53 years ago today, the cast of Oliver! performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, giving a young up-and-comer named Davy Jones his first opportunity to shine on American TV.
Oh, right, and the Beatles played, too.
Last week was no fluke. Dr. Rhino is all about the alphabet! This week it’s the killer B’s…
ABOUT DR. RHINO
40 years ago today, one of the defining bands of the New York punk scene released their debut album.
When the band Television originally formed in 1973, the lineup consisted of Tom Verlaine (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Richard Lloyd (guitar, vocals), Richard Hell (vocals, bass), and Billy Ficca (drums), and the performances by the original foursome quickly made them NYC music legends, but it took them some time to successfully make the jump from the concert stage to the recording studio. An attempt to record demos for Island Records in 1974 with Brian Eno producing the band didn’t pan out –Verlaine has described Eno’s recordings of the band as “very cold and brittle,” with “no resonance” – and when Hell bid the band adieu in 1975, it was a little touch-and-go as to whether Television would ever deliver a debut album.
50 years ago today (or possibly yesterday, given the time zone difference between the US and the UK), a Monkee met a Beatle and – during the course of the trip – experienced an evening which led to the germination of a controversial Monkees song.
If you’re slightly startled at the news that there actually was a controversial Monkees song, then you must not be from the UK, as that’s where the song was deemed to be controversial. Rather than head straight down the path to that story, however, we’re going to take a slightly winding road to get there.
38 years ago today, Stephen Stills entered the Record Plant studio in Los Angeles and started recording the first major-label album using all digital equipment…and we’re still waiting to hear it.
In fact, Stills was actually the first major-label American artist to record using digital recording and mastering equipment, period. Using a 3M system which was installed with the intention of replacing the existing analog system, engineer Michael Braunstein first recorded Stills and the California Blues Band performing a new take on Stills’ song “Cherokee,” which appeared on his self-titled debut album. With that, history was made, and it continued as Stills moved forward with the work on what was intended to be his next record for CBS, following his 1978 effort THOROUGHFARE GAP, which the label had not entirely loved.
10 years ago today, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London opened an exhibit devoted solely to a single pop star: Kylie Minogue.
Vicky Broakes, chief of exhibitions for the museum, was the one who opted to pay tribute to Minogue, an artist who – despite her comparatively limited success in the States – remains as massive now as she was when she broke through with her cover of “The Loco-Motion” in the late ‘80s. "She is the only star apart from Madonna to have had number one hits in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s," said Broakes, in an interview with Reuters at the time.
