In 1977, Fleetwood Mac's iconic single "Dreams" made it to #1 on the US singles chart. Despite having a multi-platinum selling album, "Dreams" was their first and only US #1 on The Billboard Hot 100. You can now get a copy of RUMOURS DELUXE EDITION here.
On this day in 1966, Percy Sledge and Frank Sinatra took over the top 5 UK Singles chart with "When A Man Loves A Woman" and "Strangers In The Night" respectively. Here is Frank Sinatra with his #1 hit "Strangers In The Night."
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.
With the invention of multi-song collections (back c. 1910 or so), the term “album” came to be used in the record business. Albums would have a front and back cover, and sleeves to hold individual discs inside those covers. For longer-concept music (like half an hour of ...) on disc, albums came to be the thing.
Those inside-front cover, inside-rear cover, and rear cover albums – all had room for printed stuff. The inside of a cover was known as a “liner,” undoubtedly because it was like a jacket, inside or “liner” there, too. In fact, record albums themselves soon became known as “jackets.” Whether the record industry owed anything to the clothing industry is doubtful, but I just thought that, if you’ve read this far, you should have learned something.
Thank you.
On this day in 1965, The Kinks played for a U.S. audience for the first time at the Academy of Music in New York City. Here they are that same year performing "All Day And All Of The Night" for ABC's TV show, Shindig!
“Reckoning was a chance to turn up the volume, tear up the rule book, and instead capture R.E.M.’s on-stage mojo.” – Don Dixon (producer, Reckoning)
My relationship with Reckoning began roughly 23 years ago via a dubbed cassette copy I recorded off my friend’s older brother’s vinyl LP. The flip side of the tape was Lifes Rich Pageant.I still have the cassette, the sleeve’s paper yellowed and stained, with the track titles written in the hand of a 13 year old boy. The red ink is a bit smeared and runs in places, and the cassette itself sounds a bit warped and thin. It is seasoned in the way only an album that has been played hundreds of times, in hundreds of places, can be. To say that my “getting into” R.E.M. at the beginning of my teenage years was revelatory would be an understatement. This was, after all, the late eighties in suburban Atlanta. Prior to this my musical diet primarily consisted of my parents record collection, whatever was on the radio, some Guns ‘n Roses (Appetite), Beastie Boys (Licensed To Ill), Run DMC (King of Rock) and select bargain bin finds like Zeppelin, and other ‘classic rock’ staples. Looking back, IRS Records-era R.E.M. was an absolute gateway band. It wasn’t long before my tastes expanded and I ditched the music of my parent’s generation (well, for a few years anyway) quickly getting my hands on everything I could find by the Pixies, Smiths, Devo, the Cure, and Violent Femmes. The majority of this purloined by said friend’s older brother’s collection and dubbed to cassette.
Aretha Franklin's ARETHA NOW is 45 years old today. Among the songs immortalized by the Queen of Soul on that album is “You Send Me.”
