MUSIC TRIVIA

Did You Know . . . ??

*As of 2005, according to The Guinness Book of World Records, Queen albums had spent a total of 1,322 weeks or twenty-seven years on the UK album charts; more time than any other musical act. In 2006 the Queens Greatest Hits album was the U K's all-time best selling album, with sales upwards of 5,407,587 copies, over 604,295 more copies than its nearest competitor, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The band has released a total of eighteen number one albums, eighteen number one singles, and ten number one DVDs worldwide making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. Their total album sales have been estimated at over 300 million worldwide including 32.5 million in the United States alone as of 2004.

*The week after Michael Jackson died he had thirteen top 40 Hits in the charts (the chart w/e 11th July 2009), he held positions 2, 10, 12, 13, 19, 25, 26, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 40 with "Man In The Mirror", "Billie Jean", "Thriller", "Smooth Criminal", "Beat It", "Black Or White", "Dirty Diana", "They Don't Care About Us", "Earth Song", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "You Are Not Alone", "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough", and "Bad". 

*In 2000, the Rhino Handmade label released the posthumous Tiny Tim Live at the Royal Albert Hall. This recording had been made in 1968 at the height of Tiny Tim's fame, but Reprise Records never released it. It sat on the shelf until its limited Internet release some 32 years later. Also at the fest "Isle Of Wight 1970", Tiny Tim brought a massive crowd of 600,000 revellers to their feet with overwhelming cheers when he sang "There'll Always Be an England" through a megaphone.

*Michael Jackson was just five years old when the Jackson Five played their first professional gig. Their fee for the night was only eight dollars, but they collected over one hundred dollars in money tossed on the stage.

*Elisha Gray transmitted music over a telephone line in 1876, the same year the telephone was patented Alexander Graham Bell. Elisha Gray invented the first electronic music instrument in 1874, calling it the "Musical Telegraph."

*Paul Weller played guitar on Champagne Supernova by Oasis.

*The singing voice of Lauren Bacall, in her screen debut, 'To Have And Have Not' in 1944 was dubbed by Andy Williams, when he was a teenager. This is a deeply entrenched myth 
FACT: Andy Williams was considered and even recorded, but the voice you hear in the final cut is Bacall. This was stated definitively in the bio of the diirector, Howard Hawks, that came out a few years back. (Hawks on Hawks by Joseph McBride) The author points out that the Andy Williams rumor even turned up as a Jeopardy answer, but the singing is all Lauren Bacall.

*The piano player on Art Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" is Larry Knechtel of the group "Bread".

*Pink Floyd were the first band to use a quadraphonic sound system at their concerts. Using 4 different channels of audio, it was an early version of surround sound.

*In the classic 1966 French film "Masculin-Feminin", the protagonist reads a headline from a French newspaper saying, "Qui etes-vous Bob Dylan?" This means, "Who are you, Bob Dylan?"