Today in Rock and Roll History

[too larry]

For a while I was clogging up the TnT On this Day thread with rock history. I felt bad about it, so stopped, but still saw and heard lots of good stuff fit to post, so. . . . .

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
10 hrs ·
George Harrison released the live triple LP "The Concert for Bangladesh" on Dec. 20, 1971 in the US. The record, originally titled "The Concert for Bangla Desh" followed the two concerts of the same name, held on Aug. 1, 1971 at New York's Madison Square Garden. The concerts featured Harrison, Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and Eric Clapton. The shows were a pioneering charity event, in aid of the homeless Bengali refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War, and set the model for future multi-artist rock benefits such as Live Aid (1985) and the Concert for New York City (2001).
Co-produced by Phil Spector and featuring the latter's signature Wall of Sound in a live setting, the fundraiser album was delayed for three months due to protracted negotiations between Harrison and two record companies keen to protect their business interests, Capitol and Columbia/CBS. Besides the main performers, the musicians and singers on the recording include Badfinger, Jim Horn, Klaus Voormann, Alla Rakha, Jim Keltner, Jesse Ed Davis and Claudia Linnear. The box set's original packaging included a 64-page book containing photos from the concerts; the album cover, designed by Tom Wilkes, consisted of an image of a malnourished child sitting beside an empty food bowl.
Do any of you ever listen to this LP anymore? And, what do you think was the highlight of the record?
Happy 48th Birthday to the LP "The Concert for Bangladesh"!!


Skip to 19:30 for 1st american song.

 

[too larry]

Beatlemania got a good start in the US on Dec. 20th, 1963 when Capitol Records released "Meet The Beatles."
The following Jan., The Beatles would appear on The Jack Parr Show in a taped performance and then in Feb, they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, an appearance that changed music for ever.
"Meet The Beatles" released in the U.S. 56 years ago today in the US.
Anybody remember getting this LP when it first came out, before the Ed Sullivan Show?

 

[too larry]

I've found that the Beatles made lots of history. Or so the internet would leave you to believe.

December 20th
1958 - The Quarry Men
John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison appeared as The Quarry Men at the wedding reception of George's older brother, Harry. The event was held at the Harrison family home at 25 Upton Green, Speke, Liverpool.

 

[too larry]

1969 - The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones went to No.1 on the UK album chart with their 10th release Let It Bleed featuring 'Midnight Rambler', and 'You Can't Always Get What You Want.' It was the last studio album by the band to feature Brian Jones (who had died on July 3rd of this year after drowning in his swimming pool), as well as the first to feature guitarist Mick Taylor.

 

[too larry]

1974 - Joe Walsh
Former James Gang and Barnstorm guitarist Joe Walsh officially replaced Bernie Leadon in the Eagles after producer Bill Szymczyk had recommended Walsh to The Eagles.

And the world lost this. . .

 

[too larry]

2006 - Procol Harum
Matthew Fisher, a founding member of Procol Harum won a High Court battle over who wrote their song '’A Whiter Shade Of Pale’. Fisher who played organ on the 1967 hit had argued he wrote the distinctive organ melody, but Mr Justice Blackburne ruled he was entitled to just 40% of the copyright, (rather than the 50% he was seeking). The court decided lead singer Gary Brooker's input was more substantial and Fisher's claim for back royalties - of up to £1m - was also rejected. For almost 40 years, the song had been credited to lead singer Gary Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid.

 

[Amos Otis]

For a while I was clogging up the TnT On this Day thread with rock history. I felt bad about it, so stopped, but still saw and heard lots of good stuff fit to post, so. . . . .

