Music Trivia Thread

[Attyla]

I have been putting this in other threads, but am afraid I am just cluttering up those threads, so I will stop doing that and just do stuff in this one. Care to join in? I am all about learning more about music. So here we go.

Here are five artists from the UK who are really well known, and they had hits on both sides of the Atlantic, but had a lot more success in the US than in their home countries. There may be more and if you know one, feel free to join in.

First, we start with Ringo Starr of the Beatles. He had a lot of success as a solo artist in the US with a number of top 40 singles, far more in the US than in the UK. Songs like Photograph did quite well in the US, but not so much over seas

Second, Sheena Easton, she did well on both sides, but had a lot more success in the US with songs like Sugar Walls

Third, the Alan Parson's Project. They did OK in the UK but had a lot of success in the US, with songs like Games People Play

Next we have Steve Winwood who was quite successful as a solo artist, but much more so in the US

And finally, we have George Harrison, another Beatle. Had a lot of success as a solo artist in the US and was also a part of the Traveling Wilbury's.

[Hellbound]

Well, it is scary season so let's wander down a frightening street story. And this one even includes forbidden fruit at the end. Here's the story.

The studio was about to put out one of what would become a seemingly endless series of sequels to a slasher movie. That probably gave it away right there. They had lined up some big talent to do a song for the movie and that had actually also been completed. But the deal fell through, so the artist put the song on their next album and then the studio stepped in with a lawsuit. In the end, the artist was forced to add this disclaimer: "[This song] is not part of the soundtrack...and is not authorized, licensed, or affiliated with the Nightmare on Elm Street films." to the album cover and the single. And they forced the artist to remove the music video from MTV and other music video stations. The video had too many references in it that were too closely associated with the movie. The song survives and actually did quite well. The lawsuit was settled out of court with some money changing hands and that video was supposed to be destroyed. But that did not quite happen. Their was one copy of the video that survived. And like most things, it made its way to the internet. And of course Youtube now has it available for if you want to watch it. New Line Cinema, who owns the Nightmare franchise, has never bothered to force it taken down. As a matter of fact, New Line is often referred to as the House Freddie built. And the artist? None other than Will Smith, at the time referred to as Fresh Prince, along side his long time partner Dj Jazzy Jeff. I was never a fan of either of them, nor Freddie but it is Halloween, so take a listen if you like, after all, you are not supposed to see it.

Forgot all about that song but remember it being played with regularity back in the day. As I reading your post, I kept thinking of Dream Warriors and was like "wtf. That song was on the soundtrack"

[Attyla]

The song was a huge worldwide hit in 1985 and it was one of those very rare times when a song was inspired by a documentary. We know songs are inspired by movies all the time, one being the painfully bad song "Turn On Your Heart Light" by Neil Diamond, who rarely wrote bad songs. But this hit was inspired by a documentary that was produced in 1982. But it was not shown in Europe until 1984.

The song is an interesting production because it employed audio from several sources including the documentary. it also used a fairly new technology at the time of a stutter tuner. It is pretty common today and it is probably most famously used at the time for Max Headroom but this was an earlier usage. It also got it completely wrong. As did the documentary. It got to 15 on the Hot 100 Charts here in the US but it went to number one on about 12 countries. And it was the biggest selling single in England. If you were around at the time, you probably know which song I am talking about. Paul Hardcastle's "19" was an anti war protest song regarding the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, the key telling point of the song was that the average age of a vet in that war was 19 as opposed to WWII when the age was 26. In truth, the average age of a vet in both wars was closer to 22-23. But that may never be established 100% as people lied about their ages to fight in WWII in particular. The song sampled a lot of audio narrated by Peter Thomas in one of the first such by a recording artist and they had no idea how to handle it. Hardcastle ended up paying a lot of the royalties to Thomas as a result since he did not get anyone's permission to sample for the recording. Even the video was not without problems as several American networks felt his use of footage from the war was in bad taste and that he used their footage in the clip. In the end, they had to reshoot the video using public domain footage.
So here is Hardcastle's original video for 19

[Attyla]

What does pizza and donuts have to do with hair metal royalty? Quite a bit as it turns out, here is the story.

