Back in the Day: Brooklyn Music Milestones -November , 2015

November 3, 2015 by

 BOBBY'S GIRL-MARCIE BLANE-album cover

Nov. 10, 1962: Bobby’s Girl, sung by 18-year-old Brooklyn native Marcie Blane, enters the Top 40 on its way to becoming the number three hit in the U.S. It is blocked from the top spot by juggernauts The Four Seasons and Elvis Presley. None of her six subsequent singles came close to cracking the top 40, but 1964’s Bobby Did is notable in retrospect as an early songwriting effort by then-unknown Neil Diamond.

 

Nov. 12, 1965: With Brooklyn-born Lou Reed on guitar and lead vocals, The Velvet Underground play their first live gig. The concert, staged at Summit (NJ) High School, reportedly nets the group a whopping $75.

 

Nov. 13, 1991: It’s a Kings County double bill at the Bottom Line with Kenny Vance, on the eve of re-forming the Planotones and still going strong 24 years later, opening for David Forman, whose self-titled 1976 release was named one of “10 Singer-Songwriter Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You’ve Never Heard.”

 

Nov. 17, 2009: Message to the Other Side (Osirus Part 1) by Ol’ Dirty Bastard (nee Russell Jones of Fort Greene) is released, nearly five years to the day after his death. The album is officially sanctioned by ODB’s family and Wu Tang Clan cohorts.

U2-Live Under The Brooklyn Bridge- DVD cover

Nov. 22, 2004: Brits invade Brooklyn as U2 shoots the video for All Because Of You from a moving flatbed truck that concludes with the band crossing the Manhattan Bridge into our fair borough. Later in the day, with MTV cameras rolling, they perform a brief concert under the Brooklyn Bridge.

 

Nov. 27, 1970: Touring to support their eponymous debut album, Cactus, the brainchild of Brooklyn uber-drummer Carmine Appice and fellow Vanilla Fudge alumnus Tim Bogert, open for Black Sabbath at the Sunshine Inn, Asbury Park, New Jersey. Also on the bill is Steel Mill, featuring 21-year-old Bruce Springsteen.