Unusual Rock Trivia?

[Aberdumbie]

When the band Sugarloaf got their first recording contract, their bandname was Chocolate Hair....As the debut album was about to go to press,with the to-be hit Green-Eyed Lady,the label's legal department insisted the name of the band be changed because they thought some people might take it as being racist.

Sugarloaf came from the mountain near the singer/BL's Colorado home.

Loved me some Sugarloaf back in the day.

 

[IamGroot]

Prince 1958–2016: Is the water warm enough? - The Wire

In 1980, Lisa Coleman replaced [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] in Prince's touring band[2] on keyboards and piano. Coleman was asked to contribute vocals to several tracks over his next few albums. In 1983, guitarist Dez Dickerson left the band over religious conflicts. Coleman suggested Wendy Melvoin, who had been brought on tour, as a replacement. Prince accepted Melvoin into the band as they began to record Purple Rain.[3] The film and album were a phenomenon, turning Prince and the newly named Revolution into superstars. Prince's personal life also became intertwined with Melvoin's when he began dating her twin sister Susannah.

During 1986, Melvoin and Coleman became increasingly disillusioned with Prince's decision to expand The Revolution with non-musicians, such as Wally Safford and Greg Brooks, and Prince's increasing machismo that these new members brought with them. Unhappy and vocal about their feelings, they were eventually convinced to remain with the band through the end of the Hit N Run - Parade Tour. However, Prince felt spurned and as a result he had already decided he would dissolve The Revolution once the tour was complete. Hence, by October 1986, Melvoin and Coleman (along with Bobby Z.) were dismissed by Prince, disrupting the Dream Factory album that was already completed and effectively dissolving The Revolution.[5]. Coleman and Melvoin left the Revolution and started their own duo, Wendy & Lisa, also known as Girl Brothers.

In April 2009, Melvoin gave an interview with Out magazine that, for the first time, publicly revealed that she was a lesbian and discussed her past romantic relationship with Lisa Coleman, who is still her musical partner.[4]

 

[5StringBlues]

I think Ed King was probably the most talented guy in Lynyrd Skynyrd and responsible for a lot more of the riffs that made their hits than he was given credit for, since he was the "outsider guy" in the group.

I saw the first Skynyrd reunion tour in 1987.


While Randall Hall played a bit of leads and Rossington did his signature parts, Ed King played the majority of Collins' leads as well as all his parts and those of Steve Gaines.



Ed is very underrated.

 

[IamGroot]

Yes , he is underated. If someone asked about examples of syncopation in rock to drive the music, I would point them to Ed.

 

[Badwater]

I just saw a post of Steve Gadd who was in the US ARMY band. Never new that.

 

[Tom Bomb]

Just a short note: [and one of my favorite songs ] the band, Matt Finish, was so named due to the fact that the inestimable frontman, Matt Moffitt, was prone towards endlessly extending jams and the band was always yelling at him, during rehearsals, "MATT! FINISH!"

 

[TN WOODMAN]

David Gates (of Bread later) produced 1966 sessions for Capt. Beefheart . Known as the legendary A & M sessions , unreleased until Don’s 1984 retirement from music to focus on painting. Gates even wrote one of the tracks.

 

[Richland123]

Jon Bon Jovi (under his real name John Bongiovi) sang lead vocals on the song "R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas" on the Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album. His cousin Tony Bongiovi co-produced the album and ran the recording studio at which it was recorded, where Jon was working sweeping floors at the time.

 

[IamGroot]

"Love Shack" By the B-52 (From Song Facts)

The band drew inspiration from the club in the movie The Color Purple, and also from a real club outside of Athens, Georgia called the Hawaiian Ha-Le, where they would hang out. This place drew a multifarious crowd of hippies, scenesters, and lots of students from the nearby University of Georgia. Drummer Keith Strickland has also mentioned keg parties out in the country as another inspiration.