When a pizza delivery guy was out doing his thing, mother nature rang so pizza guy ducked into a donut shop to relieve himself in the shops bathrooms. As he emerged, he saw a guy sitting at a table enjoying the deep fried confections. The pizza guy recognized donut guy as the lead singer slash guitar player of a band pizza guy liked. And donut guy recognized pizza guy as a local drummer and they got to chatting up as a pizza guy and a donut guy are apt to do. Turns out, donut guy knew pizza guy's work and he thought he was pretty good. That was when it happened, donut guy asked pizza guy to join his band, as they were looking for a new drummer. Pizza guy jumped at the chance which lead to four years playing in the local club scene. But as happens to pizza guys and donut guys, the band eventually broke up. Both went on to rock history, you see pizza guy is Bobby Blotzer from Ratt and donut guy is none other than Don Dokken. These days both are out of their world famous bands having had well documented fights both real and in the courts over music rights and royalties. Badass

[Attyla]

This one will be obvious from the start, so let's just cut to the chase on this one...Here are some things you did not know about the song Louie Louie.

Written in 1956 and released in 1957 by Richard Berry, it got its biggest traction when the Kingsmen recorded their version in 1963. The Kingsmen recorded their version in one take for $50.00. A man heard the song on the radio and was convinced it was a dirty song so he wrote the governor of Indiana in an attempt to get it off the air. He was positive the song was filthy due to the way the song was sung. The governor referred it to the FCC but after investigating they found that the song was unintelligible. Next step? The National Broadcaster's Association was brought in and they picked the song apart. Their verdict? Unintelligible and that people were putting their own biases into the song and determining the song to be dirty. Was that the end? Not at all, a woman wrote the attorney general, Robert Kennedy about the song. You cannot make this stuff up. Kennedy got the FBI involved and their crime lab picked the song apart again, this time for almost 3 years. Tax payers dollars well spent. Their verdict? No idea what is being said in the song. And why was this song so hard to understand? The group had performed the night before the recording and the singer was hoarse. On top of that, he had to strain to sing over the load band because the microphone was hanging too high above him.

And what was this dirty song about? A sailor missing his girl.

[Attyla]

Back in 1991 a very famous rock star made his wife mad. No real problem there, rock stars are known for pissing people off. Here is the story.

He was a big time rock star and his wife was very pregnant. They were supposed to go for a visit to the hospital. She was getting ready while he looked for something to kill the time while he waited. So he started leafing through the new Auto Trader magazine. This was big at the time and how you bought and sold cars. This one had a 1956 Chevy and it was just like the one the rock star owned in 1978, and he had to have it. So he jumped on his motorcycle and went to look at it. And it was perfect, so he bought the car and hired a flatbed truck to transport it back to his mansion. And that was when his famous actress wife lowered the boom on him. I think I just gave it away. Well, after Valerie delivered their son Wolfgang, Eddie Van Halen bought some custom plates for the 1956 Chevy Nomad


And yes, the plates say "she's mad"

[RickRyb]

Back in 1991 a very famous rock star made his wife mad. No real problem there, rock stars are known for pissing people off. Here is the story.

He was a big time rock star and his wife was very pregnant. They were supposed to go for a visit to the hospital. She was getting ready while he looked for something to kill the time while he waited. So he started leafing through the new Auto Trader magazine. This was big at the time and how you bought and sold cars. This one had a 1956 Chevy and it was just like the one the rock star owned in 1978, and he had to have it. So he jumped on his motorcycle and went to look at it. And it was perfect, so he bought the car and hired a flatbed truck to transport it back to his mansion. And that was when his famous actress wife lowered the boom on him. I think I just gave it away. Well, after Valerie delivered their son Wolfgang, Eddie Van Halen bought some custom plates for the 1956 Chevy Nomad


And yes, the plates say "she's mad"

Spent a lot of time in 1974, 1975 working on a friend's '56 Chevy Belair

[Attyla]

Back in the early 80's a band who was on their 7th studio album were chugging along, but mostly doing smaller venues since they were not quite popular enough. That was about to change due to their 8th album. Here is the story.

