The female vocal line on Isaac Hayes‘ toweringly magnificent classic “The Theme From Shaft” was sung by Telma Hopkins. Telma was also a member of Tony Orlando‘s Dawn. This means she featured on two of 1971’s biggest hits as she also sang on Dawn’s “Knock Three Times”. The Isaac Hayes song was at the top of the US Billboard chart in November 1971 for two weeks following the Dawn hit which was at number one in the USA for three weeks in January 1971. The latter also topped the chart in the UK.
Telma went on to appear in a number of films and TV shows including The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.
OK I would love to say that I was really disappointed to miss the Eurovision Song Contest, but I would be lying. I was at a thoroughly enjoyable Murder Mystery Night at a friends house in aid of MacMillan Cancer Care. I can confirm that I was not the murderer. Anyway I hear that this years UK entrant Lucie Jones, a former X Factor contestant, did very well. Fifteenth place with 111 votes for a UK entry is truly exceptional. In fact it is the best points haul since Blue in 2011. Well done Lucie. Incidentally Portugal won the contest with a somewhat dirgy ballad called “Amar Pelos Dois” by Salvador Sadal.
Given that us Brits treat the whole Eurovision thing with a healthy dose of irony and sarcasm I thought that it was worth pointing out that we, well our nation’s voting panels, are not very smart. Back in 1974 when Abba won the contest in Brighton with perhaps one of Eurovision’s finest winners, “Waterloo” the UK jury at the time gave them nul points. Yes although we took the Swedish pop maestros to our hearts afterwards, we never voted for them at the time. So maybe we are not as smart as we think we are! What do you think?
Procol Harum were allegedly named after their drug dealer’s Burmese cat. So where did the cat get it’s name from then? Well I understand that Procol is the breeder’s prefix. If you know more than that or different then feel free to comment!
The Voyager space probe has a golden disc which features sounds of the earth from nature, speech and music to enable an alien race somewhere else in the universe to find out a little about us if they come across the probe. There is classical music from Mozart, traditional Bulgarian music from Valya Balkanska, Blues from Blind Willie Johnson and on top of all that there is the late, great Chuck Berry with “Johnny B Goode“. Apparently Chuck was included after EMI refused permission for the Beatles “Here Comes The Sun” to be a part of Voyager. Seriously EMI why would you do that? Amazingly Voyager 1 is now more than ten billion miles from earth, I wonder what our alien friends will make of Mr Berry?
Not the Bryan Ferry painting but just a picture of a cigarette packet with a similar name to the song
Although the title of Roxy Music song and their debut single from 1972 “Virginia Plain” sounds like a woman’s name or even a place-name it is actually derived from a brand of cigarettes in a Bryan Ferry painting. Bryan Ferry was an art student and had painted a picture of cigarette packaging with that name. The song reached number 4 in the UK chart and also hit the top twenty in New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands.
Hello good people of the blogosphere and thanking you for coming to visit my blog. The With Just A Hint Of Mayhem blog is eight years old today, Thursday 9th February 2017. This blog is an Aquarius. So I was going to treat you to another numbers post (i.e. songs with 8 in the title) but then my wonderful wife Catherine a.k.a. Catwoman gave me an even better idea of which I will tell you more soon.
Firstly though here are some stats for the eight years that this blog has been alive;
1,587,200 visits (most from UK, USA, France, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Spain, Brazil and Australia)
The post with the most views (68,439 to date) was published when the blog was only 8 days old, click here to read it, it was titled “We Are Starlight, We Are Golden”.
Most searches;
lady gaga 96,870
pink floyd 57,082
kate bush 41,699
lily allen 34,810
eminem 34,675
slipknot 27,081
catwoman 21,443
beatles 16,794
pink 16,497
bjork 12,772
Many of you searched for naked artists and the most popular search there was 2,620 searches for Lily Allen Naked, you pervy bunch you!
Anyway enough of the stats! How about the birthday celebration idea that my wonderful wife came up with? Well how about some music from a selection of artists that were also born on February 9th? You want some of that? OK well here you go.
Before Roxy MusicBryan Ferry once took an audition to join classic UK band King Crimson. This was just after the late, great Greg Lake left to form Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I am not sure how the audition went but given Byron Ferrari’s (as the NME used to refer to him) later success with Roxy Music I assume that he wasn’t offered the job. The gig was given to Gordon Haskell.
That marvellous 70s pop band Mud were once known as the Mourners and to promote themselves in the most ghoulish and appropriate way they could the band even had black business cards printed that carried the phrase ‘we’re dead with it’. Actually I kind of like the name the Mourners, but I guess Mud sticks, right?
One of my favourite Alice Cooper tracks is one of his lesser known singles which barely scraped into the US top 50 and peaked at number 12 in the UK. It is taken from the 1973 album ‘Muscle Of Love‘ and considering that it was released in 1973 it is to some folk confusingly titled “Teenage Lament ’74”. I used to have the album and the single on vinyl. So why am I telling you this? Well I learnt something about the song this week that I never knew before, or maybe I knew but had forgotten it. Anyway that little trivia nugget is that backing vocals on “Teenage Lament ’74” were provided by Liza Minelli.
Procol Harum were allegedly named after their drug dealer’s Burmese cat. So where did the cat get it’s name from then? Well I understand that Procol is the breeder’s prefix. If you know more than that or different then feel free to comment!
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 