It’s Sunday Funday here in The Mermaid Lounge. We’re mid-month, which puts one of my favorite playlists into the rotation!
Today it’s The Sixties Rotation, Volume One!
Here’s your Sunday Funday line-up:
12:00 p.m. Album of The Week: Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin NEW!
Led Zeppelin IV was released by Atlantic Records on November 8, 1971, and was a massive critical and commercial success, shipping 37 million copies worldwide. All of the songs were written by the band, with the exception of the Memphis Minnie blues song, When The Levee Breaks.
3:00 p.m. The Sixties Rotation, Volume 1: Various Artists UPDATED!
Last time around, we gave you Volume 2; this time it’s the original volume, updated for your listening pleasure. This is basically 5+ hours of sixties open stream, no interruptions, no advertising. You can hear The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Petula Clark, Lulu, The Hollies, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Bobbie Gentry, Johnny Rivers, The Dave Clark Five, The Box Tops, Dusty Springfield, Mary Wells and many more!
This brings us up just about 8:00 p.m., when you’ll hear…more Open Stream. And that’s because we run 24/7 and our Streaming Mermaid is always on top of things. Get it together and join the rest of the planet at:
Greetings from the College of Rock n’ Roll Knowledge, where we enrich your lives by making sure you have all the pertinent details required to win a musical trivia contest.
Little Richard performs during the halftime show on December 31, 2004, at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tenn. The pioneering musician died on Saturday, May 9, 2020; he was 87. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images/TNS)
Here’s today’s lesson!
December 11, 1960: Aretha Franklin gives her first live performance at the Village Vanguard in New York city.
December 11, 1961: Motown Records has it’s first #1 hit on the Top 100 with Please Mr. Postman by the Marvelettes.
Also on this day, Elvis Presley’s Blue Hawaii goes to #1.
December 11, 1965: The Velvet Underground plays its first live gig when they open for a group called The Myddle Class in the auditorium of Summit High School in New Jersey.
December 11, 1966: Elton John’s band, Bluesology, opens for Little Richard in London. Elton would later say: “When I saw Little Richard standing on top of the piano, all lights, sequins, and energy, I decided there and then that I was going to be a rock and roll piano player.”
December 11, 1968: The Rolling Stones record their Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus TV special, then proceed to bury it for nearly 30 years.
December 11, 1970: John Lennon releases his first solo album, titled John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
December 11, 1972: Genesis plays its first US concert ever at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
December 11, 1988: Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash and Don Henley perform at a Roy Orbison tribute concert at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.
December 11, 1990: Led Zeppelin IV is certified Diamond with sales of 10 million in the US.
Born On This Day
December 11, 1926: Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was born in Anton, Alabama. Willie Mae was the first to record Hound Dog, the song that would later be made famous by Elvis Presley.
And that is just about it from the College of Rock n’ Roll Knowledge for this fine day!
Good Morning, Students! We have a great musical day lined up for you, so let’s dispense with all this knowledge we have here.
Paul Simon, another brilliant singer-songwriter loved in The Mermaid Lounge.
Here’s today’s lesson from the College:
December 6, 1965: The Beatles released We Can Work It Out with Day Tripper on the flip side.
Also on this day in 1965, the Beatles released the magnificent album, Rubber Soul.
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles released Going To A Go-Go.
And if all of this wasn’t enough for you on December 6, 1965, The Rolling Stones recorded 19th Nervous Breakdown and Mother’s Little Helper at RCA’s Hollywood Studios in LA.
December 6, 1968: James Taylor released his self-titled first album in the UK.
December 6, 1969: The Rolling Stones released Beggars Banquet (and we told you about the actual pre-release banquet itself yesterday).
Also on this day, Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love enters the Billboard Pop chart. It peaked at #4 and was the first of six Top 40 hits for Zep.
December 6, 1970: Gimme Shelter, a documentary about The Rolling Stones’ 1969 US tour, opened in theaters.
December 6, 1975: The album Still Crazy After All These Years by Paul Simon hit #1 on the US Album chart. The album resulted in four Top 40 US hits, Gone At Last, My Little Town, 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover (#1), and the title track.
December 6, 1977: Jackson Browne released Running On Empty, a live album of performances at various stops on his summer tour.
December 6, 1988: After spending the day with his sons and his mother, Rob Orbison has a fatal heart attack and dies at the age of 52. During his career, the Caruso of rock n’ roll had 23 Top 40 hits. He had recently regained a huge fan following as a member of The Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Jeff Lynne. Orbison’s new album, Mystery Girl, is completed posthumously and released in January 1989.
December 6, 1994: Tower Records released Live At The BBC, a 69-track compilation of Beatles songs recorded for shows like Top Gear, Easy Beat, the Saturday Club, and Pop Go The Beatles. The double-album set goes straight to #1 in the UK, selling 600,000 copies by the end of the year, and 2,000,000 in the US four weeks later.
Born On This Day
December 6, 1943: Mike Smith, lead singer of Paul Revere & The Raiders, is born in Edmonton, North London, England.
And that is it for this fine Sunday from the College of Rock n’ Roll Knowledge.
