For the number connections in the classic Pixies song “Monkey Gone To heaven” Black Francis’ source was his time as a teenage member of the evangelical Assemblies Of God Church.
The lyric in question is ‘If man is five, then the Devil is six. And if the Devil is six then God is seven’. I am not religious by any definition of the word, however I do love that lyric and the song.
The mysterious Ann Coates is listed as the backing vocalist on the Smiths classic “Bigmouth Strikes Again”. Ann is certainly not who she seems, she is in fact Morrissey with his vocal speeded up with a bit of studio jiggery-pokery!
The song “Birdland” taken from the classic Patti Smith album ‘Horses‘ was inspired by the 1973 book by Peter Reich. The title was ‘A Book Of Dreams‘ and Patti had been urged to read it by writer William Burroughs. The same book can be seen in the video for “Cloudbusting” by Kate Bush. That song was also inspired by Reich’s book.
I am pleased and a bit excited to announce that my blog reached a fantastic landmark last weekend. It has been around for just over six years and on April 4th it received its one and a half millionth hit! Yep that’s 1,500,000. If I include the hits for my other three blogs the total is in excess of 1,600,000. Now don’t get me wrong, I realise why many people have arrived at my blog; so many have searched for various celebrities in a state of undress notably Lily Allen and there was even a search for Meatloaf naked which arrived here. Recently thanks to glamorama.cl a Chilean gossip site there have been loads of hits in search of pictures of J-Lo‘s bottom. If you are interested my other blogs are;
and
Anyway by means of a celebration I thought I would give you some random statistics which show how far around the world this blog has gone and the countries that still haven’t succumbed. In addition I have made a very special top twenty where if you add up the numbers in the song titles they add up to 1,500,000. There was only a bit of artistic licence involved in this. I hope you enjoy the tunes. Incidentally the geographical stats have only been available for three years.
| Top 10 countries since | |
| February 25, 2012 | |
| Country | Views |
| USA | 123,451 |
| UK | 85,976 |
| Chile | 24,416 |
| Germany | 19,156 |
| France | 17,556 |
| Canada | 16,301 |
| Mexico | 13,552 |
| Spain | 12,422 |
| Australia | 9,249 |
| Brazil | 7,289 |
| Countries that have not accessed this blog so far |
| Svalbard (Norway) |
| Western Sahara |
| Guinea |
| Chad |
| Central African Republic |
| South Sudan |
| Turkmenistan |
| Countries that have only recorded a single view |
| Indonesia |
| Singapore |
| Bangladesh |
| Guernsey |
| Jordan |
| Bulgaria |
| Bolivia |
| Honduras |
| Estonia |
| Malaysia |
| Réunion |
| Hong Kong SAR China |
| Poland |
| Bahamas |
| China |
| Austria |
| Egypt |
| Finland |
| Slovenia |
If you are from any of these countries or indeed any other country then feel free to come and say hello. Actually even if you’re from another planet I’d be happy to see you here! And now here is the top twenty that really does add up to 1,500,000.
| Top 20 1.5 m songs | ||
| 1 | 1,000,000 | A Million Random Digits – …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead |
| 2 | 192,000 | 19-2000 – Gorillaz |
| 3 | 100,000 | 100,000 Years – Kiss |
| 4 | 100,000 | One Hundred Thousand Smiles Out – Barclay James Harvest |
| 5 | 45,789 | Beechwood 4-5789 – The Marvelettes |
| 6 | 30,000 | At 30,000 Ft – Queensrÿche |
| 7 | 10,538 | 10538 Overture – Electric Light Orchestra |
| 8 | 10,000 | 10,000 Nights of Thunder – Alphabeat |
| 9 | 5,678 | 5,6,7,8 – Steps |
| 10 | 2,468 | 2-4-6-8 Motorway – Tom Robinson |
| 11 | 2,000 | 2,000 Light Years From Home – The Rolling Stones |
| 12 | 1,234 | 1234 – Plain White T’s |
| 13 | 213 | 213 – Slayer |
| 14 | 40 | 40 – U2 |
| 15 | 15 | Fifteen – Taylor Swift |
| 16 | 9 | Cloud Nine – The Temptations |
| 17 | 8 | Eight Days a Week – The Beatles |
| 18 | 4 | 4 Minutes – Madonna |
| 19 | 3 | 3 A.M. Eternal – KLF |
| 20 | 1 | 1 Thing – Amerie |
I guess most readers of this blog and anyone with an interest in music trivia will have heard the rumour that former Countdown host Bob Holness played saxophone on Gerry Rafferty‘s classic ode to a famous London Street, “Baker Street“. Well you are also probably well aware that this is in fact untrue and Raphael Ravenscroft actually played sax on the record.
