from several years ago, Grace’s advice to women trying to break into rock
Jefferson Airplane Grace Slick
Grace Slick
From the Jefferson Airplane site: Grace Slick, to the public mind, is synonymous with Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship in the way that Mick Jagger is synonymous with the Rolling Stones. Ironically, Grace was not an original member of the band, nor was she with Starship at the very end. But Grace’s importance to every phase of the band cannot be underestimated. White Rabbit, which she wrote, helped define not only Jefferson Airplane but also the acid rock era. Her unconventional vocals on Somebody to Love gave the Airplane its biggest hit. As one of the first female rock stars (as opposed to pop singers), Grace helped redefine women’s role in modern music as more than just a sex symbol backed by a band. Of course, with her statuesque beauty and icy blue eyes, Grace had the sex symbol bit down pat as well.
Grace Barnett Wing was born October 30, 1939, in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, IL. Her father, Ivan, was an investment banker, and her mother, Virginia Barnett Wing, had been an actress and singer in the early ’30s. Her lineage goes back to Norway, where the family name was Vinje.
Jefferson Airplane Grace Slick
“Good morning, people!”
The Great Society
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Starship
Starship
What about Woodstock? From a Rolling Stone magazine article: What did you think when you walked out and saw all those people? It’s always good to see the people. I played a lot of festivals in the summer and it was set up for various kinds of performances and they had spotlights that are bolted in place, and they’re blinding. I wore a white dress with fringe. I packed it in California and I didn’t even think about the weather. I just assumed it would be marvelous. That day [after it rained], I thought, “Christ, I don’t have anything else I can wear — this is it!” So I had to keep my feet out of the mud.
Jefferson Airplane Grace Slick
Since
In a September 2017 Variety magazine interview one of her comments was, “I mostly paint now and I will encourage or not encourage people depending on who I am talking to. But also this is a period of time where I’m sitting back, which is fine. When you are older, generally, you’re a bit quieter. Rock and roll is a young expression — it’s strong, loud, and ironic. There are just things you do when you’re 25 you don’t do when you’re 70 because you look silly.”
It’s another one of those days that bursts with music history of all types. Mostly happy.
“Jingle Bell Rock“
October 29, 1957: Bobby Helms recorded “Jingle Bell Rock” at the Bradley Film and Recording Studio in Nashville, Tennessee. How many times have you heard this one?
“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes“
October 29, 1958: The Platters released “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Greatest version ever?
Bob Dylan
October 29, 1961: Bob Dylan performed on Folksong Festival radio show. Be careful. Many of his comments are simply being fun at the expense of host Oscar Brand.
The Beatles
October 29, 1962: The Beatles performed “Love Me Do” and “A Taste Of Honey” for the television program People and Places on Grenada TV. Here’s a 46 second soundbite from the show:
October 29 Music et al
Beach Boys
After the Beach Boys released their first single, Surfin’, on December 8, 1961, they released their first album, Surfin’ on October 29, 1962.
The Hollies
October 29, 1963: The Hollies went into the recording studio for the first time to begin recording their debut album which will be entitled, Stay With the Hollies.
October 29 Music et al
The Rolling Stones
October 29, 1963: The Rolling Stones, the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, and Bo Diddley were in concert with two shows at the Gaumont Theatre in Southampton, England.
“Reach Out I’ll Be There“
October 29, 1966: The Four Tops had the top R&B song with “Reach Out I’ll Be There.”
October 29 Music et al
“jk”
October 29 – November 4, 1966: “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
October 29 Music et al
Allison Steele
October 29, 1967: WNEW-FM DJ Allison Steele (a rare female DJ) announced that Rosko would be a WNEW-FM DJ. (Allison’s announcement) (see April 5, 1983)
Duane Allman
October 29, 1971: Duane Allman died. (NYT article)
Mind Games
October 29, 1973: UK release of John Lennon’s Mind Games album, his fourth. He recorded it at Record Plant Studios, NYC in summer 1973. The album was Lennon’s first self-produced recording without help from Phil Spector. It reached number 13 in the UK and number 9 in the US, where it went gold. Many more than 96 tears came to my eyes while watching the video. You,too, may need a tissue.
Joan Baez
October 29, 1975: Joan Baez became a member of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue.
Pink Floyd
1983: Pink Floyd set a new rock era record as Dark Side of the Moon placed on the album chart for the 491st week. That broke the mark set by Johnny Mathis for Johnny’s Greatest Hits. The Floyd didn’t let up, however, until they got to 780 weeks.
Madonna
October 29, 1983: Madonna’s first single debuted on the chart–“Holiday”.
