It was a big deal at the time. My college roommate had a record collection totaling about a dozen albums. He had absolutely no idea who Ry Cooder was but he talked about getting Bop Till You Drop after seeing an article in a music magazine (Rolling Stone?) that mentioned the new technology employed on the album.
What I get for not finishing the scrolling....sorry...82 pages. One of the few notables that was in my hometown of San Antonio, for a time. I'll be more mindful next time.
Interesting. I was always under the impression that the first all-digital commercial release was Giorgio Moroder's E=mc^2.
Ian Hunter 0f Mott The Hoople fame C0-wrote The Monkees single “Every Step of the Way”. Don’t blame him. He wrote some great songs. He also wrote “Ships” that Barry Manilow(!) covered.
Was it Tricycle, by any chance...? By the way, my favorite absurd music trivia has to do with Alyson Hannigan's flute "that one time, at Band Camp". Damn, I played flute on and off for three years, and that never once occur- Wow...maybe she really was a witch...!
From Wiki... Tricycle was the first non-classical recording to be released in compact disc format. It was recorded on the Mitsubishi X-80 digital audio recorder at Sound 80. The disc displayed the full dynamic range available in CDs, becoming a popular test disc for this reason. It was also the first jazz album to be recorded, mastered, and delivered in the digital domain. The recording chain, after the first few feet of microphone cable from the musicians' instruments, remained in the digital domain until it was decoded by the consumer's CD player. DMP's releases were for the most part recorded directly to two-tracks as opposed to the more common multi-track method. This means that there was minimal use of overdubs and the majority of the music was performed, recorded, and mixed "live" to the digital recorder.[
It was the second one. First was 1977’s On Green Dolphin Street by Archie Shepp put out on Denom. Cooder’ s Bop was the first major label digital recording released. originally Flim’s album was going to be a direct-to-disc recording and the digital recording back up sounded better so they used that instead. ‘along with Anazawa and Denon engineer Kaoru Yamamoto to New York City's Sound Ideas recording studio for a series ofjazz sessions engineered by Jim McCurdy.The first album, recorded 28 November 1977, was "On Green Dolphin Street" by sax-man Archie Shepp.This LP,released as Nippon Columbia YX-7524in May 1978,was the first digital recording intended for commercial release made in the U.S. Interestingly, the first Nippon Columbia LP release to come from these sessions was "Manhattan Fever" by Frank Foster and the Loud Minority (YX-7521,recorded 29-30 November 1977 and released in April 1978).In all, sevenjazz albums were recorded at Sound Ideas in November and December 1977 using the DN-034R system. And, by the time the compact‘ http://www.aes.org/aeshc/pdf/fine_dawn-of-digital.pdf
Speaking of surprising songwriting credits: I was slightly shocked to discover that Shel Silverstein, whose songs included "Sylvia's Mother", a hit for Dr Hook, and "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan", a big success for Marianne Faithfull, was also responsible for "The Unicorn", an international chart-topping hit in 1968 for The Irish Rovers, who as their name suggests were from Canada. I had always assumed that The Unicorn was a traditional Irish number, as were many of their songs. Also I never knew that this single record featured Glen Campbell on lead guitar.
My favorite piece of music trivia: 15 year old Marsha Albert ignites “Beatlemania” in the USA. Marsha sees a CBS Evening News feature on the Beatles and writes to her local DJ (Washington’s WWDC DJ Caroll James) asking why the radio station can’t play any of their music. In response, James asks an airline stewardess friend of his to pick up some Beatles records on her next trip to the UK. She gets him a copy of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” James plays it on his WWDC broadcast and it takes off. This is in early December 1963. The song goes into heavy rotation and is picked up by other stations. The rest is history. (BTW, this is one of the reasons why the Beatles first live concert was in Washington DC) Capitol Records had a carefully planned Beatles promotional campaign set to start in January. But, thanks to Marsha, they had to push the release of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to late December to meet consumer demand.
Bobby Farrell from Boney M died on the same date (30th December) in the same city (Saint Petersburg) as Rasputin . Boney M - Rasputin (Bobby dressed as Rasputin)
...To be mote precise, weren't they all in Lionel Bart's musicalization of " Oliver Twist ", " OLIVER! "?
Wait, is that the same song I've got on a budget cd of The Bachelors, & is a load of trad sounding nonsense about how you don't any unicorns any longer because the unicorn was so stupid it missed the ark? Fake edit: Same song & same year The Bachelors - The Unicorn fake edit 2: discogs says The Irish Rovers had it on an album first (in '67). The Irish Rovers - The Unicorn So the Irish Irish group was copying the Irish Canadian group? Blimey. edit: going down the discogs rabbit hole it turns out Shel released it first in '63. (I'd temp forgotten that that son of a *sound effect* also wrote A Boy Named Sue)