Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today July 30
1958
Kate Bush is born, the artist who made pop a land without maps
On July 30, 1958, Kate Bush was born in Kent; at 19 she hit UK number one with 'Wuthering Heights', the first woman to do so with a self-written song. From 'Hounds of Love' to her viral return with 'Running Up That Hill', she built a theatrical, literary and absolutely free body of work. Half of recent decades' pop avant-garde is her declared offspring.
Kate Bush
Listen
Via YouTube
1936
Buddy Guy is born, the living link between Chicago blues and rock
On July 30, 1936, Buddy Guy was born in Louisiana — the wild guitarist of the Chess studios whose electric showmanship anticipated everything Hendrix would do. Clapton, Beck and the Stones cite him as a direct teacher, and well into his eighties he keeps touring as if retirement were a rumor. He is, literally, the last standing giant of Chicago blues.
Buddy Guy
Listen
Via YouTube
1954
Elvis debuts on a big stage and discovers the power of his leg
On July 30, 1954, just 25 days after recording 'That's All Right' at Sun Studio, Elvis Presley played his first advertised professional concert at Memphis's Overton Park Shell, opening for country star Slim Whitman. Nervous, he rocked on the balls of his feet and his leg started shaking in time with the music; the girls in the crowd erupted in screams, to his own bewilderment. With Scotty Moore and Bill Black he played just two songs and stole the night. Some historians call that evening the first rock and roll concert in history.
Elvis Presley
Listen
Via YouTube
2001
'Is This It' appears first in Australia and the garage starts over
On July 30, 2001, The Strokes' debut went on sale in Australia, months before the UK and the United States. Thirty-six minutes recorded in a New York basement with Gordon Raphael, without a single new idea and with every old one sharpened to an edge. In an industry betting on nu metal, five men in second-hand jackets reminded everyone that rock also fits in a garage.
The Strokes
Listen
Via YouTube
2003
Sam Phillips dies, the man who pressed record
On July 30, 2003, Sam Phillips died in Memphis at 80, of respiratory failure. He never played on a record that mattered, and yet almost everything that mattered went through his studio: Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Howlin' Wolf. Sun Records was a small room with an enormous idea behind it — that the music radio was separating by the colour of people's skin was, in fact, the same music. He died on the exact day that, forty-eight years earlier, he had recorded 'Folsom Prison Blues'.
Sam Phillips
Sun Records
1941
Paul Anka is born, the teenager who wrote his own destiny
On July 30, 1941, Paul Anka, one of the first teen idols to write his own hits, was born in Ottawa. At 15 he conquered the charts with 'Diana' and chained together 'Lonely Boy' and 'Put Your Head on My Shoulder' in the golden age of teen pop. His true legacy, though, was as a writer: he penned the theme for Johnny Carson's show and the English lyrics to 'My Way', Sinatra's definitive anthem. Few artists from rock and roll's first wave aged with such craft.
Paul Anka
Listen
Via YouTube
1955
Cash records 'Folsom Prison Blues' without ever having set foot in a jail
On July 30, 1955, Johnny Cash recorded 'Folsom Prison Blues' at the Sun studio in Memphis, with Sam Phillips in charge and only two musicians beside him: Luther Perkins on guitar and Marshall Grant on bass. He had written it years earlier, stationed in Germany with the Air Force, after seeing a documentary about Folsom prison. He had never been locked up. He still wrote the line that would define him forever, about the man who kills another just to watch him die.
Johnny Cash
Listen
Via YouTube
1955
Rat Scabies is born, the drummer who beat the Sex Pistols to the punch
On July 30, 1955, Christopher Millar, immortalized as Rat Scabies, drummer of The Damned, was born in Kingston upon Thames. His nickname was coined at an audition: he had scabies when a rat scurried across the basement floor. With The Damned he delivered 'New Rose' in 1976, the first punk single released in the UK, beating the Sex Pistols — whom his band had supported at their first gig. His frantic, theatrical drumming set the speed standard for British punk.
Rat Scabies
The Damned
Listen
Via YouTube
1996
The record that made Sublime big came out when there was no Sublime left
On July 30, 1996, Sublime's self-titled album was released, their major-label debut. Bradley Nowell had been dead for two months: a heroin overdose in San Francisco in May, with the record finished and waiting for a date. 'What I Got', 'Santeria' and 'Wrong Way' turned the band into a five-million-selling phenomenon that could no longer exist. Success arrived on time at an address where nobody lived any more.
Sublime
Bradley Nowell
Listen
Via YouTube
2009
Forty years later, the organist claimed the song and won
On July 30, 2009, Britain's highest court unanimously recognised Matthew Fisher as co-author of 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'. The organ solo that opens the song — the part almost everyone hums — was his, and yet the credit had gone for forty-two years to Gary Brooker and Keith Reid alone. The judges noted that English law sets no time limit on claiming authorship. He was granted 40% of the music, and an uncomfortable idea came with it: signing a record is not the same as having written it.
Procol Harum
Matthew Fisher
Listen
Via YouTube
One ephemeris a day, one editorial a week. Zero spam, pure archive.