{} The Best Music You've Never Heard {}
Dick Clark begins a new holiday tradition as his first New Year’s Rockin’ Eve concert is broadcast on ABC-TV. Dick himself will host the annual event for the next 32 years. Guests for the inaugural event include Three Dog Night and Al Green.
The Chipmunks’ “The Chipmunk Song” hits #1 on the Hot 100, the last Christmas song to ever top the chart.
It would be the last Christmas song to hit #1 in the US and remarkably, it stays at the top of the chart for three more weeks – well into January.
The nightclub CBGB opens on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. A former flophouse, it becomes ground zero for East Coast punk rock, with Patti Smith, the Ramones, Television and Blondie often performing there.
In 1994 Adam Sandler performs “The Chanukah Song” on the Weekend Update segment of Saturday Night Live, enlightening us to the fact that Harrison Ford, Paul Newman and David Lee Roth (among many others) are, in fact, Jewish. Released as a single the following year, the song reaches #10 US and become a seasonal favorite.
After cleaning a church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where they had Thanksgiving dinner the day before, Arlo Guthrie and a friend clean up the place, but toss the trash down a hill when they can’t find an open dump. They are arrested, fined $25 each, and forced to pick up the garbage. When they return to the church, Guthrie writes “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” about the incident, embellishing some details.