| ADVERTISEMENT |
 |
|
|
|
|
| Mountain By Numbers 225 - 201 |
|
#225
Price ($2.25) it cost to join the CW McCall fan club in 1975. You received a glossy picture of CW McCall and a membership card. This was the hot time to join the club, too. It was the year he hit #1 with Convoy.
|
#224
Length of time in days that the BBC wouldn’t allow the airing of the Beatles song Come Together and the BBC disallowing the airing of the Kink’s song Lola for the same reason. They both contained the word Coca-Cola.
|
#223
Time it takes (2 hours 23 minutes) to drive from Hazlehurst, Mississippi to Greenwood, Mississippi – the birth and death locations of blues legend, Robert Johnson. Among the most famous Delta blues musicians, Johnson’s landmark recordings from 1936–1937 display a remarkable combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend. In blues folklore it is supposed that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a county crossroads in the Delta. Coincidentally he died at a county crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi of debated causes. The Allman Brothers put this legend into song with a verse from their 1972 hit, Melissa. "Crossroads -- will you ever let him go, or will you hide the dead man's ghost? Lord, will he lie beneath the clay, or will his spirit float away?"
|
#222
The TV show Room 222, set at fictional Walt Whitman High School in Los Angeles, ran from 1969 to 1974 on ABC. Actress Denise Nichols played guidance counselor Liz McIntyre, the girlfriend of the guy who taught in Room 222. In real life, she was married to R&B singer Bill Withers, whose first hit, Ain’t No Sunshine, was rumored to be about Nichols before their acrimonious split. (By the way, he repeats the phrase “I know” 26 times.)
|
#221
Baker Street is a real street in London. Gerry Rafferty often stayed with a friend who lived there. One of the most famous residents of Baker Street is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. He lived at 221-B Baker Street.
|
#220
Number of months since the last time U2 performed ‘Two Hearts Beat As One’ live in concert. The song made its live debut on 26 February 1983 at the first show of the War Tour and was played at almost all concerts on that tour. On the second leg of the War Tour, "Two Hearts Beat as One" began to follow "Surrender" and the two songs segued together. This transition survived to the Unforgettable Fire Tour. However, on the third leg of the Unforgettable Fire Tour, "Two Hearts Beat as One" was separated from "Surrender" and the regularity of its performances markedly declined. It became an infrequently performed song for the rest of the tour, with its last tour appearance on 29 April 1985 in Atlanta. It has made only one subsequent appearance: it was performed in the encore at a Lovetown Tour concert in 1989, in the Point Depot, Dublin.
|
#219
 Model number of the 1965 Gottlieb Buckaroo pinball machine that Elton John plays in the 1975 film version of The Who’s rock opera Tommy. (Elton's Buckaroo was customized with a piano keyboard mounted on the front edge.) The song Pinball Wizard was added to The Who’s original Tommy as an afterthought; after playing the early tracks for critic Nik Cohn, who had a lukewarm reaction, Pete Townshend decided that in order to lighten the story’s heavy spiritual message, the title character -- a deaf, dumb, and blind boy -- should also be especially good at some kind of game. The critic Cohn loved pinball, so Townshend made pinball Tommy’s special gift. He quickly wrote and recorded the song and added it to the rock opera. It became the best-known song from the double album Tommy, even though Townshend once called it “the most clumsy piece of writing I’ve ever done.”
|
#218
Month and day (February 18) in 1970 that Ringo Starr went into Abbey Road studios to begin recording It Don’t Come Easy, his second solo single after the breakup of The Beatles. Originally titled You Gotta Pay Your Dues, the song was started during sessions for Ringo’s Sentimental Journey album. Over the course of the next several months, after dozens of takes and overdubs, and a switch to Trident Studios in London, the song took shape. Supposedly Ringo “co-wrote” the song with fellow ex-Beatle George Harrison, but rumors have swirled that George really completely wrote it himself and gave it to his friend to kick-start his solo career. Demo tapes have surfaced of the song more or less in its final form with Harrison singing lead vocals and Ringo nowhere to be found. The final version that came out a year later as a standalone single -- not on an album -- featured George Harrison on guitar, Stephen Stills on piano, longtime Beatle friend Klaus Voorman on bass, two members of Badfinger singing backup vocals.
