7/7: What famous '90s group only performed 34 times?
Plus a look at how seven weeks in 1991 changed music history forever
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved, forgot, or never knew existed
July 7th, 2023 • Issue 159
This week in the ‘80s and ‘90s
July 7th
1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.
1984 - Prince’s single When Doves Cry hit number one.
1989 - Lethal Weapon 2 hit theaters.
1990 - Dream On premiered on HBO.
1990 - The first Three Tenors concert was held in Rome.
The Three Tenors only performed in concert together 34 times.
The Three Tenors performed together from 1990 through 2003. During that time they performed just 34 concerts. That included performances at four World Cups, including July 7th, 1990’s debut performance at the World Cup.
1994 - The mp3 format, then called I3enc, was released.
1994 - Real McCoy’s single Run Away was released.
1998 - Lauryn Hill's single Doo Wop (That Thing) was released.
2000 - Scary Movie was released.
July 8th
1989 - Fine Young Cannibal’s single Good Thing hit number one.
1990 - West Germany won the World Cup.
1992 - Melrose Place premiered on FOX.
The exterior shots of the “Melrose Place” apartment complex were not filmed on the actual street named Melrose Place in Los Angeles.
The shots were filmed of a building on a street called Greenwood Place, in the Los Feliz area in Los Angeles. There is a real street called Melrose Place, but it doesn’t have any apartment complexes, cinematic or otherwise.
1995 - Better Than Ezra's Good peaked at number 30.
1995 - The first CFL game was played between two U.S. teams, featuring the Baltimore Stallions defeating the San Antonio Texans 50-24.
1995 - TLC’s Waterfalls hit number one.
1996 - Wannabe by the Spice Girls was released in the U.K.
1999 - Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, the final Harry Potter book to get separate U.K. and international release dates, came out in the U.K.
2000 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released worldwide.
2000 - Real World: New Orleans premiered on MTV.
July 9th
1981 - Donkey Kong was released at arcades in Japan.
1982 - TRON hit theaters.
TRON was disqualified from the Academy Awards’ special effects category because using computer generated effects was considered “cheating.”
Obviously the Academy did a real solid 180 on that position shortly after.
Young Sherlock Holmes, which used CGI, received a visual effects nomination for at the Oscars in 1986. And The Abyss won with CGI effects in 1989.
1983 - Irene Cara’s single Flashdance... What a Feeling hit number one.
1992 - Bill Clinton announced Al Gore as his running mate.
1993 - Rookie of the Year and Weekend at Bernie's II hit theaters.
1993 - The series finale aired of A Different World.
1995 - The Grateful Dead played their final show with Jerry Garcia.
1996 - Prince’s album Chaos and Disorder was released.
1996 - LeAnn Rimes’s debut album, Blue, was released.
1997 - Married with Children aired its series finale.
1999 - American Pie hit theaters.
2001 - The Office (U.K.) premiered.
July 10th
1981 - Disney’s The Fox and the Hound was released.
The Fox and the Hound was the final Disney animated movie to include all its credits up front and feature none at the end.
Early Disney animated movies had all their credits at the beginning and eschewed credits at the end. The Fox and the Hound was the final movie in this tradition. The next Disney animated film, 1985’s The Black Cauldron, would include closing credits — as would every movie since.
1981 - Escape from New York hit theaters.
1985 - Coca-Cola relented on its New Coke experiment and announced Coke Classic would return.
1985 - Prince’s single Poplife was released.
1987 - Revenge of the Nerds 2 premiered.
1989 - The Chicago Bulls hired Phil Jackson as head coach.
1989 - Legendary voice actor Mel Blanc passed away.
1990 - Andrew Dice Clay cried on the Arsenio Hall Show.
1993 - Duice’s one hit, Dazzey Duks, peaked at number 12 on the Billboard charts.
1993 - SWV’s single Weak hit number one.
1995 - Hugh Grant appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to address his prostitution scandal and shifted the power balance in the late night wars for good.
1996 - Real World: Miami premiered on MTV.
1996 - The Harriet the Spy movie hit theaters.
1998 - Lethal Weapon 4 hit theaters.