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
10 hrs ·
George Harrison released the live triple LP "The Concert for Bangladesh" on Dec. 20, 1971 in the US. The record, originally titled "The Concert for Bangla Desh" followed the two concerts of the same name, held on Aug. 1, 1971 at New York's Madison Square Garden. The concerts featured Harrison, Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and Eric Clapton. The shows were a pioneering charity event, in aid of the homeless Bengali refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War, and set the model for future multi-artist rock benefits such as Live Aid (1985) and the Concert for New York City (2001).
Co-produced by Phil Spector and featuring the latter's signature Wall of Sound in a live setting, the fundraiser album was delayed for three months due to protracted negotiations between Harrison and two record companies keen to protect their business interests, Capitol and Columbia/CBS. Besides the main performers, the musicians and singers on the recording include Badfinger, Jim Horn, Klaus Voormann, Alla Rakha, Jim Keltner, Jesse Ed Davis and Claudia Linnear. The box set's original packaging included a 64-page book containing photos from the concerts; the album cover, designed by Tom Wilkes, consisted of an image of a malnourished child sitting beside an empty food bowl.
Do any of you ever listen to this LP anymore? And, what do you think was the highlight of the record?
Happy 48th Birthday to the LP "The Concert for Bangladesh"!!


Skip to 19:30 for 1st american song.

3 LPs full of dreadful music by many dreadful artists.

Beatlemania got a good start in the US on Dec. 20th, 1963 when Capitol Records released "Meet The Beatles."
The following Jan., The Beatles would appear on The Jack Parr Show in a taped performance and then in Feb, they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, an appearance that changed music for ever.
"Meet The Beatles" released in the U.S. 56 years ago today in the US.
Anybody remember getting this LP when it first came out, before the Ed Sullivan Show?

A great band, who would later be 4 solo artists that desperately needed to be in a band.

2006 - Procol Harum
Matthew Fisher, a founding member of Procol Harum won a High Court battle over who wrote their song '’A Whiter Shade Of Pale’. Fisher who played organ on the 1967 hit had argued he wrote the distinctive organ melody, but Mr Justice Blackburne ruled he was entitled to just 40% of the copyright, (rather than the 50% he was seeking). The court decided lead singer Gary Brooker's input was more substantial and Fisher's claim for back royalties - of up to £1m - was also rejected. For almost 40 years, the song had been credited to lead singer Gary Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid.

I never grokked 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'.

 

[too larry]

3 LPs full of dreadful music by many dreadful artists.. . . . . . .

Was this show made into a movie? I remember watching on late night tv when I was a kid.

 

[Amos Otis]

Was this show made into a movie? I remember watching on late night tv when I was a kid.

Yes. It was a now and then staple of weekend 'late shows'. Snooze inducing.

 

[too larry]

It was during this week 52 years ago in 1967, that Ian Anderson and a couple of friends put together a new band. They called the band Jethro Tull.
Remember when concerts looked like this, no 8,000 lights in the light show, it didn't take 27 semi's to move the show, just a stage, a band and great music. Oh yeah, tickets would set you back about 3 bucks. Here's an early picture of Jethro Tull to show what we mean. The good old days.......
Happy 52nd birthday to Jethro Tull!!
And the one song of theirs that sticks out to you is?

w/ Ian Anderson (musician)

 

[too larry]

 

[too larry]

From the real life is stranger than fiction section. . . . .


