Monday Musical History Day

[Heather Shay]

Hope you you will join me in adding musical history or ask music musical facts on Mondays. 

 

Can you believe it has been 30 years since Kurt Cobain was found dead of an apparent suicide? What would he have done if this hadn't happened?

1994 - Kurt Cobain

Electrician Gary Smith who was working at Kurt Cobain's house in Seattle discovered Cobain's body lying on the floor in the greenhouse. Local radio station KXRX broke the news at 9.40am that the Nirvana singer and guitarist was dead. A shotgun was found next to Cobain's body. A suicide note was found that said, 'I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music, along with really writing . . . for too many years now'. A high concentration of heroin and traces of Valium were also found in Cobain's body.

[Heather Shay]

I was thinking about where groupo names came from or meanings or previous names:

 

Procol Harum -  amed after a frtiend's cat. Orginal name - The Paramounts

Blue Oyster Cult - originaaly called Soft White Underbelly

10cc - named after the amount of a male ejectulation

Small Faces - Small as in they were short and Faces was a term for a MOD culture

Steely Dan - a sex toy from William Burroughs "The Naked Lunch"

Rolling Stones - from Muddy Waters song

Beatles - in honor of Buddy Holly's backing band the Crickets with John's pun on spelling 

The Who - were orinally the Detours

Queen was originally called Smile

Chicago shortrened their name from Chicago Transit Authority

Fleetwood Mac - Peter Green named it for the drummer qand bas player

Joy Division - area in unhealthy politics coincentration camp where raping of prisoners occurred

Spandau Ballet - named from unhealthy politics concentration camp where hangings occurred and called ballets

 

Ouch that makes me wonder whhat were they thinking and maybe better NOT to know where names came from

[Heather Shay]

Simon & Garfunkel broke up early in their career and Paul Simon went to England and wrote songs. He heard the record company added drums and other instruments to Sound of Silence (he hated the idea) and it took off - S&G reunited and the rest is history.

 

Speaking of break ups - The Who nearly broke up and if their next LP didn't go well they would break up - the LP was called Tommy.

 

Speaking of the Who, Pete Townsend was working on another concept album called Lifehouse and it wasnb't fgoing anywhere - so he abandoned it and took some songs from it and added others and it became Who's Next.

 

Seals & Croft where in Jay & The Americans backing band originally.

 

Poor Monkees - they were chastised because they hadn't played on their first 2 albums - but neither did the Beach Boys and The Grassroots, etc., etc., etc. as a studio group called The Wrecking Crew did most of the musical work.

 

And speaking of not playing on their own records - Motown has the Funk Brothers, and Stax had thweir own group and of course let's not forget The Swampers.

 

 

[Jani]

This is a great list Heather! 

Also Paul Simon wrote "Bridge over Troubled Water" in the same LA home that George Harrison wrote "Blue Jay Way".   He was there with his girlfriend as Art Garfunkel was acting in the filming of Catch-22.

 

Seals and Crofts, great harmonies! 

[Heather Shay]

Oooooooooooooooops, I forgot yesterday.

 

I was thinking of a few bands who had a member invited who said no and went right into obscurity or left before the band got big.

 

1) Led Zeppelin -  origially wanted Terry Reid to be lead vocalist and he decided the stay solo.

2) Crosby, Stills & Nash - invited John Sebastian to join before Neil Young, Sebastian said no.

3) Signe Anderson quit as lead vocalist with Jefferson Airplane and they replaced her with Grace Slick.

 

 

[Jani]

I hadn't heard about the John Sebastian invite.  Interesting.  He certainly would have blended in well with the other three. 

[Heather Shay]

Gosh, missed Monday again.

 

Did you know that Producer Keith Oslen was distraught because the duo his recorded Buckingham-Nicks first album went nowhere? In walked Mick Fleetwood also distraught because once again Flleetwood Mac lost a guitarist in Bob Welsh and he was at least going studio shopping and came to Sound City in LA because he'd heard the drum sound they got there was incredible. He asked Oslen to play something recorded there. Olsen played some of Buckingham-Nicks and Fleetwood loved the sound of the guitarist and wanted Buckingham. Olsen said he comes with Nicks because Olsen managed both. Fleetwood didn't want Nicks but eventually the remaining Mac members said okay and next thing you know - the Fleetwood Mac that scored a huge following was born. Sadly right after the "Fleetwood Mac" album and before "rumours" was recorded, the band got huge headed and got rid of Oslen so they didn't have to play him a lot of music they wanted to keep. Olsen did ok after by recording Ozzy Osbourne, the Grateful Dead, Whitesnake, Pat Benatar, Heart, Santana, Saga, Foreigner, Scorpions, Journey, The Babys, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Joe Walsh, 38 Special, and Eric Burdon & the Animals, among others. BTW - Olsen was also a members in 1967 of a band called Music Machine (not the James Taylor one) that scored a huge hit with the song "Talk Talk"

[Jani]

I had heard the story of Nicks-Buckingham but not the rest.  Olsen was prolific.

[Heather Shay]

Two unusual conbinations:

Jackson Brown was accompanist for Nico of The Velvet Undarground & Nico fame.

David Gates of Bread fame played with Captain Beefheart.

[Jani]

Quite the pairings!