In 1971 Andy Warhol photographs the denim-clad groin area of Warhol Factory regular Jed Johnson. The photo goes on to become an indelible image in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, as it became the cover photo for The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers album. The cover even featured a working zipper that when opened revealed […]

Aurora, Illinois, 1992 - Best friends Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar, along with two friends, spontaneously recreate the Queen classic “Bohemian Rhapsody” inside Garth’s blue Gremlin. The song spawned a new video inter-cutting film excerpts with footage from the original Queen video, along with some live footage of the band. It also renewed interest in […]

June 21, 1967 - Summer Of Love officially begins. During the summer of 1967, particularly in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, thousands of young people loosely and freely united for a new social experience. As a result, the hippie counterculture movement came into public awareness.

Summer of Love

 
January 14, 1967 - The Human Be-In is held in Golden Gate Park. Proclaimed to be the best first “hippie event,” performers included the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, comedian/activist, Dick Gregory, Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg. A prelude to the Summer of Love, which got its official start on June 21, 1967, […]

November 18, 1993 - Nirvana plays an MTV acoustic unplugged show at Sony Studios in New York City. The band only agreed to do the show to boost ticket sales in support of their album In Utero. It worked. More importantly, critics and audiences took notice. The barebones performance showcased […]

Following up on his hit “The Twist,” Chubby Checker had another twistin’ hit with “Let’s Twist Again,” for which he won a Grammy Award for Best Rock & Roll Recording/Performance in 1961.

In 1960, Philadelphian Chubby Checker recorded a cover of a Hank Ballard song, “The Twist.” Ballard wrote the song in 1958; it was an up-tempo 12 bar blues that used a melody line he’d lifted from the group’s flop of the previous year, “Is Your Love For Real?” which he had in turn borrowed from […]

From United-Mutations.com, as told by Frank Zappa:
“The day before the show, a journalist in New York City woke me up — knocked on the door and is standing there with a tape recorder and goes: “Frank, I’d like to introduce you to John Lennon,” you know, waiting for me to gasp and fall on the […]

“I Don’t Like Mondays” by Irish rock band the Boomtown Rats is inspired by a real-life school shooting in San Diego, CA. On Monday, January 29, 1979, 17-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire on a school playground. She killed principal Burton Wragg and custodian Mike Suchar of Cleveland Elementary School, located across from Spencer’s house. […]

Genya Ravan (b. 1945, Lodz, Poland) is a rock vocalist, producer, and pioneer. Born Genya Zelkowitz, her mother later changed her name to Goldie. The family emigrated to the United States from a Russian refugee camp in 1947. Growing up on New York’s Lower East Side, “R&B is what I was listening to as a […]