Archive for April, 2010
Just in case you were looking for another reason to detest the one-hit wonder behind the infintely annoying fakey feminist ’97 song “Bitch”…
she produced Jennifer Love Hewitt’s album, BareNaked.
If you want to be depressed about the state of the music industry, consider that this was Jennifer Love Hewitt’s fourth album.
He’s got a generic name and only one hit album, but Gary Wright is slightly more interesting than his footnote position in the annals of rock would have you believe.
That one hit album was called The Dream Weaver. God, isn’t this album cover hideous?
Gary claimed that The Dream Weaver was the first-ever all keyboard/synthesizer album, but Wendy Carlos got there almost a decade earlier — bad form, Gary!
The album’s biggest hit? “Dream Weaver,” duh!
Wes Craven said that “Dream Weaver” was the inspiration for A Nightmare on Elm Street. I dunno if that makes the song more badass or the movie a little bit lame.
“Love is Alive” was also a number 2 hit.
Your last bit of Gary Wright trivia: played piano on Nilsson’s “Without You”!
Now you can go back to forgetting about him (if you can erase that album cover from your brain, that is).
Vince Clarke was one of the founding members of Depeche Mode, and wrote “Just Can’t Get Enough,” among other songs. He ditched the band in ’81.
He’d eventaully go on to form Erasure, but first, he formed Yaz (or Yazoo in the UK) with Alison Moyet. I remember her mid-’90s solo output getting some coverage in the music press, but I couldn’t name a song of hers.
Yaz’s debut UK single was “Only You.” Its b-side, “Situation,” was released as their lead single in the US and became a minor hit. Clarke sings lead on the song; the only discernable touch of Moyet’s voice is her laugh, repeated throughout the song.
…
You probably don’t want to remember “The Macarena.” But remember that sampled woman’s giggle in the beginning? That’s Moyet’s laugh from “Situation.”
You know him. He did “Baker Street,” that song with a saxophone chorus that probably gave birth to the ’80s saxophones-in-rock fad. (EDIT: Whoa, I’m right! “The eight-bar alto saxophone solo led to a resurgence described as “the ‘Baker Street’ phenomenon.”[1] There followed a jump in saxophone sales, and a noticeable increase in the use of the instrument in mainstream pop music and TV advertising.”)
But did you know that he was one of the founding members of Stealers Wheel (y’know, the band who did “Stuck in the Middle With You,” not Bob Dylan like you probably thought)?
Wikipedia also alleges that Gerry Rafferty has become considerably more, uh, interesting in his old age:
The newspaper Scotland on Sunday reported that Rafferty was asked to leave the Westbury Hotel in London during July 2008. This report stated that the hotel manager had claimed that other residents were distressed by his habit of relieving himself in various corners of the hotel and that his suite was also in a disgraceful and unusable condition.[5] He then checked himself into St Thomas’ Hospital suffering from a chronic liver condition. The same report claimed that on 1 August 2008, Rafferty had disappeared, leaving his belongings behind, and that the hospital had filed a missing persons report.[5] However, this was rebutted by the Metropolitan Police who stated that no such missing persons report existed.[9]
After unconfirmed sightings and unauthenticated reports that he was in contact with his family, on 17 February 2009 The Guardian reported that Rafferty, “who has battled alcoholism for years”, was in hiding in the south of England, being cared for by a friend.[10]
I love “Baby Come Back,” a 1968 UK hit by the Equals. Check out this video of the song, complete with hilarious ’60s outfits:
Now let me blow your mind. The singer from the Equals went on to have this equally awesome hit 15 years later:
The station I listen to at work plays too much Springsteen. I don’t hate his music, but I don’t need to hear “Pink Cadillac” every other day. They play “Hungry Heart” a lot too, another one of those Bruce ditties that probably has more going on in it than the schlocky music would lead you to believe, but I’ve never felt the need to find out. But I did feel the need to look it up on Wikipedia.
Apparently Joey Ramone (!) asked Springsteen (!!) to write a song for the Ramones (!!!) and “Hungry Heart” was the result. And the backup vocalists? Two dudes from The Turtles (of 1967’s “Happy Together” fame).
WHOA. 