Apr 5th 2004 #Vehemence released the album “Helping The World To See” #KillForGod #AloneInYourPresence #DarknessIsComfort #MelodicDeathMetal

Did you know..

“Her Beautiful Eyes” was a re-recorded song off an earlier demo.

Apr 5th 2007 #Monstrosity released the album “Spiritual Apocalypse” #SacredOblivion #TriumphInBlack #TheBloodlineHorror #DeathMetal

Did you know…

Kelly Shaefer of Atheist did guest vocals on the songs “The Inhuman Race” and “Firestorm”.

Apr 5th 2019 #Exumer release NEW album “Hostile Defiance” #Trapper #Descent #Raptor #VerticalViolence #ThrashMetal

Did you know…

The band did a cover of the Entombed song “Supposed to Rot” on this album.

‪Apr 5th 2005 #CorrosionOfConformity released the album “In The Arms Of God” #ItIsThatWay #SoMuchLeftBehind #InfiniteWar #SludgeMetal ‬

‪Did you know…‬

‪It was their first album to not feature drummer Reed Mullin.‬

‪Stanton Moore of the band Galactic played drums on this album.‬

‪Apr 5th 1985 #Venom #Slayer and #Exodus played the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, Illinois. #CombatTourLive ‬

‪Did you know…‬

‪The tour was ranked number 1 in Decibel‘s Top 100 Metal Tours of All Time special issue.‬

‪The crowds were batshit crazy, as were all metal gigs of this period. It was the first time I’d seen stage diving and mosh pits.‬

Apr 5th 2013 #Volbeat released the album “Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies” #LonesomeRider #TheHangsmanBodyCount #PearlHart #HeavyMetal

Did you know…

The track “Room 24” featured vocalist #KingDiamond

It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.

Apr 5th 2002 #LayneStaley singer with #AliceInChains died. #RIP

Did you know…

In 1984 Layne joined a glam metal band called Sleze, who would change their name to Alice N’ Chains. Months later Layne took that name and changed it to Alice In Chains.

Apr 5th 1998 #CozyPowell legendary drummer who played with #Whitesnake and #BlackSabbath died in car accident. #RIP

Did you know…

Powell had appeared on at least 66 albums, with contributions on many other recordings. Many rock drummers have cited him as a major influence.

Apr 5th 2007 #MarkStJohn former guitarist with #KISS died. #RIP #HardRock

Did you know…

St. John was with Kiss only a short time; but he was featured on the album Animalize, the second album of the non-makeup period.

April 6, 1990, All of Motley Crue’s tours have no doubt been eventful for drummer Tommy Lee, but the band’s spring 1990 dates in support of their hugely popular Dr. Feelgood album ended up making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

On April 7, just a few days after being hauled down to the police station and fined for mooning a Concert crowd in Georgia, Lee ended up making a different kind of post-show detour after the band’s stop in New Haven, Conn. This time, he ended up at the hospital instead, with the band forced to end their show about halfway through their usual setlist.

The Associated press reported that Lee was hospitalized with a mild concussion — but was “alert, awake and in good spirits” — after falling off the kit at the end of his “flying drum solo” and hitting his head on the floor. 

A hospital spokesman, while admitting he wasn’t exactly sure how it happened, told reporters the fall was “part of the routine,” but that wasn’t entirely true.

https://youtu.be/RVg2N00S_DQ

As the chronicalogical Crue timeline details the incident, on most nights, Lee’s solo ended with a spectacular but fairly uneventful bungee drop. In New Haven, however, he was worried that the brake wouldn’t be pulled in time, so he uncoupled himself in order to “reach his foot strap, turning him upside down.” 

Thus inverted, Lee culminated his 20-foot fall with a painful head-first landing. Fortunately, he didn’t sustain any serious damage. Although Lee finished his next few solos with a far less death-defying version of the bungee drop, his injury was just part of the band’s all-out approach to its music. 

“We don’t just play rock ‘n’ roll, we live it,” bassist Nikki Sixx is quoted as saying in the AP report. “We go on tour and get broken bones, diseases, the crowd leaves bloody. It’s more like going to war.”

Plasmatics’ Wendy O. Williams Commits Suicide April 6, 1998

Ten years after her cult shock-punk band’s last tour,
Plasmatics’ lead singer Wendy O.
Williams has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Williams’ longtime companion and onetime manager found her body in
the woods just outside of their Storrs, Conn., home on Monday.
Williams was 48.

