TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Canada - Toronto & Southern Ont.
-- 101 facts you never knew about music
101 facts you never knew about music
Most of you might know only a few of the names mentioned in the following but its still an interesting read.
(source links at the end)
1. Leo Fender, inventor of the Stratocaster and Telecaster, couldn't play the guitar.
2. John Lennon's eyesight was so poor that he was legally blind without his glasses.
3. Noel Gallagher, Gary Moore and Mark Knopfler write left-handed but play guitar as if right-handers. Coldplay's Chris Martin plays guitar and draws right-handed, but he writes left-handed. And the world's most-famous 'left-handed' player, Jimi Hendrix, wrote with his right hand.
4. Kiss's Gene Simmons can speak Hungarian.
5. Queen's multi-millionaire drummer Roger Taylor was once spotted in Guildford's Sainsbury's supermarket filling out a National Lottery ticket. Question: why?
6. The surname of the late Robert Moog, inventor of the legendary Moog Synthesiser, is actually pronounced 'Mogue' (rhyming with 'rogue'). But everyone has said 'Moog' for so long, no-one bothers to correct it anymore.
7. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich is a keen modern art collector. In 2008 he auctioned his "last Basquiat" for $13.5 million.
8. Slash was born in Hampstead, London. (Not Stoke, England, as is usually reported.)
9. Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus, 63, suffers from severe memory loss and no longer remembers much of his life. MusicRadar bets his accountant remembers everything.
6. The surname of the late Robert Moog, inventor of the legendary Moog Synthesiser, is actually pronounced 'Mogue' (rhyming with 'rogue'). But everyone has said 'Moog' for so long, no-one bothers to correct it anymore.
7. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich is a keen modern art collector. In 2008 he auctioned his "last Basquiat" for $13.5 million.
8. Slash was born in Hampstead, London. (Not Stoke, England, as is usually reported.)
9. Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus, 63, suffers from severe memory loss and no longer remembers much of his life. MusicRadar bets his accountant remembers everything.
12. 'Irish' band U2 aren't really all Irish. Adam Clayton was born in Oxfordshire, England, to English parents. The Edge (David Evans) was born in Barking, east London, to Welsh parents.
13. The world's official fastest rapper is Ricky Brown. He holds the Guinness World Record by rapping 723 syllables in 41.27 seconds on his track No Clue, in January 2005, in front of a licensed speech therapist.
14. Public Image Limited bassist Jah Wobble (John Wardle) worked for a while, post-PiL, for the London Underground. He allegedly once made an announcement over the PA system at London's Tower Hill underground station: "I used to be somebody. I repeat, I used to be somebody."
15. The 15 May 1997 was declared official 'ZZ Top Day' in the band's home-state of Texas. Who would pass such bizarre legislation? The Texas State Governor at the time, George W Bush.
16. In his teens, Johnny Marr had trials as a footballer for Manchester City FC. "I was good enough for City," he reckons, "but they didn't follow up because I was probably the only player wearing eyeliner."
17. Whereas Damon Gough - aka Badly Drawn Boy - had trials for Manchester United.
18. Veteran gangsta rapper Ice-T's birth name is Tracy Lauren Marrow. So you're named after two girls and a vegetable, hard man?
19. Brian Eno partly-produced Dido's new album, Safe Trip Home. Which makes for a full-name collaboration between Brian Peter George St John Le Baptiste de la Salle Eno and Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong. That's posh parents for you.
20. The seemingly-random block artwork on Coldplay's third album album uses the Baudot code. It spells out 'x and y', in Emile Baudot's pioneering code used for early telegrams. The code spells out 'Fair Trade' on the CD inner-booklet.
21. Crooner Engelbert Humperdinck was born Arnold George Dorsey. He borrowed his stage name from a German composer who died in 1921. Weirdly, Arnold Dorsey sounds much cooler.
22. The original Village People line-up was recruited via an advert that read "Macho types wanted: must have moustache".
23. Blur's Graham Coxon models for Cordings, an upmarket London gentleman's tailor, part-owned by Eric Clapton.
24. Before Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder was the singer in Bad Radio, a progressive funk rock band heavily influenced by early Red Hot Chili Peppers.
25. Over the years, Pete Best, Stuart Sutcliffe, Brian Epstein, George Martin, George Best and Billy Preston have all been referred to as The Fifth Beatle.
