23 AUGUST
Featured Events
2008 Madonna starts her Sticky & Sweet Tour (supporting her album Hard Candy) with a show at Cardiff, Wales. Her first excursion under her Live Nation contract, it breaks the record she set on her 2006 Confessions Tour for biggest-selling tour by a solo artist: the 85 dates earn about $408 million, second only to The Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang Tour at $558 million.
2007 Brian May of Queen gets a degree from London's Imperial College. It's not one of those honorary degrees either - he earned a PhD in astrophysics. He would have gotten it sooner, but he was busy being a rock star.More
1994 Jeff Buckley's first and only album, Grace, is released to critical acclaim.More
1974 John Lennon claims to see a UFO from his New York apartment. He describes it as an archetypal flying saucer, surrounded by lights with a red one on top. In his next album, Walls and Bridges, he includes this note in the booklet: "On the 23rd August 1974 at 9 o'clock I saw a U.F.O. - J.L."
1973 With salsa music hot in New York City, the label Fania Records showcases its acts at a concert in Yankee Stadium that draws a crowd of 63,000. Willie Colón, Johnny Pacheco and Larry Harlow are among the performers.
1970 Lou Reed plays his last gig with The Velvet Underground at the club Max's Kansas City in New York. His father brings him home to Long Island and puts him to work in his accounting firm, where he stays for two years before signing a solo deal.
1963 In the UK, The Beatles release "She Loves You," which becomes the best-selling UK single of all time, a record that isn't broken until 1977, when Paul McCartney releases "Mull Of Kintyre."
23 AUGUST
In Music History
2023 The first Republican debate opens with a clip of Oliver Anthony singing "Rich Men North Of Richmond," his takedown of venal and incompetent politicians in Washington, with the candidates asked, "Why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now?" "It was funny seeing my song in the presidential debate, because I wrote that song about those people," Anthony says.
2019 Taylor Swift releases Lover, an upbeat album that stands in contrast to her previous release, the serpentine Reputation.More
2014 The Guardians Of The Galaxy soundtrack, an awesome mix of '70s hits, goes to #1 in America, where it stays for two weeks.More
2013 In an interview with AARP Magazine, Linda Ronstadt reveals she has Parkinson's disease, which ended her singing career in 2009.
2008 Erykah Badu joins My Morning Jacket during their performance in Dallas to perform her song "Tyrone."
2005 Bay City Rollers' lead singer Les McKeown is arraigned on cocaine possession and distribution charges in London. He is eventually acquitted of the intent to distribute.
2000 Kenny Loggins is awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1999 Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers marries his third wife, Patti Arnold, at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
1996 The movie She's The One, with a soundtrack by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, opens in theaters. Jennifer Aniston and Edward Burns, who star in the film, appear in the video for "Walls."
1995 Industrial/techno musician Dwayne Goettel (of Skinny Puppy) dies of a heroin overdose in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, at age 31.
1993 Testifying in court against his former Guns N' Roses bandmate Steve Adler, Duff McKagan is asked about "the spaghetti incident," referring to a time when Adler may or not have eaten McKagan's leftover pasta. The band finds this hilarious and names their next album The Spaghetti Incident.
1993 News of Michael Jackson's child molestation investigation is finally made public by the Los Angeles police.
1992 The British boy band Take That release their debut album, Take That & Party, which stays on the UK albums chart for over a year.
1991 A month before their Nevermind album is released, Nirvana wow the crowd at the Reading Festival in England with a set capped by a Kurt Cobain headlong dive into Dave Grohl's drum kit. The next year, Nirvana headline the festival.
1990 David Rose (leader of David Rose & His Orchestra) dies of natural causes in Burbank, California, at age 80.
The KLF Burn £1 Million
1994For no apparent reason the British duo The KLF burn £1 million on the Isle of Jura in Scotland.
From 1990-1992, The KLF had five huge hits in the UK, including the #1 "3 A.M. Eternal." The mercurial duo - Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty - ended their musical collaboration in 1992 but continued to work on art projects as the "K Foundation." With £1 million at their disposal from KLF earnings, they decide to make a statement by destroying the cash. With a security firm handling logistics and verifying that the money is real, Drummond and Cauty toss the bills into a fire - it takes about two hours to incinerate all the cash. The event is filmed and witnessed by the reporter Jim Reid, who writes about it in The Observer. Explaining why they did it, Drummond says, "We wanted the money, but we wanted to burn it more." In 1995, the film Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid is released, documenting the event.
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