They were popular locally overseas but playing midsized venues. They had not captured the US market and were working on their 8th album. But it needed one more song to finish off the album. So they got together in the studio and hammered out the final song. It had a driving riff to it but it was a throw in so they buried it in the album where you normally put the songs destined to never be heard from again.

But as fate would have it, the execs and producers at the label started listening to that song and thought it might make a good single. They pressed out the 45's of the song and started shipping them to radio stations around the world, including the US. And sure enough, that song was the driver needed to make this hard rocking band into superstars. And it made the album take off like no metal album had done previously. That album also propelled their front man to rock star royalty. Know who I am talking about? Judas Priest rode "You Got Another Thing Coming" to the top of metal mania and is still in frequent rotation on radios to this day. A throw away, lol, it was an amazing track and I had the disc in my day.

[Attyla]

In the 80's, it was not uncommon for big acts to write songs and farm them out. After the Bee Gees got the death label of a disco group, that is pretty much all they did for the longest time. But there was one huge act that farmed out one of the songs he wrote for the most basic of reasons. She was pretty hot. Here is the story.

He wrote the song for an act on his label. They even recorded it for their debut album, but it just never made the cut. At the same time, a little known band was working on their second album. Little did they know, but he had heard stuff from their debut album and liked some of their music. He also thought one of their vocalists was pretty cute, and he was not wrong. So "Christopher" reached out to their manager with the song. They immediately took him up on the opportunity. But they did not just record it like he had written it. No, Susanna Hoffs and the Bangles put their own spin on the song, in what they referred to as Banglefication and thus was born, Manic Monday, but removed the pseudonym of Christopher and gave proper credit to Prince. The song went to number one, being held out of the top spot by Kiss performed by Prince. And the song was favorably compared to Monday Monday by the Mommas and Papas. Prince and Susanna never hooked up but years later they are still on the road and it is a staple of their set. The girls did take a break but the core four did return to the road, losing their bass player to retirement only recently.

And if you search hard enough, you can find Prince and Apollonia 6's version on a bootleg recording. I think the girls did it better.

[Attyla]

Let's talk milk bottles. How do they play into one of the biggest hits of the 80's during the beginning of the new wave sound that took over the decade? Well, you know the song unless you live on Mars, but here is the story.

He was the guitarist for an unknown band. Band many be a bit of a stretch but that is a story for another time. He was in the market for a new guitar, but a very talented salesman took him in another direction. He walked out with a synthesizer and a drum machine. Now that is a salesman right there. He took his new equipment to the studio, and began working with his very talented singer on a new song. But the singer was getting frustrated with the process, even threatening to move back to Scotland. But they were on the verge of a life changing song, so she hung in there. They needed a rhythm fill but the synth could not produce the sound they needed, so they grabbed some milk bottles and thus was born one of the most unique sounds of the 80's. Adding to that was her unique look, with her short cropped hair died bright orange. Annie Lennox would front the Eurythmics to stardom, and Sweet Dreams would be a hit of the decade.

[Attyla]

Here is a Beatles quick hit.