...and of course, Ringo on drums and lead vocals.
|
#217
Number of seconds into David Bowie’s “Fame” where you hear John Lennon’s voice sped up to reveal a high-pitched “Fame” and its subsequent echoes in lower and lower register. With the Young Americans sessions mostly concluded in late 1974, Bowie extricated himself from his contract with manager Tony DeFries. During this time he was staying in New York, and met John Lennon. The pair socialised and jammed together, which led to a one-day session at The Power Plant studio in January 1975. There, Bowie recorded a new song called "Fame," with the title from Lennon. Despite having only a minor contribution, Lennon was given a co-writing credit due to the lyrics and because Bowie acknowledged that Lennon singing "Fame!" over Alomar’s guitar riff was the catalyst for the song. Lennon's voice was heard at the ending of the song, repeating the word: "FAME, FAME, FAME", from a fast track to a slow track of his voice, as it started from a high voice, culminating in his regular voice, and ending in a lower deep voice, before Bowie finished the song with the words.
|
#216
Number of calories in a grande Starbucks soy latte, as mentioned in Train’s “Drops of Jupiter.” (The best soy latte that you ever had, and me).
|
#215
For 215 episodes, from 1994 to 2002, comedian Dennis Miller had an Emmy-winning talk show on HBO called Dennis Miller Live. For all 215 episodes, during 8 seasons of the show, the theme song was Everybody Wants to Rule The World by Tears for Fears. According to Curt Smith of Tears for Fears, “the concept of the song is quite serious - it's about everybody wanting power, about warfare and the misery it causes.”
|
#214
Price ($214) a pair of 10th row tickets went for this year’s Winter Warmth concert on Ebay.
|
#213
Number of minutes it took Boy George to fly from New York to London on the Concorde so he could make the recording session for Do They Know It’s Christmas in November 1984. The song was conceived by Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats and Midge Ure of Ultravox to raise money and awareness for Ethiopian famine relief. The plan was to assemble some of the best-known British and Irish musicians for one massive recording session. Geldof began greeting the artists at 9am on the day of the session – the lineup included Duran Duran, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Spandau Ballet, Paul Young, George Michael, Kool and the Gang, Sting, Bono and Adam Clayton of U2, Phil Collins, and Bananarama. Some of the members of Culture Club arrived, but when Geldof noticed that Boy George was a no-show, even though he’d called him in New York the day before, demanding he sing on the record, he went back to the phone to get the singer out of bed and on to the Concorde. By 6pm London time Boy George was in the studio recording his part. Recording and mixing took a full 24 hours; within a week the single was in stores and immediately went to #1 in the UK. In the United States, the video was played endlessly on MTV throughout the holiday season and the single sold more than a million copies.
|
#212
Distance in miles from Carnegie Hall in New York to The Strand Theater in Dorchester, MA. The band Til Tuesday performed the entire video to their hit Voices Carry inside the Strand Theater. The only shot which wasn’t The Strand Theater, was an opening shot of Carnegie Hall in New York to give the impression that by song’s end Aimee Mann is disturbing a Carnegie Hall show & crowd – much more inappropriate and embarrassing than a Strand Theater crowd.
|
#211
Month and day --February 11, 1964 -- the Beatles made their live US concert debut in Washington, DC, the day after their TV debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. Over 350 police surrounded the stage to keep the 8,000 plus screaming fans in control. One police officer found the noise so loud that he used bullets as ear plugs. They did an 8 song set; the highlight was I Saw Her Standing There.
|
#210
Number of times “na” is heard in the Beatles’ epic, Hey Hude. The "na na na" fadeout takes 4 minutes. The chorus is repeated 19 times.
