Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for Rocktober 12th

Today we take a look at: ...what passed for Automotive Hi-Fi in the '50's --  A classic '60's No. 1 LP with wicked cool cover art -- and a notorious '70's murder...yeesh...

10/12/1955 (60 years ago today) - The Chrysler Corporation launched High-Fidelity Record Players for their upcoming 1956 line-up of cars. Get this: the unit was about four inches high, less than a foot wide, and was mounted under the instrument panel. The discs were seven inches and spun at 16 2/3 RPM -- they required almost three times the number of grooves per inch as a regular LP! Unsurprisingly and without fanfare, the players were discontinued...but not until 1961. Can you say "pain in the ass"? We think you can.

10/12/1968 (47 years ago today) - The No. 1 album on the U.S. chart belonged to Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin and the classic "Cheap Thrills" LP. Released in the summer of 1968, and boasting legendary artwork by underground cartoonist R. Crumb on the cover (thanks to the insistence of Janis), the release was intended to be titled "Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills", but Columbia Records wouldn't have it. Nearly 50 years later, the album remains a landmark of hard-blues-psychedelia, a bona-fide killer-chunk of pure '60's rock and just as good (well, probably better) as anything anyone else made out San Francisco way at the time -- look at the songs: "Piece Of My Heart", "Combination Of the Two", "Summertime", "Ball And Chain". Yeah, you gotta have this one in your collection.

10/12/1978 (37 years ago today) - While living in New York City's Chelsea Hotel, Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols phoned the police and announced that someone had stabbed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. He was arrested, charged with murder, and locked up in the detox unit of a New York prison. Sid died of a heroin overdose before the case went to trial. Some would argue that punk rock pretty much died then, too -- the whole tawdry episode was turned into the 1986 film "Sid and Nancy" starring Gary Oldman as the punk "legend"; not for the squeamish.

Thoughts on the Calendar, eh? Have at it here on our web site and on the WBLM Facebook and Twitter pages with the hashtag #TommysCoffeeBreak.

"Never, never, never, never, never, never hear me when I cry at night babe/And I cry all the time...", xoxo!