1998 Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra is sued by his bandmates over unpaid royalties. They eventually win the case and gain control of the group's songs and the rights to the name. In 2001, they re-form with a new lead singer replacing Biafra, who never re-unites with the band.
1995 Paul Anka guest stars on the "Treehouse of Horror VI" episode of The Simpsons.
1993 Tim Burton's animated musical The Nightmare Before Christmas hits US theaters. The film features music composed by Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo; Elfman also sings the vocal parts of protagonist Jack Skellington.
1992 The British band Verve, dispatched to America to promote their debut album, perform their song "A Man Called Sun" for over two hours from a flatbed truck driving around New York City at night. America takes little notice of the band until their 1997 single "Bitter Sweet Symphony."
1991 In Peoria, Illinois, Metallica launch their mammoth Wherever We May Roam tour, which runs for 224 shows, wrapping up on December 18, 1992.
1987 Woody Herman, jazz musician and big band leader, dies at age 74.
1987 Rolling Stones guitarist and sometime painter Ron Wood gets his first public presentation, Decades, in London, featuring mostly portraits of Wood's famous friends over the past two decades.
1984 Deep Purple release Perfect Strangers, their first album since 1975. The subsequent tour does big business.
1979 Legendary bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie appears on The Muppet Show and performs with The Electric Mayhem. It's the only time that the otherwise all-muppet band features a bongo player.
1978 Rush's Hemispheres hits stores. The album is ambitious even by Rush standards, and the work put into recording it nearly gives the band members nervous breakdowns.
1977 Paul Davis's "I Go Crazy" enters the charts.
1976 Bruce Springsteen brings long-forgotten Gary U.S. Bonds on stage at The Palladium in New York City to perform Bonds' 1961 hit "Quarter To Three." Five years later, Springsteen engineers a comeback for Bonds, working on his album Dedication and supplying the hit "This Little Girl."
1976 Elvis Presley records "It's Easy For You," "Way Down," and "Pledging My Love."
1973 John Lennon releases "Mind Games" and the LP of the same name in the US.
1971 Duane Allman (of The Allman Brothers Band) dies in a motorcycle crash in Macon, Georgia, at age 24.
"Islands in the Stream," written by the Bee Gees and intended for Marvin Gaye, goes to #1 in the US as a duet by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.
Read more1996 Axl Rose announces that Slash is no longer a member of Guns N' Roses. Slash forms Slash's Snakepit and Velvet Revolver, while Axl keeps GnR going with a variety of new faces.More
1984 Frankie Goes to Hollywood release their debut album, Welcome To The Pleasuredome, in the UK.More
1983 Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon album breaks the record for most weeks on the Billboard albums chart when it eclipses Johnny's Greatest Hits by Johnny Mathis with 491 weeks. Dark Side remains on the chart until 1988, when it drops off with 724 weeks. Thanks to reissues and promotions, it returns from time to time, notching over 880 weeks on the chart in total.
1972 Diana Ross and her husband Robert Ellis Silberstein have their second child, Tracee Ellis Ross. She becomes an actress, starring in the TV series Girlfriends and Black-ish.More
1966 Powered by a captivating Vox Continental organ riff and a lead singer who always wears sunglasses and goes by the name of "?", "96 Tears" by ? & the Mysterians hits #1 in America.More
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