11 AUGUST
Featured Events
1995 Dangerous Minds, starring Michelle Pfeiffer as an inner-city schoolteacher, debuts in US theaters. The movie's soundtrack tops the Billboard albums chart thanks to its lead single, Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise."
1986 The Monkees, on a reunion tour, have an amazing six albums on the Billboard 200. The highest is The Monkees at #92.
1980 Johnny Cash sings a duet of "Jackson" with Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show. He also gets under the fur of Rowlf the dog with his song "Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog."
1973 The first big oldies revival kicks off in earnest as George Lucas' new film, American Graffiti, opens in theaters. Set in 1962, the film creates a wave of nostalgia for songs from the '50s and early '60s.More
1973 At a dance party in the Bronx, DJ Kool Herc plays a set with lots of instrumental breaks that his friend MCs over, marking what many consider the beginning of hip-hop.More
1964 With Beatlemania at a fever pitch, the group's first movie, A Hard Day's Night, debuts in America.More
11 AUGUST
In Music History
2023 The Hip Hop 50 Live concert goes down at Yankee Stadium, celebrating 50 years since Kool Herc birthed the genre in the Bronx. Performers include Snoop Dogg, The Sugarhill Gang, Lauryn Hill, and Run-D.M.C. in their last performance.
2016 For the second year, President Obama releases two summer playlists on Spotify. It's his last year in office, which might be why "So Very Hard To Go" is on the list.More
2012 Geto Boys reunite at the 12th annual Gathering Of The Juggalos.
2011 Go-Go's receive the 2,444th star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. It is located where the legendary punk club The Masque used to stand. Go-Go's frequently played this club during their early years.
2011 Warrant lead singer Jani Lane dies at age 47 after a long battle with drug and alcohol addiction.
2009 Train get back on track, releasing "Hey Soul Sister," their first hit since "Calling All Angels" in 2003. It becomes the top-selling song of 2010 on iTunes.
2009 Lady Antebellum release "Need You Now," a song about drunk dialing. A huge crossover hit, it goes to #1 on the Country chart, #2 on the Hot 100, and sells 9 million digital downloads.
2008 Noah and the Whale debut Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down is released on the Mercury/Vertigo label. Laura Marling, who was a member of the band at the time of recording but soon left to focus on her solo career, is featured as a vocalist on the album. Fellow Indie-Folk artist Emmy the Great also contributes vocals to the album.
2008 The Canadian singer Feist appears on Sesame Street, where she turns her song "1234" into a lesson in counting. It becomes one of the most popular music segments on the show, and far more popular than the original.
2006 Singer/talk show host Mike Douglas dies suddenly on his 86th birthday after a bout of dehydration in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
2004 Vanessa Williams and her basketball-player husband Rick Fox get divorced.
2003 Phish bass player Mike Gordon is arrested backstage at a Grateful Dead concert in Jones Beach after he is found taking photos of a 9-year-old girl. He is later cleared of the charges, and the girl's parents agree that it was an "unfortunate misunderstanding."
2000 Madonna gives birth to her second child, Rocco. The father is Guy Ritchie, director of the films Snatch and Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.
1999 Kiss are awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1997 Backstreet Boys release their second album, Backstreet's Back, in international markets. It tops the charts in several countries, including Canada, Spain and Germany. In America, some of the songs appear on their next album, Millennium, in 1999.
Keith Moon Shows His Dark Side In A Moment Of Lunacy
1976Keith Moon trashes a hotel room - no surprise there. But this time The Who drummer is hospitalized after beating up his room at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami.
Keith Moon has exhibited destructive tendencies since the early days of The Who, when in response to Pete Townshend smashing a guitar, he kicked over his drum kit to the delight of the crowd - a stunt that has become a signature of the band's raucous sets that they end with what they call "auto-destructive art." He even went so far in 1967 as to load his bass drum with gunpowder for a TV appearance - an event later featured as the opening to the 1979 movie The Kids Are Alright. That particular stunt was not repeated after it ended with Pete Townshend's hair on fire and Moon with a piece of cymbal protruding from his arm. The carnage is not restricted to stage shows, and Moon has also become (in)famous for destroying hotel rooms. His first time was in Germany in 1966, and the bills have racked up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last decade. This time the errant drummer comes off the worse and ends up in the Hollywood Memorial Hospital, Florida, taken away by ambulance after drunkenly destroying his room and then collapsing for the second time in five months. Moon is released from the hospital a week later and flies to Malibu to recuperate in the new house he is building. Before doing so, he tells local DJ Dave Ryder, "I don't really remember much about it. I felt dizzy... and I just blacked out." Medical staff describe his condition as a breakdown caused by overwork and pressure. The hard-living star has long suffered from alcohol addiction, resulting in increasingly erratic behaviour both on and off stage. The only reason he has not been fired from The Who is because his bandmates are concerned that doing so may finally tip him over the edge. Despite repeated attempts to sober up, his hell raising continues until 1978 when he dies after overdosing on the very drugs he is prescribed to wean him off drink. Photo from the album The Who Sell Out
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