01/24/2025
ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY: 1.24
1969 - New Jersey state prosecutors issue a warning to US record dealers that they would be charged with distributing po*******hy if they were caught selling the John Lennon / Yoko Ono LP 'Two Virgins'. The front cover of the album showed the pair frontally n**e, while the back cover showed them from behind.
1970 - Dr. Robert Moog unveils the "minimoog" synthesizer, one of the first portable synth keyboards, at a price of $2,000. The American Federation of Musicians at first opposes the instrument, fearing its "realistic" settings will put horn and string sections out of work. The minimoog becomes the first synth to go on tour with rock bands.
The Beatles, the Doors, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, were among early adopters to the technology, and in the ‘70s the Moog accented music from Pink Floyd, Donna Summer, Parliament, Heart, Yes, Tangerine Dream, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, ABBA, and Giorgio Moroder. As time has passed Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Nine Inch Nails, Portishead, and many others have used Moog’s products.
Songs that have a moog in them:
Kraftwerk - Autobahn
Parliament - Flashlight
Wilco - A Shot In The Arm
Air - S*xy Boy
Donna Summer - I Feel Love
Heart - Magic Man
Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Lucky Man
Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here
Lipps, Inc.- Funkytown
The Beatles - Here Comes the Sun
1972 - Aretha Franklin released Young, Gifted and Black. It's nearly impossible to single out any of Aretha Franklin's early-'70s albums for Atlantic as being her best, but Young, Gifted and Black certainly ranks highly among her studio efforts, with many arguing that it may be her greatest. And with songs like "Rock Steady," that may be a valid argument. But there's much more here than just a few highlights. If you really want to go song by song, you'd be hard-pressed to find any throwaways here -- this is quite honestly an album that merits play from beginning to end.
Franklin was in her prime here, not only in terms of voice but also in terms of confidence -- you can just feel her exuding her status as the best of the best. Furthermore, her ensemble of musicians (Billy Preston, Dr. John, Donny Hathaway, Hugh McCracken) competes with any that she had worked with on previous albums. So even if this isn't the greatest Aretha Franklin album of the early '70s, it's certainly a contender, the sort of album that you can't go wrong with.
1979 - The Clash released their first single in the U.S. with "I Fought The Law" (written by Sonny Curtis of Buddy Holly's Crickets, later popularized in a version by the Bobby Fuller Four). Joe Strummer and Mick Jones were inspired to learn the song after hearing the Bobby Fuller version on a jukebox owned by a San Francisco recording studio where they had been recording overdubs for their second album. This cover version helped gain the Clash their first taste of airplay in the States and is one of the best-known cover versions of the song.
2005 - LCD Soundsystem released their self-titled debut album. Main man James Murphy throws it all against the wall here: Acid house, post-punk, garage rock, psychedelic pop, and at least a dozen other things factor into his songs, and he's not afraid to be obvious. This is someone who clearly owns tons of records and cannot escape them when making his own music. Murphy's songs cough up references from his subconscious or are put together as if he's thinking more like a DJ, finding ways to combine elements from disparate sources, from John Lennon to Brian Eno, Gang Of Four to PiL. Highlights: Daft Punk Is Playing at My House, Beat Connection, and Losing My Edge. (Photo by ALAIN JOCARD/AFP via Getty Images)
2011 - Adele releases 21. If the tastefully organic production and overabundance of well-known co-writers come off a bit too on-the-nose in terms of delivering to fan expectations, then the best thing the album does is to showcase Adele's titanic vocal ability, which -- more than a few times on 21 -- is simply spine-tingling.
Adele immediately injects us with the propulsive gospel fever-blues anthem "Rolling in the Deep." While the track certainly owes a heavy debt to the punk-blues of Beth Ditto and the Gossip, it is also ridiculously sexy and one of the best singles of any decade -- and, unfortunately, completely sets the bar way too high for everything else on 21. Which isn't to say that 21 is bad; on the contrary, tracks like the similarly blues-inflected Ryan Tedder co-write "Rumour Has It" and the old-school-style soul cut "He Won't Go" are terrifically catchy, booty-shaking numbers, and exactly the kind of songs you want and expect from Adele. That said, if Adele's voice goes on forever here, so apparently does her appetite for bad relationship mojo. Over the course of the album, the insistence of track after track of heartbreak can get a bit alienating, although Someone like You is a stellar cut on the set. Ultimately, however, Adele does give us her all on 21.
Birthdays:
Aaron Neville is 84. Blessed with a voice that's smooth as silk, and strong despite his emphasis on his higher register, Aaron Neville is one of the most distinctive R&B artists of his generation, a legend of New Orleans music who went on to become a star in pop, country, and adult contemporary circles thanks to his collaborations with the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Trisha Yearwood.
As Bob Dylan said: "He's the most soulful of singers, maybe in all of recorded history. If angels sing, they must sing in that voice. I just think his gift is so great. The man has no flaws, never has".
Warren Zevon was born today in 1947. Few of rock & roll's great misanthropes were as talented, as charming, or as committed to their cynicism as Warren Zevon. A singer and songwriter whose music often dealt with outlaws, mercenaries, sociopaths, and villains of all stripes, Zevon's lyrics displayed a keen and ready wit despite their often uncomfortable narrative circumstances, and while he could write of love and gentler emotions, he did so with the firm conviction that such stories rarely end happily. Though he frequently worked with luminaries of the Los Angeles soft rock scene, Zevon was always the odd man out, someone who shared their exacting musical standards but not their smugly satisfied view of the world around them, and he remained a cheerful pessimist right up to the moment he met a fate that could have visited one of his own characters.
Blues Brother John Belushi was born today in 1949. Although John Belushi was best known as a TV and movie actor, he enjoyed quite a bit of success late in his tragic career as one half of the blues revival act the Blues Brothers.
He started at with Chicago's famed Second City Comedy Troupe. One of his best bits showcased his vocal skills, as he could do a show-stopping, dead-on impersonation of the great Joe Cocker (both visually and sonically). By 1972, the buzz surrounding Belushi's talents had began to spread, as he was offered a job with National Lampoon's Lemmings and syndicated Radio Hour.
From there he moved to Saturday Night Live. Early in the show, Belushi and Dan Aykroyd would perform as a "warm-up" band for the waiting audience (backed by the SNL band), doing blues and R&B nuggets. This bit soon made its way to the air as the Blues Brothers, as the pair assumed the alter identities Elwood (Aykroyd) and Jake (Belushi), as they dressed in black suites and dark sunglasses, backed by a fantastic group that included former Booker T & the M.G.'s guitarist Steve "the Colonel" Cropper and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, among others.
Belushi's fame spread even further in 1978, when he starred as the party animal character Bluto in the comedy classic motion picture, Animal House. At the same time that Animal House hit number one at the box office, Saturday Night Live was also the number one show on TV, and the Blues Brothers' debut album, Briefcase Full of Blues, hit number one on the Billboard album charts.
R.I.P.:
2017 - Drummer Butch Trucks from The Allman Brothers Band died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at the age of 69.
Alongside drummer and percussionist Jai “Jaimoe” Johnny Johanson, Trucks helped lay the swinging foundation for southern-rock drumming.
“Jaimoe was a real good drummer, but more of a pocket guy … he wasn’t really able to handle the power,” Allman Brothers guitarist Dicky Betts said. “We needed Butch, who had that drive and strength, freight train, meat-and-potatoes thing. It set Jaimoe up perfectly.”
2018 - Mark E. Smith from Manchester post-punk band The Fall died aged 60 after a long illness with lung and kidney cancer. Smith formed the Fall in 1976 and was the only constant member of the band. Their unmistakably unique style generally avoided conventional song structures, instead preferring free-form prose ranted over raucous, primitive rhythms inspired by garage rock, Krautrock, dub, and other styles, with common ground being hypnotic repetition.
Smith was known for his tempestuous relationship with his bandmates, and frequently fired them - there were 66 different members over the years.
On This Day In Music History was sourced, curated, copied, pasted, edited, and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose from, This Day in Music, Paste, Allmusic, Paste, Song Facts,
Rolling Stone, and Wikipedia.
