1963 - It was the sixties, the Merseybeat, The Beatles, swinging London, the mini skirt, pirate radio stations, and pop music TV shows such as Ready Steady Go, which premiered on the BBC in London this very night - and look who appeared?
1964 - Bob Dylan and Joan Baez performed on stage, publicly, together for the first time. The relationship between Baez and Dylan aroused much public interest at the time, and it appears a bitter bust-up of the couple fired it up even more in people's imaginations. Baez has since detailed how Dylan rejected the openly political role she wanted him to play - which she herself played out to such a life-defining degree - and how now she would never have insisted on that. How about Joanie doing Bobby…or as she says, Dylan doing Joan doing Dylan. Following that, how about this little gem posted by youtuber Catloud.
1978 - It is now 33 years since blues legend Muddy Waters performed at a White House picnic for American President Jimmy Carter. Three years later, in 1981, the undisputed king of Chicago blues headlined ChicagoFest, which was the 'windy city's' top outdoor music festival at the time. Waters headlined for two nights, his loyal subjects mobbing Navy Pier on the lakefront to hear one of the greatest blues innovators. Waters had led the charge in the late 1940s and early '50s to electrify Delta blues in an urban setting, and his peerless combo included such future stars as guitar bluesman Jimmy Rogers, harmonica virtuoso Little Walter and piano wizard Otis Spann. His gruff, authoritative vocal delivery and slashing slide guitar define the purest form
of postwar Chicago blues. Waters' charisma was as immense as his electrical vision for blues music.
1980 - Never a more sad song, never a more sad story as to its creation, sung by one of the best female singers in pop history, The Winner Takes It All, by Abba, hit #1 on the charts today in the UK, and then around the world in the following weeks. The gorgeous Agnetha Fältskogwe sang lead on this song, written by her husband Björn Ulvaeus & Benny Andersson. However, Ulvaeus denies the song was about their divorce, saying the basis of the song "is the experience of a divorce, but it's fiction. There wasn't a winner or a loser in our case. A lot of people think it's straight out of reality, but it's not".
2005 - This was the day The Magic Numbers walked out of an appearance on UK music show Top of the Pops after presenter Richard Bacon said the band had been put in a “fat melting pot of talent.” The band left the studio in protest at the “derogatory, unfunny remarks”. Whatever happened to the Magic Numbers.
2006 - Shakira played at the Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas, tonight, the first date on the North American leg of her 99-date Oral Fixation world tour. The singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, dancer, and philanthropist emerged in the music scene of Latin America in the early 1990s, having been born in Barranquilla, Colombia. Shakira revealed many of her talents in school as a live performer, demonstrating her vocal ability with rock and roll, Latin and Middle Eastern influences, and with her own original twist on belly dancing. She is a native Spanish speaker and also speaks fluent English and Portuguese as well as some Italian, French and Arabic. Not a bad singer, either - and a hip shaker supreme.
2007 - It's four years to the day since London singer Amy Winehouse cancelled a series of European shows after being admitted to hospital suffering from “severe exhaustion”. The 23-year-old singer was taken to University College London Hospital and later discharged. In the previous few weeks she had pulled out of the T in the Park festival - also citing exhaustion Liverpool’s Summer Pops event, and concerts in Norway and Denmark. But before that, she appeared on the Jools Holland Show, in London. Exactly one year gap, I wrote, of Amy: "Amy comes from a long line of tragic femme singers. Blues to the core, beautiful singers, sexy as hell, but, oh, so tragic. I love her to death and hope to hell she recovers from her inner demons." That was 12 months ago. Sadly, Amy did not escape her demons. RIP Amy Winehouse.
1964 - Bob Dylan and Joan Baez performed on stage, publicly, together for the first time. The relationship between Baez and Dylan aroused much public interest at the time, and it appears a bitter bust-up of the couple fired it up even more in people's imaginations. Baez has since detailed how Dylan rejected the openly political role she wanted him to play - which she herself played out to such a life-defining degree - and how now she would never have insisted on that. How about Joanie doing Bobby…or as she says, Dylan doing Joan doing Dylan. Following that, how about this little gem posted by youtuber Catloud.
1978 - It is now 33 years since blues legend Muddy Waters performed at a White House picnic for American President Jimmy Carter. Three years later, in 1981, the undisputed king of Chicago blues headlined ChicagoFest, which was the 'windy city's' top outdoor music festival at the time. Waters headlined for two nights, his loyal subjects mobbing Navy Pier on the lakefront to hear one of the greatest blues innovators. Waters had led the charge in the late 1940s and early '50s to electrify Delta blues in an urban setting, and his peerless combo included such future stars as guitar bluesman Jimmy Rogers, harmonica virtuoso Little Walter and piano wizard Otis Spann. His gruff, authoritative vocal delivery and slashing slide guitar define the purest form
of postwar Chicago blues. Waters' charisma was as immense as his electrical vision for blues music.
1980 - Never a more sad song, never a more sad story as to its creation, sung by one of the best female singers in pop history, The Winner Takes It All, by Abba, hit #1 on the charts today in the UK, and then around the world in the following weeks. The gorgeous Agnetha Fältskogwe sang lead on this song, written by her husband Björn Ulvaeus & Benny Andersson. However, Ulvaeus denies the song was about their divorce, saying the basis of the song "is the experience of a divorce, but it's fiction. There wasn't a winner or a loser in our case. A lot of people think it's straight out of reality, but it's not".
2005 - This was the day The Magic Numbers walked out of an appearance on UK music show Top of the Pops after presenter Richard Bacon said the band had been put in a “fat melting pot of talent.” The band left the studio in protest at the “derogatory, unfunny remarks”. Whatever happened to the Magic Numbers.
2006 - Shakira played at the Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas, tonight, the first date on the North American leg of her 99-date Oral Fixation world tour. The singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, dancer, and philanthropist emerged in the music scene of Latin America in the early 1990s, having been born in Barranquilla, Colombia. Shakira revealed many of her talents in school as a live performer, demonstrating her vocal ability with rock and roll, Latin and Middle Eastern influences, and with her own original twist on belly dancing. She is a native Spanish speaker and also speaks fluent English and Portuguese as well as some Italian, French and Arabic. Not a bad singer, either - and a hip shaker supreme.
2007 - It's four years to the day since London singer Amy Winehouse cancelled a series of European shows after being admitted to hospital suffering from “severe exhaustion”. The 23-year-old singer was taken to University College London Hospital and later discharged. In the previous few weeks she had pulled out of the T in the Park festival - also citing exhaustion Liverpool’s Summer Pops event, and concerts in Norway and Denmark. But before that, she appeared on the Jools Holland Show, in London. Exactly one year gap, I wrote, of Amy: "Amy comes from a long line of tragic femme singers. Blues to the core, beautiful singers, sexy as hell, but, oh, so tragic. I love her to death and hope to hell she recovers from her inner demons." That was 12 months ago. Sadly, Amy did not escape her demons. RIP Amy Winehouse.
