31 MARCH
Featured Events
2016 Michael Stipe, Cyndi Lauper, Ann Wilson and Perry Farrell are among the performers at a Carnegie Hall concert honoring David Bowie.More
2000 The movie High Fidelity, starring John Cusack and Jack Black as record store clerks, and featuring a cameo by Bruce Springsteen, opens in theaters.More
1995 23-year-old Tejano singer Selena dies after being shot by her former personal assistant and former fan club president, Yolanda Saldivar, in Corpus Christi, Texas. Jennifer Lopez stars in a movie about her life that is released in 1997.
1984 Kenny Loggins' "Footloose" hits #1 in America. It's the title song to the soon-to-be-famous film where Kevin Bacon brings dancing to a small town in the South.
1967 At the Astoria Theatre in London, Jimi Hendrix sets fire to his guitar for the first time, and goes to the hospital after the show with minor burns. During the rest of the tour, Hendrix makes a habit of playing his guitar with his teeth, and he ignites his axe a few more times.More
1958 Chuck Berry releases "Johnny B. Goode." The song is named after his piano player (Johnnie Johnson) and the street where he grew up (Goode Avenue).
1955 Angus Young is born in Glasgow, Scotland. He later moves to Australia and forms AC/DC with his brother Malcolm.
31 MARCH
In Music History
2015 British jazz pianist Ralph Sharon, who brought "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" to Tony Bennett, dies in Boulder, Colorado, at age 91.
2009 Lynyrd Skynyrd release Live at the Cardiff Capitol Theatre. It features music recorded at Cardiff, Wales' Capitol Theatre on November 4, 1975. It's released alongside the album Authorized Bootleg: Live In Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 3/07/76.
2007 Police issue arrest warrants for Country singer Billy Joe Shaver after he shoots and wounds a man outside a Lorena, Texas, bar. Shaver later turns himself in.
2003 The Roots release Phrenology three years after their highly successful fourth album, Things Fall Apart. An ambitious work that pushes the boundaries of hip-hop, Phrenology also contains a hit: the Cody ChesnuTT collaboration "The Seed (2.0)."
2001 Acker Bilk receives an MBE (Member of the British Empire) medal from Queen Elizabeth for services to the music industry.
1999 The Matrix opens in theaters with a soundtrack featuring Marilyn Manson, Ministry, The Prodigy and Rob Zombie. It establishes industrial music as the sound of simulation theory.
1996 After battling a number of health issues, Gun Club guitarist Jeffrey Lee Pierce dies at age 37.
1995 23-year-old Lance Cunningham injures four people at a Jimmy Page/Robert Plant concert in Auburn Hills, Michigan, when he tries to rush the stage with a pocketknife. Cunningham claims he was trying to attack Page, accusing him of being "Satanic."
1993 Mitchell Parish, who wrote lyrics for the songs "Deep Purple" and "Stardust," dies at 92.
1992 After the sudden split of The Judds - a hit country duo she formed with her mom, Naomi - Wynonna Judd kicks off her solo career with a self-titled album that helps country crossover to the mainstream thanks to the hit single "No One Else On Earth."More
1987 Georg Listing (bassist for Tokio Hotel) is born in Halle, Germany.
1986 O'Kelly Isley (of The Isley Brothers) dies of a heart attack at age 48 in Alpine, New Jersey.
1984 Jack Antonoff, producer of hits for Taylor Swift, Lorde and Lana Del Rey, is born in Bergenfield, New Jersey.
1982 The Doobie Brothers announce their breakup. After a summer goodbye tour, lead singer Michael McDonald launches a successful solo career. The band regroups in 1987.
1981 At the first ever Golden Raspberry Awards (aka The Razzies), Neil Diamond takes home the prize for Worst Actor for his performance as Yussel Rabinovitch in The Jazz Singer. Laurence Olivier, who played Cantor Rabinovitch in the film, also scores a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor, an honor he shares with John Adames for Gloria.
Springsteen Releases Two Albums at Once, Minus the E Street Band
1992Bruce Springsteen releases two albums on the same day, Human Touch and Lucky Town. They're his first since Tunnel Of Love in 1987, and first without the E Street Band.
A lot happened to Bruce Springsteen after releasing Tunnel Of Love. He (in order): Got divorced (from Julianne Phillips) Broke up the E Street Band Had his first child Got re-married (to Patti Scialfa, the mother of his children) Had his second child It was during this period of reflection and transition when he worked on the Human Touch album. It was ready in 1991, but instead of releasing it, Springsteen decided to make another album with more songs he was working on. That album became Lucky Town, and both were released at the same time. It's not uncommon for an artist to have two album's worth of songs, but typically they'd release it as a double album. Guns N' Roses upended that paradigm in 1991 when they issued Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II at the same time. It worked for them: the albums debuted at #1 and #2 and combined to sell over 14 million copies in America. But GnR had released Appetite For Destruction just four years earlier and had a fanbase that foamed at the mouth for new material. Springsteen had plenty of fans, but not many that were willing to wait in line to buy two albums of reflective songs recorded without his storied band. They each sold a million copies, which combined was less than what Tunnel Of Love sold. Springsteen's introspective phase lasted a few more years. He released the haunting "Streets Of Philadelphia" in 1994 for the acclaimed movie Philadelphia, and in 1995 issued a stark, acoustic album called The Ghost Of Tom Joad that he followed with a stark, acoustic solo tour. He started rocking stadiums again in 1999 when he re-fired the E Street Band. Little of his '90s output found its way into their setlists.
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