INTERESTING WEEK MUSCIALLY

Cool stuff that happened this week in the music/culture wars from the folks at www.musiciansfriends.com. See if any of this makes you go “No kiddin’!” or “I didn’t know that.”

1957: Ed Sullivan hosts the TV debuts of Sam Cooke, and Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

1968: Graham Nash quits the Hollies, then announces the formation of Crosby, Stills and Nash.

1969: Altamont Speedway concert with the Stones; Airplane; Santana; and C, S, N and Y on the playbill and the Hell’s Angels providing security. Four people are killed. The documentary of the debacle, “Gimme Shelter” (many consider it marks the end of the flower generation) shows the following year.

1971: The Montreux Casino in Geneva, Switzerland, catches fire during a show by the Mothers of Invention, inspiring Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water.” Deep Purple was across Lake Geneva from Montreaux watching the fire from their hotel and the smoke drifted across the lake … hence the song's title.

1972: Carly Simon releases "You're So Vain," a song which sets the whole country to wondering exactly who is so insufferably vain. Candidates include Mick Jagger (who sang on the record), Cat Stevens, Kris Kristofferson, and Warren Beatty. When asked if she's "gone with" Beatty, she says, "Hasn't everybody?" She later notes: "I felt I was one among thousands at that point – it hadn't reached, you know, the populations of small countries." In 2003 she volunteers to tell the highest bidder at a charity auction who the song is actually about, but only if the winner will abide by a confidentiality agreement. NBC exec Dick Ebersol paid $50,000, but he's not talking.

1976: Bob Marley and the Wailers are rehearsing at Marley's house in Kingston, Jamaica, when seven gunmen appear and shower the house with a hail of gunfire. Marley, wife Rita, and manager Don Taylor are all hit but miraculously nobody is seriously injured. The band plays a gig two nights later.

1976: the Sex Pistols' Glenn Matlock uses the "F" word during an English TV interview and the resulting uproar proves that the Brits can be every bit as priggish and sanctimonious as the Yanks. Most of the Pistols' upcoming gigs are cancelled and by the next month they can't book a date anywhere in the U.K.

1986: Annie Lennox, lead singer for the Eurythmics, gets so carried away at a concert in Birmingham, England, that she rips off her bra, which is the only thing covering her breasts. This does not cause a national scandal, nor bring down the monarchy or British civilization like a latter similar Super Bowl event does.

1988: Roy Orbison dies; 1993: Frank Zappa dies at 53; 1996: Tiny Tim, (born Herbert Khaury) dies.