Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for April 23rd

Today you got two all-time great Brit bands meeting for the first time....An LP that's on the list of the most influential debut's in all of classic rock....and the birthday of one of the sweetest voices ever heard...

4/23/1963 (56 years ago today) - The U.K.'s Crawdaddy Club was legendary for the bands that performed there over the years -- Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Rod Stewart -- but on this particular night, The Beatles were in the audience to catch a set by...The Rolling Stones! It's the first time the bands have met and they actually got along quite well: planning their record releases apart from each other, making non-credited appearances on each others songs, etc...Pretty cool.

4/23/1976 (43 years ago today) - It doesn't seem possible that this record could be over 40 years old: The Ramones release their self-titled debut album and there was absolutely nothing -- NOTHING! -- else that sounded like this at the time. The twisted-comic-pop of songs like "Blitzkreig Bop", "I Don't Wanna Go Down In The Basement", "Beat On The Brat", "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" is off-set by The Ramones looks and the wonderful, sheer-ridiculous volume with which they pull 'em off -- simple, loud, very, very, very fast, with none of the tracks lasting longer than two-and-a-half minutes. Statement made, thank you very much.

4/23/1936 - Born on this date, the totally and uniquely talented Roy Orbison. Because of his distinctive, powerful and almost operatic voice, he was nicknamed "The Big O", along with an image that carried an air of mystery and a little danger, too: those trademark sunglasses often disguised what were quite complex compositions which could turn very dark and moody. Like you-know-who(m), Roy's career began with rockabilly at Memphis' Sun Studios, but his classic status was sealed with a run of 22 Top 40 singles for the Monument Record label between 1960 and '64: "Only The Lonely", "Oh, Pretty Woman", "In Dreams"...plus he was one of The Traveling Wilburys! Roy's catalog is the definition of "timeless", truly awesome stuff, no question.

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"What they want, I don't know/They're all revved up and ready to go...", xoxo!