11 MARCH
In Music History
1989 Eighteen-year-old Debbie Gibson goes to #1 in America with her second album, Electric Youth, which stays on top for five weeks.
1982 Jimmy Sohns of the Shadows of Knight is arrested for distributing cocaine.
1981 Russell Lissack of Bloc Party is born in Chingford.
1981 LeToya Luckett, one of the four original members of Destiny's Child, is born in Houston, Texas.
1979 Joel and Benji Madden (Good Charlotte) are born Joel Rueben Combs and Benjamin Levi Combs in Waldorf, Maryland.
1975 Alice Cooper releases Welcome To My Nightmare, the first album where he's considered a solo artist and not part of the band Alice Cooper. The ensuing tour is an elaborate production with dancers, video screens, and giant spiders.
1970 The 5th Dimension win the Record of the Year Grammy for "Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In." Blood, Sweat & Tears, nominated for a record 11 awards, win three, including Album of the Year. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young win Best New Artist.
1969 Pete Droge is born in Seattle, Washington.
1968 Lisa Loeb is born in Bethesda, Maryland.
1967 The Supremes notch their ninth #1 hit in America: "Love Is Here And Now You're Gone."
1967 Opera star Geraldine Farrar dies at age 85.
1964 Pantera drummer and co-founder Vinnie Paul is born in Abilene, Texas.
1963 The Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers attract record company interest with a show at the Marquee Club in London. They later sign with HMV (a division of EMI) and change their name to Manfred Mann.
1961 Dead or Alive bass player Mike Percy is born.
1961 Big Country guitarist Bruce Watson is born in Timmins, Ontario, Canada, but soon moves to Scotland with his family, where the group is formed.
Paul McCartney Is Knighted
1997Thirty years after being admitted as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), Paul McCartney is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to popular music.
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Featured Events
2018 American Idol, which ran for 15 seasons on Fox, returns on ABC just two years later with new judges Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan.
2006 The High School Musical soundtrack reaches #1 on the US albums chart, the first TV soundtrack album to top the tally since the Miami Vice soundtrack, which was #1 for eight weeks in 1985 and another three in 1986. Nine songs from the album make the Hot 100, led by "Breaking Free," sung by Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, which reaches #4.
2006 "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt goes to #1 in America. Blunt later explains that the song is "about a guy who's high as a f--king kite on drugs in the subway stalking someone else's girlfriend."
1972 Wings' "Give Ireland Back To The Irish" is listed at #23 in the Melody Maker chart. An article in the same issue reports it has been banned by the BBC as "unsuitable for broadcasting."
1972 Neil Young's album Harvest hits #1 in America, supplanting Don McLean's American Pie, which has been on top for seven weeks.
1903 Lawrence Welk, bandleader and host of the long-running Lawrence Welk Show, is born in Strasburg, North Dakota.
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