The Current Music Blog: August 6, 2009 Archive

Today In Music History: Saint Elliott

Posted at 6:29 AM on August 6, 2009 by Steve Seel
Filed under: Music History

1965 - The Beatles released their fifth album and soundtrack to their second film Help! which included the title track, "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "Ticket to Ride" and "Yesterday."
1974 - Abba scored their first US top 10 hit when "Waterloo" went to No.6.
1983 - Avant-garde musician (and one time David Bowie backing singer) Klaus Nomi died at the age of 39 of AIDS in New York City aged 38. Nomi was one of the first celebrities to contract AIDS.
1988 - Appetite For Destruction, Guns N' Roses debut album, went to No.1 after spending 57 weeks on the Billboard album chart and selling over 5 million copies.
2004 - Rick James was found dead at his Los Angeles home. Addicted to cocaine, he once admitted to spending $7,000 a week on drugs for five years.

Singer songwriter Elliot Smith would have been 40 today - born Stephen Paul Smith on this day in 1969 in Omaha, Nebraska. Smith spent a significant portion of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity, first with the band Heatmiser and second as a solo act. He rose to mainstream prominence when his song "Miss Misery" (from soundtrack for the film Good Will Hunting) was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Song category in 1997.

Smith battled depression and drug addiction, topics that often made their way into his lyrics in songs that seemed to contain just about as much dark and forboding imagery as jangly, Beatle-esque pop and melodic sophistication. At age 34, he died in Los Angeles from two stab wounds to the chest. The autopsy evidence was inconclusive as to whether the wounds were self-inflicted.

For Elliott today, I played "Stupidity Tries" from Figure 8.