100 greatest moments in alt-rock history, part one (Alan Cross: Greatest New Rock Moments #100-91)

History is often shaped by big decisions, but it's also changed by little decisions and incidents. If Napoleon hadn't had piles / hemorrhoids the day of the Battle of Waterloo, Europe would probably have looked very different than it does now. To look into the history of a culture, one must also look into the music and how it changed. (stolen from the first part of the radio show)

This series is a 10-part series, and I'll try to remember to update it every Wednesday night for the next nine weeks. As per the Alan Cross Ongoing History of New Rock radio show:

100. Oct. 31, 1967: James Jewell Osterberg (aka Iggy Pop) decides to go totally nuts on stage because Ron Asheton had screwed up / ruined his guitar. (the band was the Stooges)


99. Aug. 12, 1994: the 25th anniversary of Woodstock at Saugerties, New York. (also the date that baseball had its first strike in 90 years) It was muddy because of all the rain that had been coming down. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails decided to show his solidarity with the muddy / tired / dirty crowd by rolling around in the mud during the band's performance.


98. June 26, 1982: The Hacienda nightclub in Manchester was opened. (FAC-51) Designed as a place to celebrate Manchester's music; even though it was a money pit, it was a great place to hang out. New Order's label owned it.. and it was Ground Zero for the introduction of ecstasy to the British club scene. It was eventually sold off piece by piece in 1997, including the dance floor. (tile-by-tile)


97. The great home taping crisis of the early 1980's: Record sales being in freefall because of home taping. You shouldn't have taped copies of your cassettes for your friends or to use in the car.. instead, you should have gone out and bought another copy. Bow Wow Wow was for home taping, releasing a song called C-30, C-60, C-90, Go! encouraging it.


96. July 13, 1985: An event that almost destroyed U2. Live Aid at Wembley Stadium helped to raise a lot of money. They only had a few minutes to play Bad and The Unforgettable Fire. Their third song would have been Pride in the Name of Love, but Bono decided to be a grandstander and find a dance partner from the audience. (which took many minutes)

That ate up all their allotted time, and backstage, the band had a fight. The Edge, Larry Mullen, and Adam Clayton accused Bono of not being able to stick to the plan, and Bono quit on the spot. They all went back to Dublin separately, and Bono picked up a female hitchhiker who was totally enthusiastic about their Live Aid performance. After that, he contacted the rest of the band and apologized. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn't picked her up...


95. April 19, 2002: the discovery of Layne Staley's long, slow death / suicide. As Alice in Chains became more successful, his addiction became more powerful. (especially after his long-time girlfriend's death from complications of drug use) He mixed smack, cocaine, and crack that was delivered to his condo by a network of dealers.

In April 2002, his accountants noticed there had been no withdrawals from his bank account for a couple of weeks. They notified Staley's mom and stepdad, and the Seattle police kicked in the door to find Layne Staley dead with a heroin cooker in his arm. The coroner's best guess was that he'd died on Apr. 5, the same date Kurt Cobain had died eight years before.


94. July 8, 1972: David Bowie's transformation as Ziggy Stardust. Theater, clothes, make-up, music.. very sexy / sexual. He made cross-dressing / men wearing makeup fashionable.. and his music was extremely popular. A village in Cypress and a hotel in Thailand both bear his name.. not bad for a fictional rock star alter-ego.


93. David Bowie in a blue dress on the cover of The Man Who Sold The World, 1971: The world wasn't ready for this marketing concept dreamed up by Bowie and his manager, Tony DeFries. Bowie had a gun pulled on him in Texas, and many stores refused to sell copies of the album unless the record company would supply them with alternate covers, with Bowie NOT wearing a man's dress. (only 1395 copies were sold in four months) The next Bowie character was Ziggy Stardust, as outlined above.


92. April 21, 2001: R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck had a case of non-insane automynism. (spelling?) After consuming some Ambien, he chased it down with 15 glasses of red wine. Instead of falling asleep on the flight, he had an air-rage moment and went berserk in first class. The Heathrow police weren't pleased, and his first trial collapsed even with character witnesses like U2 and the rest of the band. His second trial went better, as the jury believed the doctor's diagnosis. The date of his acquittal was Apr. 5, 2002.


91. Aug. 18, 1992: Ska makes the earth literally move. The band Madness performed at a festival where they were the headliners, at their first public performance in eight years. People in the adjacent apartments swore they felt an earthquake in Central London, which was pretty unheard-of. Geologists investigated, and found that the many Madness fans dancing to the ska beat actually created earthquakes noticeable enough on the Richter scale.


That's it till next week! :)