skitch Henderson, original bandleader for The Tonight Show (hosted by Steve Allen) and founder of The New York Pops orchestra, dies at age 87.
2004Terry Knight, original manager and producer for Grand Funk Railroad, is murdered by his teenage daughter's boyfriend, Donald A. Fair. Knight, age 61, was stabbed to death when he tried to breakup an argument over Fair's drug use.
2004EMI pays tribute to Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who celebrates 50 years recording for the company. In a rare appearance at a private party at EMI's London headquarters, Rostropovich is presented with a golden Neumann microphone and a plaque commemorating the 100 recordings he has made with the company since 1954.
2002T.I. is arrested and convicted in Georgia for carrying a 10mm pistol. This is the rapper's second arrest for gun possession charges in less than a year.
2000Ben Folds Five announce their breakup. Folds continues as a solo artist.
1999Celine Dion is inducted into the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame during the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Gold Ribbon Awards gala in Montreal. Dion joins Bryan Adams and Anne Murray for the accolade.
1999With getting music over the internet still a novel concept and technical challenge, Third Eye Blind offer their single "Anything" exclusively online. It's free, but can only be played for three weeks.
1998Madonna presents director Alan Parker with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Director's Guild of Great Britain. The ceremony takes place aboard a boat on the river Thames in London.
1998NBC airs part one of the four-hour miniseries The Temptations based on Otis Williams' autobiography Temptations. Williams, portrayed by Charles Malik Whitfield, is the last surviving member of the group's original line-up, and takes a lot of heat from his former bandmates' families for his version of events.
RIAA Agrees To Label Offensive Albums
1985The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) agrees to some demands made by another initialed organization, the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). As a result, any album deemed to contain offensive lyrics must be issued with a warning label, or the lyrics must be printed on the sleeve. Most record companies go with the labels, which don't seem to hurt sales.
The issue of obscene lyrics has been brewing since May, when the PMRC rallied support for a ratings system for albums similar to the one used by movies. In September, the United States Senate held a hearing to discuss the matter, with PMRC leaders Tipper Gore and Susan Baker squaring off against Frank Zappa, Dee Snider and John Denver. The musicians are big names, but the PMRC is politically connected - Gore is married to a senator and Baker's husband is the Treasury Secretary. Zappa and others are adamant in their opposition to any kind of labeling, but the RIAA decides to make a concession to quell legal action and placate the PMRC. Instead of a cumbersome ratings system, they agree to voluntarily label albums with offensive lyrics, leaving it up to record companies to decide which albums get the stickers. Predictably, very few albums get the labels, so the RIAA threatens further action. In the early '90s, the stickers start appearing in earnest, mostly on hip-hop albums like Ice Cube's AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and anything by Geto Boys. Many big-box retailers refuse to stock the stickered albums, so kids hit up record stores to find them. Some artists go out of their way to make sure their albums are stickered. 2 Live Crew takes it up a notch, issuing an album in 1990 that is declared legally obscene, making warning stickers seem quaint and exposing them as a marketing tool. Many acts, including 2 Live Crew, release "clean" and "dirty" versions of their albums to cover their bases. This becomes common practice into the digital age, with tracks available for streaming or downloaded clearly labelled "explicit" if there are dirty words.
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