26. Meat Loaf supports English football team Hartlepool United.
27. Neptunes producer Pharrell Williams is huge fan of the science fiction series Star Trek. Hence his consistent use of the Vulcan salute to signify his label name, Star Trak.
28. Elvis Presley weighed 170lbs following his discharge from the US Army in 1960. When he died, in 1977, he weighed 260lbs.
29. Andy White, the drummer who played on the definitive version of The Beatles' Love Me Do, never earned more than his original session fee of �7 from the track.
30. Steve Vai is an expert beekeeper and occasionally lectures schoolchildren on the joys of apiary.
31. Since their inception, Guns N' Roses have had 21 full-time band members� and counting. Could you pick them all out in a police line-up?
32. In his youth, Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis's babysitters included Cher and Sonny Bono.
33. Acclaimed UK cook and author Delia Smith baked the cake on the cover of The Rolling Stones' 1969 masterpiece Let It Bleed.
34. Flowers In The Rain by The Move was the first record ever played on BBC Radio 1 in the UK.
35. Malcolm Young uses IK Multimedia AmpliTube software on AC/DC's Black Ice tracks Big Jack and Anything Goes.
36. The built-in MIDI ports on the Atari ST were only included because they were suggested by Atari boss Jack Tramiel's son when the computer was being designed.
37. Jay-Z hasn't written any of his lyrics down for more than a decade.
38. James Joseph Brown Jr, who died on Christmas Day 2006, was meant to be named after his father Joe but a mix-up on the birth certificate meant Joseph became his middle name. Once he reached adulthood, Brown legally removed the 'Jr' despite (or because of�) Junior/Little Junior being his nickname as a boy.
39. Hard rock production guru Brendan O'Brien (Soundgarden, AC/DC, Pearl Jam) plays Hammond organ on Bob Dylan's MTV Unplugged.
40. Timbaland has claimed to have the sounds from every drum machine ever made.
41. Tom Morello's father, Ngethe Njoroge, a Kenyan, was the country's first ambassador to the United Nations.
42. Chic's Le Freak was originally called Fuck Off. These were the words that were sung as the main hook, but they were changed to 'Freak out' before the song was recorded.
43. One of the rumoured reasons behind Prince's decision to pull The Black Album just before its release in 1987 is that he had a bad experience on Ecstasy.
44. Edward Van Halen's middle name is Lodewijk, after composer Ludwig van Beethoven. (Lodewijk is the Dutch version of Ludwig.)
45. Steven Van Zandt (Bruce Springsteen, Silvio Dante in The Sopranos) wears a bandana to cover permanent loss of hair from a car accident, where he hit a windscreen with his head.
46. The Chemical Brothers were originally called The Dust Brothers, but had to change their moniker after the US production duo of the same name threatened legal action.
47. One of the samplers in Propellerhead's Reason is called the NN-19. This is in tribute to Paul Hardcastle's 19, his 1985 hit that features stuttered samples as its name hook.
48. Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye recorded most of the vocal parts for their 1973 duets album in separate studios. A pregnant Ross was worried that Gaye's marijuana smoking would damage the health of her unborn child.
49. The famous synth motif from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind was played on an ARP 2500.
50. Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante once planned to audition for Frank Zappa � until he found out about Zappa's strict 'no-drugs' rule for his band.
51. Between 1948 and 1960, blues legend John Lee Hooker released over 100 singles.
52. The intro to Eddie Floyd's Knock On Wood is the same as the intro to In The Midnight Hour, but the chord progression is played backwards. Both songs were co-written by guitarist Steve Cropper. Economical work, Mr Cropper!
53. Oasis's Noel Gallagher and Status Quo's Francis Rossi share a birthday: 29 May. The creative forces of guitar boogie are strong on that day, obviously.
54. The drum machine part on the recording of New Order's Blue Monday - acknowledged as the best-selling 12-inch single of all time - had to be reprogrammed after the original was lost when the power lead was knocked out. The band have said that the first beat was better.
55. Funk bass legend Bootsy Colllins famously appears in the video for Deee-Lite's dance anthem Groove Is In The Heart, but he contributes only additional vocals. The bassline is actually sampled from Herbie Hancock's Bring Down The Birds.
56. Martin's OM-28 John Mayer signature acoustic was limited to a production run of 404. Why, you ask? It's the area code of his Atlanta hometown.
