Hope everyone had a great week !
"…..Well I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road, and I asked him tell me where are you going and he told me…. Said I'm going down to Yasgur's farm going to join in a Rock and Roll band.."
52 years ago today, a whole bunch of people were heading to Upstate New York and many were already there.
There was a music festival starting that day.
It was a defining event for a generation. The festival came to be known simply as "Woodstock".
How many of you were a part of these people? And, how many of you wish you were a part of it?
The Woodstock Festival started 52 years ago today at 5:07 EST when Richie Havens took the stage. He played for 1 hour and 53 minutes. He played every song he knew. He wasn't suppose to be the first performer, but because of the traffic problems, the other artist were having problems getting to the site. When Ritchie ran out of songs to sing, he improvised playing an old gospel song he knew. He came up with some lyric on the spot. It became one of his signature songs "Freedom".
When Richie started playing, there were still a lot of people not there yet. Here is what the crowd was like when he was playing.
In some ways it seems like a lifetime ago and in other ways, just a couple of years ago.
How many of you were (really) there and how many of you younger people can't wait for a time machine?
At 8:15 pm, on Aug. 15, 1965, The Beatles took the stage at Shea Stadium in New York City, marking the very first time a rock band would headline a stadium concert. Tickets for the show, sold merely by word of mouth created by kids who asked the concert promoter Sid Bernstein about the next Beatles show while he strolled in Central Park. The concert sold out in just three weeks, beating the stadium's old seating record with 56,000 seats sold.
Two thousand professionals were hired for security. The concert, filmed for BBC and NBC both, also featured openers Brenda Holloway and The King Curtis Band.
The attendance record would stand until Grand Funk Railroad out did it a few years later.
On Aug. 15, 1965, New York City was the place to be for great Rock and Roll. Just 4 years later to the day, the place to be was in Upstate New York in a little place called White Lake.
How many of you were there for the first time The Beatles played Shea, 54 years ago tonight! For our younger friends, this was a really big show for the time. It was record breaking.
And just 4 years later.... Woodstock.
On Saturday, Aug. 16, 1969, The Who were scheduled to play at Woodstock. They didn't end up going onstage until about 5am on Sunday the 17th. During their performance of their rock opera Tommy, specifically, during the instrumental "Underture", activist and yippie leader Abbie Hoffman came out on stage and grabbed a microphone, and yells "I think this is a pile of shit, while John Sinclair rots in prison!" John Sinclair was a fellow activist, and had been sentenced to ten years for two marijuana joints.
Pete Townshend had no clue who Hoffman was and hit him over the head with his guitar and told him to "**** off my ****ing stage!"
We would agree with Pete that people were there for the music, not the politics. 52 years ago...
Here's the audio from what is called the 'Abbie Hoffman Incident"
During the morning of Aug. 16, 1977, while at his home, Elvis Presley grabbed the book he'd been reading, Frank Adams' The Scientific Search For The Face Of Jesus, and went into his bathroom. His then girlfriend Ginger Alden said to him "Don't fall asleep in there," because she knew he did occasionally tend to fall asleep while in there. Elvis replied "Okay, I won't." Ginger went back to sleep.
At about 1:30 in the afternoon, Ginger woke up and sees Elvis is still gone. When knocking on the bathroom door produces no reply, she enters and finds his lifeless body on the floor in front of the toilet.
Alden screams for Elvis associates Al Strada and Joe Esposito, who arrive and call the fire department. An ambulance is dispatched. Daughter Lisa Marie and father Vernon arrive in the bathroom, but Lisa Marie is quickly removed from the scene. Elvis is rushed to nearby Baptist Memorial Hospital, where, after several attempts to revive him, he dies at 3:30 pm CST. His autopsy is performed at 7:00 pm.
