This Week in Music

1962 - Bishop Burke of the Buffalo, New York Catholic Diocese bans the Twist, in any form, from all of his school's functions.

1967 - General Motors begins installing 8 tracks as an option in their Buick line.

1970 - The mini-moog synthesizer is introduced by Dr. Robert Moog. Musicians can now have the sound of strings and horns on stage, without having a full orchestra with them. The American Federation of Musicians considers a ban on the $2,000 keyboard, fearing that its ability to simulate instruments could put musicians out of work.

1977 - Peter Green, who had earlier left Fleetwood Mac, is institutionalized after firing a pistol in the direction of a delivery boy attempting to deliver a $30,000 royalty check. Green had renounced rock and roll in 1970 and apparently didn't want the money. He later worked as a hospital porter and a gravedigger, but returned in 1979 to record "In the Skies."

1983 - Radio station WDHA in New Jersey claims to be the first US station to play music from a compact disc.

1986 - Buddy Holly is posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at it's inaugural ceremony. Other initial inductees are Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Sam Cooke, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Little Richard and Fats Domino.

1993 - Warner Brothers Records announces it is releasing rapper Ice-T (real name Tracy Marrow) from his contract due to "creative differences." In summer 1992, the record company found itself in the middle of controversy over Ice-T's song, "Cop Killer". Marrow would go on to co-star in the police drama, Law and Order in 1999.

10 favorites of 2005

Although it's hard to distill a years listening into 10 favorites, the attempt has to be made and a number placed on it. I've numbered these but they could have just as easily been pulled from a hat.

1. Beck - Guero
2. Brazilian Girls - Brazilian Girls
3. Eels - Blinking Lights & Other Revelations
4. Amos Lee - Amos Lee
5. M. Ward - Transistor Radio
6. Shelby Lynne - Suit Yourself
7. My Morning Jacket - Z
8. Death Cab For Cutie - Plans
9. Husky Rescue - Country Falls
10. Ry Cooder - Chavez Ravine

Townshend warns iPod users

Guitarist Pete Townshend has warned iPod users that they could end up with hearing problems as bad as his own if they don't turn down the volume of the music they are listening to on earphones.
Townshend, 60, guitarist in the The Who, said his hearing was irreversibly damaged by years of using studio headphones and that he now is forced to take 36-hour breaks between recording sessions to allow his ears to recover.
"I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf," he said on his Web site. "Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY be OK ... But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead."
Referring to the increasingly popular practice of downloading music from the Internet, Townshend said: "The downside may be that on our computers _ for privacy, for respect to family and co-workers, and for convenience _ we use earphones at almost every stage of interaction with sound."
The Who rock group was famous for its earsplitting live performances, but Townshend said his problem was caused by using earphones in the recording studio.

Dance Of The Decades

This week's show will present the taste makers, taste breakers and songs creating significant conversation in January 1956 through 1996. The representatives are:

1956 Tennessee Ernie Ford "16 Tons"
1966 The Kinks "Till The End Of The Day"
1976 David Bowie "Golden Years"
1986 Pet Shop Boys "West End Girls"
1996 Presidents Of The United States Of America "Lump"