Happy 53rd birthday to Morrissey! A couple of months back the singer played an intimate gig at Hollywood High School. We didn't make it in (but fortunately someone with a camera did), and Morrissey performed a few Smiths songs, including “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.”
Have we got the songs? Is a frog’s ass watertight?!? Yes and yes. Gather round the ol’ listenin’ post and hear Judy Collins, Joy Division, Emmylou Harris, Frank Sinatra and a few words from the late, great Ray Manzarek.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.
Mo Ostin kept at his job as head of Warner Bros. Records. His job: keep open to emerging acts, no matter how-where-what-which-huh? He’d experienced much. Then, in 1977, he heard the weirdest of all. All the way from London.
Over there, a thrown-together “group” (really just four street lads) got named “The Sex Pistols.” The group kept showing up in the trade papers. They’d get a label contract half-signed, then fully rejected. No real album had so far come out, and no real deal for North America ever existed, either. And the news coverage made the group sound, as they say in Burbank, fairly fart-y.
For instance, the Sex Pistols’ album title was going to be titled “Never Mind the Bollocks.” Well, in Burbank, the word “bollocks” meant nothing. Not so in England.
The Sex Pistols had been assembled and named by a London entrepreneur named Malcolm McLaren, who’d opened a clothing store based on astonishing attitudes. For him, the music meant little, the publicity meant all. “Bollocks” had gotten attention right off.
This day in 1982, The Hacienda Club in Machester England, open its doors for the first time to the public. Madonna made her first UK TV debut at the venue. It was also home for many artists such as The Smiths, Happy Mondays and U2. Here is Madonna performing "Holiday" at The Hacienda Club.
Happy Birthday to the bass guitar player from The Kinks, John Dalton. Enjoy their classic video and let us celebrate in this special "Sunny Afternoon":
Happy 67th birthday to Cher! Let's celebrate the occasion with her smash single, "If I Could Turn Back Time."
