Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for January 24th

1969 was a fantastic year for these two reasons; plus, Zimmy lands a big one!

1/24/1969 (48 years ago today) - New Jersey state prosecutors issue a warning to record shops that they would be charged with "distributing pornography" if it was discovered they had been selling the "Two Virgins" album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Remember now, the front cover was a photo of John and Yoko standing up and staring into the camera, both of 'em totally nude!!! The back cover, of course, showed them from, er, behind. The LP was a batch 'o' noise, but it managed to reach No. 124 on the U.S. chart. In England, it was an almost-immediate collector's item: only 5,000 copies were ever pressed for U.K. distribution.

1/24/1969 (48 years ago today) - The Doors performed at Madison Square Garden where they were paid $50,000 for the gig, making Jim and the boys one of the highest grossing acts of the year. Hey, fifty-thou in '69-dollars was yowza, Boss!

1/24/1976 (41 years ago today) - Bob Dylan kicks off five-weeks-in-a-row at No. 1 with his 17th studio album "Desire". It was going to be a little tough for Bob to follow-up the previous years masterpiece "Blood On The Tracks", but this one was very well received by both critics and audience alike. The albums centerpieces were a pair of lengthy story-songs that generated mucho controversy: the 11-minute "Joey", which some interpreted as glorifying the notoriously violent gangster "Crazy Joey" Gallo, and the album-opener "Hurricane", an eight-and-a-half-minute (and quite passionate) account of the murder case against boxer Rubin Carter; the song asserts the athlete was framed, and, in fact, it led to Carter being released from jail in 1985 when a judge overturned the conviction on appeal. Along with other solid tracks like "Isis", "Black Diamond Bay", "Mozambique" and "One More Cup Of Coffee", the "Desire" LP has deservedly become one of the best-selling albums in all of Dylan's classic hefty catalog. Get yours today!

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"Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties/Are free to drink martinis and watch the sunrise...", xoxo!