12 September

Pick a Day

12 SEPTEMBER

In Music History

Page 1
1 2 3

2022 The Jennifer Hudson Show debuts in syndication. The first guest on the daytime talk show is Simon Cowell, a judge when Hudson competed on American Idol.

2017 Stevie Wonder, Demi Lovato and Dave Matthews are among the performers at the "Hand in Hand" telethon, which benefits victims of hurricanes Harvey and Irma.More

2016 The #HotInHerreStreamingParty hashtag takes off as Nelly fans try to help him out of a $2.4 million tax debt by repeatedly streaming his hit "Hot In Herre." Based on an estimated Spotify royalty of $0.007 per stream, it will take about 342,857,142 listens to play off the debt.

2014 Joe Sample (pianist of The Jazz Crusaders) dies of mesothelioma at age 75.

2013 Ray Dolby (sound engineer who invented the noise-reduction system which bears his name) dies of leukemia in San Francisco, California, at age 80.

2012 After years of mainstream popularity, considerable airplay, and being nominated for numerous awards, Matchbox Twenty finally get their due on the charts with a #1 debut on the Billboard albums chart. North is their first top-charting album and their fifth studio album in the 16 years the band has been together.

2011 Suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Glen Campbell performs "It's Your Amazing Grace" on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Campbell's memory is shot, but on stage he's able to perform, reading the lyrics from a teleprompter. He had just started his Goodbye Tour, which continues for more than a year, until his condition deteriorates to the point where he can no longer perform.

2011 Ed Sheeran's debut album, +, is released in the UK, where it tops the albums chart.

2010 The 2010 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony is broadcast live from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, on MTV, with Chelsea Handler hosting the event. Lady Gaga takes Video of the Year for "Bad Romance."More

2009 The Christian rock band Skillet charts on the Hot 100 for the first time when their single "Awake and Alive" ekes in at #100. The track is from their hit crossover album Awake, which debuts at #2 in the US.

2008 Metallica release Death Magnetic, produced by Rick Rubin.

2007 R&B singer Bobby Byrd (member of The Famous Flames with James Brown) dies of cancer near Atlanta, Georgia, at age 73.

2006 Marianne Faithfull announces she has breast cancer (seven weeks later she says she has made a "full recovery").

2000 Lynyrd Skynyrd release Christmas Time Again, their first Christmas album.

2000 Barenaked Ladies release their fifth studio album, Maroon.

Page 1
1 2 3

The Monkees TV Show Debuts

1966

The Monkees TV show makes its debut, with four actors chosen to portray a pop band based on The Beatles. While The Monkees are a fictional band, they become very real and eventually play on their own recordings instead of studio musicians.

It all started with an ad in Variety seeking "Four Insane Boys, Ages 17-21" to star in a new NBC-TV sitcom. Answering the call among 400 other hopefuls are two folkies (Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork), an English actor (Davy Jones) and a former child star (Micky Dolenz). Together they are the Monkees, an aspiring rock 'n roll band bumbling their way to their big break one zany adventure at a time. And they're too busy singing to put anybody down. Inspired by the prat-falling 1964 Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night, filmmakers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider wanted to exploit a youthful audience already enthralled with Beatlemania. Sunny Monkees tunes soon begin climbing the charts alongside the Fab Four, with "Last Train To Clarksville" and "I'm A Believer" landing at #1. Fans are startled to learn, however, that there are more than four Monkees in the barrel. Don Kirshner, future creator of The Archies, oversees the music while songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart write the songs. The instrumentals are almost entirely played by studio musicians, while at least one Monkee provides vocals. "At the same time, we were the Monkees," Tork explained to When The Music Mattered in 1982. "It was a unique phenomenon, to be a member of a group that wasn't really a group and yet was a group. If we'd been a group, we would have fought to be a group or we would have broken up as a group. But we were a project, a TV show, a record-making machine." At the height of their success, the Monkees are derided as a plastic, prefabricated, Beatles-wannabe band without any real substance. In response, the group ousts Kirshner in favor of former Turtles bassist Chip Douglas and announces their intent to write and play their own music. The result is another #1 album, Headquarters, followed by the chart-topping Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. The Monkees, which garners an Emmy win for Outstanding Comedy Series, ends its two-season run in 1968, but the now-legitimate band continues to perform until 1971. In 1986, MTV celebrates the group's 20th anniversary with a marathon of the series, sparking a resurgence of Monkeemania. The group embarks on a reunion tour and lands a record-breaking six albums on the Billboard 200.

Categories

Comments

send your comment
Be the first to comment...

©2024 Songfacts®, LLC