Ever want a 'Special' present for your self for Christmas?
Elvis Presley really, really wanted an official badge from the DEA. Seems ironic now. But on Dec. 21, 1970, Elvis met with then President of The United States, Richard Nixon to ask him for one. (The following was written by Peter Carlson and appears on The Smithsonian web site):
"The image looks like a computer-generated joke, or maybe a snapshot from some parallel universe where the dead icons of the 20th century hang out together—even Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon.
But the picture is genuine, an official White House photograph of a bizarre encounter that occurred in this universe, in the Oval Office on December 21, 1970.
The story began in Memphis a few days earlier, when Elvis' father, Vernon, and wife, Priscilla, complained that he'd spent too much on Christmas presents—more than $100,000 for 32 handguns and ten Mercedes-Benzes. Peeved, Elvis drove to the airport and caught the next available flight, which happened to be bound for Washington. He checked into a hotel, then got bored and decided to fly to Los Angeles.
"Elvis called and asked me to pick him up at the airport," recalls Jerry Schilling, Presley's longtime aide, who dutifully arrived at the Los Angeles airport at 3 a.m. to chauffeur the King to his mansion there.
Elvis was traveling with some guns and his collection of police badges, and he decided that what he really wanted was a badge from the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs back in Washington. "The narc badge represented some kind of ultimate power to him," Priscilla Presley would write in her memoir, Elvis and Me. "With the federal narcotics badge, he [believed he] could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying any drugs he wished."
After just one day in Los Angeles, Elvis asked Schilling to fly with him back to the capital. "He didn't say why," Schilling recalls, "but I thought the badge might be part of the reason."
On the red-eye to Washington, Elvis scribbled a letter to President Nixon. "Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out," he wrote. All he wanted in return was a federal agent's badge. "I would love to meet you," he added, informing Nixon that he'd be staying at the Washington Hotel under the alias Jon Burrows. "I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a federal agent."
After they landed, Elvis and Schilling took a limo to the White House, and Elvis dropped off his letter at an entrance gate at about 6:30 a.m. Once they checked in at their hotel, Elvis left for the offices of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. He got a meeting with a deputy director, but not approval for a bureau badge.
Meanwhile, his letter was delivered to Nixon aide Egil "Bud" Krogh, who happened to be an Elvis fan. Krogh loved the idea of a Nixon-Presley summit and persuaded his bosses, including White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, to make it happen. Krogh called the Washington Hotel and set up a meeting through Schilling.
Around noon, Elvis arrived at the White House with Schilling and bodyguard Sonny West, who'd just arrived from Memphis. Arrayed in a purple velvet suit with a huge gold belt buckle and amber sunglasses, Elvis came bearing a gift—a Colt .45 pistol mounted in a display case that Elvis had plucked off the wall of his Los Angeles mansion, which the Secret Service confiscated before Krogh escorted Elvis—without his entourage—to meet Nixon.
"When he first walked into the Oval Office, he seemed a little awe-struck," Krogh recalls, "but he quickly warmed to the situation."
While White House photographer Ollie Atkins snapped photographs, the president and the King shook hands. Then Elvis showed off his police badges.
Nixon's famous taping system had not yet been installed, so the conversation wasn't recorded. But Krogh took notes: "Presley indicated that he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. The President then indicated that those who use drugs are also those in the vanguard of anti-American protest."
"I'm on your side," Elvis told Nixon, adding that he'd been studying the drug culture and Communist brainwashing. Then he asked the president for a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
"Can we get him a badge?" Nixon asked Krogh.
Krogh said he could, and Nixon ordered it done.
Elvis was ecstatic. "In a surprising, spontaneous gesture," Krogh wrote, Elvis "put his left arm around the President and hugged him."
Before leaving, Elvis asked Nixon to say hello to Schilling and West, and the two men were escorted into the Oval Office. Nixon playfully punched Schilling on the shoulder and gave both men White House cuff links.
"Mr. President, they have wives, too," Elvis said. So Nixon gave them each a White House brooch.
After Krogh took him to lunch at the White House mess, Elvis received his gift—the narc badge.
At Elvis' request, the meeting was kept secret. A year later, columnist Jack Anderson broke the story—"Presley Gets Narcotics Bureau Badge"—but few people seemed to care.
In 1988, years after Nixon resigned and Elvis died of a drug overdose, a Chicago newspaper reported that the National Archives was selling photos of the meeting, and within a week, some 8,000 people requested copies, making the pictures the most requested photographs in Archives history.
These days, the Archives gift shop sells T-shirts, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets and snow globes emblazoned with the image. And Chris DerDerian, the Archives' director of retail, is thinking of adding an Elvis-Nixon souvenir charm.
Why is the photo so popular? DerDerian figures it's the incongruity: "There's this staid president with this rock 'n' roll figure. It's a powerful image."
Krogh agrees. "It's a jolt seeing them together. Here is the leader of the Western world and the king of rock 'n' roll in the same place, and they're clearly enjoying each other. And you think, 'How can this be?'"
A President and a King, 49 years ago today in The White House.

 

[Amos Otis]

From the real life is stranger than fiction section. . . . .


