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Music News: Buddy Holly's 'Peggy Sue' dies at 78

Buddy Holly onstage in 1958.
Buddy Holly onstage in 1958.V&A Images/Getty Images, via NPR
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by Jay Gabler

October 02, 2018

Above, listen to an episode of The Current's daily Music News podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can also sign up for a daily Music News e-mail.


Peggy Sue Gerron, the woman who inspired Buddy Holly's classic song "Peggy Sue," has died at age 78 in Lubbock, Texas. Gerron first met Holly when he accidentally knocked her over on the way to a gig; she later married Crickets drummer Jerry Allison.

"I was just delighted," she said about first hearing the 1957 song that used her name. "It's really hard to stand still when you're listening to 'Peggy Sue.'" The song was such a hit for Holly that he recorded a sequel, "Peggy Sue Got Married" (1959), although it wasn't released until after his death.

As for Gerron, she ultimately divorced Allison and had two children with a second husband. Among her professional accomplishments, she became the first licensed woman plumber in the state of California. (Rolling Stone)

Las Vegas marks one year since tragic shooting

Lights dimmed on the Las Vegas strip on Monday to mark the one-year anniversary of the deadliest day in American music history. On Oct. 1, 2017, a mass shooting at a Las Vegas country music festival claimed 58 lives and injured hundreds more.

"The casino lights and famous Welcome to Las Vegas sign were darkened for three minutes starting at 10:01 p.m. — around the time a gunman opened fire from the gold tower of Mandalay Bay hotel across the street from the country music festival," reports Billboard.

Stadium power rankings: T-Mobile Arena on top

Meanwhile, Las Vegas's T-Mobile Arena tops Billboard's stadium power rankings list this year, pulling in a 12-month gross of $164.4 million. That tops the $158.6 million gross of Madison Square Garden, which comes in at number two. Filling out the top five: London's O2 Arena (number three), The Forum in Inglewood, Calif. (number four), and Brooklyn's Barclays Center (number five).

The T-Mobile Arena was aided, notes Billboard, by big boxing matches, the Golden Knights' Stanley Cup run, and a George Strait residency.

UB40 unwillingly drawn into Supreme Court nomination battle

There haven't been this many people talking about UB40 in a quarter-century. The British pop-reggae band have been popping up in national headlines about a 1985 police report that described a New Haven, Conn. bar brawl in which Brett Kavanaugh — then a student at Yale, now a Supreme Court nominee — was involved.

According to a statement by one of Kavanaugh's classmates, the future judge and some friends were at a bar after a UB40 concert when they noticed a fellow patron who, they thought, resembled UB40 frontman Ali Campbell. The supposed doppelgänger didn't appreciate being stared at, and things went downhill from there. Kavanaugh, the Campbell lookalike said, threw ice at him "for some unknown reason." (New York Times)

"This is a case of mistaken identity and has nothing to do with UB40," said a spokesperson for the band's co-founder Robin Campbell. (Ali Campbell left the band in 2008.) Nonetheless, it can't hurt buzz for the band's upcoming album, For the Many. (Billboard)

Ticketmaster sued for supposed secret scalping program

A new class-action lawsuit alleges that Ticketmaster has been operating a secret scalping scheme. What makes this story complicated is that it hinges on a completely public ticket resale site operated by Ticketmaster: TradeDesk. The lawsuit emerged from a Canadian investigative journalism report that found Ticketmaster would look the other way when resellers violated their own terms of service (for example, by purchasing more than the stated maximum number of tickets), and then encourage them to use TradeDesk to resell the tickets — thus charging two sets of fees on the same tickets.

Ticketmaster has denied the practices, and said it was conducting "an internal review of our professional reseller accounts and employee practices to ensure that our policies are being upheld by all stakeholders." (Consequence of Sound)

Listen to Paramore's Hayley Williams eat chips

You might have heard of ASMR: it stands for autonomous sensory meridian response...also known as "getting chills." It's become big business on YouTube, where popular accounts feature soft tapping sounds, ear licking, honeycomb eating, and hair brushing.

Now, Hayley Williams has made an ASMR video that features the Paramore singer whispering, eating potato chips, slurping a drink, tapping her fingernails, and tearing packaging open. It's all to promote her Good Dye Young line of vegan, cruelty-free hair dye. (NME)


Songs sampled in podcast
Jahzzar: "Comedie" (CC BY 4.0)
BoxCat Games: "Against the Wall" (CC BY 3.0)
BoxCat Games: "Mt. Fox Shop" (CC BY 3.0)
Buddy Holly: "Peggy Sue"
UB40: "Red Red Wine"
Hayley Williams ASMR video
Jesse Spillane: "Dance Rocket" (CC BY 4.0)