|
#209
Area code to Lodi, California – known for its Zinfandel and most notably a place you don’t ever want to be stuck in – according to John Fogerty.
|
#208
Number of minutes it took for Nick Drake to record his third and final album, “Pink Moon.” It was recorded at midnight in 2 session of just less than 3 ½ hours total, over two days in October of 1971, featuring only Nick Drake's vocals and guitar, as well as some piano later overdubbed by Drake on the title track. Initially, Pink Moon garnered a small amount of critical attention, but after Drake's death it received widespread public and critical acclaim. The music on Pink Moon is strikingly sparse and unadorned (especially in comparison to Drake's previous recordings), leading some to consider it to be the least accessible of his three albums, though it nevertheless continues to be thought of by many as his greatest work.
|
#207
The point in time (2 minutes 7 seconds) in the Grateful Dead song “Touch Of Grey” where Jerry Garcia talks about the ABCs we all must face, referring to the earlier line of “The Abels and the Bakers and the Cs.” Able and Baker are the first two words in the old military communication alphabet, used to make spelling more intelligible over radio communications devices. This was the Dead’s jab at the military, war and the lack of understanding between nations and governments. The lyrics go on to say: “The deltas and the east and the freeze, The ABC's we all think of, Try to give a little love.”
|
#206
Running length (2 hours 6 minutes) of the Tom Cruise movie “A Few Good Men” in which the main character (played by Cruise) only has “Yoo-Hoo and Cocoa Puffs” in his apartment. It was this chocolate drink’s (Yoo-Hoo) bottling factory in Baltimore, Maryland that fed David Byrne’s imagination when he wrote a 1985 song about a girl he knew who used to take LSD in a field next to the beverage factory. “And she was lying in the grass And she could hear the highway breathing And she could see a nearby factory Shes making sure she is not dreaming.”
|
#205
Amount - in British pounds - that Keith Richards was fined in 1973 after admitting to having cannabis, Chinese heroin, mandrax tablets (a sedative/muscle relaxant) and a revolver at his Chelsea home. It was after this incident that the band went into the studio to record the beginnings of what would become “It’s Only Rock and Roll, But I Like It.”
|
#204
Number of months between the time the Beatles used the line “take these broken wings and learn to fly” in “Blackbird” and Mr. Mister used the same line. The song “Broken Wings” was co-written with lyricist John Lang, who was inspired by a book called "Broken Wings" written by Khalil Gibran. Paul McCartney and John Lennon both drew from the work of Kahlil Gibran.
|
#203
Number of months between the original release of Gloria Jones’ debut single “Tainted Love” and the top ten cover version of the song by 1980’s synth-pop act Soft Cell. While Gloria Jones was most noted for her backing vocalist work with Neil Young, The Grateful Dead, Little Feat and Billy Preston, she was made infamous as the driver of the car, an Austin Mini, that crashed and killed Marc Bolan on 16 September 1977.
|
#202
Number of episodes American Idol has had before using Collective Soul’s Hollywood as it’s theme song for the 7th season of the show.
|
#201
Miles between Chicago and Bloomington, Indiana, by air. R&B singer India Arie made the trip from Chicago, where she’d been on the Oprah show, to Bloomington, where John Mellencamp has a studio, so she could add her vocals to the song Peaceful World.
|
Mountain By Numbers continues...
For more Mountain By Numbers, click here!
|
|
Sunday Brunch
Join 103.7 The Mountain for Sunday Brunch this Sunday, from 8a-12Noon. Grab a cup of coffee, make breakfast, and ease into your Sunday with Sunday Brunch. Click to learn more and seepast week's playlists.
|
The Mountain Top Archives
The Mountain Top Archives feature the best in Mountain Music, as picked by Mountain listeners. Looking for the Top 10 CDs of the year? Top 50 Mountain Music Lounges of all-time? Look no further. Click to check out The Mountain Top Archive lists.
|
|
|
|
|
| ADVERTISEMENT |
 |
|
|
|
|
