8 OCTOBER
Featured Events
2018 Taylor Swift offers her political views for the first time, endorsing two Tennessee Democrats and urging her 112 million Instagram followers to vote. Vote.org reports a spike in voter registrations. Swift's pick for the Senate, Phil Bredesen, loses to incumbent Marsha Blackburn. Jim Cooper, whom Swift endorsed for the House of Representatives, retains his seat.
2004 Ray Charles, who died in June, scores his first Platinum album when Genius Loves Company, released in September, sells over a million copies.
1990 Eddie Vedder flies from his home in San Diego to Seattle, where he meets his Pearl Jam bandmates for the first time and starts a week of recording that becomes the bulk of their debut album, Ten. Vedder was chosen based on vocals he added to a three-song instrumental demo the band made.More
1990 The Go-Go's pose for the first "Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" poster for PETA.More
1988 Def Leppard's ballad "Love Bites" hits #1 on the Hot 100.
1985 Little Richard crashes a rented Nissan 300SX into a telephone pole in West Hollywood. The accident nearly kills him, and his right leg is so badly broken it requires two operations to repair. He credits God with saving his life and continues to preach.
1983 Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish is released. Tom Waits appears in the film as the bubblegum-chomping owner of Benny's Billiards. His character exists on the periphery of the main plot line, but he is given an extended, poetic monologue about life, time, and aging.
8 OCTOBER
In Music History
2019 Pitbull trademarks his famous "grito" yell, making it one of the few sounds protected by trademark, and likely the first by a musical artist.
2016 Robert Plant and St. Vincent play the Festival of Disruption in Los Angeles, an event staged by the director David Lynch that includes film screenings and meditation.
2013 Novelty song singer Larry Verne dies of heart failure in Sylmar, California, at age 77.
2012 Green Day is forced to cancel their appearance at the New Orleans' Voodoo Music Festival, citing Billie Joe Armstrong's problems with substance abuse. Armstrong had an onstage outburst mid-show in Las Vegas a few weeks earlier that prompted him to get treatment.
2011 Weezer bass player Mikey Welsh dies of an overdose-induced heart attack at a hotel in Chicago, Illinois, at age 40.
2011 Pianist Roger Williams dies of pancreatic cancer in Encino, California, at age 87. Known for his 1955 chart-topping instrumental version of "Autumn Leaves."
2008 Foo Fighters make a villain out of John McCain after the GOP candidate uses "My Hero" without permission. "'My Hero' was written as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential. To have it appropriated without our knowledge and used in a manner that perverts the original sentiment of the lyric just tarnishes the song," Dave Grohl writes in a statement.
2002 Jennifer Love Hewitt releases her fourth studio album, BareNaked.
1998 Bruce Springsteen gives evidence in London's High Court in his case against Masquerade Music over that company's attempt to release some of his early '70s recordings in the UK. The artist says that he was living hand-to-mouth at the time the songs in question were written, relying on handouts from Mike Appel, his co-manager at the time.
1997 Jonas "Jo" Bruce (keyboardist Afro Celt Sound System) dies suddenly of an asthma attack at age 27. He was the son of Cream bass player Jack Bruce.
1996 Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne play a benefit show for environmental groups at the Britt Pavilion in Jacksonville, Oregon. They are greeted by the roar of chainsaws wielded by loggers upset at their efforts to stifle their livelihood.
1996 Jimmy Chamberlin, charged with drug possession, pleads guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct. The Smashing Pumpkins drummer was shooting heroin with touring keyboard player Jonathan Melvoin in July when Melvoin overdosed and died. Chamberlin was fired from the band, but returns in 1999.
1991 Soundgarden's second album for A&M Records, Badmotorfinger, is released. Its arrival neatly coincides with the uprising of grunge (Nirvana's Nevermind was released two weeks earlier, and Pearl Jam's Ten was issued on August 27) and serves as the group's commercial breakthrough.More
1990 Barrie "B.J." Wilson (drummer for Procol Harum) dies after a long illness in Eugene, Oregon, at age 43.
U2 Song Played At Murder Trial
1991The U2 song "Exit" is played at the trial of Robert Bardo, who claims the song compelled him to kill the actress Rebecca Schaeffer.
Bardo, a deranged 19 year old from Tucson, showed up at Schaeffer's apartment in Los Angeles on July 17, 1989 and shot her to death. He told a court-appointed psychiatrist that the U2 song, specifically the line, "The pistol weighed heavy," gave him motivation for the murder. As evidence, Bardo's defense attorney plays the song in the courtroom, making the case that his client is mentally incompetent. When the song plays, Bardo, who has shown no real emotion throughout the trial, suddenly becomes energized and sings along to the song. Unlike the case where AC/DC's song "Night Prowler" was cited by a murderer, there are no calls to ban U2 or implicate them in the crime. Bardo gets a life sentence with no chance of parole.
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