On the original Parlophone pressing of the album Sgt Pepper album from 1967, the guys decided to have a bit of fun. On the run out groove of side two, right after you hear the last notes of the song "Day In The Life" you hear something and you don't hear something. Normally the run out groove is a space eater with no sound recorded. Not so with this album. So first, John got it in his head to record a dog whistle. And it really worked, in that a dog could actually hear the whistle and respond. Then you heard some backwards laughter and gibberish. Only if you had a turntable that could reverse course could you hear what the gibberish said. You hear John say, "Been so high" and Paul response, "Never could be any other way." The band denied that it was intentional but that was an obvious lie to cover for the fact that there was a segment of society that found this a rather dangerous message for the youth of the day. The engineer of the album spliced together the message on a two track tape and put together the unusual concept and it was pressed onto the afore mentioned Parlophone version of the album. This album is actually quite a collectors piece with good quality complete albums going for around 500 bucks. Later pressings did not include the run out grove message and are far less valuable.

[Attyla]

1982 brought one of the most watched video's of the year when MTV played music videos. I am not even sure what they do these days. Here is the story.

They were a fairly popular band and the lead singer was writing for their next album. He lived in San Francisco in the tenderloin area of the city. He was walking around, when you could actually walk on the sidewalks when he came across this establishment. It was the red light district after all so the sign in the window should not shock anyone. It read, "Pay a Dollar, Talk to a Naked Girl." He had never done anything like that before but he went in. He put a dollar in the slot in the booth he had entered and up came the panel. And before him, a beautiful woman beginning to disrobe. He was stunned at her beauty so he said as quickly as he could "Why are you doing this, you are beautiful. Come be one of our backing dancers" but she wanted nothing to do with him.

Leaving, this became the inspiration for a huge hit for the Tubes, and yes, their drummer had duel bass drums with nipples on them. You never got to see it in the video unless you watched after 11PM as they blurred them out for the kiddies. Talking to a naked girl paid off for the Tubes and the boy in the video absolutely got an eyeful. Unfortunately, Alexis Arquette was not interested in girls. That is right, the boy would make a name for himself parroting Boy George in the Wedding Singer.

[Attyla]

One time, that was all it took to take a band from regional to world wide, just one time. Here is the story.

A major record label was polling record sales in a regional market only to be told an independent was beating out the big bands selling 50K of their record out of a van. So they signed them. This was in the 90's so you would think they were grunge. You would be wrong. They cut their album again using the finer recording studio and with a professional producer. But the label had a problem. Nobody was buying stuff that was not grunge so they were unsure about releasing the album. But if you invest, you must try to profit so the album was released. It did well locally but national sales were less than stellar. But a radio station in New York played the bullet song from the album, one time.

And that was all it took. One time and by luck when David Letterman was listening to his radio. He loved the song and booked the band to play on his late night talk show. It was September 2, 1994 and Hootie and the Blowfish took that major step in their careers. Take a listen


And the other part of the clip is their last time on Letterman.

[FLORIDARAYDAH]

One time, that was all it took to take a band from regional to world wide, just one time. Here is the story.

A major record label was polling record sales in a regional market only to be told an independent was beating out the big bands selling 50K of their record out of a van. So they signed them. This was in the 90's so you would think they were grunge. You would be wrong. They cut their album again using the finer recording studio and with a professional producer. But the label had a problem. Nobody was buying stuff that was not grunge so they were unsure about releasing the album. But if you invest, you must try to profit so the album was released. It did well locally but national sales were less than stellar. But a radio station in New York played the bullet song from the album, one time.

And that was all it took. One time and by luck when David Letterman was listening to his radio. He loved the song and booked the band to play on his late night talk show. It was September 2, 1994 and Hootie and the Blowfish took that major step in their careers. Take a listen


And the other part of the clip is their last time on Letterman.

I saw Hootie and the Blowfish last year....fun concert

[Attyla]

I saw Hootie and the Blowfish last year....fun concert

I am sure it was, front man is very talented. He has branched out to some country stuff and from what little I have heard he was pretty good.

[FLORIDARAYDAH]

I am sure it was, front man is very talented. He has branched out to some country stuff and from what little I have heard he was pretty good.

They put on a good show. Darius has a voice that sounds just as good in person. It was with the whole band so they mostly played Hootie songs.