30 MAY
Featured Events
2017 Bob Seger's Greatest Hits album, released in 1994, is certified Diamond for sales of 10 million copies. His music was kept off streaming services until 2017, which helped boost sales, at least half of which came after 2002.
2000 Eminem's second major-label album, The Marshall Mathers LP, becomes the fastest-selling rap album ever when it sells 1.76 million copies in its debut week.More
1997 Yanni becomes the first Western artist in modern times to perform at the Forbidden City in Beijing. Despite strict regulations (including a 40-decibel sound limit), the show is a success as the Chinese welcome the Greek musician.
1992 Paul Simon marries Edie Brickell, a singer known for her song "What I Am," at a small ceremony in Montauk, Long Island. Simon, who was previously married to Carrie Fisher, is 26 years older than Brickell.
1989 Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) appears on a British TV show called Hypotheticals, where he addresses the fatwa issued against the author Salman Rushdie. Islam seems to support the fatwa - when asked if he would attend a protest where a Rushdie effigy is burned, he replies, "I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing."More
1966 Dolly Parton marries Carl Thomas Dean, the owner of a Nashville asphalt road-paving business. The long-lasting pair celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2016.
1964 The Beatles hit #1 in America with "Love Me Do," a song John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote as teenagers.
1909 Benny Goodman is born in Chicago. At just 12 years old, he begins performing professionally as a clarinetist; by 14, he joins a musicians union. He records his first solo in 1926 and by 1934 he is the leader of a 12-piece big band.
30 MAY
In Music History
2018 At FivePoint Amphitheatre in Irvine, California, Styx return "Mr. Roboto" to their setlist for the first time since their 1983 Kilroy Was Here tour, which caused enough discord to break up the band for seven years.
2017 NBC debuts its dance competition series World Of Dance, with executive producer Jennifer Lopez, Ne-Yo, and Derek Hough on the judging panel.
2017 Olivia Newton-John postpones her US and Canadian tour to fight a recurrence of breast cancer, which has spread to her back. The 68-year-old singer had been in remission since 1992.
2010 Anita Humes, lead singer of The Essex ("Easier Said Than Done") dies at age 69.
2003 English record producer Mickie Most, who issued hits from The Animals, Herman's Hermits, and Hot Chocolate on his RAK Records label, dies of peritoneal mesothelioma at age 64.
2002 Diana Ross enters a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Los Angeles.
2000 Tex Beneke (blues singer and saxophonist of The Glenn Miller Orchestra) dies of respiratory failure at age 86.
1998 Former 2 Live Crew leader Luther "Luke" Campbell's "Raise The Roof" peaks at #26 on the Hot 100. Also a #1 rap hit, it spawns a dance craze.More
1996 John Kahn (bass guitarist for The Jerry Garcia Band) dies of a heart attack at age 48.
1994 Metallica start their S--t Hits the Sheds tour, with Danzig, Suicidal Tendencies and Candlebox supporting. Alice in Chains is supposed to be one of the opening acts, but has to bow out due to Layne Staley's drug problem.
1993 Jazz composer Sun Ra, a pioneer of free improvisation and modal jazz, dies of pneumonia at age 79.
1991 Before his concert in Paris, Lenny Kravitz gets a visit from Mick Jagger, one of his musical heroes. Kravitz quickly learns the Rolling Stones song "No Expectations" and brings Jagger on stage to perform it with him. They become good friends and frequent collaborators; Kravitz opens some shows for The Rolling Stones in 1994 and co-writes Jagger's 2001 single "God Gave Me Everything."
1987 The Deep Purple House Of Blue Light tour is cancelled when Ritchie Blackmore breaks a finger showboating at a concert in Phoenix, Arizona.
1987 The Los Angeles Times reports that Michael Jackson has offered $50,000 for the bones of "The Elephant Man," John Merrick, who died in 1890. Said Jackson's manager: "Jackson has a high degree of respect for the memory of Merrick. He has read and studied all material about the Elephant Man, and has visited the hospital in London twice to view Merrick's remains."
Midnight Oil Protest Exxon
1990Australian rockers Midnight Oil make headlines when they stage a protest concert outside of the Exxon building in New York City in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill that devastated Prince William Sound in Alaska the year before. Vocalist Peter Garrett says: "We can't treat the world like a garbage dump, and there's more to life than profit and loss."
The company's refusal to accept responsibility for the disaster, which was caused when one of their oil tankers crashed into Bligh Reef and leaked nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean and surrounding coastline, outraged the "Beds Are Burning" hitmakers. Armed with a banner that proclaims "Midnight Oil Makes You Dance, Exxon Oil Makes Us Sick," the band pulls up on the back of a flatbed truck and blasts through an eight-song set for the astonished Exxon employees and thousands of passersby during the lunchtime rush. "The day was completely chaotic, even though it had been planned with military precision. It was a guerrilla raid on New York City," the Oils' guitarist and keyboardist Jim Moginie tells Blurt Magazine. "The police wanted to shut it down as we were disrupting traffic. There were heated negotiations between the mayor's office, our record label Sony and the NYPD to keep it open for us." They manage to squeeze in eight songs, including the Blue Sky Mining track "River Runs Red" and a cover of John Lennon's "Instant Karma!" The event makes headlines the next day, with clips of the performance airing on MTV News. Says Moginie: "We played 'Instant Karma' for the first time, which summed up matters pretty well about the oil spill. It felt good to make the point that needed to be made about Exxon. It was only afterwards I realized the event was front page news all around the world. I’m so glad it was filmed and recorded. Everybody heard about it in the mainstream media world so in that sense it put us in front of more people." The concert is included in the documentary Black Rain Falls, with proceeds going to Greenpeace.
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