2000 - Coldplay’s debut album, Parachutes, was released.
July 11th
1987 - Bo Jackson became a two-sport professional athlete by signing with the L.A. Raiders.
1987 - Heart’s single Alone hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
1989 - Bo Jackson won the MVP of MLB’s All-Star Game.
Bo Jackson is the only pro athlete to be an all star in two sports.
After making the MLB All-Star Game in 1989 — and winning MVP — Jackson made the NFL Pro Bowl in 1990.
1989 - Mega Man 2 for the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in North America.
1995 - Shaggy’s album Boombastic was released.
1997 - Timbaland and Magoo’s debut single, Up Jumps Da Boogie, was released.
1997 - Notorious B.I.G.’s single Mo Money, Mo Problems was released.
1997 - Contact hit theaters.
2001 - South Park’s seminal Scott Tenorman episode premiered.
July 12th
1979 - The Chicago White Sox held the infamous Disco Demolition Night.
1984 - Geraldine Ferraro became the first female major vice presidential candidate.
1985 - Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome hit theaters.
1986 - Simply Red’s single Holding Back the Years hit number one.
1990 - The series premiere of Northern Exposure aired.
1990 - Final Fantasy was released for NES.
1991 - Point Break hit theaters nationwide.
1995 - Enrique Iglesias’s debut album was released.
1996 - Kirby Puckett retired from MLB due to going blind in one eye.
1997 - The series premiere of Oz aired on HBO.
The prison set for Oz was an old cracker factory — one that was the first location where Oreos were ever produced.
The production team for Oz couldn’t find an empty prison they could use for their show, so they got creative. They turned the abandoned home of the National Biscuit Company in Manhattan into a prison. And yes, that old cracker factory was the first place to mass produce Oreos in the early 20th century.
1997 - Meredith Brooks’s one hit, B****, peaked at number two.
1998 - France won the men’s World Cup.
1999 - Disney announced it was going all-in on Go.com.
July 13th
1991 - “Blood Feud”, the season two finale of The Simpsons, aired.
1985 - Live Aid benefit concerts were held in the U.K. and U.S.
1985 - Duran Duran’s single A View to a Kill hit number one.
1987 - Kylie Minogue’s debut single, Locomotion, was released.
Kylie Minogue’s Locomotion is her most successful single on the U.S. Billboard charts.
Kylie Minogue’s Locomotion — released in the U.S. as The Loco-Motion — made it to number three on the Billboard Hot 100. Though Minogue has had double-digit number one hits (and number two hits) in her native Australia, in the U.K., and in several other countries over her four-decade career, she’s never had a song rank higher in the U.S. than her debut single.
Can’t Get You Out of My Head came closest, hitting number 7 in the U.S. in 2001.
1990 - Ghost hit theaters.
1993 - Randy Johnson and John Kruk did some shtick during the MLB All-Star Game.
2001 - Legally Blonde hit theaters.
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news
The Barney the Dinosaur movie that’s in the works is going to be “surrealistic” according to Mattel. “We’re leaning into the millennial angst of the property rather than fine-tuning this for kids. It’s really a play for adults.”
Kim Cattrall says her brief cameo in And Just Like That is “as far as [she’ll] go” with the character.
Netflix is rumored to be rebooting 1984’s Dreamscape as a TV series.
According to a former Paramount executive, Speed was tossed around at the studio as a possible script for Beverly Hills Cop III. They passed, and the movie was eventually produced by 20th Century Fox.
A charred Game Boy that survived a bombing in Operation Desert Storm is no longer on display at Nintendo’s store in New York City. And there’s no official reason why.
Recommendations of the week
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved
A new list ranked the 25 funniest movies ever made. 11 of the entries are from the time period covered in this newsletter, including three of the top four.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you forgot
A new collection of leaked documents from Sega tells the tale of the now-forgotten battle between its Sega Saturn and the Sony PlayStation. The internal memos in 1996 begin optimistic and become increasingly less so in the span of a year.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you never knew existed
When does one era of music end and another begin? Here’s a fascinating look at how seven weeks in the summer and early fall of 1991 changed music forever.
Have a great week!
-Sam