Williams, who pursued a solo career after the Plasmatics’s 1982
swansong Coup d’Etat, was nominated for a Grammy in 1985
for best Female Rock Vocal. She had also dabbled in both film and
television acting (Reform School Girls in 1986 and
McGyver in 1990), but had dropped out of the public eye in
recent years and had been working as an animal rehabilitator. In an
Associated Press report, manager Rod
Swenson said that Williams had found it difficult to live
a normal life past her peak and had been despondent for a long
time.

“This was something she had planned,” Swenson said. “It was no
spur-of-the-moment thing.”

The Plasmatics debuted their hybrid of punkish heavy metal and
performance art at New York’s infamous CBGB in
1978. Swenson, a Yale grad who dubbed himself “Captain Kink” and
produced live sex shows in the ’70s as well as videos for
Patti Smith and the Ramones,
dreamed of starting his own band and picked Williams, one of his
stars, to front it.

From the beginning, the focus of the Plasmatics’ act was on
Williams, who would use sledgehammers and chainsaws to wreak
genuine havoc on television sets, guitars and, most memorably,
Cadillac Coupe de Villes. Williams’ simulated sex acts and
provocative partial nudity — as well as the band’s mohawks, hair
dyes, nurses’ outfits, ballet tutus and songs about sex, violence
and fast food — rounded out the Plasmatics experience. The package
garnered a healthy dose of media attention, a cult following,
modest album sales and the title “queen of shock rock” for
Williams.

Predictably, the no-holds barred stage antics also drew multiple
obscenity charges for Williams, who was arrested on January 18,
1981 in Milwaukee and the following night in Cleveland. Williams
and Swenson were also charged with battery and resisting arrest the
first night, when, according to witnesses, Williams slapped an
officer after she was grabbed in a sexually abusive way. Williams
and Swenson were taken to a hospital after the resulting fracas
(both claimed to have been abused by the arresting officers.)
Williams and Swenson later sued but lost their case.

In the aftermath of the arrests, Williams remained a vocal
advocate of her rights to self expression.

“Using sex to create the law is so stupid, and I’m not the kind
of person who walks the middle of the line,” Williams said in a
1981 Rolling Stone interview. “We’re not out to pick
fights. But then the essence of what we do is shaking up the middle
class; I think if you don’t do that with your music, you’re just
adding to the noise pollution.”

Williams, who was raised on a farm in Upstate New York and ran
away from home at 16, is survived by her mother and two sisters.

https://open.spotify.com/album/1ntNLgaYCFCkeW4flGYlY2

Martin Luther King Jr. Is Killed

1968

US civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. is killed after being shot on a Memphis motel balcony. King’s life inspires a number of songs, including U2’s “Pride (In The Name Of Love).”

Three days after King’s assassination, Nina Simone performs a song written in tribute, “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead).” Further musical tributes are conflated with the death of Senator Robert Kennedy, who is killed two months later: The Rascals’ “People Got to Be Free,” inspired by King and Kennedy, goes to #1 in August; later in the year Dion has a hit with “Abraham, Martin and John,” a song about King, Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln. Even Elvis gets in on it, with a King/Kennedy song called “If I Can Dream.”

The most trenchant tributes to King come more than a decade after his death, when his legacy is unbound from Kennedy’s. Stevie Wonderleads a successful campaign to get King’s birthday declared a national holiday, with his 1980 track “Happy Birthday” written in King’s honor. U2 learns about King in 1983 when they visit the Chicago Peace Museum, leading to two songs on their album The Unforgettable Fire: “MLK” and “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” (Bono references the shooting as “Early morning, April 4” in the lyric, although it actually happened at 6 p.m.).

In ensuing years, songwriters of all stripes lionize King. Public Enemy pleads his case in “By the Time I Get to Arizona“; Rage Against the Machine calls him a “Renegade of Funk.” The folk music community, a powerful voice for King’s work during his lifetime, also comes through, with Patty Griffin’s “Up to the Mountain” reflecting on his famous speech. Hip-Hop is sprinkled with references to King, with the Game/Nas collaboration “Letter to the King” explaining how they came around after years of youthful indifference. “You the first real Braveheart, we miss you,” Nas raps.

1987Starship‘s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” written by Diane Warren and Albert Hammond and used in the movie Mannequin, hits #1 in the US.

1973A taped Elvis Presley concert entitled Elvis: Aloha From Hawaii is telecast on NBC and proves to be a huge success. The total worldwide audience for the show, the first commercial worldwide satellite broadcast, amounts to over a billion people.

