Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, originally issued on Atlantic Records on March 28, 1973, turns forty tomorrow.

Led Zeppelin was already a record-setting global powerhouse when Atlantic Records released the band's fifth album, Houses of the Holy, on March 28, 1973. The English quartet had laid down the basic tracks for the record in the spring of 1972 at the Rolling Stones' mobile recording studio at Stargroves, a county estate west of London at Berkshire. In the months leading up to the release, Led Zeppelin toured the world, selling out arenas in the United States, Europe and Japan, smashing ticket records set by the Beatles.

See also:
- The Beatles' Please Please Me turns fifty
- Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon turns forty
- The Stooges' Raw Power turns forty

More »

Fifty years ago today, the Beatles' electrifying debut album, Please Please Me was issued in the U.K. Designed to reproduce the manic intensity of an early Beatles' live performance and hastily produced to meet demand after the group's song of the same name rocketed to number-one on the British singles charts in February of 1963, most of the record was recorded in a single ten-hour session at Abbey Road Studios.

See also:
- The Beatles' Sgt Pepper turns 45
- The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street turns forty
- The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced turns 45

More »

Dark Side of The Moon, originally released on March 1, 1973, turns forty today.

More than being one of the best selling albums of all time, more than having the most recognizable album cover the world over, Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon was a cross-cultural, trans-generational album that connected with audiences on issues of death, greed, life-purpose and the horrors and triumphs of mental illness. It also proved that white English boys could still take the blues in unprecedented and yet ultimately authentic directions. Today marks the fortieth anniversary of this celebrated album, and while it should be appreciated as an artifact of its time, Dark Side Of The Moon is just as palatable for the medicated-millennials of today as it was for depressed hippies in 1973.

See also:
- Review: The Flaming Lips take on Dark Side of the Moon at Red Rocks, 8/3/11
- The Stooges' Raw Power turns forty today
- Album Anniversary Archives (Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Velvet Underground, New Order)

More »

Raw Power, released on February 7, 1973, turns forty years old today.

Great art does not always move units. Case in point: The Stooges' 1973 album, Raw Power, was a complete flop commercially. But, as with the story about the Velvet Underground, it seems that everyone who did buy it must have been inspired to start a band, because forty years after its initial release, Raw Power stands as one of the most influential albums in rock history.

See also:
- Brian Eno's Before and After Science turns 35
- Velvet Underground & Nico turns 45 today
- Today In History: More notable music and album anniversaries

More »

Aaron Thackeray

My Bloody Valentine at the Fillmore Auditorium in April 2009.

So the album that everybody's talking about this week (and for good reason) is mbv, the record that fans have been eagerly awaiting for at least two decades, since the release of Loveless, My Bloody Valentine's 1991 masterpiece. To give you an idea of just how eagerly awaited this follow-up was: As soon the band released the disc this past weekend, making it available for download on its website, the site unceremoniously crashed.

Once things got sorted out on the band's end, folks were eventually able to download the new album, and when they did, as expected, it was totally worth the wait. What greeted them was the classic My Bloody Valentine sound. When the act came to Denver in April 2009, Tom Murphy had the chance to speak with Kevin Shields specifically about the band's sound, and Shields noted how it was not actually created by effects pedals as many had wrongly assumed:

See also:
- Best of Denver 2010: My Bloody Valentine at the Fillmore Auditorium
- My Bloody Valentine's Loveless is twenty
- My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields talks Loveless and the influence of bands like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.

More »

buckfifty.org

If you were living in Denver thirty-four years ago this week, the Rainbow Music Hall would've been the talk of the town. After a grand opening gala featuring Jerry Jeff Walker, who performed three sets on two back-to-back nights at the venue, suddenly, the humble movie theater multiplex at the corner of Evans and Monaco became a prime concert destination for a slew of iconic acts such as Bob Dylan, Van Halen, Tom Petty and U2.

See also:
- Rainbow Music Hall now officially only a memory
- Piece of Rainbow Music Hall lives on at Twist & Shout
- More Rainbow Music Hall memorabilia unearthed

More »

Brian Eno's 1977 album Before and After Science marks the end of an era. In the four years before it came out, starting in January of 1974, Eno released no fewer than three solo pop albums, and this, his fourth, was to be his last for almost thirty years. By the time he returned to song-oriented vocal pop under his own name -- with 2005's Another Day on Earth -- Eno had enjoyed several discrete careers' worth of success as the inventor of ambient music, as one of rock's most sought-after and celebrated producers, and, in perhaps his most well-known work, as the creator of the iconic Microsoft start-up sound that originated with Windows 95.

See also:
- U2's The Joshua Tree turns 25
- Velvet Underground & Nico turns 45 today
- Lester Bangs died thirty years ago

More »

Incesticide, released on December 14, 1992, turns twenty years old tomorrow.

In the wake of the generation defining, pop music altering, astronomically hyped wonder that was Nirvana's Nevermind, Kurt Cobain would spend the next two and a half years of his life trying to remind people what his band was actually all about (while simultaneously trying to figure that out himself). After embarking on world tours, gracing countless magazine covers and garnering persistent praise from the likes of MTV, Nirvana released Incesticide on December 14, 1992.

See also:
- Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction turns 25
- Beastie Boys' Check Your Head turns twenty
- Today in history archives

More »

Pure Guava by Ween was released twenty years ago today, on November 15, 1992.

Twenty years hasn't done much to mellow the pure weirdness of Pure Guava, Ween's third studio album and major label debut from 1992. Like 1991's The Pod, Pure Guava includes plenty of sound experiments and bizarre conceptual flights of fancy. But the album - released twenty years ago today - also takes much bigger steps than its predecessor, both creatively and commercially. In addition to "Push Th' Little Daisies," arguably the band's best-known song, the album contains bare-bones versions of tunes like "Don't Get 2 Close 2 My Fantasy" and "Reggaejunkiejew," brilliant tunes that would evolve and blossom during decades' worth of live performances.

See also:
- Today in History album anniversary archive
- Ween's The Pod turns twenty years old today
- Gene Ween on Ween's history, working with Dean Ween and playing in Colorado
- Review: Aaron Freeman at the Fox Theatre, 11/2/12
- Review: Ween at the Fillmore Auditorium, 12/29/11
- Review: Ween at the Fillmore Auditorium, 12/30/11
- Review: Ween at the Fillmore Auditorium, 12/31/11
- Review: Ween at 1STBANK Center, 10/31/10
- Ten best Beavis and Butt-head music-video riffs

More »

New Order's Substance was released 25 years ago today, on August 17, 1987.

See also:
- New Order's Movement turns thirty
- Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction turns 25
- The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street turns 40
- The Beatles' Sgt Pepper turns 45
- Prince's Sign of the Times turns 25
- Velvet Underground & Nico turns 45 today
- Today In History Archives

When New Order was interviewed by Keith Allen in 1993, Allen asked the band "who is the laziest member of the group?" Before anyone else could answer, bassist Peter Hook quipped, "Ian Curtis. I haven't seen him do anything in years." This was over a decade after the group's former lead singer had hanged himself in his kitchen. By then, the band had obviously come a long way toward processing its grief and moving on toward casual humor. Beyond public interviews, this emotional journey can be traced through the band's musical evolution, as seen in their career defining singles collection, Substance, which celebrates its 25th anniversary today.

More »