1967 - The Beach Boys' production of the Smile project was halted. Brian Wilson had toiled for over a year composing and producing the album, an effort to best the Beatles in his perceived battle for pop supremacy. However, after the Beatles released their groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Wilson became discouraged and intimidated, convinced his Smile would come off as "second best." In 2011, Smile was finally released as The Smile Sessions.
1978 - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers release You're Gonna Get It. Even if at times it sounds like leftovers from their strong debut, it's still a solid album. "I Need to Know" and the scathing "Listen to Her Heart" are testaments to how good this band could be when it was focused.
1983 - New Order release Power, Corruption, and Lies. It's still stands as one of the most exciting dance-rock hybrid in music. Confident and invigorating, the record simply pops with energy from the start. "Age of Consent," a shimmering pop song with only a smattering of synthesizers overlaying Bernard Sumner's yearning vocals. Aside from all the bright dance music and inventive production on display, Power, Corruption & Lies also portrayed the band's growing penchant for beauty: "Your Silent Face" is a sublime piece of electronic balladry and "Leave Me Alone" is a wonderfully melancholic slice of post-punk guitar pop. Here the band is finding its feet and leaping ahead of the pack, combining superior songwriting skills, imaginative playing, and stunning arrangements that mixed the present with the future.
1988 - Living Colour's debut album, Vivid, is released. Though the album was released in mid-1988, it picked up steam slowly, exploding at the year's end with the hit single/MTV anthem "Cult of Personality," which merged an instantly recognizable Reid guitar riff and lyrics that explored the dark side of world leaders past and present (and remains LC's best-known song).
The album was also incredibly consistent, as proven by the rocker "Middle Man," the touching "Open Letter (To a Landlord)," plus the Caribbean rock of "Glamour Boys." an inspired reading of Talking Heads' "Memories Can't Wait," and you have one of the finest hard rock albums of the '80s.
1989 - The Stone Roses released their self-titled debut album. Here they welcomed dance and pop together, as well as the neo-psychedelic world of acid house. Throw in the catch hooks of the British invasion and you get an important album of the "Madchester Scene". Highlights: I Wanna Be Adored, She Bands The Drum, and Waterfall.
1989 - The Cure issued Disintegration. It's a hypnotic, mesmerizing record, comprised almost entirely of epics like the soaring, icy "Pictures of You." The handful of pop songs, like the concise and utterly charming "Love Song," don't alleviate the doom-laden atmosphere. The Cure's gloomy soundscapes have rarely sounded so alluring, however, and the songs -- from the pulsating, ominous "Fascination Street" to the eerie, string-laced "Lullaby" -- have rarely been so well-constructed and memorable.
1989 - Bob Mould released his solo debut album, Workbook. Recorded in part at Paisley Park, the album arrived following the breakup of his influential punk rock band Hüsker Dü. Mould explores a wide variety of styles, from pure pop ("See a Little Light") to reflective folk laced with cellos. It's an astonishing array of styles, and the songs are among Mould's finest. For many observers, the record established him as a major songwriter, but it also established a way for underground post-punk artists to mature -- echoes of Workbook could be heard throughout the '90s, from R.E.M.'s elegiac Automatic for the People to Nirvana's use of cellos on In Utero and Unplugged.
1997 - The James Bond spoof Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery hits theaters. The theme is "Soul Bossa Nova," a song by Quincy Jones from 1962 - the same year the first Bond movie appeared. Yeah baby!
2005 - Eric Clapton joined former Cream members Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce for the first of four nights at London's Royal Albert Hall 36 years after they had split up. Clapton aged 60, is said to have agreed to because of the failing health of the other former members of the band.
On a local note, Clapton is a fan of the western shirts of Rockmount Ranch Wear, located on Wazee. Eric had requested some for the shows via e-mail to Rockmount’s Steve Weil (he likes the No. 640-BLK. I own a similar one, they're cool).
Weil: "I replied that shipping to London takes a week, but he could have the shirts in time if I hand-carried them. He invited me to the concert. A friend and I flew the next day, meeting him and his family for a meal at the “green room” in the Royal Albert Hall before the concert."
Clapton and Weil would later collaborated on a shirt design.
(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Birthdays:
1929 - Link Wray was born. Famous for his 1958 hit single 'Rumble'. Wray was credited with inventing 'fuzz' guitar after punching a hole in a speaker giving him a distorted sound. Wray is also said to have popularized "the power chord. Listen to any of the tracks he recorded between that landmark instrumental in 1958 through his Swan recordings in the early '60s and you'll hear the blueprints for heavy metal, thrash, you name it.
Pete Townshend: "He is the king; if it hadn't been for Link Wray and "'Rumble,'" I would have never picked up a guitar."
On this Day In Music History was sourced, curated, copied, pasted, edited, and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose from This Day in Music, Rockmount, Denver Post, Allmusic, Music This Day, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
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