1964The Beatles hold the top five spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with the following singles:

5) “Please Please Me“
4) “I Want To Hold Your Hand“
3) “She Loves You“
2) “Twist And Shout“
1) “Can’t Buy Me Love“

1960Frank Sinatra’s version of “High Hopes” from the movie A Hole In The Head wins the Oscar for Best Original Song.

2015Marilyn Manson is sucker punched by a fellow patron at a Denny’s in Alberta, Canada. The rocker, who stopped by the restaurant for a late-night meal after a show promoting his Pale Emperor album, denies claims that he insulted the assailant’s girlfriend and spurred the incident.

2014Richard Marx and Cynthia Rhodes announce the end of their 25-year marriage that included the birth of three sons. The pair met in 1983 when both were working on the film Staying Alive (Marx on the soundtrack, Rhodes as a dancer).

2009At the Public Hall in Cleveland, Jeff Beck, Little Anthony & The Imperials, Metallica, Run-DMC and Bobby Womack are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

2008Procol Harum‘s Gary Brooker wins an appeal in London to an earlier ruling, which stated that Harum organist Matthew Fisher was entitled to 40 percent of the royalties from the band’s 1967 smash “A Whiter Shade Of Pale.” Though the new ruling notes that Fisher wrote the organ line and should be co-credited, it also overturns the royalty award by noting that Fisher waited 38 years to sue.

2008The Martin Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones concert documentary Shine A Light hits theaters. The next week, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jack White appear on the cover of Rolling Stone with the headline, “Blues Brothers.”

2007An article is published in New Musical Express quoting Keith Richards as saying, “I snorted my father.” Richards later claims it was an April Fools’ joke.

1996Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia’s ashes are scattered in the Ganges river in India by Dead guitarist Bob Weir and Garcia’s widow, Deborah.

1996More trouble for Wilson Pickett, who after serving a one-year jail sentence in 1994 is arrested at his New Jersey home and charged with possession of two grams of cocaine. Still on probation, he enters a rehab center in August.

1992Beastie Boys make their first concert appearance playing instruments at a show at The Palladium in Los Angeles.

1978Loretta Lynn sings “One’s On The Way” on episode #308 of The Muppet Show. Because the Muppet Theatre is supposedly being fumigated, the entire show takes place at a railroad station.

1974R&B singer Andre Dalyrimple is born in Georgia. Along with his three brothers, he’ll form the group Soul For Real, known for their 1994 hit “Candy Rain.”

2008 – R.E.M. went to No.1 on the UK album chart with ‘Accelerate’ the bands — 2008 – R.E.M. went to No.1 on the UK album chart with ‘Accelerate’ the bands fourteenth studio album.

https://youtu.be/LJWlkQv42wI

2004 – Queens of the Stone Age frontman and Eagles…— 2004 – Queens of the Stone Age frontman and Eagles of Death Metal drummer Josh Homme is involved in a bar brawl in New York’s East Village.

2004 – Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy enters rehab to treat an addiction for painkillers… — 2004 – Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy enters rehab to treat an addiction for painkillers, pushing back the release of their A Ghost is Born album. 

2003 – Nigerian Drummer Bahatunde Olatunji, whose … — 2003 – Nigerian Drummer Bahatunde Olatunji, whose albums introduced African percussion to a wide U.S. audience, dies of diabetes in Salinas, Calif. He is 76.

2003 – Country star Shania Twain picks up the Arti… — 2003 – Country star Shania Twain picks up the Artist of the Year Award along with the Fan Choice Award at the soldout 32nd annual Juno Awards, held in Ottaw.

2003 – Avril Lavigne walks away with four Junos at the Canadian… — 2003 – Avril Lavigne walks away with four Junos at the Canadian awards ceremony, including New Artist of the Year and Album of the Year for Let Go.

2002 – Sarah McLachlan’s audience grows by one whe…— 2002 – Sarah McLachlan’s audience grows by one when the Canadian musician gives birth to daughter India Ann Sushil Sood, her and drummer-husband, Ashwin Sood’s first child.

2001 – Soul vocalist Charles Pettigrew of the duo … — 2001 – Soul vocalist Charles Pettigrew of the duo Charles & Eddie dies in Philadelphia after a long battle with cancer. The group achieved international success with the 1992 single.

2000 – Veteran singer/songwriter Joaquin Sabina sw…— 2000 – Veteran singer/songwriter Joaquin Sabina sweeps the annual Premios de la Musica awards ceremony, held at Madrid’s refurbished Vista Alegre bullring. Sabina wins four awards, for best pop author.