The official coroner's report lists "cardiac arrhythmia" as the cause of Presley's death, but this was later admitted to be a ruse entered into by the Presley family along with autopsy physicians Dr. Jerry T. Francisco, Dr. Eric Muirhead and Dr. Noel Florredo to cover up the real cause of death, a cocktail of ten prescribed drugs, taken in doses no doctor would prescribe: The painkillers Morphine and Demerol. Chloropheniramine, an antihistamine. The tranquilizers Placidyl and Vailum. Finally, four drugs were found in "significant" quantities: Codeine, an opiate, Ethinamate, largely prescribed at the time as a "sleeping pill," Quaaludes, and a barbituate, or depressant, that has never been identified. It has also been rumored that Diazepam, Amytal, Nembutal, Carbrital, Sinutab, Elavil, Avental, and Valmid were found in his system at death.
The phrase "cardiac arrhythmia," in the context of the coroner's report, means little more than a stopped heart; the report initially tried to attribute the arrhythmia to cardiovascular disease, but Elvis' own personal physician has stated that Presley had no such chronic problems at the time.
Elvis' last words "Okay I won't"……
44 years ago today, Elvis left the building. Do you remember where you were when you heard the news? For those of you not old enough to remember this, when did you first learn about Elvis?
RIP Elvis. Thank you on so many levels.
The Monkees released their first single "Last Train to Clarksville" on Aug. 16, 1966. The song, which was written by the songwriting duo Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, has been compared to The Beatles's "Paperback Writer", particularly the "jangly" guitar sound, the chord structure, and the vocal harmonies. The Beatles song had been number one in the US charts three months earlier.
The lyrics tell the story of a man phoning the woman he loves, urging her to meet him at a train station in Clarksville before he must leave, possibly forever. The Vietnam War was raging at the time, and what was not made explicit was that the song was about a serviceman headed for the war zone.
It is often said that the song refers to Clarksville, Tennessee, which is close to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the home of the101st Airborne Division, which served in Vietnam. But according to songwriter Hart, it was not specifically written with that town in mind. Hart said of writing the song: "We were just looking for a name that sounded good. There's a little town in northern Arizona I used to go through in the summer on the way to Oak Creek Canyon called Clarksdale. We were throwing out names, and when we got to Clarksdale, we thought Clarksville sounded even better. We didn't know it at the time, [but] there is an Air Force base near the town of Clarksville, Tennessee — which would have fit the bill fine for the story line. We couldn't be too direct with The Monkees. We couldn't really make a protest song out of it — we kind of snuck it in."
Though "Clarksville" is in the song title, the video accompanying the song on the Monkees' TV program showed a sign pointing to "Clarkesville."
Hart got the idea for the lyrics when he turned on the radio and heard the end of The Beatles' "Paperback Writer". He thought Paul McCartney was singing "Take the last train", and decided to use the line when he found out McCartney was actually singing "Paperback Writer". Hart knew that The Monkees TV series was pitched as a music/comedy series in the spirit of The Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night, so he knew emulating The Beatles would be a winner. To do that, he made sure to put a distinctive guitar riff in this song, and wrote in the "Oh No-No-No, Oh No-No-No" lyrics as a response to The Beatles's famous "Yeah Yeah Yeah".
Happy 55th Birthday to "Last Train To Clarksville"!!! 55 years, it just doesn't seem that it is possible it was that long ago.
Were you / are you a fan of The Monkees?
"....and the 27 club began.... it's not one you want to be in but damn it has some members..."
Legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, whose songs have been recorded by the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, the Allman Brothers and many other classic rockers, died 83 years ago today at age 27. As the story goes, Robert Johnson met his end in 1938 at the bottom of strychnine-laced bottle of whiskey. He was playing a county dance in Greenwood, Mississippi, when a woman gave him a poisoned drink. In some versions, the woman is the wife of a jealous bar owner who tricks her into poisoning Johnson. In others she is his own jealous lover. Johnson’s mom recounted what she heard of her son’s poisoning to Alan Lomax: “Some wicked girl or her boyfriend had give him poison and wasn no doctor in the world could save him, so they say." Johnson's mom goes on to describe the moment of his death: "When I went in where he at, he lay'in up in bed with his guitar crost his breast. Soon’s he saw me, he say, "Mama, you all I been wait'in for." "Here," he say, and give me his guitar. "Take and hang this thing on the wall, cause I done pass all that by. That what got me messed up, Mama. It’s the devil's instrument, just like you said. And I don’t want it no more." And he died while I was hangin his guitar on the wall.
