On Del Shannon's song "Midnight Train" (from the Drop Down And Get Me album), during Marty Jourard's [The Motels] sax solo it sounds like another sax is dueling with him - but it is actually Del singing
Judy Garland's "Over The Rainbow" was almost cut from the film "The Wizard Of Oz" in 1939!!! That's the album equivalent of the side two medley being cut from "Abbey Road"!
"Tiny Dancer" was actually my favorite Elton John song well before I seen the tour bus scene in "Almost Famous" (2000). Although that scene indeed is perfect and has elevated the song to a sort of iconic stature nowadays...
When Ron Griffiths quit the Iveys in 1969, the remaining members tried to recruit Hamish Stuart as a replacement, but he couldn't get out of a management contract and had to turn them down. So Pete Ham, Tom Evans and Mike Gibbin got Joey Molland instead, renamed themselves Badfinger and the rest is history.
Cher's recording career was so in the toilet that she was not even signed to a US record label when her album "Believe" was released in the UK in October of 1998. Later, it was finally rush-released in the US by Warner Brothers where they forgot to add the title of the album to the front cover art work! The album went on to sell over 4 million copies in the US alone. Major fans had already bought imports!
She had a daughter with Richard; I wonder how those Weekend with Hell child hand offs went after she married McEnroe.
How about... In 1996 Tori Amos got sued by a guy who had crashed his car when he was distracted by a giant billboard advertising her then-new album Boys for Pele. It had a picture of Tori breastfeeding a piglet on it (also included in the album booklet). I won't post the pic here, but you may certainly Google if you wish to see.
According to John Sebastian, the Lovin' Spoonful hit song "Nashville Cats" was written after John and Zal caught an incredible guitar player performing at a Nashville, TN lounge. The guitarist that they saw playing was Washington, D.C. born-and-raised picker Danny Gatton. Not exactly a home-grown "Nashville" cat at all.
You literally can not start any kind of thread on SHMF without people coming in to take passive aggressive jabs at what they believe to be the attitudes of the forum's general population.
I daresay that this limited range of public appreciation has been more the norm throughout the history of music than wide ranging eclecticism. People often tend to stick with the traditions that they're raised with.
The superb jazz drummer, and personal favorite Buddy Rich was often brutally abusive to his band members. He was extremely cruel, and verbally assaulted many over the years... He was forever threatening them. His anger could get to the point where his language and threats were hard to imagine. This is a fact, there are some unreal recordings floating around, I've heard them myself.
I keep encountering this sentiment in the forum and I just don't think it's true. Maybe it's true for British and American people, but not for most people. I think it's natural for people to prefer music from their era and their culture. So naturally, British and American people will mostly listen to English-language music from the last 50 years. In an international forum, like this one, we talk mostly about English and American popular music, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what we listen mostly to. It's just something that is relevant to all of us, so we can have proper discussions. I could start talking about how much I like Alkinoos Ioannidis, Eleftheria Arvanitaki, Pouloupolos, Ksilouris, Loizos, Chatzis etc. but it would mean nothing to most of the posters here.
I think you're correct: many if not most people here very likely have musical interests that are far beyond what they commonly talk about here. But even if that weren't true, the irony in the thinly-veiled jab is that for centuries, most people probably never had the opportunity to hear music outside of their own culture. If it wasn't being played within earshot, they would never hear it. So the idea that it's some peculiarly wrong thing that many people have limited musical tastes seems to be a very elitist argument at best.
The 1986 #1 hit song "That's What Friends Are For" by Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, Elton John and Stevie Wonder written by Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager was originally sung by Rod Stewart and played over the closing credits of the movie Night Shift directed by Ron Howard starring Michael Keaton, Henry Winkler and Shelley Long.
Passive aggressive? Not at all; if anything, I was just being a smart-ass. Not to worry, though, I have fixed this for you....
