Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for April 28th

"Hair" starts a long run (cute, eh?)... -- We're amused by playing records backwards too, but this one's ridiculous!!! -- Props for a controversial one-hit wonder...

4/28/1968 (52 years ago today) - The Broadway musical "Hair" premiered in New York City at the legendary Biltmore Theater -- Proudly flaunting its blatant hippie counterculture and late 1960's sexual revolution themes with irreverence for the American flag, a hefty amount of profanity and a nude scene that caused mucho controversy, this self-proclaimed "American Tribal Love-Rock Musical" went on to score BIG hit singles across the board, most notably The Fifth Dimension's "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In", Oliver's "Good Morning Starshine", Three Dog Night's incredibly moving version of "Easy To Be Hard" and even The Cowsills got in the act, covering the title track --The production ran for an astounding 1,729 performance s before closing on July 1st, 1972. Seems quaint, now...

4/28/1982 (38 years ago today) - This actually happened: The California State Assembly Consumer-Protection-Committee spent hours hearing testimony from self-proclaimed "culture/media experts" who claimed Led Zeppelin used a technique called "backmasking" to deliver subliminal messages in "Stairway To Heaven" -- Specifically, they insisted that when you played the track backwards, you could hear: "I sing because I live with Satan.The Lord turns me off, there's no escaping it. Here's to my sweet Satan", etc., etc.....you see where this is going. Anyway, how about a killer cover version:

4/28/2015 (5 years ago) - Well, it was more than a one-hit wonder, really: After a long illness, the lead singer for The Kingsmen, Jack Ely, passed away at age 71 -- Hard to imagine classic rock without the infamous "Louie, Louie" which went to No. 1 in 1963 even though nobody knew what he was really singing or what the stupid song was even about. Just like real rock and roll. One of the greatest tracks of all-time and it sparked an FBI investigation into whether or not its lyrics were obscene. Is that totally awesome or what?!?!

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"Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven...", xoxo!