26
Featured Events
2008Clay Aiken announces 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."
1992Gloria Estefan stages a star-studded concert to provide relief to victims of Hurricane Andrew.More
1990Cop Rock, a musical police drama with a theme song by Randy Newman, debuts on ABC. Stung by scathing reviews and terrible ratings, it is cancelled after 11 episodes.More
1987Whitney Houston scores the fifth of seven consecutive #1 hits when "Didn't We Almost Have It All" tops the Hot 100.
1986In Solna, Sweden, Metallica play their last show with bass player Cliff Burton, who dies when the band's tour bus crashes on the way to the next stop. The last song is "Blitzkrieg."
1966The lyrically dissonant "Cherish" (don't play it at your wedding) by The Association hits #1 in America. In 1971, David Cassidy of The Partridge Family has his first hit with a cover of the song.
1964Roy Orbison's "(Oh) Pretty Woman" hits #1 in America for the first of three weeks.
1957The musical West Side Story, a retelling of Romeo and Juliet with New York City gang members, debuts on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre. It runs for 732 performances.
26
In Music History
2015The day after releasing his debut album, Up Next, rapper Fetty Wap is injured in a motorcycle accident in Paterson, New Jersey, when he collides head-on with an oncoming vehicle. His injuries put him out of action, but thanks to the hit single "Trap Queen," the album climbs the charts and hits #1 while he's still in the hospital. When Fetty returns to the stage on October 22 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, he does his set from a specially designed throne with his injured leg elevated.
2014Mark Loomis (lead guitarist of The Chocolate Watchband) dies in Hawaii.
2014Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke releases his second solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, for just $6 on the peer-to-peer file-sharing platform BitTorrent. According to the album's producer, Nigel Godrich, "It could be an effective way of handing some control of Internet commerce back to people who are creating the work." In just over a week, the album averages 1.8 million downloads.
2012Pink, aka "P!nk," lands her first #1 album in America with The Truth About Love. Her sixth studio album, it features the hits "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" and "Just Give Me A Reason."
2012Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro gets into hot water for his slurs against Lady Gaga. The extensive rant consists, in part, of "There's Gaga. Here's this, this, I would call her a slut. This slut is influencing many, many children."
2007Phil Spector's first trial in the murder case of Lana Clarkson in 2003 ends in a hung jury, with 10 guilty votes and two not guilty. A retrial begins the next year, and he is eventually found guilty.
200354-year-old Robert Palmer dies of a heart attack in Paris after a quiet dinner and a movie.
2002Colin Hay of Men at Work appears throughout the Scrubs episode "My Overkill," performing his song "Overkill" in various fantasy sequences.
2000The popular songwriter Carl Sigman dies. Among his many compositions: "It's All In The Game" and "Marshmallow World."
2000Good Charlotte release their self-titled debut album.
200098 Degrees' new album Revelation is premiered in US Wal-Mart stores via an exclusive satellite broadcast concert.
2000Creed lead singer Scott Stapp launches his With Arms Wide Open Foundation with a fundraising re-release of the song "With Arms Wide Open."
1998The father of Blackhawk's Dave Robbins dies of a heart attack the day after watching his son perform at the North Georgia State Fair.
1998Prince (who is using an unpronounceable symbol as his name) injures his ankle performing at a show in Atlantic City and is forced to postpone his remaining tour dates.
1998MTV Russia debuts at midnight with Prodigy Live in Moscow, a concert taped in spring 1997. The first Russian video on the network is Mummy Troll's "Vladivostock 2000."
Rocky Horror Opens In Theaters
1975The 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.
Written by fledgling actor Richard O'Brien, the film (directed by Jim Sharman) is a campy send-up to the low-budget sc-fi and horror flicks of his youth. A little bit of Frankenstein and a whole lot of sex and rock 'n roll. Curry is Frank-N-Furter, a "sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania" who also happens to be a mad scientist who creates a muscle-bound monster in his basement. Frank is hosting the Annual Transylvanian Convention at his castle when stranded newlyweds Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) accidentally crash the party – and the fun begins. Along with Curry and much of the cast, Meat Loaf was already a Rocky Horror veteran, having starred in the original London stage production as Frank's rival Dr. Everett Scott and delivery boy Eddie. He only reprises his role as Eddie for the movie, shaking things up at the castle with "Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul" and sending Frank into a jealous rage. Other memorable songs include "Dammit Janet," "Sweet Transvestite" and "Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me." Rocky Horror mastermind O'Brien also leads the cast in the dance number "Time Warp," as the hunchbacked handyman Riff Raff. As film critic Roger Ebert recalls, the movie is "ignored by pretty much everyone, including the future fanatics who would eventually count the hundreds of times they'd seen it." Frank N. Furter finds his audience at midnight screenings, where fans start a ritual of interacting with the movie. Halloween showings attract diehards dressed in elaborate recreations of the flashy costumes: torn fishnet stockings, sequins, and leather are a must. Costume designer Sue Blane doesn't take credit for the punk movement, but her camp vision of tattered sex appeal was a hallmark of the growing genre. "The Rocky Horror Show was definitely a big part of that build-up," she said. The Rocky Horror Picture Show continues a limited run into the next century, the longest-running theatrical release in film history, and is often accompanied by "shadow casts" that mimic the action on the big screen… or as the iconic disembodied red lips would call it, "the late-night, double-feature picture show."
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