• In 1970, the Temptations released a song called "Link Removed," which has the refrain: "Psychedelic Shack, that's where it's at." This was clearly an influence on "Love Shack," although Fred Schneider insists he wasn't thinking of any other song when he came up with the title.
• The album was recorded at Dreamland Studios near Woodstock, New York, a town famous for giving off lots of love vibes (although the Link Removed took place 50 miles away in Bethel). According to Fred Schneider, he was driving up there, there thinking of song titles when "Love Shack" popped into his head. When he, Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson worked on the lyrics, they thought about what the "Love Shack" meant. For Schneider, it was the Hawaiian Ha-Le.
• This introduced The B-52s to a mainstream audience. They had a strong cult following, especially in the gay community and on college radio, but "Love Shack" broke them big. Many listeners who discovered them through this song had no idea they had been around for over a decade and had released four previous albums.
  
  "Love Shack" was their first entry on the US Top 40 (their most popular song to this point: "Link Removed"). The follow-up single, "Roam," also made #3, but pop success proved fleeting and they never got higher than #28 ("Good Stuff" - 1992) with any subsequent releases.
• One of the most famous breakdowns in pop music comes near the end of this song, when the music stops and Fred Schneider asks, "You're what?"
  
  Cindy Wilson replies with one of the most famous misinterpreted lines in pop music, as she wails, "Tin Roof, Rusted." The line is commonly misheard, often as something like, "Hennnnn-ry, busted."
  
  This section came from a happy accident: the track stopped as Wilson was doing her vocal, and she just kept singing, which gave them the idea to stop the music in this section. As for the line itself, there were rumors that "Tin Roof, Rusted" meant a pregnant woman. The band denied this.
• For Kate Pierson, the actual Love Shack is where she lived in the '70s: a five-room cabin with a tin roof in Athens, Georgia. The band would sometimes work up songs there, including "Rock Lobster." It really was set way back in the middle of a field (off of Jefferson River Road), with no plumbing or running water (an outhouse was nearby). The shack was later renovated, but in 2004 it [Invalid or Expired Link Removed].
• The lyrics are fun and harmless, but they can be interpreted as being about a place where people go to have sex. At Disney World, you will never see Mickey Mouse dancing to it. Really - they refuse to play it at Disney weddings.
• The video was shot at a house in Upstate New York belonging to a friend of the band who can be seen in the garden as the camera sweeps by the window. It was directed by Adam Bernstein, the go-to director for irreverent videos. His other work includes "Link Removed" for Sir Mix-A-Lot, "Link Removed" for Beastie Boys, and several episodes of the TV series Breaking Bad.
  
  The clip was meant to capture the vibe of their shows: a big party where everyone's invited, and spontaneous dancing is likely to break out. Someone on set had a big-as-a-whale Chrysler convertible that the band takes to the love shack at the beginning. Partygoers included friends of the band, along with their touring musicians Zack Alford, Sara Lee and Pat Irwin. The dance line is something the band often did; Fred Schneider's spotlight dance is called The Panty Fling, where you pull down your undies and throw them away.
• Drag queen Rupaul, unknown at the time, is in the video. He had a dance hit called "Link Removed" a few years later.
• Don Was, whose other clients include Jewel, Bob Dylan, Elton John and The Rolling Stones, produced this track. He also had his own group in the '80s called Was Not Was, which had a hit with "Link Removed." The B-52s wanted Nile Rodgers to produce the Cosmic Thing album, but he was tied up on another project, so they started working on it with Was, planning to record three songs with him. Those three were completed early, so the band played him their rough demo of "Love Shack." The first attempt at recording the song didn't go well, but the next day they got it on the first take. The other tracks Was produced on the album are "Junebug," "Bushfire" and "Link Removed." Rodgers did the rest.
• The line, "The love shack is a little old place where we can get together" originally showed up just once in the song, but producer Don Was convinced the group to repeat that line, as it makes a nice hook. Kate Pierson credits Was with turning this song into a hit; on previous albums they often performed the songs live before they recorded them, but the tracks on Cosmic Thing were recorded before they could play them outside of the studio. "He really helped us structure that," she told The A/V Club. "It's just such an iconic song that everybody just feels this joy. When we play it, everyone just lets their inner freak out."
• When this song took off, Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson embarked on a number of non-B-52s projects. In 1991, Schneider made a video for his 1984 solo track "Monster" and re-released it as a single which went to #85 US. In 1990, Pierson sang on the Iggy Pop song "Candy," and the following year appeared on the R.E.M. track "Link Removed."
• The group performed this on an episode of The Simpsons as "Glove Slap." In the 1999 episode, titled "E-I-E-I-Doh!", Homer takes to slapping people with a glove and challenging them to a duel.
• Over the years, various adult video stores have cropped up using the Love Shack name. There was also a movie released on video in 2010 called Love Shack, which is about a group of porn stars who get together to make a film in honor of a deceased producer.
• The horns were provided by The Uptown Horns, a New York-based section that toured with the J. Geils Band on their Freeze Frame tour and played on Tom Waits' Rain Dogs album.
• The Cosmic Thing album was the first one the group recorded without guitarist Ricky Wilson, who died of AIDS in 1985 while they were recording their fourth album, Bouncing off the Satellites, which was released the following year. They didn't tour and weren't sure they would continue, but they carried on with drummer Keith Strickland recording guitar parts in Wilson's style.
• Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson performed this at the 2002 Jammy Awards with the group Particle. Since the awards honored jam bands, they stretched the song into an extended jam.

