Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today August 11
1973
A party in the Bronx: the night DJ Kool Herc ignited hip-hop
On August 11, 1973, in the community room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, DJ Kool Herc powered his sister's back-to-school party by extending the breaks of records with two turntables. That technique, born to make a neighborhood dance, founded hip-hop — the most influential musical culture of the past half century. Every empire starts in a small room.
DJ Kool Herc
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1954
Joe Jackson is born, new wave's elegant restless mind
On August 11, 1954, Joe Jackson was born in England — classically trained and launched into the fray with the melodic rage of 'Is She Really Going Out with Him?'. From new wave he leapt to swing, jazz and chamber music, treating each genre with the same rigor. 'Steppin' Out' remains his elegant calling card: pop sophistication without a drop of cynicism.
Joe Jackson
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1959
Gustavo Cerati is born: the man who gave Latin rock its own language
On August 11, 1959, Gustavo Cerati was born in Buenos Aires. With Soda Stereo he proved you could make modern rock in Spanish without sounding like a translation or an imitation: the band filled stadiums from Mexico to Chile when that still seemed impossible for an Argentine group. His solo career was restless, moving between electronics and song. A stroke left him in a coma in 2010 and he died four years later, never speaking again.
Gustavo Cerati
Soda Stereo
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1979
'Bad Girls' rules the chart just as disco records are being burned
On August 11, 1979, Donna Summer's 'Bad Girls' was number one in the United States. A month earlier, at the White Sox stadium in Chicago, a crowd had blown up a pile of disco records at Disco Demolition Night, with racism and homophobia barely hidden behind the joke. Meanwhile the queen of the genre was outselling everyone. The real audience and the audience that shouts are rarely the same people.
Donna Summer
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1979
Led Zeppelin bid farewell to the UK at Knebworth
On August 11, 1979, Led Zeppelin played their last concert on British soil with the original lineup at Knebworth, before some 104,000 people. They were returning after two years of silence marked by the death of Robert Plant's son, with 'In Through the Out Door' fresh out of the oven. Nobody knew it then, but John Bonham's death the following year would turn that night into a final goodbye to their homeland.
Led Zeppelin
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1949
Eric Carmen is born: from Raspberries power pop to 'All by Myself'
On August 11, 1949, Eric Carmen, voice and pen of Raspberries, was born in Cleveland, Ohio. With 'Go All the Way' he helped invent power pop, that bridge between Beatle melody and hard guitar that would influence entire generations. Solo, he penned 'All by Myself', a ballad built on Rachmaninoff that became a universal standard. Few songwriters have joined classical ambition and radio hooks so naturally.
Eric Carmen
Raspberries
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1950
Erik Brann is born, the teenage guitarist of 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida'
On August 11, 1950, Erik Brann, guitarist of Iron Butterfly, was born in Pekin, Illinois. He was just 17 when he recorded the hypnotic seventeen minutes of 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida', a founding piece of acid rock whose album surpassed thirty million copies. His raw, distorted guitar helped build the bridge between psychedelia and what would soon be called heavy metal.
Erik Brann
Iron Butterfly
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1958
Jah Wobble is born: the bassist who put dub inside post-punk
On August 11, 1958, John Wardle was born in east London, renamed Jah Wobble by a drunk Sid Vicious who couldn't manage his name. In Public Image Ltd he played bass as if it were a Jamaican sound system: enormous notes, slow and spaced out, holding up records like 'Metal Box' on their own. He learned reggae in the same streets where he learned punk, and never saw why they should be different things.
Jah Wobble
Public Image Ltd
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1973
'Fresh' tops the chart and Sly Stone reinvents rhythm a second time
On August 11, 1973, Sly and the Family Stone's 'Fresh' topped the R&B albums chart. It came after the pitch-black 'There's a Riot Goin' On' and carried 'If You Want Me to Stay', with a bass line that always seemed to arrive slightly late on purpose. Sly was already vanishing behind drugs and cancelled shows, but he still had one record in him capable of rearranging funk entirely.
Sly and the Family Stone
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2001
'Bootylicious' hits number one and hands the dictionary a new word
On August 11, 2001, Destiny's Child's 'Bootylicious' was number one in the United States. The song was built on the riff from Stevie Nicks' 'Edge of Seventeen', a loan so brazen that Nicks ended up appearing in the video. The word in the title, invented to celebrate a body the industry wasn't celebrating, eventually entered the Oxford dictionary. Beyoncé wasn't solo yet and was already rewriting the language.
Destiny's Child
Stevie Nicks
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One ephemeris a day, one editorial a week. Zero spam, pure archive.