8 SEPTEMBER
Featured Events
2016 Lance Bass of *NSYNC hosts Finding Prince Charming on the Logo network, the first all-gay dating show.
1997 The first episode of the legal dramedy Ally McBeal airs on FOX. Vonda Shepard, an unknown singer, catches her big break when she sings the theme song "Searchin' My Soul." Shepard also becomes a series regular, playing a lounge singer who gives voice to Ally's troubles through music at the end of each episode.More
1994 Nearly four months after tying the knot in a secret ceremony in the Dominican Republic, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley make their first public appearance as a married couple at the MTV Video Music Awards, where Jackson infamously plants a sloppy smooch on his bride.More
1993 Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) appear on stage together for the first time, performing at Club Lingerie in Los Angeles. They play "Pennyroyal Tea" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"
1990 The New Kids On The Block cartoon series makes its debut. Lasting just one season on ABC, the animated New Kids travel the world and face challenges like getting to concerts on time.
8 SEPTEMBER
In Music History
2020 McDonald's introduces the Travis Scott Meal: a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Sprite, and fries with BBQ sauce. It's the first McOffering named after a celebrity since 1992, when the McJordan appeared on the menu.
2019 Mitski, burned out from years on the road and increasing pressure from her rising popularity, wraps up her Be The Cowboy tour with a show in Central Park where she says it will be her "last show indefinitely." She returns to music in 2021 and gets a fresh jolt of fame as her music permeates TikTok over the next few years.
2017 Forty-one years after it was recorded, Neil Young's Hitchhiker is finally released. It features the first recorded versions of "Pocahontas" and "Powderfinger."
2017 Troy Gentry of the country music duo Montgomery Gentry dies in a helicopter crash en route to a gig in Medford, New Jersey. He was 50.
2016 Prince Buster, a Jamaican native who popularized ska music in England, dies at age 78.
2010 Rich Cronin (of LFO) dies of a stroke while battling leukemia in Boston, Massuchusetts, at age 36.
2007 Lynyrd Skynyrd are inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Atlanta.
2002 Gordon Lightfoot undergoes an emergency stomach operation in a suburban Toronto hospital.
2001 Kylie Minogue releases the single "Can't Get You Out Of My Head," with a "la la la" chorus that does indeed burrow into the brain. A global smash, it's her first big hit in America since "The Loco-Motion" in 1988.
2001 Jennifer Lopez's "I'm Real" remix tops the Hot 100 for the first of five non-consecutive weeks. The pop singer gets some urban street cred with the help of guest rapper Ja Rule.
1997 Cornershop release When I Was Born for the 7th Time, their third studio album. It contains the hit song "Brimful of Asha."
1994 At the MTV Video Music Awards, Beastie Boy Adam Yauch (MCA), in character as "Nathanial Hornblower," rushes the stage when R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" beats "Sabotage" for Best Direction. It's the first such intrusion at the VMAs.More
1994 Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil accept the Best Metal/Hard Rock Video Award at the MTV Video Music Awards for Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" clip, beating out Aerosmith ("Cryin'"), Anthrax ("Black Lodge"), and Rollins Band ("Liar").
1992 Tom Waits' album Bone Machine drops a sonic avalanche of apocalyptic percussion sounds, snarls, and deathly wails - and fans love him for it.More
1989 The DJ/producer Avicii is born Tim Bergling in Stockholm. His hits include the electronic-music landmark "Levels" and the Aloe Blacc collaboration "Wake Me Up."
Chuck Berry Does The Duck Walk
1955In an attempt to hide the wrinkles in his suit, Chuck Berry does the duck walk for the first time.
Berry performs the famous move, squatting on one leg while hopping across the stage, at the Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, where he is low in the bill at Alan Freed's "Rock and Roll Spectacular," a week-long run of shows that features Tony Bennett, Lillian Briggs and The Rhythmettes. It's one of Berry's first shows outside of St. Louis, where he has been performing with his trio (piano player Johnnie Johnson and drummer Ebby Harding) since 1952. Their suits get wrinkled on the way to New York, so Berry keeps a crouch on stage to conceal them, improvising his duck walk along the way. The crowd goes nuts, so Berry does it at the rest of the shows, where it wows the crowd every time. It became his signature move on stage. Berry has a flat-footed gait, making the duck walk a natural for him, but rather difficult for the many guitarists who try to emulate it along with his licks. It's a pose he's been striking since he was a kid. The move is one of Berry's many contributions to rock and roll, which is in its infancy. In promoting this new form of music, Freed, a prominent disc jockey, mixes traditional acts with artists like Berry and Fats Domino, who are forging the new sound. Tony Bennett may seem out of place headlining a "Rock and Roll Spectacular," but nobody is quite sure what the genre entails yet. Berry soon defines it along with Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Little Richard and other trailblazers. His duck walk remains the most famous stage move in rock. Berry told the Washington Post that he came up with the duck walk in 1956, but his description of the events - that it took place at "one of my first gigs," and that it was at an Alan Freed show at the Paramount - places it on this date in 1955.
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