Ever want a 'Special' present for your self for Christmas?
Elvis Presley really, really wanted an official badge from the DEA. Seems ironic now. But on Dec. 21, 1970, Elvis met with then President of The United States, Richard Nixon to ask him for one. (The following was written by Peter Carlson and appears on The Smithsonian web site):
"The image looks like a computer-generated joke, or maybe a snapshot from some parallel universe where the dead icons of the 20th century hang out together—even Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon.
But the picture is genuine, an official White House photograph of a bizarre encounter that occurred in this universe, in the Oval Office on December 21, 1970.
The story began in Memphis a few days earlier, when Elvis' father, Vernon, and wife, Priscilla, complained that he'd spent too much on Christmas presents—more than $100,000 for 32 handguns and ten Mercedes-Benzes. Peeved, Elvis drove to the airport and caught the next available flight, which happened to be bound for Washington. He checked into a hotel, then got bored and decided to fly to Los Angeles.
"Elvis called and asked me to pick him up at the airport," recalls Jerry Schilling, Presley's longtime aide, who dutifully arrived at the Los Angeles airport at 3 a.m. to chauffeur the King to his mansion there.
Elvis was traveling with some guns and his collection of police badges, and he decided that what he really wanted was a badge from the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs back in Washington. "The narc badge represented some kind of ultimate power to him," Priscilla Presley would write in her memoir, Elvis and Me. "With the federal narcotics badge, he [believed he] could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying any drugs he wished."
After just one day in Los Angeles, Elvis asked Schilling to fly with him back to the capital. "He didn't say why," Schilling recalls, "but I thought the badge might be part of the reason."
On the red-eye to Washington, Elvis scribbled a letter to President Nixon. "Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out," he wrote. All he wanted in return was a federal agent's badge. "I would love to meet you," he added, informing Nixon that he'd be staying at the Washington Hotel under the alias Jon Burrows. "I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a federal agent."
After they landed, Elvis and Schilling took a limo to the White House, and Elvis dropped off his letter at an entrance gate at about 6:30 a.m. Once they checked in at their hotel, Elvis left for the offices of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. He got a meeting with a deputy director, but not approval for a bureau badge.
Meanwhile, his letter was delivered to Nixon aide Egil "Bud" Krogh, who happened to be an Elvis fan. Krogh loved the idea of a Nixon-Presley summit and persuaded his bosses, including White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, to make it happen. Krogh called the Washington Hotel and set up a meeting through Schilling.
Around noon, Elvis arrived at the White House with Schilling and bodyguard Sonny West, who'd just arrived from Memphis. Arrayed in a purple velvet suit with a huge gold belt buckle and amber sunglasses, Elvis came bearing a gift—a Colt .45 pistol mounted in a display case that Elvis had plucked off the wall of his Los Angeles mansion, which the Secret Service confiscated before Krogh escorted Elvis—without his entourage—to meet Nixon.
"When he first walked into the Oval Office, he seemed a little awe-struck," Krogh recalls, "but he quickly warmed to the situation."
While White House photographer Ollie Atkins snapped photographs, the president and the King shook hands. Then Elvis showed off his police badges.
Nixon's famous taping system had not yet been installed, so the conversation wasn't recorded. But Krogh took notes: "Presley indicated that he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. The President then indicated that those who use drugs are also those in the vanguard of anti-American protest."
"I'm on your side," Elvis told Nixon, adding that he'd been studying the drug culture and Communist brainwashing. Then he asked the president for a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
"Can we get him a badge?" Nixon asked Krogh.
Krogh said he could, and Nixon ordered it done.
Elvis was ecstatic. "In a surprising, spontaneous gesture," Krogh wrote, Elvis "put his left arm around the President and hugged him."
Before leaving, Elvis asked Nixon to say hello to Schilling and West, and the two men were escorted into the Oval Office. Nixon playfully punched Schilling on the shoulder and gave both men White House cuff links.
"Mr. President, they have wives, too," Elvis said. So Nixon gave them each a White House brooch.
After Krogh took him to lunch at the White House mess, Elvis received his gift—the narc badge.
At Elvis' request, the meeting was kept secret. A year later, columnist Jack Anderson broke the story—"Presley Gets Narcotics Bureau Badge"—but few people seemed to care.
In 1988, years after Nixon resigned and Elvis died of a drug overdose, a Chicago newspaper reported that the National Archives was selling photos of the meeting, and within a week, some 8,000 people requested copies, making the pictures the most requested photographs in Archives history.
These days, the Archives gift shop sells T-shirts, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets and snow globes emblazoned with the image. And Chris DerDerian, the Archives' director of retail, is thinking of adding an Elvis-Nixon souvenir charm.
Why is the photo so popular? DerDerian figures it's the incongruity: "There's this staid president with this rock 'n' roll figure. It's a powerful image."
Krogh agrees. "It's a jolt seeing them together. Here is the leader of the Western world and the king of rock 'n' roll in the same place, and they're clearly enjoying each other. And you think, 'How can this be?'"
A President and a King, 49 years ago today in The White House.