RIP to the Original Bluesman. This one of the only photographs of him that is know to exist.
THE GOAT
Led Zeppelin's frontman Robert Plant is celebrating his 73rd birthday today. Plant is regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of rock and roll and he has influenced countless other singers. In 2006, Heavy Metal magazine Hit Parader named Plant the "Greatest Metal Vocalist of All Time". In 2009, Plant was voted "the greatest voice in rock" in a poll conducted by Planet Rock. In 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him number 15 on their list of the 100 best singers of all time. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers ranked Plant the greatest of all lead singers.
Would you put Robert at the top of your list, top 5, top 20 or no mention?
Happy Birthday Mr. Plant!!!
Led Zeppelin released their eighth studio LP "In Through the Out Door" on Aug. 15, 1979. It was their final album of entirely new material. It was recorded over a three-week period in November and December 1978 at ABBA's Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. It was the last album released by the band before the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980.
The album was named by the group to describe its recent struggles amidst the death of Robert Plant's son Karac in 1977, and the taxation exile the band took from the UK. The exile resulted in the band being unable to tour on British soil for over two years, and trying to get back into the public mind was therefore like "trying to get in through the 'out' door."
In contrast to previous Led Zeppelin albums, "In Through the Out Door" had a much greater influence on the part of bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones and vocalist Robert Plant. John Paul Jones has said it was "mainly because I had a new toy. I had this big new keyboard. And Robert and I just got to rehearsals early, basically. With Zeppelin writing, if you came up with good things, and everybody agreed that they were good things, they got used. There was no formula for writing. So Robert and I, by the time everybody turned up for rehearsals, we’d written three or four songs. So we started rehearsing those immediately, because they were something to be getting on with."
Being their 8th LP, did you still have the same fondness for the band as you did when they released their first couple of LP's?
Happy 42nd Birthday to "In Through The Out Door"!!!
"…..Well I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road, and I asked him tell me where are you going and he told me…. Said I'm going down to Yasgur's farm going to join in a Rock and Roll band.."
52 years ago today, a whole bunch of people were heading to Upstate New York and many were already there.
There was a music festival starting that day.
It was a defining event for a generation. The festival came to be known simply as "Woodstock".
How many of you were a part of these people? And, how many of you wish you were a part of it?
The Woodstock Festival started 52 years ago today at 5:07 EST when Richie Havens took the stage. He played for 1 hour and 53 minutes. He played every song he knew. He wasn't suppose to be the first performer, but because of the traffic problems, the other artist were having problems getting to the site. When Ritchie ran out of songs to sing, he improvised playing an old gospel song he knew. He came up with some lyric on the spot. It became one of his signature songs "Freedom".
When Richie started playing, there were still a lot of people not there yet. Here is what the crowd was like when he was playing.
In some ways it seems like a lifetime ago and in other ways, just a couple of years ago.
How many of you were (really) there and how many of you younger people can't wait for a time machine?
At 8:15 pm, on Aug. 15, 1965, The Beatles took the stage at Shea Stadium in New York City, marking the very first time a rock band would headline a stadium concert. Tickets for the show, sold merely by word of mouth created by kids who asked the concert promoter Sid Bernstein about the next Beatles show while he strolled in Central Park. The concert sold out in just three weeks, beating the stadium's old seating record with 56,000 seats sold.
Two thousand professionals were hired for security. The concert, filmed for BBC and NBC both, also featured openers Brenda Holloway and The King Curtis Band.
The attendance record would stand until Grand Funk Railroad out did it a few years later.
On Aug. 15, 1965, New York City was the place to be for great Rock and Roll. Just 4 years later to the day, the place to be was in Upstate New York in a little place called White Lake.
How many of you were there for the first time The Beatles played Shea, 54 years ago tonight! For our younger friends, this was a really big show for the time. It was record breaking.
And just 4 years later.... Woodstock.
