Keefer

Keefer

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ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY: 10.10

1969 - King Crimson releases In the Court of the Crimson King, considered by some to be the first Prog Rock album. It's the group's definitive album, and one of the most daring debuts ever recorded by anybody. At the time, it blew all of the progressive/psychedelic competition out of the running.

An album highlighted by strong songwriting (most of it filled with dark and doom-laden visions), the strongest singing of Greg Lake's entire career, and Robert Fripp's guitar playing that strangely mixed elegant classical, Hendrix-like rock explosions, and jazz noodling.

1972 - James Brown causes a stir by meeting with President Richard Nixon in the White House and endorsing him in his bid for re-election.

Brown, who doesn't claim a political affiliation, uses the brief meeting to push for a national holiday celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Nixon says he's "aware of that."

After Nixon won in 1968, Brown played at his inauguration; after Nixon's victory in 1972, Brown skips it because the White House refuses to pay for the performance.

1986 - The film True Stories, directed by and starring David Byrne, is released in theaters. The soundtrack serves as Talking Heads' seventh album.

The film is presented as a series of vignettes centered around Byrne as an unnamed, cowboy-hat-wearing stranger who visits the fictional Texas town of Virgil, where he observes the citizens (strange and musical characters) as they prepare for the "Celebration of Specialness" to mark the 150th anniversary of Texas' independence.

1995 - No Doubt release their breakthrough album Tragic Kingdom.

Led by the infectious, pseudo-new wave single "Just a Girl," No Doubt's major-label debut, Tragic Kingdom, straddles the line between '90s punk, third-wave ska, and pop sensibility. Tragic Kingdom might not have made much of an impact upon its initial release in late 1995, but throughout 1996 "Just a Girl" and "Spiderwebs" positively ruled the airwaves, both alternative and mainstream, and in 1997 No Doubt cemented their cross-generational appeal with the ballad hit "Don't Speak."Photo by Kevin Winter/ImageDirect

2007 - Radiohead took an innovative approach with the release of their seventh studio album, In Rainbows, by offering it as a pay-what-you-want download. Most people paid nothing for the download, but the album still fared well.

Despite references to "going off the rails," hitting "the bottom," getting "picked over by the worms," being "dead from the neck up," and feeling "trapped" (twice), -- the one aspect of the album that becomes increasingly perceptible with each listen is how romantic it feels, in a Radiohead kinda way.

The album is very song-oriented, yet there are abstract electronic layers and studio-as-instrument elements to prevent it from sounding like a regression. In Rainbows will hopefully be remembered as Radiohead's most stimulating synthesis of accessible songs and abstract sounds, rather than their first pick-your-price download.

2011 - Lana Del Rey releases her first single, "Video Games," a song inspired by two fractured relationships. "The verse was about the way things were with one person, and the chorus was the way that I wished things had really been with another person, who I thought about for a long time," she told Socialstereotype.com.

Birthdays:

The jazz great Thelonious Monk was born today in 1917. Recognized as one of the most original musicians in American history, Thelonious Sphere Monk fashioned a startlingly unique, inimitable playing and composing style that influenced virtually every succeeding jazz generation. His playing technique offered a percussive approach to the piano, identified by sparse, complex, sometimes dissonant harmonies, developed from unusual intervals and rhythms, and imbued with warmth and playfulness. (His motto was "There are no wrong notes on the piano.") Monk's name is synonymous with the creation of modern jazz; many of his compositions are jazz standards including, "Round Midnight," "Well You Needn’t," and "Straight, No Chaser."

.John Prine was born on this day in 1946. After serving in West Germany with the U.S. Army, he returned to Chicago in the late 1960s, where he worked as a mailman, writing and singing songs first as a hobby and then as a club performer. He was a master storyteller whose work was often witty and always heartfelt, frequently offering a sly but sincere reflection of his Midwestern roots, writing about the lives of ordinary people in a remarkable and perceptive way.

Kirsty MacColl, known for her vocals on the Pogues song "Fairytale Of New York,"was born on this day in 1959.

Actor, musician Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet who became one of the most successful groups to emerge during the New Romantic era, is 62. They produced a number of international hits during the 80s including 'True', 'Gold' and 'Through the Barricades.'

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R.I.P.:

1939 - The real Eleanor Rigby died in her sleep of unknown causes at the age of 44. The 1966 Beatles' song that featured her name wasn't written about her, as Paul McCartney's first draft of the song named the character Miss Daisy Hawkins. Eleanor Rigby's tombstone was noticed in the 1980s in the graveyard of St. Peter's Parish Church in Woolton, Liverpool, a few feet from where McCartney and Lennon had met for the first time in 1957.

2010 - R&B/soul singer Solomon Burke died. He was an important pioneer of early soul, bringing a country influence into R&B. This combination of gospel, pop, country, and production polish was basic to the recipe of early soul. He, like Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, was an important influence upon the Rolling Stones, who covered Burke's "Cry to Me" and "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" on their early albums.

On this Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.

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