The week that was...?

[PhilcoFord]

Does anyone else get/read The Week that Was from Musician's Friend? Man, I love that...

 

[PhilcoFord]

OK... Maybe you don't get it and you don't know what it is... For those of you who don't, here's this week's "The Week That Was In Matters Musical", from your friends (?) at Musician's Friend:

This is the week that was in matters musical...1956, The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Elvis Presley is founded by D.C. DJ, Bob Rickman...1970 Stephen Stills gets popped for cocaine possession in a motel and is released on $2,500 bail...1988, rockabilly guitar marvel Roy Buchanan allegedly hangs himself by his T-shirt from a waist-high bar in the drunk tank...Buchanan's career is going well and family members question the cause of death...the truth is never ascertained...a concert by Rage Against the Machine this week in 2000 inspires a crowd of 9,000 to do just that...the machine, embodied in the local police, responds by macing the crowd and shooting them with rubber bullets...1969, the most celebrated rock festival of all is held on a farm near Bethel, N.Y....most of the big pop bands of the time are there...during The Who's set at 3:00 one morning, Abbie Hoffman gets up on stage and tries to launch into a political diatribe, only to be ignominiously ousted by Pete Townshend, who's having the most miserable gig of his life...some 400,000 muddy hippies are enjoying what they can comprehend of the show...Paul Simon single-handedly beats that number hands down by giving a free concert in Central Park in 1991 for which an estimated 750,000 fans show up...8 years earlier, Paul weds Carrie Fisher aka Princess "Donut Head" Leah...they tolerate each other for 2 years...1985, Madonna and Sean Penn join in a holy matrimony that will make it 4 years...1958, Buddy Holly marries his girlfriend of 3 months, Maria Elena Santia, soon to leave her a widow...1966, TV faux band The Monkees go legit when they release their first single "Last Train to Clarksville"...the song goes straight to number one, ensuring their enduring status in pop trivia publications...Leon Russell, Steven Stills, and Neil Young all provide backup during Monkees recording sessions...1977, everybody finds out once and for all how undeniably famous and popular the King really is when he's found dead on his bathroom floor...President Carter issues a statement and 75,000 fans show up for the funeral two days later...as the inimitable James Brown says, Elvis "taught white America how to get down"...precisely 39 years prior, in 1938, a perhaps even greater force toward that goal met his demise...nobody knows for sure, but the most seemingly reliable accounts hold that Robert Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband and died a hideous death...1967, Fleetwood Mac plays their first gig at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival a month before John McVie joins the band...while the band's name does derive from Fleetwood and McVie's last names, it is really based on a song guitarist Peter Greene named after them during an earlier recording session on which they both played...when Greene and Fleetwood form a band together after leaving the Bluesbreakers, they name their new band after the song...1960, this is the week the Beatles do their first foreign gig in Hamburg...it's also the first gig in which Pete Best takes on duties as the band's drummer...exactly 2 years later Pete is axed on the word from George Martin and Ringo Starr takes his place, thus completing the Fab Four...1969, Miles Davis goes into the studio to record the monumental "Bitches Brew" LP...and that was the week that was.

BIRTHDAYS:

August 14: Swing and jazz violinist Stuff Smith (1909), Dash Crofts (1940), David Crosby (1941), Tim Bogart of Vanilla Fudge (1944), Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone (1946)

August 15: Oscar Peterson (1925), Bill Pinkney of The Drifters (1925), Bobby Helms (1933), R&B singer Bobby Byrd (1934), Peter York of the Spencer Davis Group (1942), Jimmy Webb (1946), Tom Johnston of the Doobie Brothers (1948), Tommy Aldridge of Black Oak Arkansas (1950), MCA of The Beastie Boys (1967)

August 16: Baritone jazz crooner Al Hibbler (1915), Bill Evans (1929), Eydie Gorme (1931), Barbara George (1942), Barry Hay of Golden Earring (1948), J.T. Taylor of Kool & The Gang (1953) Tim Farriss of INXS (1957), Madonna (born Louise Ciccone) (1958), Emily Erwin of Dixie Chicks (1972)

August 17: Mark ("Teenangel") Dinning (1933), rock/blues man Luther Allison (1939), Sib Hashian of Boston (1949), Eric Johnson (1954), Belinda Carlisle (1958), Gilby Clark of Guns N' Roses (1962), Steve Gorman of the Black Crowes (1965), Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block (1969)

August 18: Folk singer Cisco Huston (1918), Johnny Preston (1939), Nona Hendryx (1945), Dennis Elliot of Foreigner (1950), Ron Stryker of Men at Work (1957), Dr. Spot (1960), Everlast (1969)

August 19: Jazz pianist Jimmy Rowles (1918), Ginger Baker (1939), Johnny ("I Can See Clearly Now") Nash (1940), Ian Gillian of Deep Purple (1945), Queen's John Deacon (1951), Lee Ann Womack (1966)

August 20: Jim Reeves (1924), Tom Coster of Santana (1941), Isaac Hayes (1942), James Pankow of Chicago (1947), Robert Plant (1948), Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy (1951), Rudy Gatlin of the Gatlin Brothers (1952), John Hiatt (1952)

DEPARTURES:

August 14: Roy Buchanan (1988)

August 15: Rockabilly producer Norman Petty (1984)

August 16: Sufi songster Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan (1997), Elvis Presley (1977), Robert Johnson (1938)

August 17: Pearl Bailey (1990)

August 18: Rockabilly star Dorsey Burnette (1979)

August 19: Blind Willie McTell (1959)

 

[Ed Rafalko]

I enjoy those. I used to read them but with the amount of junk mail I'm getting these days it's all going right to the trash nowadays.

 

[PhilcoFord]

I hear you... for me this is the only welcome piece of spam I get.

 

[cherrick]

I'm not a big fan of spam, and when I go into MF the array of differences in tail piece locations is just bewildering.