Bryan Adams
October 29, 1984: Bryan Adams released his landmark album Reckless.
Wells Kelly
October 29, 1984: Wells Kelly, drummer for Orleans and Meat Loaf, died at the age of 45.
Ron Wood
October 29, 1987: Rolling Stone’s guitarist, Ron Wood, opened an art exhibition in London called Decades, which featured portraits of friends and rock stars from the past 20 years.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
October 29, 1990: The Byrds, LaVern Baker, John Lee Hooker, The Impressions, Wilson Pickett, Jimmy Reed and Ike & Tina Turner were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
October 29, 1869: Abram Colby was born into slavery in Greene County, Georgia, in approximately 1817. The son of an enslaved black woman and a white landowner, Colby was emancipated 15 years before the end of American slavery and worked tirelessly to organize freed slaves following the Civil War. A Radical Republican, Colby was elected to serve in the Georgia House of Representatives during Reconstruction. His impassioned advocacy for black civil rights earned him the attention of the local Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization founded in 1865 to resist Reconstruction and restore white supremacy through targeted violence against black people and their white political allies.
Klansmen attacked and brutally whipped 52-year-old Abram Colby on October 29, 1869. Three years later, when called to Washington, DC, to testify about the assault before a Congressional committee investigating reports of racial violence in the South, Colby bravely identified his attackers as some of the “first class men in our town. One is a lawyer, one a doctor, and some are farmers.” Shortly before the attack, Colby explained, the men had tried to bribe him to change parties or give up his office. Colby refused to do either and days later they returned:
“On October 29. 1869, [the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead. They said to me, ‘Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?’ I said, “If there was an election tomorrow, I would vote the Radical ticket.” They set in and whipped me a thousand licks more, with sticks and straps that had buckles on the ends of them.”
Colby told the committee that the attack had “broken something inside of [him],” and that the Klan’s continued harassment and violent assaults had forced him to abandon his re-election campaign. Colby testified most emotionally about the attack’s impact on his daughter, who was home when the Klansmen seized him to be whipped: “My little daughter begged them not to carry me away. They drew up a gun and actually frightened her to death. She never got over it until she died. That was the part that grieves me the most.” [Colby’s 1872 testimony] (next BH, see February 18, 1688)
Civil Rights Committee
October 29, 1947: the President Harry Truman’s Civil Rights Committee, [created on December 5, 1946] was the first presidential committee or commission on civil rights. The commission’s report, To Secure These Rights, released on this day, was an historic event. The report identified race discrimination in virtually every area of American life — education, employment, voting, military service, and so on — and its recommendations charted the course of the civil rights movement for the next 20 years. [Truman Library article] (mext BH, see Nov 6, 1948; military, see October 30, 1954)
Muhammad Ali
October 29, 1960: Cassius Clay’s first professional fight against Tunney Hunsaker, police chief of Fayetteville, West Virginia. “He sure was a brassy young boy when I fought him. He drove to the Louisville airgrounds in a brand new pink Cadillac,” said Hunsaker, loser of the bout. (BH, see Nov 1; Ali, see June 18, 1963)
Stokely Carmichael
October 29, 1966: Stokely Carmichael addressed an audience consisting primarily of college students at the open-air Greek Theater at the University of California at Berkeley in a speech that has become known as “Black Power”—although he gave other speeches that stressed the same theme and sometimes have been referred to by that same title. (next BH, see Nov 30)
School Desegregation
October 29, 1969: Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, the US Supreme Court demanded that its opinion in 1955’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (the so-called Brown II case) ordered desegregation be implemented despite the phrase of “all deliberate speed”. The phrase had given the South an excuse to defy the law of the land. The Court wrote that “The obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools.” The previously-set pace of “all deliberate speed” was no longer permissible. ( integration at once) (BH, see February 21, 1970; SD, see April 20, 1971)
Vietnam, Chicago 8 & Black Panthers
October 29, 1969: Judge Julius Hoffman ordered “Chicago Eight” defendant Bobby Seale gagged and chained to his chair during his trial. Seale and his seven fellow defendants (David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Thomas Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, and John Froines) had been charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to cause a riot during the violent anti-war demonstrations in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hoffman gave the order to gag Seale after Seale repeatedly shouted accusations and insults at the judge and prosecution and disrupted the court proceedings. In November, Seale’s conduct forced the judge to try him separately. Seale was sentenced to 48 months in prison for 16 acts of contempt. Seale was then charged with killing a Black Panther Party informant in New Haven, Connecticut; the contempt charges were eventually dismissed and the murder trial ended with a hung jury. [Black Then article] (Vietnam, see Nov 3; Chi8, see February 9, 1970)
Georgetown reparations
October 29, 2019: officials at Georgetown University announced that it would raise about $400,000 a year to benefit the descendants of the 272 enslaved people who were sold to help keep the college afloat nearly two centuries ago.