Cool story. Unfortunately, that's not The King with President Nixon, but an Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff.
Elvis had grown despondent in his life without Priscilla, and in the mess his manager had made of his career - singing fluff in B movies. His 'so called friends' were bleeding him dry. He walked away from it all, and traded his identity to Haff, the best impersonator of the day. While Elvis worked as Elvis impersonator Sebastian Haff and enjoyed a trailer park lifestylye, Haff succumbed to the riches and temptations [ drugs] that Elvis had avoided. In the end, Haff died of a drug overdose in his toilet in Graceland, still believed to be Elvis Pressley, while The King died defending his fellow residents of a nursing home from a soul sucking mummy, along with former president John Kennedy, who in fact, survived the gunshots in Dallas.

 

[too larry]

1967 - Dave Mason
British guitarist and singer Dave Mason quit Traffic after differences of musical opinion. Mason wrote 'Hole in My Shoe', a psychedelic pop song that became a hit in for Traffic in 1967.

 

[too larry]

Today in rodent history. . . .

1999 - Spice Girls
Three ferrets named Beckham, Posh Spice and Baby Spice were used to lay power cables for a rock concert being held in Greenwich, London, England, (workers were not allowed to dig up the turf at the Royal Park). Organizers found that rods could not push the cables through the tiny tunnels, which frequently bend and dog-leg. The ferrets were eased into tiny nylon harnesses with wires which where then attached to a rope, the animals ran into a series of ducts which were under the stage like rabbit runs, leading the cables with them. The ferrets instinctively make for any hole in the ground and are enticed to the end of the duct by a slab of smelly meat. The New Years Eve concert featured Simply Red, Eurythmics and Bryan Ferry.

 

[too larry]

"Straight to Hell" was written and recorded towards the very end of the Clash's New York recording sessions for the Combat Rock album. Mick Jones' guitar technician Digby Cleaver describes the sessions as "a mad, creative rush" that occurred on 30 December 1981, the day before the Clash was due to fly out of New York on New Year's Eve 1981.[1]

Joe Strummer reflected on this creative process in a 1991 piece about the track:

I'd written the lyric staying up all night at the Iroquois Hotel. I went down to Electric Lady and I just put the vocal down on tape, we finished about twenty to midnight. We took the E train from the Village up to Times Square. I'll never forget coming out of the subway exit, just before midnight, into a hundred billion people, and I knew we had just done something really great.[1]

 

[too larry]

More Clash. . . . . . .

2002 - Joe Strummer
The funeral of former Clash singer and guitarist Joe Strummer took place in London. Strummer had died of a suspected heart attack on 22nd Dec 2002 aged 50.

 

[injinji]

1969 - John Lennon
The entire shipment of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's album 'Two Virgins' was seized by authorities in New Jersey due to the full frontal nude photograph of the couple on the cover. The album was eventually wrapped in plain brown paper in record stores.

 

[injinji]

1974 - Tex Ritter
US country singer, actor and radio presenter Tex Ritter died of a heart attack when he was trying to bail a member of his band from a jail in Nashville. His song 'High Noon' won an Oscar for Best Song in 1952.

 

[injinji]

1999 - Chef
Chef went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with Chocolate Salty Balls (PS I Love You). Chef appeared in the cult TV series South Park, the voice was that of Isaac Hayes (who had a hit with Shaft in 1971).