57. Stevie Wonder partially lost his sense of smell in a 1973 car crash.
58. Snow Patrol were originally called Polar Bear. They changed their name in 1995.
59. Michael Jackson is said to have spent three weeks working on the bassline for Billie Jean.
60. David Gilmour recorded the last two Pink Floyd albums on his Surrey, UK, houseboat studio, the Astoria. The boat can accommodate a 90-piece orchestra on the top deck and was built by Fred Karno: 'inventor' of the custard-pie-in-the-face gag and manager of Charlie Chaplin.
61. Lemmy of Motorhead's first band were called The Rockin' Vickers. They were the first British band to play behind the so-called 'Iron Curtain' when they visited Yugoslavia in 1965.
62. Arab Strap's third album is called Elephant Shoe. Elephant Shoe is a phrase mumbled by nervous teenagers who don't want to say "I love you" to girls. Say it out loud and you'll see it makes the same mouth shapes. Clever huh?
63. Orville Gibson, founder of The Gibson Guitar Corporation in Kalamazoo, Michigan in the late 1890s, only registered one design patent. It was for the first archtop mandolins he made.
64. At Woodstock, Neil Young skipped most of Crosby, Stills and Nash's acoustic set (the exceptions being Young's own Mr Soul and Wonderin') but he did play their electric set. You can hear Young's Sea Of Madness on the Woodstock LP but it wasn't actually filmed there - it was recorded a month later at the Fillmore East.
65. REM play It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) in The Simpsons episode Homer The Moe. If you want to sing along, Homer sings "Leonid whats-his-name/Herman Munster Motorcade/Birthday party/Cheetos/Pogo sticks and lemonade/You symbiotic stupid jerk/That's right, Flanders/I am talking about you!"
66. Island Records was founded in Jamaica in 1959 by Chris Blackwell and Graeme Goodall. The label was named after 1955 Alec Waugh novel, Island In The Sun (later a hit song for Harry Belafonte). The company moved to the UK in May 1962 and, until Blackwell sold the label to PolyGram in 1989, was the largest indie record label in history.
67. Founded in 1962 in Japan by Tsutomu Kato and Tadashi Osanai, Korg was originally known as Keio Electronic Laboratories because its fledgling offices were located near the Keio train line in Tokyo and Keio can be formed by combining the first letters of Kato and Osanai.
68. Elvis Presley's house Graceland was named after original owner SE Toof's daughter, Grace. It is the second most visited private residence in the United States outside the White House.
69. When Liverpool FC fan John Peel married his girlfriend Sheila 'The Pig' Gilhooly in August 1974, they walked down the aisle to You'll Never Walk Alone with Peel dressed in Liverpool red. Their sheepdog Woggle served as bridesmaid.
70. Richard David James (Aphex Twin) was born in Limerick, Ireland, before his family relocated to Lanner, Cornwall, England. His first two DJ residencies as a teenager were at The Shire Horse in St Ives and The Bowgie Inn in Crantock (with Tom Middleton). He now records under several aliases.
71. Before settling on ex-Scream member Dave Grohl, Nirvana went through five drummers: Aaron Burckhard (1987-1988), Dale Crover (1988 and 1990), Dave Foster (1988), Chad Channing (1988-1990) and Dan Peters (1990).
72. According to all-known recorded sales data, the harmonica is the world's best-selling musical instrument.
73. Angel And The Snake's Debbie Harry renamed her band Blondie for two reasons. The first is builders wolf-whistling "Hey, Blondie!" at her. The second is they were named after Hitler's German Shepherd, Blondi. The band allegedly toured as Hitler's Dog but still play as Blondie to this day. Blondi wasn't so lucky - she joined Hitler in the bunker and was given a dose of cyanide just before 'The F�hrer' committed suicide.
74. Speaking of dogs, Fred Durst has a pet bulldog called Bizkit.
75. Gene Simmons' Rock School champion Lil' Chris went to the same Lowestoft, England, high school as Justin and Daniel Hawkins of The Darkness. Incredibly, so did two of MusicRadar's staffers. Fact.
76. The Clash's original sticksman Terry Chimes was cured of 'serious arm pain' in 1985 by Black Sabbath's personal chiropractor. After touring with Sabbath in 1987/88, the drummer set up Chimes Chiropractic and has over 30,000 patients on file. They also do acupuncture.
77. David Bowie has a lizard tattooed on his ankle.
78. The oldest artist to top the UK singles chart was Louis Armstrong (aged 66 years and 10 month) in 1968 with What A Wonderful World.
