1978: Grace Slick takes the stage in St. Goarhausen, West Germany with Jefferson Starship, but is really too intoxicated to perform. Instead, she sings badly and starts taunting the audience with Nazi references.

The crowd doesn’t appreciate it. They riot, causing a million dollars damage. The end result, Slick leaves the band, not returning until 1983.

1970: The promoters of the original Woodstock festival announce that they have lost $1.2 million on the event. However, the subsequent film and soundtrack album eventually gets the promoters out of the red and into a solid profit.

1966: Capitol Records releases the Beatles album “Yesterday… and Today.” The album is a compilation of singles and songs Capitol cut when rearranging the band’s British LPs for American consumption.

The boys’ cheeky “butcher” cover – a sly comment of how their American label was treating their albums – touches off a fierce backlash, forcing Capitol to re-release it with a safer cover. However, a few of the re-released albums are the original butcher cover albums with the new cover pasted over it.

Today, those albums are highly valuable collector’s items (provided the safer cover was removed with great care).

1970: Eric Clapton’s new band, Derek and the Dominoes make their stage debut in the UK. Former Traffic member, Dave Mason sits in on guitar, replacing Duane Allman, who had played on the band’s one and only album, “Layla.”

Interest rates can work for us (when we’re saving or investing) or against us (when we’re buying cars or using our credit cards).

Here are some quick tips to make sure you getting the best rates in either case.

Car Loans: The rate you pay when you pay things like a new car depends on your credit score. If your score is above 740, you should be able to qualify for the lowest rates. Check your score (many credit card companies now furnish your score every month along with their invoice).

If you want to improve your score, visit MyFICO.com for helpful suggestions.

Mortgages: If it’s been a while since you last checked, find out what rate you’re currently paying. If you’re paying 1% or more over the rates banks are currently offering, it may be time to get with your bank or other lender and see if refinancing might lower your rate.

Credit Cards: If you’re a disciplined shopper, it can pay to take advantage of those 0% interest offers on balance transfers that credit card companies frequently offer. Just be aware that the transfer typically involves an up front interst charge, usually 2-3% of the balance being transferred. But if you can pay it off in the time allotted in the offer, you’ll still save far more interest.

Also it pays to shop around when getting credit cards as they can charge asignificantly different rates. To research rates and what card(s) might be best for you, visit credit.com.

Remember the Beach Party movies of the 1960’s? They were made quickly and cheaply with the barest excuse for a plot (and the barest excuse for swimsuits they could get away with in those days.

Somehow, when they decided to make one more trip to beach in 1987 with Paramount Pictures’ Back to the Beach, they made it look just as cheap and feeble as the original films!

Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello are the stars (natch) only instead of being “Frankie and Dee Dee” as they were called in the original series, they’re now named “Annette” and “Annette’s Husband” (no, we’re not making that up).

What little plot there is revolves around a return trip to Malibu where their grown-up daughter is “living in sin” (remember that concept?) with a new generation of surfer. Also along for the ride is their young son, who actually looks like he could be Eric Von Zipper’s kid (although Harvey Lembeck is nowhere to be found). If we were Frankie, we’d get a DNA test. Just sayin’…

Anyway, Frankie’s become a car salesman in Ohio who couldn’t do “surf’s up” if you gave him Viagra, Annette has a serious Skippy problem and Connie Stevens (who was never in the original series) shows up as the divorced woman on the make putting the moves on Frankie.

Along the way, you also get cameo appearances by a whole raft of Baby Boom TV icons: Wally & the Beav, Gilligan, Maxwell Smart and more.

You also get Stevie Ray Vaughn jammin’ on the classic instrumental “Pipeline” with surf music legend Dick Dale.

Just when you think things couldn’t get any weirder, Pee Wee Herman pops up out of nowhere to sing “Surfin’ Bird” (we repeat, we are not making this up).

There are some of those really phony looking shots of the stars riding surfboards inside a Hollywood soundstage, a couple of gratuitous jokes about Annette’s two biggest assets, and a surfing competition where June Cleaver gets to say “crapola.”

If you’re feeling nostalgic or want something to play in the background while you engage in a little mid-life make-out session, you might want to rent or stream Back to the Beach this weekend.

Now, anybody know what happened to Gidget and Moondoggie?

There is evidence that a daily regimen of low-dose aspirin (what used to be called “baby aspirin”) can reduce the risk of a first heart attack or stroke in those between the ages of 50 and 69. There is also some evidence that it may reduce the risk of colon cancer. Experts warn that such a regimen should only be undertaken by those with a high risk of heart disease and a low risk of bleeding.

As with any drug, do not begin a regimen of low-dose aspirin without consulting your doctor.

With all of the CSI-style forensic cop shows on TV, it may be hard to remember that network television was once ruled by cowboys and two-fisted private eyes.

One of the first of the shamuses was Richard Diamond, Private Detective.

The show was one of the first on TV because it had been a long-running, successful radio series. The radio show was created by Blake Edwards, who was later to create TV detective Peter Gunn as well as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau of Pink Panther film fame.

 Diamond had been played on radio by Dick Powell, but when it made the jump to CBS television, Powell stepped behind the camera as Executive Producer. In his place a young David Janssen was cast, beginning what was a very long career as a television star (The Fugitive, O’Hara, U.S. Treasury, Harry O, etc.). 

One of the best remembered elements of the show was Diamond’s answering service. The woman who took his messages was only identified as “Sam” and we only saw close-ups of her mouth and most often, shots of her very attractive legs.

Supplying the voice and the gams was none other than Mary Tyler Moore who was just billing herself as Mary Moore in those days.

The first two seasons saw Diamond as a hard-boiled Manhattan detective in the Dashiell Hammett/Mickey Spillane tradition. However, for the 3^rd season (perhaps reflecting the sudden success of a new private eye series 77 Sunset Strip) Diamond moved out to Los Angeles and traded his shabby N.Y. office for an elegant bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills.

For its fourth and final season, the show jumped to NBC and the Hollywood glamour elements were toned down.

While the show was initially very successful in syndication, the fact that all four seasons were shot in black and white eventually led to its disappearance from the Vast Wasteland.

Two of the shows 77 episodes have since slipped into public domain. They can be found on many “dollar bin” collections of old TV shows, but the rest of the series has never been officially released on home video.

1964: The Rolling Stones make a television appearance on ABC’s Hollywood Palace. Guest host Dean Martin insults the band by remarking after a daredevil trambolinist’s act: “That's the father of The Rolling Stones. He's been trying to kill himself ever since.”