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This one fell right into my lap. I wasn't even looking for it . . .
50 years ago today, August 1st, 1971, George Harrison and Ravi Shankar held the Concert For Bangladesh, raising millions for emergency relief efforts in the Southeast Asian country and beginning a legacy of giving that continues to this day with UNICEF.
Well, I am a day late, but according to I Love It Loud! Today in Rock n Roll History
January 23, 1988: A band called Nirvana recorded a ten song demo tape at the Reciprocal Recording studio in Seattle, with Jack Endino producing. The head honcho at a small, indy label called Sub Pop Records would hear the demo and offered to put out a Nirvana single, which would be band’s debut release, “Love Buzz." It would be released in November 1988.
The Beatles scored their first No.1 best seller in the US when 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' reached the top of the Cash Box Magazine music chart. The Fab Four would eventually rack up 25 No.1's in America.
The Beatles assemble in a recording studio in Paris to cut a German-language version of I Want To Hold Your Hand, which had recently been dominating the charts all over the world. Though they all knew some German from playing in Hamburg, they had to bring in a translator to get the German lyrics rights. The b-side was She Loves You (in German).
As a single Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand would go to #1 in West Germany, while Sie Liebt Dich would also then be released itself as an a-side, peaking at #7 (and, curiously, at #97 in the U.S.).
22 year old Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, aged 17, died in a crash shortly after take-off from Clear Lake, Iowa, the pilot of the single-engined Beechcraft Bonanza plane was also killed. Holly hired the plane after heating problems developed on his tour bus. All three were travelling to Fargo, North Dakota, for the next show on their Winter Dance Party Tour which Holly had set - covering 24 cities in three weeks, to make money after the break-up of his band, The Crickets, last year.
Exactly 50 Years Ago this was the Billboard #1 record about that:
KMET was a Los Angeles FM radio station owned by Metromedia (hence the "MET" in its call sign) that broadcast at 94.7 MHz, beginning in June 1968. KMET was a member of a group of progressive-rock stations that emerged across the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s, along with KSAN, WNEW-FM in New York City, WMMR in Philadelphia, WBCN in Boston, WMMS in Cleveland, and KQRS-FM in Minneapolis.
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The 1978 movie FM, written by former employee Ezra Sacks, was reportedly loosely based on KMET. The lead character was based around Mike Herrington, the program director for much of the era preceding the film. Much of the history of KMET is documented in Jim Ladd's book Radio Waves, where the station is referred to as Radio KAOS and many of the DJs are given pseudonyms. Arguably, 1978 was the pinnacle year at the station. The line-up was impressive. Jeff Gonzer, Bob Coburn, Cynthia Fox, Jack Snyder, Mary Turner, and Jim Ladd. Ace Young and Patrick 'Paraquat' Kelley provided the breaking news and views of the day.
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The progressive format thrived on KMET throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, at one time becoming one of the most successful FM stations in the country. But changing trends in music, culture and society, and the advent of strict formatting in radio eventually turned KMET into a relic. The station experienced staff turnover, radio consultants, tight playlists and an increasingly-impersonal approach typical of the more mainstream album oriented rock format. It signed off on February 14, 1987. The station, nicknamed "The Mighty Met" (among other nicknames), was a pioneering station of the "underground" progressive rock format.
I remember that one! I was newly stationed in the High Desert and while KMET could not be picked up in that area, I did get the Sunday LA Times, and the entertainment section, which had listings to all of the clubs and the bands playing them, had a full-page article about the demise of The Mighty Met.
This Dokken video, circa 1985, was made in LA and features a couple references to KMET and KNAC (but no KROQ or KLOS, the only station I could get in the High Desert besides KCAL which was in San Bernardino). It's an interesting look back at mid-80s SoCal and some now-defunct retailers (Tower Records, J.J. Newberry, et al).
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