Videos

7 years ago today (10/24/08), keyboardist Merl Saundres died in San Francisco of complications from a stroke he suffered in 2002. Saunders gained notice in the 1970s when he began collaborating with Jerry Garcia. Saunders at in with the Grateful Dead, and co-founded the Saunders/Garcia Band which produced three albums,…

14 years ago today, (10/23/01), Apple released the first line of iPods which essentially revolutionized the portable music industry and laid the framework for smart phones. In Apple’s press release from October 23, 2001, former CEO Steve Jobs said, “With iPod, Apple has invented a whole new category of digital…

12 years ago today (10/241/03), song-writer Elliott Smith died at the age of 34 years from two stab wounds to the chest. At the time of his death, Smith was working on his sixth studio album, From a Basement on the Hill, which was posthumously completed and released in 2004.…

Happy 65th Birthday to Tom Petty who was born on 10/20/50 in Gainesville, Florida. Petty has had a career the rivals few and has sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. In 2002, he was inducted into the Rock…

68 years ago today (10/16/47), Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist/vocalist Bob Weir was born. Weir was born in San Francisco andwas raised by his adoptive parents, Frederic Utter and Eleanor Cramer Weir, in the suburb of Atherton. On New Year’s Eve, 1963, 16-year-old Weir and another underage friend were wandering the…

28 years ago today (10/15/87), the Jerry Garcia Band began a 15 show residency Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, which featured the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band opening each performance. Along with Garcia on vocals and guitars this edition of the Electric JGB featured Melvin Seals (keys), David Kemper (drums), John Kahn (bass) and…

75 years ago today (10/13/40), jazz saxophonist and holder of one of the coolest names ever – Pharoah Sanders – was born. Emerging from Coltrane’s groups of the mid-1960s, Sanders is known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of “sheets of…

8 years ago today (10/10/07), Radiohead’s In Rainbows was self-released as a pay-what-you-want download, followed by a retail CD release in most countries in the last week of 2007. The pay-what-you-want release, the first for a major act, made headline news across the world and sparked debate about the implications…

75 years ago today (10/9/15), Beatles legend John Lennon was born/ Lennon began his music career at 15 with The Quarrymen and a the band’s second gig, Lennon met the young Paul McCartney and invited him to join the group and the rest is history, until his horrific murder in…

15 years ago today (10/7/15), Phish began their first extended hiatus following the conclusion of their fall 2000 tour at Shoreline Ampitheatre in Mountain View, CA. This concluded the Phish 1.0 era that began upon the band’s formation at the University of Vermont in 1983. With the pending extended break…