The university planned to use the money to support community projects such as health clinics and schools. The announcement came six months after Georgetown students voted in a nonbinding referendum to impose student fees that would have raised about $400,000 a year to support the descendants. [NYT article] (next BH, see Nov 1)
Antwon Rose
October 29, 2019: according to court documents, Judge Marilyn Horan dismissed the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Antwon Rose II against former police officer Michael Rosfeld and the borough of East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Horan signed the dismissal documents, which state that Rose family would not be permitted to refile the same lawsuit again in the future.[CNN story] (next B & S, see Dec 23; next AR, see )
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
US Labor History
October 29, 1889: Japanese immigrant and labor advocate Katsu Goto was strangled to death, his body then strung from an electric pole, on the Big Island of Hawaii by thugs hired by plantation owners. They were outraged over Goto’s work on behalf of agricultural workers and because he opened a general store that competed with the owners’ own company store. [Hawaii dot edu article] (see January 25, 1890)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Anarchism
October 29, 1901: Leon Czolgosz, assassin of President McKinley, executed. His body was buried in a pine coffin, but before the coffin was sealed, authorities poured acid over the body to destroy it within 12 hours. (NYT article) (see March 3, 1903)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Military draft
October 29, 1940, The US began its first peacetime military draft. NYT article)
October 29, 1962, the Beach Boys’ debut album, “Surfin’ Safari,” was released. (see July 4 – 17, 1964)
“96 Tears”
October 29 – November 4, 1966: “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Allison Steele
October 29, 1967: WNEW-FM DJ Allison Steele (a rare female DJ) announced that Rosko will be a WNEW-FM DJ. (Allison’s announcement) (see April 5, 1983)
Mind Games
October 29, 1973: UK release of John Lennon’s Mind Games album, his fourth. He recorded it at Record Plant Studios, NYC in summer 1973. The album was Lennon’s first self-produced recording without help from Phil Spector. It reached number 13 in the UK and number 9 in the US, where it went gold.
Lennon and May Pang went to Los Angeles to promote ‘Mind Games’ and decided to stay. But without Ono’s restraint, Lennon began to drink heavily. (see Nov 16)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Feminism
October 29, 1966: The National Organization for Women (NOW), organized by feminist leader Betty Friedan and a small group of friends on June 30 was formally chartered. (see Dec 22)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Technological Milestone
October 29, 1969: the Internet had its beginnings when the first host-to-host connection was made on the Arpanet – an experimental military computer network – between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif. [Live Science article] (see January 4, 1972)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Vietnam
October 29, 1971: US troops in Vietnam drop in number to 196,700, their lowest since January 1966. [chart] (see Dec 18)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Cannabis
Medical marijuana
October 29, 1998: prior to the election, former Presidents Ford, Carter, and Bush released a statement urging voters to reject state medical marijuana initiatives because they circumvented the standard process by which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tests medicines for safety and effectiveness. ‘Compassionate medicine,’ these leaders insisted, ‘must be based on science, not political appeals.’ (see Nov 3) or see CCC for expanded chronology)
Medical licenses
October 29, 2002: after California legalized medical marijuana in 1996, the US government threatened to take away the medical licenses of physicians who recommended the use of marijuana. On Oct. 29, 2002, a US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit 3-0 ruling (80 KB) in the case Conant v. Walters prohibited “the federal government from either revoking a physician’s license to prescribe controlled substances or conducting an investigation of a physician that might lead to such revocation, where the basis for the government’s action is solely the physician’s professional ‘recommendation’ of the use of medical marijuana.” The US Supreme Court denied an appeal, so physicians maintained the right to discuss marijuana with their patients. (see May 26, 2004)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Trayvon Martin Shooting
October 29, 2013: Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, told a panel of US senators that state “stand your ground” self-defense laws do not work and must be amended, reviving the politically charged gun-control issue a year ahead of the 2014 midterm elections. But little besides politics emerged from the session, held in the Senate’s made-for-television hearing room. Democrats, who hold majority power in the Senate and are trying to keep it, supported call. Republicans, led by Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), said the matter should be left to the states that passed the laws. (see Nov 18)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
FREE SPEECH, US Labor History & Colin Kaepernick
Colin Kaepernick
October 29, 2017: about 40 members of the Houston Texans knelt during the national anthem in protest of their team owner Robert McNair’s “inmates running the prison” remarks. [USA article] (mext FS, US Labor, & CK, see Nov 1)
UF Professors Banned
October 29, 2021: the University of Florida banned three professors from assisting plaintiffs in a lawsuit to overturn the state’s new law restricting voting rights, lawyers said in a federal court filing. The ban was an extraordinary limit on speech that raised questions of academic freedom and First Amendment rights.