On Saturday, Aug. 16, 1969, The Who were scheduled to play at Woodstock. They didn't end up going onstage until about 5am on Sunday the 17th. During their performance of their rock opera Tommy, specifically, during the instrumental "Underture", activist and yippie leader Abbie Hoffman came out on stage and grabbed a microphone, and yells "I think this is a pile of shit, while John Sinclair rots in prison!" John Sinclair was a fellow activist, and had been sentenced to ten years for two marijuana joints.
Pete Townshend had no clue who Hoffman was and hit him over the head with his guitar and told him to "**** off my ****ing stage!"
We would agree with Pete that people were there for the music, not the politics. 52 years ago...
Here's the audio from what is called the 'Abbie Hoffman Incident"
During the morning of Aug. 16, 1977, while at his home, Elvis Presley grabbed the book he'd been reading, Frank Adams' The Scientific Search For The Face Of Jesus, and went into his bathroom. His then girlfriend Ginger Alden said to him "Don't fall asleep in there," because she knew he did occasionally tend to fall asleep while in there. Elvis replied "Okay, I won't." Ginger went back to sleep.
At about 1:30 in the afternoon, Ginger woke up and sees Elvis is still gone. When knocking on the bathroom door produces no reply, she enters and finds his lifeless body on the floor in front of the toilet.
Alden screams for Elvis associates Al Strada and Joe Esposito, who arrive and call the fire department. An ambulance is dispatched. Daughter Lisa Marie and father Vernon arrive in the bathroom, but Lisa Marie is quickly removed from the scene. Elvis is rushed to nearby Baptist Memorial Hospital, where, after several attempts to revive him, he dies at 3:30 pm CST. His autopsy is performed at 7:00 pm.
The official coroner's report lists "cardiac arrhythmia" as the cause of Presley's death, but this was later admitted to be a ruse entered into by the Presley family along with autopsy physicians Dr. Jerry T. Francisco, Dr. Eric Muirhead and Dr. Noel Florredo to cover up the real cause of death, a cocktail of ten prescribed drugs, taken in doses no doctor would prescribe: The painkillers Morphine and Demerol. Chloropheniramine, an antihistamine. The tranquilizers Placidyl and Vailum. Finally, four drugs were found in "significant" quantities: Codeine, an opiate, Ethinamate, largely prescribed at the time as a "sleeping pill," Quaaludes, and a barbituate, or depressant, that has never been identified. It has also been rumored that Diazepam, Amytal, Nembutal, Carbrital, Sinutab, Elavil, Avental, and Valmid were found in his system at death.
The phrase "cardiac arrhythmia," in the context of the coroner's report, means little more than a stopped heart; the report initially tried to attribute the arrhythmia to cardiovascular disease, but Elvis' own personal physician has stated that Presley had no such chronic problems at the time.
Elvis' last words "Okay I won't"……
44 years ago today, Elvis left the building. Do you remember where you were when you heard the news? For those of you not old enough to remember this, when did you first learn about Elvis?
RIP Elvis. Thank you on so many levels.
The Monkees released their first single "Last Train to Clarksville" on Aug. 16, 1966. The song, which was written by the songwriting duo Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, has been compared to The Beatles's "Paperback Writer", particularly the "jangly" guitar sound, the chord structure, and the vocal harmonies. The Beatles song had been number one in the US charts three months earlier.
The lyrics tell the story of a man phoning the woman he loves, urging her to meet him at a train station in Clarksville before he must leave, possibly forever. The Vietnam War was raging at the time, and what was not made explicit was that the song was about a serviceman headed for the war zone.
It is often said that the song refers to Clarksville, Tennessee, which is close to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the home of the101st Airborne Division, which served in Vietnam. But according to songwriter Hart, it was not specifically written with that town in mind. Hart said of writing the song: "We were just looking for a name that sounded good. There's a little town in northern Arizona I used to go through in the summer on the way to Oak Creek Canyon called Clarksdale. We were throwing out names, and when we got to Clarksdale, we thought Clarksville sounded even better. We didn't know it at the time, [but] there is an Air Force base near the town of Clarksville, Tennessee — which would have fit the bill fine for the story line. We couldn't be too direct with The Monkees. We couldn't really make a protest song out of it — we kind of snuck it in."
