A look at two totally classic 1980's albums, and the birthdate of an original-highly-regarded-yet-still-somewhat-overlooked American singer-songwriter...

Nilsson
Harry Nilsson, 1972. (Photo: Stan Meagher/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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6/15/1985 (30 years ago today) - Dire Straits begin nine weeks of dominating the U.S. album chart when "Brothers In Arms" hits No. 1. It also spent ten weeks at #1 in the U.K., and a ridiculous 34 weeks at the top of the Australian LP chart on its way to becoming one of the most successful rock album releases in history: over 30 million copies certified sold world-wide, nine million of those here in the U.S. alone!!! Still sounds pretty good, actually...

6/15/1989 (26 years ago today) - It was given zero fanfare at the time: Nirvana release their debut album "Bleach"; the title came from a "Bleach Your Works" poster which urged drug users to bleach their needles. Kurt Cobain later claimed he was "pissed off" while writing the lyrics for the album the night before the band was scheduled to go into the studio to start recording; apparently there were record label executive types hoping for an "Aerosmith-sounding" record. This infuriated Kurt who proceeded to make the songs deliberately negative and bleak and slow-paced. Interesting stuff...

6/15/1941 - Born on this date, the very quirky and occasionally unpredictable Harry Nilsson; he was a critics darling, earning rave reviews for his early 1970's albums and was quoted by John Lennon and Paul McCartney as being their favorite American artist! Harry won some Grammys and, yeah, had chart hits; in fact, he made a fantastic classic animated movie ("The Point") but cared more about artistic pursuit over commercial success, and interestingly hardly ever played in public -- in fact, he never went on tour at all. Sadly, alcoholism caught up with him and Harry passed away January 15th, 1994. A look at his recorded work between 1968 and 1973 reveal the genius that might have been...

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