Good Morning, Music Trivialists! We here at the College of Rock n’ Roll Knowledge draw from our own archive of totally useless information and pour over various electronic sources to bring this to you every day. As you may expect, some sites differ from others about locations of events, timing, etc. Needless to say, research, critical thinking and weed is required to complete this task.
The Million Dollar Quartet: Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Here’s today’s lesson!
December 4, 1956: Elvis Presley stopped by Sun Studios unexpectedly to find Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash watching Carl Perkins in the studio. The four would tape several songs together on that day, but it would be 25 years before that day would be immortalized on vinyl as The Million Dollar Quartet.
December 4, 1964: The Beatles release their fourth album, Beatles For Sale, which spends 11 weeks as the #1 album in the UK.
December 4, 1965:Turn, Turn, Turn would give The Byrds their second consecutive #1 hit, following up Mr. Tambourine Man.
December 4, 1969: President Richard M. Nixon, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and forty governors spend the day watching simulated acid trips and listening to rock music to help them understand the “generation gap.” We have been led by idiots for a very long fucking time.
December 4, 1971: Don MacLean’s eight-minute epic, American Pie, enters Billboard’s Hot 100. Before all is said and done, it will sell 3 million copies. To this day, it remains one of the most analyzed and debated songs in music history.
Also on this day, Sly & The Family Stone’s Family Affair begins a three-week run at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. This will be their third and final #1 and their last song in the top 10 before the band implodes under the weight of personal issues, and falls apart. Too bad. They were a great band.
Led Zeppelin also began a two-week stint at the top of the UK Album chart with the Four Symbols album, which includes Stairway To Heaven. The album will eventually sell 11 million copies and remained on the US charts for nearly five years.
December 4, 1980: Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Paul Jones announce that Led Zeppelin will not continue on after the death of drummer John Bonham.
December 4, 1982: A retrospective album of John Lennon’s solo work called The John Lennon Collection, started a six-week run at #1 on he UK Album chart. The front and back covers were shot by Annie Liebovitz on December 8, 1980, just five hours before John Lennon’s murder.
December 4, 1987: Alison Krauss, just sixteen years old, releases her debut album, Too Late To Cry, with her backing band, Union Station.
December 4, 1988: Roy Orbison (aka, Lefty Wilbury) plays his final gig at The Front Row Theater in Akron, Ohio. Orbison dies of a heart attack two days later.
Born On This Day
December 4, 1942: Chris Hillman, of The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Desert Rose Band, was born in Los Angeles.
December 4, 1944: Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys was born in Inglewood, California.
And that, my friends, is as they say — all the news that’s fit to print because there are a lot of singers we simply don’t give a shit about here in The Mermaid Lounge.
Good Morning, Music Lovers. We’ve got some really good stuff going on today, particularly with our new playlist kicking it all off at noon.
This is what we’re taught. Personally, I think we’re already in hell.
Here’s today’s line-up!
12:00 p.m. Between Heaven & Hell: Various Artists NEW!
We’ve got some real interesting songs in this one. Some stuff I know I’ve never put in a playlist before. Includes songs from Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Bob Dylan, The Eagles, The Byrds, Emmylou Harris, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley, ZZ Top, Lucinda Williams, Roberta Flack, and others! it’s a good one.
Take this with a grain of salt, but the playlist should be up before the stream begins. Go to the Playlist tab and scroll to the bottom to see if I make good on my attempt.
4:00 p.m. The Beatles: The Early Years
We certainly don’t play enough of our co-House Band here. But all of this stuff I research has made me understand that sometimes we forget just how fucking good they were. But Bob Dylan? He knew:
“We were driving through Colorado, we had the radio on, and eight of the Top 10 songs were Beatles songs…’I Wanna Hold Your Hand,’ all those early ones. They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid… I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go.”
8:00 p.m. In The Spotlight: The Music of Irma Thomas
Somehow, there are those great singers who fall through the cracks when they should be much bigger. Irma Thomas is such a singer. She is a contemporary of Aretha Franklin, and she is known as The Soul Queen of New Orleans.
It’s Monday. It’s going to be rainy here with 50-mph winds. I’m turning it up and hunkering down. You should too.
And so begins another week. Here at the Mermaid Lounge, we’re trying to accomplish the impossible: Programming a week in advance. It’s a valiant effort, but the jury is OUT. Nevertheless, we have a lot of info here for you.
The very first juke box at the Palais Royal Hotel in San Francisco
November 23, 1899: The first jukebox was placed at The Palais Royale Hotel in San Francisco (see photo).
November 23, 1962: The Beatles auditioned at St. James’ Church Hall in London for The BBC, which was looking for people with potential to be on TV. The Beatles failed. I wonder if the guy who made that decision kept his job.
November 23, 1963: Jimmy Gilmer & The Fireballs have the top R & B song with Sugar Shack.
November 23, 1964: /The Beatles release the single, I Feel Fine. The B-side is She’s A Woman.
The Rolling Stones are late for the radio shows Top Gear and Saturday Club, and were banned by The BBC.