 

[IamGroot]

Billie Jean by Michael Jackson

Jackson stated several times that "Billie Jean" was based on the Invalid Link Removed he and his brothers encountered while part of The Jackson 5.[2][3][4] "Billie Jean is kind of anonymous. It represents a lot of girls. They used to call them groupies in the '60s." He added: "They would hang around backstage doors, and any band that would come to town they would have a relationship with, and I think I wrote this out of experience with my brothers when I was little. There were a lot of Billie Jeans out there. Every girl claimed that their son was related to one of my brothers."[5]

Jackson's biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli promoted the theory that "Billie Jean" was derived from a real life experience the singer faced in 1981. The Magic & The Madness documents how a young woman wrote Jackson a letter, which informed the singer that he was the father of one of her twins.[6][7] Jackson, who regularly received letters of this kind, had never met the woman in question and ignored it. The woman, however, continued to send Jackson more letters, which stated that she loved him and wanted to be with him. She wrote of how happy they would be if they raised the child together. She pondered how Jackson could ignore his own flesh and blood. The letters disturbed the singer to the extent that he suffered nightmares.[6]

Following the letters, Jackson received a parcel containing a photograph of the fan, as well as a letter and a gun. Jackson was horrified; the letter asked that the pop singer kill himself on a certain day and at a specific time. The fan would do the same once she had killed their baby. She wrote that if they could not be together in this life, then they would be in the next. To the mother's dismay, Jackson had the photograph of the woman framed and hung above the dining room table of their family home. Afterwards, the Jacksons discovered that the fan had been sent to a Invalid Link Removed.[6]

 

[Richland123]

Steve Walsh of Kansas toured as a keyboardist for Cheap Trick in 1985.

Robin Zander - Vocals
Rick Nielson - Guitar
Jon Brant - Bass
Bun E. Carlos - Drums
Steve Walsh - Keyboards

 

[Bob_Ross]

^^^Wow. Never would have imagined that in a million years.

 

[IamGroot]

I saw the first Skynyrd reunion tour in 1987.


While Randall Hall played a bit of leads and Rossington did his signature parts, Ed King played the majority of Collins' leads as well as all his parts and those of Steve Gaines.



Ed is very underrated.

Ed King was the guitarist in The Strawberry alarm Clock ("Incense & Peppermint"). He met Lynyrd Skynrd several years before he joined them.

 

[IamGroot]

Lyle Ritz was both a famous upright bassist who appeared on a lot of 60s hits and also a ukelele virtuoso.

