On This Day..
1964 Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel recorded ‘The Sounds Of Silence’ as an acoustic duo. It wasn’t until record company producers added electric guitar, bass and drums, without the knowledge of Paul and Art, that the song would become a hit in late 1965.
1973 Pink Floyd released their eighth studio album The Dark Side of The Moon in the US. It remained in the US charts for 741 discontinuous weeks from 1973 to 1988, longer than any other album in history. After moving to the Billboard Top Pop Catalog Chart, the album notched up a further 759 weeks, and had reached a total of over 1,500 weeks on the combined charts by May 2006. With an estimated 45 million copies sold, it is Pink Floyd’s most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums worldwide.
1979 Gloria Gaynor started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with “I Will Survive.” The song was originally released as the B-side to a song first recorded by The Righteous Brothers called “Substitute.”
2003 During a concert in London, England, Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines said that the band was “ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas” (referring to Maines’ hometown of Lubbock and President Bush hailing from the same state). This was during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the comment sparked intense controversy and outrage among Americans, including a large share of country music fans.
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Brand New Music
Valerie June | The Order of Time
A master blender of genres and feel, Valerie June has again sprung up from the ground beneath us to present something so individually folk, country, blues, R&B and brilliant. With Order of Time this Tennessean displays her prowess as a song writer, but also her ability to conceptualize a record that is rich in background and stylistic regional influences.
The Magnetic Fields | 50 Song Memoir
It’s easy to be disappointed with this album. Obviously because there are far less than the 69 tracks offered in 69 Love Songs. Although, other than this shortcoming, there’s a lot of creativity on display as Stephin Merritt plays a sort of musical dress-up game by grabbing over 100 different instruments to play. As his distinctive baritone keeps the attitude, at the very least, melodically memorable, the instrumental work here is a statement of an absolutely boisterous mental state, which makes the whole thing a blast to listen to.
Laura Marling | Semper Femina
When discussing something like feminism, or basing your entire new record on it, one can fall into the trap of hiding behind over-familiar observations or well used characters instead of offering something personal and honest. Semper Femina does not suffer from this. Few songwriters, especially some body still working through their 20s, have the ability to so clearly state and illustrate such a complex idea with this degree of insight. While still approaching her own womanhood and female relationships from various angles and distances, she seems to always offer an intimate and personal viewpoint.