November 23, 1965: The Beatles film promos for I Feel Fine, Ticket To Ride, Help!, Day Tripper and We Can Work It Out at Twickenham Studios in London. The BBC paid 1,750 pounds for the broadcast rights, and then deals were made with other broadcasters around the world.
November 23, 1967: The Who played the New Barn at The Lions Delaware County Fairgrounds in Muncie, Indiana.
November 23, 1968:Little known fact, here: After Dusty Springfield had recommended Jimmy Page to Ahmet Ertegun, head of Atlantic Records, Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant finalized their recording contract.
Steve Miller debuted on the charts after his first single, Living in The USA.
The Beatles tied the existing rock era record (held by Bobby Darin’s Mack The Knife) with a ninth week at #1 for Hey Jude.
Judy Collins’ version of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now enters the Top 40, where it will peak at #8. It will also win The Best Folk Performance of the year.
November 23, 1970: George Harrison released his first solo single, My Sweet Lord, in the US.
November 23, 1972: Bob Dylan arrives in Durango, Colorado, to film the movie Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door).
November 23, 1975: Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody goes to #1 on the UK charts, where it will remain for nine weeks.
November 23, 1976: Wings kicked off a 19-date UK tour at The Royal Court in Liverpool.
November 23, 1983: Tom Evans of Badfinger committed suicide after the band decided to break up.
Born On This Day
November 23, 1939: Betty Everett, of The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss) fame, was born in Greenwood, Mississippi.
November 23, 1940: Freddie Marsden, drummer for Gerry & The Pacemakers, was born in Liverpool.
November 23, 1954: Bruce Hornsby, one of the greatest keyboardists ever, leader of Bruce Hornsby & The Range and keyboardist for The Grateful Dead, was born in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Good Morning from The College of Rock n’ Roll Knowledge. It’s another busy day in musical history, as you will see.
Tom Petty & Dave Grohl on stage during the Heartbreaker’s 30th Anniversary Tour.
Here’s today’s lesson plan:
November 19, 1955: Carl Perkins records Blue Suede Shoes at Sun Studios in Memphis. It will be Perkins’ biggest hit, reaching #2 on Billboard.
November 19, 1966: The Supremes enjoy their eighth US #1 hit with You Keep Me Hangin’ On.
November 19, 1971: B.B. King celebrates his 25th year in music by kicking off a European tour in London.
November 19, 1973: Led Zeppelin begins recording demos for their album, Physical Graffiti.
Meanwhile, Bob Dylan releases his 13th studio album, simply called Dylan.
November 19, 1975: The J. Geils Band records Blow Your Face Out (a fucking great album) at Cobo Hall in Detroit.
November 19, 1976: Van Morrison’s Moondance album receives a Gold Record. The album spawns two hits. In addition to the title track, Into The Mystic is released.
November 19, 1982: Led Zeppelin releases its final studio album, Coda, which is a collection of unused tracks written before drummer John Bonham’s death in 1980.
November 19, 1983: Tom Evans of Badfinger died at the age of 36. Like his and mate, Pete Ham, Evans also hanged himself. The story of what record company and manager greed and avarice did to Badfinger’s career is one that should be told. We will touch on that in the blog sometime.
November 19, 1994: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers perform You Don’t Know How It Feels and Honeybee on Saturday Night Live, with Dave Grohl of Nirvana and The Foo Fighters on drums.
November 19, 1995: Bruce Springsteen’s thirteenth album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, is released.
A 60-track album called Beatles Anthology I is released and sets a single-day sales record of 450,000 units.
That’s it, children. Take notes. There’ll be a quiz later (just kidding).
Good Morning, Ungovernables! Today we have Wide Open Stream until 11:00 a.m. EST, when we begin airing The British Are Coming, more than five uninterrupted hours of British Invasion (and beyond) music.
Here are some of the artists you’ll be hearing:
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
The Kinks
The Dave Clark Five
The Who
Queen
Eric Clapton
The Pretenders
Cream
Lulu
Led Zeppelin
Jeff Beck
Pink Floyd
Them (featuring Van Morrison)
Dusty Springfield
Faces
The Searchers
and many more. So, tune us in, people. You will not regret it.
Good Morning, Ungovernables! We’re back at another Monday, and we have some great music and mayhem on tap.
Here’s your Monday line-up!
11:00 a.m. The Inner Sanctum: Dead Reckoning
We move on to Episode 2 of our old time radio show, The Inner Sanctum.
2:00 p.m. Mudcrutch Monday!
Today in the Spotlight, we have Mudcrutch. The band that would morph into the force that’s known as Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. In reality, Mudcrutch was a force unto itself, returning under Petty in 2008 to make some brilliant music. Failing to see this band during it’s small-venue tour in 2016 is one of the great regrets of my musical life.
6:00 p.m. In the Spotlight: The Music of Led Zeppelin NEW!
We’re spending some quality time with the original headbangers tonight. Formed in London in 1968, they celebrated their 50th year in service to the musical masses in 2018.
Where you at? Tune us in. We’re free and always will be.
Good Morning, Ungovernables! Here we are on the first Friday of the New Year, and we’re celebrating John Paul Jones’ birthday by putting Zep in the Spotlight.
#BecomeUngovernable Radio 