University officials told the three that because the school was a state institution, participating in a lawsuit against the state “is adverse to U.F.’s interests” and could not be permitted. In their filing, the lawyers sought to question Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, on whether he was involved in the decision. [Oct 29 NYT article; Nov 4 NYT article] (next FS, see Nov 5)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Native Americans
October 29, 2017: Dennis J. Banks, the militant Chippewa who founded the American Indian Movement in 1968 and led often-violent insurrections to protest the treatment of Native Americans and the nation’s history of injustices against its indigenous peoples, died at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He was 80. [NYT obiturary] (see Nov 23)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
TERRORISM
October 29, 2018: according to authorities, an additional threatening package addressed to CNN was recovered and investigators said that Cesar Sayoc, Jr had prepared a list of about 100 possible targets. (T, see Oct 30; CSJ, see Oct 31)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Immigration History
October 30, 2018: President Trump said he was preparing an executive order that would nullify the long-accepted constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship in the United States.
“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years, with all of those benefits.”
In fact, at least 30 other countries, including Canada, Mexico and many others in the Western Hemisphere, grant automatic birthright citizenship, according to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that supports restricting immigration and whose work Mr. Trump’s advisers often cited. (see Nov 9)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Trump Impeachment Inquiry
Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman
October 29, 2019: Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman of the Army, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council (a decorated Iraq war veteran) told House impeachment investigators that the White House transcript of a July 25 call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president omitted crucial words and phrases, and that his attempts to include them failed, according to three people familiar with the testimony.
The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump’s assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, and an explicit mention by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.
Vindman twice registered internal objections about how Trump and his inner circle were treating Ukraine, out of what he called a “sense of duty,” according to his opening statement.
Vindman was the first White House official to testify who listened in on the July 25 telephone call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. [NYT article]
Resolution unveiled
October 29, 2019: House Democrats unveiled a resolution reaffirming their impeachment inquiry and setting out the process for it to continue examining whether the president improperly tried to pressure Ukraine into launching an investigation into a potential political rival.
The measure would enable public hearings and a release of the witness interviews already taken by House committees and would allow the president and his attorneys to cross-examine witnesses.
The move came after congressional Republicans and President Trump complained that the inquiry underway was unfair and lacked due process.
The resolution stated that after the inquiry phase was over, the investigating committees would send their findings to the House Judiciary Committee, which would determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment. [NPR story] (see TII for expanded chronology)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Women’s Health
October 29, 2019: US District Judge Myron Thompson blocked Alabama’s the Human Life Protection Act that would have blocked almost all abortions, calling it a “ban” that “contravenes clear Supreme Court precedent.”
Thompson issued a preliminary injunction barring from taking effect until the court resolves the case in full.
In the 17-page opinion, Thompson wrote that the state’s abortion ban “violates the right of an individual to privacy, to make choices central to personal dignity and autonomy.” Thompson also stated that the ban “diminishes the capacity of women to act in society, and to make reproductive decisions.”
Thompson wrote: “It defies the United States Constitution.” [CNN article] (next WH, see Nov 6)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Student Rights
October 29, 2019: the NCAA Board of Governors voted unanimously to allow student-athletes to be paid for the use of their name, image and likeness once its three divisions decide on rules for such opportunities.
“We must embrace change to provide the best possible experience for college athletes,” said Michael Drake, chair of the board for the NCAA, which governs major college athletics.
The NCAA’s stunning reversal came after California passed a Fair Pay to Play Act, which would go into effect in 2023. Other states are looking at possible legislation. The California law would allow athletes to sign endorsement deals and licensing contracts, something NCAA rule makers will address. [CNN article] (next SR, see June 21, 2021)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Environmental Issues
October 29, 2019: according to research by Climate Central, rising seas would affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought, threatening to all but erase some of the world’s great coastal cities.
The authors of a paper had developed a more accurate way of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard way of estimating the effects of sea level rise over large areas, and found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic. The new research shows that some 150 million people are now living on land that will be below the high-tide line by mid-century.
Climate Central, a science organization based in New Jersey, published the paper in the journal Nature Communications. The projections did not account for future population growth or land lost to coastal erosion. [NYT article] (next EI, see Oct 31)
October 29 Peace Love Art Activism
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