2000 – The Black Crowes are sued by an Ohio teenager… — 2000 – The Black Crowes are sued by an Ohio teenager who claims he suffered permanent hearing damage from sitting in the second row of a 1999 concert.

1999 – Sony Corp. announces plans to begin selling… — 1999 – Sony Corp. announces plans to begin selling Super Audio CD players and related products in Japan. Sony’s first SACD products are targeted mainly at the high end of.

1999 – Returning to the stage for the first time s… — 1999 – Returning to the stage for the first time since his recent bout with pneumonia, Johnny Cash electrifies an audience in New York with a surprise appearance.

1999 – Red Norvo, who performed with such greats a…— 1999 – Red Norvo, who performed with such greats as Charles Mingus and Frank Sinatra and is credited with introducing the xylophone to jazz, dies at the age of 91.

1999 – Microsoft’s digital download technology, MS… — 1999 – Microsoft’s digital download technology, MS Audio 4.0, is unveiled.

1999 – Marcel Avram, the 61-year-old German concer…— 1999 – Marcel Avram, the 61-year-old German concert promoter jailed for three and a half years in December 1997 after being convicted on charges of tax evasion, is unexpectedly freed.

1999 – Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, the bear…— 1999 – Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, the bearded half of ABBA, take to the stage in London, 25 years after the band’s debut at the Eurovision Song Contest.

1999 – Tipper Gore, co-founder of the Parents’ Music Resource… — 1999 – Tipper Gore, co-founder of the Parents’ Music Resource Center, plays congas with Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart at a fund-raiser for her husband.

1998 – Tammy Wynette, whose hit “Stand By Your Man… — 1998 – Tammy Wynette, whose hit “Stand By Your Man” stands among the classic recordings of all time, dies in her sleep at her Nashville home. She is 55.

1998 – A group of 27 country artists led by Tim Mc… — 1998 – A group of 27 country artists led by Tim McGraw and including Trisha Yearwood, Faith Hill, Vince Gill, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, Martina McBride, Randy Travis, Pam Tillis.

1997 – The Michael Jackson film Captain EO has… — 1997 – Michael Jackson film ‘Captain EO’ shows for the last time at Disneyland. The scandal and molestation charges Michael faced prompted Disney to remove the attraction. Nice family ride.

1985 – Gilbert O’Sullivan wins a multimillion-dollar lawsuit… — 1985 – Gilbert O’Sullivan wins a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against his former manager for unpaid royalties from hits like “Alone Again Naturally.”

1984 – Guitarist Steve Van Zandt Guitarist Steve Van Zandt announces that he’s amicably leaving the E Street Band to pursue solo projects.

1979 – Rod Stewart marries Alana Hamilton. — 1979 – Rod Stewart marries Alana Hamilton.

1979 – Doobie Brothers: Minute by Minute US LP is no. 1 chart topper. — 1979 – Doobie Brothers: Minute by Minute US LP is no. 1 chart topper. Lyrics: Hey, dont worry, Ive been lied to Ive been here many times before Girl, dont you worry, I know.

1977 – No. 1 Chart Toppers Pop Hit: “Dancing Quee… — 1977 – No. 1 Chart Toppers Pop Hit: “Dancing Queen,” Abba. This is the only No. 1 song by the international phenomenon.

1975 – No. 1 Chart Toppers Pop Hit: “Philadelphia… — 1975 – No. 1 Chart Toppers Pop Hit: “Philadelphia Freedom,” Elton John. 

1974 – California Jam music festival attracts 200,… — 1974 – California Jam music festival attracts 200,000. 

1974 – Billy Joel cracks the top 40… — 1974 – Billy Joel cracks the top 40 for the first time with “Piano Man.”

1974 – Ladies and Gentlement, The Rolling Stones, the first film… — 1974 – Ladies and Gentlement, The Rolling Stones, the first film with quadrophonic sound, premiers at the Ziegfield Theatre, New York. The Rolling Stones premiere their concert film Ladies.

1973 – Queen sign their first recording contract. — 1973 – Queen sign their first recording contract.

Queen has announced that they will release a series of unreleased live recordings from their legendary performance at Live Aid as part of the original soundtrack to Bohemian Rhapsody, the upcoming Queen biopic.

1971 – Composer Igor Stravinsky, who shook… — 1971 – Composer Igor Stravinsky, who shook the world with his compositions The Rite of Spring and The Firebird, dies at age 88.