Lyle Ritz - Wikipedia

 

[IamGroot]

Merry Clayton
Invalid Link Removed
Merry Clayton is best known for her 1969 duet with Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones song "Gimme Shelter," According to Jagger, this collaboration came about due to partially to chance. Jagger states that they thought “it’d be great to have a woman come do the…chorus.” They called Clayton “randomly” in the middle of the night, and she showed up to the studio “in curlers” and did the verse in a few takes, which Jagger remarks is “pretty amazing.”[6] She had a miscarriage upon returning home from recording "Gimme Shelter", according to the LA Times.[15]The Stones had asked Bonnie Bramlett to sing on the song, but Bramlett's husband, Delaney, refused to let her perform with the Stones.[7]

Clayton also sang backing vocals on Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama".[8]

Clayton was married to jazz artist Curtis Amy from 1970 until his death in 2002.[13] Clayton's brother is the Little Featpercussionist Sam Clayton.[14]


On June 16, 2014, Clayton was severely injured in a car accident in Los Angeles, California.[16] Both of Clayton's legs were later amputated at the knees due to her suffering "profound trauma to her lower extremities" as a result of the accident.[17]

 

[IamGroot]

Joe Strummer - Wikipedia

John Graham Mellor (21 August 1952 – 22 December 2002), known by his stage name Joe Strummer, was a Turkish-born English musician, singer, actor and songwriter who was the co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist of the Clash, a punk rock band formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk.

In 1975, after being offered £120 (equivalent to £900 in 2016[39]), Strummer Invalid Link Removed Pamela Moolman, a South African citizen, so she could obtain British citizenship. He bought his signature Fender Telecaster, later painted black, with the money. The 1966 Fender Telecaster originally came in a three-colour sunburst with a white pickguard. Strummer acquired the guitar in middle of 1975 while playing with the 101ers. After joining the Clash, the guitar's body and pickguard were refinished in grey auto primer and then painted black. By 1979, the word NOISE was stenciled on the upper part of the body, a rasta flag sticker was placed at the horn of the pickguard, and an "Ignore Alien Orders" sticker was placed above the bridge. By the release of Give ‘Em Enough Rope, the guitar was fitted with a bridge with individual saddles and the original Kluson tuners were replaced with later model tuners and a large question mark was spraypainted on its back.

Strummer was naturally left-handed, but was taught to play guitar right-handed by his close friend Tymon Dogg. Strummer had reckoned his left-handedness on a right-hand guitar as a drawback and claimed it caused him to be underdeveloped as a guitarist, although his style of playing was unique.

Before the album Combat Rock was released in 1982, Strummer wilfully went into hiding and band management represented that he had "disappeared". Bernie Rhodes, the band's manager, pressured Joe to do so because tickets were selling slowly for the Scottish leg of an upcoming tour.[2] It was planned for Strummer to travel, in secret, to Texas and stay with his friend, musician Joe Ely. Uneasy with his decision, Strummer instead decided to genuinely disappear and "dicked around" in France. During this time, Strummer ran the Paris Marathon in April 1982. He claimed his training regime consisted of 10 pints of beer the night before the race. For this period of time, Joe's whereabouts were not only a mystery to the public, but the band's management as well. Joe later said this was a huge mistake and you "have to have some regrets". This was in spite of the popular success of the single "Rock the Casbah". During this time band members began to argue a lot, and with tensions high, the group began to fall apart.[12]

 

[Richland123]

Before forming Cheap Trick, Rick Nielsen and Tom Peterson (the real spelling of his last name) were in a band called Fuse that recorded one album in 1968 and released it in 1970 and also a single in 1967 with "Hound Dog" and "Cruisin' for Burgers". Fuse's line-up consisted of Rick Nielsen (keyboards/guitar), Joe Sundberg (vocals), Tom Peterson (bass guitar), Craig Myers (lead guitar), and Chip Greenman (drums/percussion). After releasing an album, Fuse moved to Philadelphia in 1971 and began calling themselves Sick Man of Europe. After a European tour in 1973, Nielsen, Petersson and Bun E. Carlos formed Cheap Trick with Randy Hogan. Hogan left the band shortly after its formation and was replaced by Robin Zander.

 

[GregC]

Lyle Ritz was both a famous upright bassist who appeared on a lot of 60s hits and also a ukelele virtuoso.

Lyle Ritz - Wikipedia

Cool! I'd never heard of this fellow, he had an interesting career.

 

[Tom Bomb]

Brian Wilson Presents Smile took thirty-eight years to complete.

 

[StudioStuntz]

Session keyboardist Artie Butler came up with an 'on the spot' organ coda when asked by record producer Artie Morton for the first entry, then made it slightly longer and used it again for the organ coda for the second entry: