portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Friday, May 17, 2019

ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC

1963 - Monterey Folk Festival
The first Monterey Folk Festival took place over three days in Monterey, California. The festival featured Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Peter Paul and Mary. 


Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger


Jerry Garcia (on banjo) and 'The Wildwood Boys' with Robert Hunter on bass

By 1967 Monterey Rock festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by Jimi Hendrix and The Who as well as the first major public performances of Janis Joplin. It was also the first major performance by Otis Redding in front of a predominantly white audience.
later it reached further out . . . . . . . 

1966 - Bob Dylan
During a UK tour, Bob Dylan appeared at The Free Trade Hall in Manchester. This was the concert where a member of the audience [John Cordwell] shouted out ‘Judas’ at Dylan unhappy with the singers move from acoustic to rock. Dylan replied with ‘I don't believe you. . . . . . You’re a liar’, the entire concert was eventually officially released in The Bootleg Series by Sony Music in 1999. 
This cat call annoyed me so much and not least when compared with the earlier event at Newport where Pete Seeger tried to take an axe to Bob's amplifier leads. I guess the great and the pompous folkie fascists took a while to get their house in order!? The now named heckler has now gone down in music history as one of the all time blinkered idiots for whom a wind was sure to follow . . . . . {sic}


DYLAN 'Like A Rolling Stone'  (FREE TRADE HALL-MANCHESTER 1966) ...'Judas!' from Dom McGlynn on Vimeo.

1967 - The Beatles
Working at Abbey Road studios The Beatles began recording a new John Lennon song ‘You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)’. The song was not finished until November 1969, and was not released until March 1970 (as the B-side of the ‘Let it Be’ single).

1986 - Spitting Image
Spitting Image started a three-week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'The Chicken Song.' Spitting Image had become the 'must see' Sunday night UK TV show, which mocked politicians and public figures.

..."And pretend your name is Keith!" >>sigh<<

2006 - Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney and his wife Heather Mills admitted that they had given up the fight to save their marriage, saying that after four years together, they were going their separate ways.


2008 - Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty
Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty posted a two-minute clip of themselves playing with newborn mice on Youtube. The video showed Doherty and Winehouse in a bare room, making rambling comments, picking up the mice and talking to them.


2016 - Guy Clark
American Texas country and folk singer, and brilliant songwriter Guy Clark died in Nashville following a lengthy battle with lymphoma. He wrote songs for Johnny Cash, Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jimmy Buffett, Lyle Lovett and many other artists.

Nanci and Guy sing Woody Guthrie's 'Do Re Mi'

BIRTHDAYS!

1965 - Trent Reznor
Trent Reznor, American singer-songwriter, record producer and member of Nine Inch Nails, (2005 US No.1 album 'White Teeth'). He and his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, are members of the post-industrial group How to Destroy Angels. Reznor with Atticus Ross scored the David Fincher films The Social Network (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and Gone Girl (2014), winning the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Social Network and the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Reznor also became one of the more interesting collaborators with David Bowie and the interview here is worth checking out







1961 - Enya
Enya Ni Bhraonain, from Irish family band Clannad who had the 1982 UK No.5 single 'Harry's Game'. Enya had the solo, 1988 UK No.1 single 'Orinoco Flow', and the 2001 US No.2 album 'A Day Without Rain'. Enya is Ireland's biggest selling solo artist and second overall behind U2 with an estimated 75 million records sold worldwide. I bought quite a few Enya albums and I genuinely liked her work from singing with Clannad on theme tune Harry's Game on to her own solo work and believe her to be a pioneer of trance music and taking a road from Eno's ambient ethos. Something of a running gag now people decry her work. I still like it ( I am loyal to a fault|)!



1944 - Jesse Winchester
Jesse Winchester, Canadian folk singer, songwriter. His songs have been covered by many artists including Patti Page, Elvis Costello, Jimmy Buffett, Joan Baez, Anne Murray, Reba McEntire, The Everly Brothers and Emmylou Harris. He died on April 11, 2014.
UPDATE:
Sorry needed to post some Jesse . . . . . I loved his laid back JJ Cale style and his songs from Third Down 110 To Go


I first heard somebody cover a Winchester classic in the Tommy Lee Jones film about the murderer Gary Gilmore a 1982 made-for-television Lawrence Schiller directed film adaptation of Norman Mailer's 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name,  'The Executioners Song' with 'Defying Gravity' and I dearly love that song . . . and searched for it for ages after seeing the film and it remains one of my favourite songs of all time . . . . . . 



1942 - Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal, US multi-instrumentalist, composer of film soundtracks. In the early 60s he formed The Rising Sons with Ry Cooder, one of the first interracial bands of the period. Mahal has worked with Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, Lightnin' Hopkins, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm of The Band, and Muddy Waters. Taj holds a unique position in music history and whilst centred in the blues is like Cooder something of an iconoclast and ploughs his own furrow. Who else in the multi-instrumentalist blues field can feature a conch?




Music for the Day features the incomparable mixer Mr Taj Mahal and Mr Toots Hibbert!

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