Though "Clarksville" is in the song title, the video accompanying the song on the Monkees' TV program showed a sign pointing to "Clarkesville."
Hart got the idea for the lyrics when he turned on the radio and heard the end of The Beatles' "Paperback Writer". He thought Paul McCartney was singing "Take the last train", and decided to use the line when he found out McCartney was actually singing "Paperback Writer". Hart knew that The Monkees TV series was pitched as a music/comedy series in the spirit of The Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night, so he knew emulating The Beatles would be a winner. To do that, he made sure to put a distinctive guitar riff in this song, and wrote in the "Oh No-No-No, Oh No-No-No" lyrics as a response to The Beatles's famous "Yeah Yeah Yeah".
Happy 55th Birthday to "Last Train To Clarksville"!!! 55 years, it just doesn't seem that it is possible it was that long ago.
Were you / are you a fan of The Monkees?
"....and the 27 club began.... it's not one you want to be in but damn it has some members..."
Legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, whose songs have been recorded by the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, the Allman Brothers and many other classic rockers, died 83 years ago today at age 27. As the story goes, Robert Johnson met his end in 1938 at the bottom of strychnine-laced bottle of whiskey. He was playing a county dance in Greenwood, Mississippi, when a woman gave him a poisoned drink. In some versions, the woman is the wife of a jealous bar owner who tricks her into poisoning Johnson. In others she is his own jealous lover. Johnson’s mom recounted what she heard of her son’s poisoning to Alan Lomax: “Some wicked girl or her boyfriend had give him poison and wasn no doctor in the world could save him, so they say." Johnson's mom goes on to describe the moment of his death: "When I went in where he at, he lay'in up in bed with his guitar crost his breast. Soon’s he saw me, he say, "Mama, you all I been wait'in for." "Here," he say, and give me his guitar. "Take and hang this thing on the wall, cause I done pass all that by. That what got me messed up, Mama. It’s the devil's instrument, just like you said. And I don’t want it no more." And he died while I was hangin his guitar on the wall.
RIP to the Original Bluesman. This one of the only photographs of him that is know to exist.
THE GOAT
Led Zeppelin's frontman Robert Plant is celebrating his 73rd birthday today. Plant is regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of rock and roll and he has influenced countless other singers. In 2006, Heavy Metal magazine Hit Parader named Plant the "Greatest Metal Vocalist of All Time". In 2009, Plant was voted "the greatest voice in rock" in a poll conducted by Planet Rock. In 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him number 15 on their list of the 100 best singers of all time. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers ranked Plant the greatest of all lead singers.
Would you put Robert at the top of your list, top 5, top 20 or no mention?
Happy Birthday Mr. Plant!!!
Led Zeppelin released their eighth studio LP "In Through the Out Door" on Aug. 15, 1979. It was their final album of entirely new material. It was recorded over a three-week period in November and December 1978 at ABBA's Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. It was the last album released by the band before the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980.
The album was named by the group to describe its recent struggles amidst the death of Robert Plant's son Karac in 1977, and the taxation exile the band took from the UK. The exile resulted in the band being unable to tour on British soil for over two years, and trying to get back into the public mind was therefore like "trying to get in through the 'out' door."
In contrast to previous Led Zeppelin albums, "In Through the Out Door" had a much greater influence on the part of bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones and vocalist Robert Plant. John Paul Jones has said it was "mainly because I had a new toy. I had this big new keyboard. And Robert and I just got to rehearsals early, basically. With Zeppelin writing, if you came up with good things, and everybody agreed that they were good things, they got used. There was no formula for writing. So Robert and I, by the time everybody turned up for rehearsals, we’d written three or four songs. So we started rehearsing those immediately, because they were something to be getting on with."
Being their 8th LP, did you still have the same fondness for the band as you did when they released their first couple of LP's?
Happy 42nd Birthday to "In Through The Out Door"!!!
