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Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
News
1968: January
5:36 PM GMT 20/02/2008
1 – Billboard magazine reports that Americans spent over $1billion on records in 1967. For the first time ever, albums are outselling singles.
4 – Jimi Hendrix is jailed overnight and fined for wrecking a hotel room in Gothenburg following a fight with bandmate Noel Redding.
4 – Political activist Jerry Rubin and The Fugs’ Ed Sanders meet to discuss methods of disrupting the US Democratic Party Convention in August. The Festival Of Life, an ambitious live music rally is planned. Support immediately floods in from the likes of Judy Collins, Country Joe Macdonald, Phil Ochs and Arlo Guthrie. Meanwhile, invitations are sent out to every artist in the rock firmament – Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, Simon & Garfunkel, The Doors, The Who, The Mamas & Papas and The Beatles to name but a few. None of those on Rubin’s wishlist reply.
6 – Happening ’68, Dick Clark’s daytime music show premieres on the ABC Television Network in the US. Pop combo, Harper’s Bizarre are the first act to perform. Mark Lindsey and Paul Revere present the daily programme until it is cancelled in September ’69.
13 - Johnny Cash plays a one-off show in the cafeteria at California’s Folsom Prison. The performance is recorded and the resulting live album is released later in the year.
16 – The Yippie movement, aka The Youth International Party, is founded by an anarchic collective of counter-cultural bigmouths. Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and Paul Krassner lead the charge. Rubin's book DO IT!, published in 1970, will go on to inspire Aphrodite's Child to include a song of the same name on their double-LP 666.
18 – During a White House luncheon, jazz singer Eartha Kitt commits professional suicide when she speaks out against the war in Vietnam.
“What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning this war.” NBC News Anchor, Walter Kronkite
20 – Bob Dylan appears in public for the first time since his Woodstock motorbike crash in October 1966. He joins a bill that includes Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Richie Havens, Odetta, Arlo Guthrie and Judy Collins. The artists are assembled to pay tribute to the late Woody Guthrie. Dylan’s old backing the band, The Hawks, soon to be re-christened The Band, are also present.
26 – As they make their way to a booking at Southampton University, British psych pioneers Pink Floyd decide not to pick up their singer Syd Barrett, following the frontman’s increasingly erratic behaviour. Bassist Roger Waters asks old chum David Gilmour whether he can stand in on guitar and vocals. Gilmour says yes.
28 – The Doors' Jim Morrison is attacked outside a Las Vegas adult movie theatre for pretending to smoke a joint. He is arrested on charges of vagrancy and public drunkenness.
30 – The Velvet Underground release their sophomore album, White Light/White Heat on the Verve label. Creem Magazine’s Lester Bang's will later call it “rock’n’roll’s ultimate expression of nihilism and destruction”.
31- As the war continues to rage in South East Asia, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops join forces and launch a brutal attack on US strongholds in the south, in what will become known as The Tet Offensive. The results are catastrophic.
Ross Bennett
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 5:36 PM GMT 20/02/2008
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