However the Holness family do feature in music history. His daughter Ros Holness was a member of Toto Coelo who had a big hit with “I Eat Cannibals” in 1982. The song peaked at number 8 in the UK charts that year. Sadly none of their follow ups dented the UK top 50. Although “Dracula’s Tango/ Mucho Macho” reached number 19 in the Australian chart in 1982 while “Milk From The Coconut” hit number 4 in South Africa the following year.
Ros’ sister Carol Ann Holness was also a musical success, as well as singing backing vocals for Lena Zavaroni and Cleo Laine she also wrote the fabulous “Flip” for Jesse Green. This was one of my favourite 70s disco hits. She was also a founder member of Toto Coelo with her sister Ros, although she left the band before their chart successes. Carol Ann was known by her stage name of Nancy Nova and also had some solo success in the dance charts and on Italian television.
Did you ever wonder why the Prodigy‘s classic 1997 album ‘The Fat Of The Land‘ had a picture of a crab as it’s cover? Well it was originally going to be a doner kebab on a spit, you know the one that looks like an elephant’s foot. The meat was going to have the album title seared into it. Liam Howlett changed his mind on seeing the picture so XL Records in-house designer Alex Jenkins found the dancing crab photo. He then increased the size of the creature’s left claw to make it seem as if the crab was sticking two fingers up to the world.
I love ‘The Fat Of The Land’ and I also think that the new Prodigy album ‘The Day Is My Enemy’ is bloody good too. What do you think?
What was the first album on an independent record label to enter the UK top 20? If you had asked me to guess this I am pretty confident that I would have got it wrong. But according to a recent piece in Vive Le Rock magazine it was Stiff Little Fingers with their début album ‘Inflammable Material‘. It reached number 14 in 1979. So now feel free to enjoy a few tracks from that classic album from one of Northern Ireland’s finest bands. Including an excellent cover version of Bob Marley’s “Johnny Was”
John Lennon was originally intending to give the name Glass Onion to a band that had been signed to the Beatles Apple record label. That didn’t happen and the band went on to become Badfinger. Oh well no matter….what! Oh and “Glass Onion” went on to become a song on the Beatles’ classic ‘White Album‘ from 1968. The song references at least five other Beatles songs too; “I Am The Walrus”, “Fool On The Hill“, “Fixing A Hole“, “Lady Madonna” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”
I reckon there are plenty of links between the Beatles and Pink Floyd. But here are a couple that I heard lately. The till (or cash register to my chums across the big pond) that you can hear on the Fab Four’s “Yellow Submarine” was the same one that the Floyd used on “Money” from ‘Dark Side Of The Moon‘.
But my favourite relates to the drawing by a very young Julian Lennon that inspired the Beatles’ “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” is now owned by Pink Floyd’s guitar genius, Dave Gilmour!
We’ve all heard of “Bat Out Of Hell”, Bat For Lashes and Ozzy Osbourne’s taste for bat’s heads but now a real live bat (as opposed to the Ozzy one) has become a rock legend. Maybe not a big legend, but a legend nonetheless in my opinion.
During a recent US gig Napalm Death had to stop the show because a bat was flying persistently above the stage. The band might be hard-core rockers but they did see the funny side of it and broke into an impromptu Black Sabbath song!
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 