12
Featured Events
1989Garth Brooks releases his debut album, Garth Brooks.
1988Sonny Bono (of Sonny & Cher) is elected mayor in his hometown of Palm Springs, California. He holds the position until 1992; in 1994 he is elected to Congress.
1983R.E.M. release their debut album, Murmur.
1976Bob Seger, beloved in Michigan but an obscurity elsewhere, releases Live Bullet, which captures the intensity of his live performances and makes him a national act.More
1975Elton John's "Philadelphia Freedom," named after the professional tennis team his friend Billie Jean King coaches, hits #1 on the Hot 100.
1966In an eerie recreation of the duo's single from the year before, Jan Berry of Jan & Dean crashes his Corvette into a parked truck on Beverly Hills' Whittier Drive, near a stretch of road in Los Angeles known as Dead Man's Curve. Berry suffers paralysis and extensive brain damage, and will require four years of rehabilitation to be able to talk and a full decade in order to perform live again.
12
In Music History
2015Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine breaks her foot leaping off the stage at Coachella. For the next several weeks, she sits during performances, per doctor's orders.
2013Five years after the release of Folie à Deux, Fall Out Boy issue their pop-leaning comeback album, Save Rock and Roll, featuring the hit "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)."
2011Karmin post a cover of "Look at Me Now" to YouTube with their singer Amy Heidemann speed rapping the Busta Rhymes section. It goes viral and lands the duo a deal with Epic Records.
2011Ed Sheeran is due to play a free show at The Barfly in Camden, London. Over 1000 fans turn up, prompting Sheeran to play four separate sets, including one on the street outside the venue once it had closed.
2009Brian McKnight is the seventh contestant eliminated on Season 8 of The Celebrity Apprentice.
2008Lou Reed marries his third wife, the conceptual artist Laurie Anderson. The couple, who have been together since the early '90s, decided to get married the previous day, so they meet at a friend's house in Boulder, Colorado, and hold the ceremony in the backyard.
2007Akon, who has a tendency to bring girls on stage and dance with them very suggestively, does so with a 15-year-old girl at a concert in Trinidad and Tobago. When video surfaces, outrage ensues and Verizon drops their sponsorship of the Sweet Escape tour, which Akon is supporting for Gwen Stefani.
2001Gladys Knight marries her fourth husband, longtime friend William McDowell.
1999Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II becomes just the fourth album certified by the RIAA as Double Diamond for sales of over 20 million in the US, following Thriller, Eagles - Their Greatest Hits 1971 - 1975 and The Wall.
1999Backstreet Boys release "I Want It That Way."
1999Country singer Boxcar Willie dies of leukemia at age 67 in Branson, Missouri.
1996The Hollywood Rock Walk inducts Jan & Dean, The Ventures, The Chantays, and The Surfaris.
1993Actress Lisa Bonet files for divorce from Lenny Kravitz.
1992The Eagles' Don Henley leads 6,000 fans through Walden Woods in Massachusetts as part of a benefit walk to save the literally significant woods popularized by Henry Thoreau's work.
1990Sinead O'Connor refuses to appear as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live in protest of the guest host, comedian Andrew Dice Clay.
Stevie Wonder Plays "Superstition" On Sesame Street
1973In one of the show's most memorable moments, Stevie Wonder plays a funky, 7-minute live version of "Superstition" on Sesame Street.
After appearing in a few segments where he teaches Grover how to sing, Wonder plays "Superstition," his #1 hit from a few months earlier. He doctors the lyrics a bit with a shout out to Cookie Monster, but doesn't suppress the groove, giving the kids a full blast of funk. Wonder is joined by his full band, which includes Ray Parker, Jr., later of "Ghostbusters" fame. They are dialed in, oblivious to the children and puppets around them. "You couldn't be distracted," bass player Scott Edwards tells Songfacts. "If you look at the clips, we're all keeping an eye on him or listening to what he's doing. I really don't remember those puppets and stuff." The show is in its fourth season, and while music has always been a mainstay on Sesame Street, Wonder is by far the biggest act to appear. "The whole studio rocked out and it was great because, white people, black people, young people, old people - everybody was on the same page," Sonia Manzano, who played Maria, says. "Moments like Stevie being on the show gave us a glimpse of the way things could be." Many famous acts follow Wonder's lead and appear on the show, Johnny Cash, Paul Simon and Billy Joel among them. In later years, musicians typically sing different lyrics to suit the lesson, James Blunt turning "You're Beautiful" into "A Triangle" for instance.
No comments:
Post a Comment