5 MARCH
Featured Events
2013 Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath and rapper Coolio appear on Celebrity Wife Swap, where they send their respective partners to each others' homes. McGrath's wife, Carin, struggles with all the chores she has to do at Coolio's house, while Coolio's girlfriend Mimi - who leaves him just weeks after the episode is taped - squirms under the watchful eye of helicopter parent McGrath.
2009 Michael Jackson announces his "This Is It" series of concerts to be held at the O2 Arena in London. The shows quickly sell out, but Jackson dies before they begin.
2006 "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from the movie Hustle & Flow wins an Oscar for Best Song, just the second rap song to get the award, after "Lose Yourself" by Eminem. Three 6 Mafia become the first rappers to perform at the ceremony.More
2002 MTV launches its new reality television show, The Osbournes, which chronicles the domestic life of heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne and his family. In its first season, it becomes the most-viewed series on MTV.More
1983 Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" hits #1 for the first of seven weeks.
1975 Rod Stewart meets the Swedish actress Britt Ekland when she comes backstage after his concert at the Los Angeles Forum, kicking off an affair that results in a famous song and a nasty lawsuit.More
1953 America learns of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's death when Air Force Staff Sergeant Johnny Cash intercepts a coded message from Russia. Cash enlisted in 1950 after he turned 18 and was assigned to the 12th Radio Squadron Mobile of the US Air Force Security Service at Landsberg, West Germany, where he proved his skill as a Morse Code operator.
5 MARCH
In Music History
2023 Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Gary Rossington dies at 71. He was last founding member of the band still alive.
2016 Visiting a music-production class at N.Y.U., Pharrell Williams is blown away by a song called "Alaska" by Maggie Rogers, a senior at the university. "It's singular... your whole story I can hear it in the music," he tells her.More
2013 In a Czech court, Lamb of God lead singer Randy Blythe is acquitted of manslaughter. He was charged with pushing a fan to his death at a 2013 LoG concert in Prague; in 2012 he was arrested when the band returned to the country for another show.
2011 Justin Bieber, 17, hits #1 with Never Say Never - The Remixes, a companion to his Never Say Never concert film. This makes him the only male solo artist with two #1 albums before turning 18. Before the year is over he adds a third with his Christmas album Under The Mistletoe.
2007 Three years after publishing their well-received debut album Funeral, Arcade Fire release Neon Bible.
1999 Trauma Entertainment files a $40 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against the members of Bush for failure to deliver their next album.
1995 Viv Stanshall of Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band dies in a fire at age 51. Stanshall was asleep in his North London home when an electrical fire broke out.
1994 Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane is arrested at her home in Tiburon, California for pointing a loaded gun at police officers responding to reports of a domestic dispute. She will be sentenced to community service and forced to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
1992 Soundgarden play the first of two nights at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle, Washington. Both nights are filmed, and several songs turn up in November as part of the Motorvision home video, with additional tracks eventually turning up as part of the 25th Anniversary edition of Badmotorfinger in 2016.
1984 Howard Jones' debut album, Human's Lib, is released in the UK, where it rises to #1.
1983 At The Stone in San Francisco, Metallica play their first show with bass player Cliff Burton. The band relocates to the Bay Area to accommodate Burton and join a metal scene far more vibrant than the one they leave behind in Los Angeles.
1982 John Belushi of The Blues Brothers, 33, dies of a drug overdose in his bungalow at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. Belushi had been injected with a speedball, a mixture of cocaine and heroin.
1981 Songwriter E.Y. "Yip" Harburg ("Over The Rainbow") dies in a car accident at age 81.
1977 18-year-old Kate Bush writes "Wuthering Heights" after catching the end of a BBC adaptation of Emily Bronte's novel of the same name. The ethereal tune becomes her debut single the following year and hits #1 in the UK.
1977 Barbra Streisand's "Love Theme From A Star Is Born (Evergreen)" hits #1 in the US. The song was written for the 1976 film she starred in with Kris Kristofferson.
Kings Of Leon Become First Major Act To Release NFT Album
2021Kings Of Leon release their album When You See Yourself in a non-fungible token (NFT) auction that also includes digital artwork and "Golden Tickets." Other acts (notably, Grimes) have sold NTF art, but KoL is the first big name to try it with an album and VIP package.
NFTs are held on blockchains and bought with the associated cryptocurrency, in this case, Ethereum. They have unique digital identifiers to certify ownership and a record of their transaction history. Each album costs $50 and includes a digital download and physical vinyl copy. Buying it requires going though a digital labyrinth that involves opening an Ethereum wallet, purchasing the token, then redeeming it for the album. The "non-fungible" part comes into play because each token is unique, so it's like having a numbered copy of each album, even though they are all the same (fungible). More ambitious is the "Golden Ticket" auction. These are basically VIP packages for life, allowing the holders access to a set of four front-row tickets for a show on every subsequent Kings Of Leon tour, along with meet-and-greets and concierge service. These are more like traditional auctions, with fans bidding on six of them, each with a distinct lot number. Two of them sell - for roughly $150,000 and $90,000 - but the others don't meet the reserve price. 6,486 copies of the album are sold, which along with the digital art, brings their total haul to 766 Etherium, worth about $1.4 million. This is on top of traditional sales of the album and its associated merch, giving the band a nice additional revenue hit. This is all happening during a boom in the prices of cryptocurrencies (including Etherium), so many buyers have seen their investments take off and have lots of crypto to spend.
Categories
©2024 Songfacts®, LLC
Comments
send your comment