Are you ready to learn some stuff? It’s May 9th and here’s what happened Today in Rock History
Starting off strong with releases, we got The Last of the Independents by The Pretenders in 1994, Big Daddy from John Mellencamp in 1989 and Stadium Arcadium by the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2006!
Gorillaz also released one of their biggest singles in 2005: Feel Good Inc.
For birthdays, we have Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan of Oasis, Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick, and Andrew W.K.
Oh, and it’s also Billy Joel’s birthday today.
Moving onto some music business history, in 2013 the RIAA began counting streaming towards their Gold and Platinum awards. 150 song streams counted to one song sale, while 1,500 album streams equaled to one album sale.
We lost Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson of the MC5 from a heart attack in 2024. Thompson was the final surviving member of the group.
In 1996, Geddy Lee of Rush was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. I could’ve put in an “Oh Canada” bit, but I think you South Park fans out there will enjoy this much more.
In 1974, a young Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band opened for Bonnie Raitt at show in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rolling Stone critic John Landau was in the audience and would go on to write extreme praise for the future Boss saying, “I have seen rock & roll’s future and his name in Bruce Springsteen.”
Speaking of Springsteen, in 1992, The Boss made his North American network television debut when he appeared on Saturday Night Live!
Eight years later in 1998, Jimmy Page also appeared on SNL with rapper, and extremely sketchy dude, Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs. They performed Come With Me from the Godzilla soundtrack, as the song sampled the guitar riff from Zeppelin’s Kashmir. There’s also no video of the performance online, plus the song kinda sucks, so here’s Kashmir instead
And finally in 1987, the Grateful Dead record their very first music video for their song Touch of Grey after a show in Monterey, California. They would bring the audience back in to watch two performances of the song: one with the band and one with their skeleton versions aka “The Dead Ringers.” The video was a success going into rotation on MTV and the song became the band’s first hit single.
This has been Today in Rock History! Keep on Rocking, keep on Rolling! Check back tomorrow for your next rock history lesson!
