12.26: On this day in 1963, Napster’s arch nemesis and Metallica’s beat maker, Lars Ulrich, was born. As one of the founding members of the biggest thrash metal band of all time and, perhaps, the biggest metal band of all time, Lars' career of the past 30 years is quite different from his intended career: tennis player. Believe it. Lars "Drummer For The Biggest Metal Band In The World" Ulrich wanted to be a tennis player. Now, to put this in context, Lars' dad Torben was a professional tennis player in Europe, so the thought of Lars yearning to reach the top of the tennis world isn't entirely out of the realm of reality, but we're kind of glad that he instead gravitated toward the world of metal instead, eventually hooking up with one Mr. James Hetfield, via a classified ad in a musician magazine, and the rest, as they so often say, is rockin' awesome history.

12.29: Don't go chasing waterfalls, y'all. Immortal words spoken by an immortal singer from an immortal band. Now, if we can just remember their name....Hmmm, still don’t have it....Oh, yeah. We just googled it. Tony Toni Tone. No, wait a minute, that’s not right. Okay, we’re done messing around. It’s TLC. That group's most vocal and trouble-prone member, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, never backed down from a disturbance she couldn’t cause, which brings us to this day in 1994. Left Eye pled guilty to arson charges in a fire that destroyed her boyfriend’s (Atlanta Falcon’s receiver, Andre Rison) shoes and mansion. You see, they’d had a contentious relationship, fraught with not-so-good times, and Left Eye had had enough. She set fire to his favorite shoes, but the fire got out of hand pretty quickly, burning the massive house down to the ground (we still remember the helicopter-cam images from tv), turning it into a toasted, gnarled shell of nothing, along with all of Rison’s shoes and belongings. Yeah, that’ll teach him! We know we make fun, but we really dig TLC. Their Atlanta-based southern-tinged rhythm and blues holds a special guilty-pleasure place in our rockin’ hearts.

12.31: Okay, let’s go back in the Way Back Machine. We’re going back to the early ‘80s, a time before the fandangled interweb thingamajiggy, upon which you find yourself this very second, a time when, compared to now, the music business seemed small, almost quaint. It was before the rise of alternative rock, before the term “hip-hop” entered the lexicon and most people just called it “rap music,” before MySpace and YouTube and Facebook, a time when you owned a record player, a boom box, or were still relegated to Super 8s (look it up). Michael Jackson made people take notice for his music not his life and Madonna struggled to get her nascent name on the tips of everyone’s mind. In 1983, a little band from Sheffield, England, came out with an album called Pyromania and the world exploded in awesomeness. Def Leppard blended the metal of the previous decade (Black Sabbath, Judas Priest) with the melodic sense of theater that came from glam rock (David Bowie, T.Rex). Def Leppard owned the term “hard rock” in the ‘80s. Pyromania launched them into the stratosphere of popularity, on the propulsion of songs like “Photograph” and “Die Hard The Hunter.” Def Leppard tied themselves to the mast of the then-new MTV, as it sailed the musical seas, and they never looked back. Okay, what does this have to do with this day in rock history? Well, kiddoes, on this day in 1984, Rick Allen, Leppard’s shirtless drummer extraordinaire, flipped his car going around a corner at very, very high speeds and, in the ensuing crash, lost his arm. Well, he didn’t actually lose it. It was found in the field by paramedics. Ewww. They even reattached it. Okay, that's cool. Then they sawed it off again due to infection. Double ewwww. Man, way to mess with a guy, doctor dudes. Kinda like the ol’ “I got yer nose” trick people play with kids, except they were doing it with a guy’s arm, and they weren’t pretending. Anyhoo, Allen didn’t give up the drumming gig and went on to help Def Leppard close out the ‘80s by drumming (with a special kit, of course) on Hysteria, the equally popular follow-up to Pyromania, which featured the best stripper song ever, “Pour Some Sugar On Me.” Man, we love that song. Thanks for not giving up on music, Rick.

01.01: Okay, we know this is Hard Rock, and we know all that name entails, but today is the anniversary of an immensely sad day in the history of music. This day in 1954, Hank Williams, Sr., one of the original outlaws of country music, overdosed in the back of a car on the way to his next gig. All of 29 (!?), it again hits home, to this day, that the candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. Like Sam Cooke and Otis Redding in the genre of soul or Jimi Hendrix and Kurth Cobain in the genre of rock, Williams’ shadow falls long and hard over the genre of country and western. If you don’t know about him or are one of those people that say you like all music, “except country,” then you need to do some research, pick up one of Hank Williams' albums or compilations, and listen. Listen to the lyrics, most of all. This was a man who lived a hard life, through the Great Depression and his own self-induced problems, who knew the pain that can encompass life, and came out of it with an amazing voice, an intense perspective, and something to say. His lyrics were dark and wouldn’t be out of place in a Trent Reznor song. Man, wouldn’t that be awesome? Nine Inch Nails covering “Cold Cold Heart.” That he died before his time doesn’t belie the fact that his straightforward, no bull way of singing and performing influenced many in country, rock, soul, and every genre (whether they know it or not). R.I.P., Hank. You died too soon, but we’re grateful for what you left behind.