4 FEBRUARY
Featured Events
2012 About 100 dancers participate in a Soul Train-style line dance in Times Square as a tribute to the recently deceased founder of the show, Don Cornelius.
2012 Adele becomes the first female British artist to have three #1 songs from the same album top the Billboard Hot 100 chart when "Set Fire to the Rain" hits the top spot, following "Rolling In The Deep" and "Someone Like You" from the album 21.
2007 Prince wows at the Super Bowl halftime show, closing with an otherworldly rendition of "Purple Rain" in the rain.More
1998 Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford comes out as gay in an interview with MTV. "I feel this is the moment to discuss it," he says. "A lot of homophobia still exists in the music world."
1983 Karen Carpenter of the Carpenters dies at age 32 of complications from anorexia.
1980 The Ramones release their fifth album, End of the Century, produced by Phil Spector. Dee Dee Ramone claims Spector pulled a gun on him during the sessions.More
1978 The Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive," which features in the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever, hits #1 in the US and stays there for four weeks.
1977 Fleetwood Mac release their landmark album Rumours. The LP sets a record for most weeks at #1 with 31, and becomes one of the best-selling albums of all time, with worldwide sales estimated at about 40 million.More
1974 The Stooges play a bar in Wayne, Michigan, where a biker gang called The Scorpions is initiating a new member by having him hurl eggs at lead singer Iggy Pop, who responds by going into the crowd to fight him.More
4 FEBRUARY
In Music History
2024 Taylor Swift wins the Album Of The Year Grammy for Midnights, making her the first artist to win that award four times. Miley Cyrus gets Record Of The Year for "Flowers" and Billie Eilish takes Song Of The Year for "What Was I Made For?" from the movie Barbie.
2017 Black Sabbath play the final concert of their farewell tour at the Genting Arena in their English home city of Birmingham. Their final song of the night, "Paranoid," is streamed live on Facebook so fans around the world can witness the historic moment onstage.
2016 Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White dies at age 74 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.
2015 Post Malone, 19, uploads a demo of his song "White Iverson" on SoundCloud. It takes off, landing him a record deal and launching his career.
2013 Jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd (of The Blackbyrds) dies at age 80.
2013 R&B singer Darlene McCrea (of The Cookies) dies.
2013 Reg Presley (lead singer The Troggs) dies of lung cancer, coupled with a series of strokes, at age 71.
2009 Lux Interior (of The Cramps), real name: Erick Lee Purkhiser, dies of aortic dissection at age 62.
2008 John Mellencamp becomes the first of many artists to accuse soon-to-be-Republican presidential nominee John McCain of using their music without authorization. McCain had been using the song "Our Country," and while he had the legal rights to do so, Mellencamp makes it clear he does not support McCain and asks that he refrain from using his music.
2008 Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart resurrect Grateful Dead for a benefit concert in support of presidential hopeful Barack Obama in San Francisco.
2008 With digital delivery transforming the industry, some record companies package releases with additional goodies. The Virgin-owned Astralwerks label issues Laura Marling's debut album, Alas, I Cannot Swim, in what they call a "songbox" format, which includes a concert ticket and souvenirs representing each song along with the CD.
2007 Razorlight members Johnny Borrell and Carl Dalemo clash onstage at a gig in Lyon. The concert is halted, but the band returns to finish the set.
2002 On the occasion of civil-rights activist Rosa Parks' 89th birthday, Stevie Wonder sings his song "Happy Birthday" to her at the premiere of her TV-movie biography The Rosa Parks Story. The song had originally been written by Wonder to help bring about a national Martin Luther King holiday.
1999 In a daring move, Rykodisc becomes the first music label to give its stamp of approval to MP3, the controversial Internet-based music distribution format that struck fear into the hearts of many music industry executives.
1997 The Offspring return with their fourth studio album, Ixnay on the Hombre - the follow-up to their 1994 breakthrough album Smash and the band's first after signing to Columbia Records in 1996.
Judge Says "Down Under" Copies "Kookaburra"
2010A judge rules that the flute riff of the Men at Work song "Down Under" plagiarizes another Australian classic: the 1932 song "Kookaburra."
"Kookaburra" was written by a schoolteacher named Marion Sinclair, who died in 1988 and was not involved in the case. Little is made of any similarity between the two songs until 2007, when a popular trivia show in Australia called Spicks and Specks plays "Down Under" and asks the question, "Name the Australian nursery rhyme this riff is based on." In 2009, Larrikin Music, which owns the rights to "Kookaburra," files the lawsuit, which "Down Under" co-writers Colin Hay and Ron Strykert (lead singer and guitarist for Men at Work), fight tooth-and-nail. Justice Peter Jacobson rules that there is infringement, but on July 6, he awards Larrikin just 5% of the song's royalties, and only since 2002 - a far cry from the 60% they asked for. "The musical significance of the relevant bars from 'Kookaburra' is relatively small," he states in his ruling. According to Colin Hay, the award amounts to about $100,000. He says legal fees in the case are about $4.5 million. The meager judgment provides some solace, but Hay is crestfallen. "I believe what has won today is opportunistic greed, and what has suffered is creative musical endeavor," he says in a statement. Greg Ham, who played the flute part on "Down Under," takes it hard. "I'm terribly disappointed that's the way I'm going to be remembered — for copying something," he says. In 2012, Ham dies of heart failure at age 58. In the documentary Waiting For My Real Life, Hay says, "Gregory felt terribly guilty about having played the line, unconsciously or not." bird photo: JJ Harrison
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