79. So-called 'gut strings' for acoustic Spanish guitars were originally made from the small intestines of slaughtered sheep. The production material only changed - to nylon - during World War II, when all available gut was used in the production of surgical thread for wounded soldiers. Eww!
80. Led Zeppelin didn't release singles during their heyday in the UK, and the b-side to the US release of Immigrant Song - Hey Hey What Can I Do? - was the band's only non-album release.
81. Pink Floyd performed under various monikers in their early years, including Tea Set, Sigma 6, The Screaming Abdabs and Leonard's Lodgers (after their landlord Mike Leonard � unconnected with MusicRadar Editor of the same name).
82. Johnny Cash's estate was approached by an advertising company asking for permission to use Ring Of Fire on an ad for haemorrhoid cream. The request was refused.
83. The longest-held recorded instance of the word "c*nt" appears in Oceansize's Sleeping Dogs And Dead Lions. Incredibly, Oceansize are not a death metal band.
84. Pseudonyms used by Paul McCartney in his career include Paul Ramone, Bernard Webb, A Smith, Apollo C Vermouth, Country Hams, Percy 'Thrills' Thrillington... and, of course, The Fireman.
85. Monaco's orchestra is bigger than its army.
86. Prog rockers Emerson Lake And Palmer knew how to tour. In 1977, they had 63 roadies, including a karate instructor for drummer Carl Palmer and the band's own doctor. It's rumoured they also had a 'carpet roadie', whose job was to transport and sweep the Persian rug that Greg Lake stood on during the shows. A 70 piece orchestra joined that lot.
87. Axl Rose used to earn $8 an hour for smoking cigarettes, for a science experiment at California's UCLA.
88. Prince played 27 different instruments on his debut album For You.
89. In an official PR biography, Martial arts actor Steven Segal once claimed to have played guitar with John Lennon. Why? How? When? Further details from Segal are 'sketchy'.
90. Keith Richards' preferred tipple is vodka (2 measures) with Sunkist orange soda (1 measure), plus ice. He calls this refreshing drink Nuclear Waste.
91. A concert promoter in Hawaii once sold a thousand tickets to a Spice Girls concert. However, the concert never existed. When arrested, the man told police he needed the money for a nose job and a sex change. That's a damn ambitious excuse, whatever else you think.
92. Gruff-voiced rocker Bryan Adams photographed Queen Elizabeth II for this Canadian stamp.
93. In 1996, Ringo Starr appeared in a Japanese advertisement for apple sauce, which is what "Ringo" means in Japanese.
94. When The Offspring's early drummer James Lilja left the band, he retrained as a gynaecologist. A kinda suitable career swap, maybe?
95. Pete Townshend has smashed more than 90 guitars in his Who career, including at least 23 Fender Stratocasters, 12 Gibson Les Pauls and 21 Gibson SGs.
96. The Beastie Boys is an acronym for Boys Entering Anarchistic Stages Towards Internal Excellence. Well, that's what Mike D says.
97. Kings Of Leon's regular co-writer Angelo Petraglia has also written songs for country stars Martina McBride, Tim McGraw and Trisha Yearwood. Seriously: does this ruin Kings Of Leon's cred?
98. Creaky goth rocker Alice Cooper has a golf handicap of only three. Which is pretty good.
99. The Strokes' Albert Hammond Jr plans to release his own line of men's suits, which he will co-design along with stylist Ilaria Urbinati.
100. Alison Goldfrapp sang vocals for children's TV series Old Bear Stories, which ran in the UK from 1993-1997.
101. Hip-hop mega-producer Dr Dre, born Andre Young, was a diver in his school swimming team.
http://www.musicradar.com/news/guit...c-part-1-189650
http://www.musicradar.com/news/guit...c-part-2-189652
http://www.musicradar.com/news/guit...c-part-3-189975
http://www.musicradar.com/news/guit...c-part-4-189980
37. Jay-Z hasn't written any of his lyrics down for more than a decade.
This is quite impressive; I watched a documentary about Jay and the film shows how he simply comes up with the lines in his head and then gets in the booth.
8. Hampstead, England...
| quote: |
| Originally posted by VDub 8. Hampstead, England... |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by El K Dee where's london? |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by VDub Is it proper to say Etobicoke, Toronto... |
some interesting facts in there for sure!
Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.