#350
The cubic inches of displacement in the V8 engine of a Corvette in 1983, the year Prince released his song “Little Red Corvette.”
|
#349
The average number of calories in a serving of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese dinner, which in Canada is simply called Kraft Dinner. A line in the Barnaked Ladies’ song “If I had $1000000” inspired fans to begin throwing Kraft Dinner at the band during concerts. (“If I had a million dollars we wouldnt have to eat Kraft Dinner.”) It initially began as a single box at a 1991 show in Toronto. It quickly grew by word-of-mouth, and the number of boxes being thrown rapidly increased. It became so bad that eventually hundreds of boxes were often thrown onto the stage at shows. Many were not tossed gently; the band and their instruments were often pelted with boxes thrown very hard. Even worse, sometimes people threw cheese packets that were open, and even cooked pasta. The band began asking fans not to bring Kraft Dinner to shows, and set up bins in the lobbies of their shows to collect the boxes for local food banks. Security at BNL shows will still sometimes check incoming concert-goers for Kraft Dinners, though the practice has pretty much subsided. The campaign spawned the fan slogan, "those in the know, don't throw".
|
#348
The price, including tax, for a night in the Adobe house with a fireplace at the 29 Palms Inn in Twentynine Palms, California. This hotel (and the alleged happenings in the hotel) was the inspiration for Robert Plant’s song: The “Alleged”. Part of the song is about his fling at the hotel with singer Alannah Myles.
|
#347
The time it takes (in minutes) to travel from Los Angeles to Honolulu. Joni Mitchell once said in an interview: "Living in Los Angeles, smog-choked L.A. is bad enough but the last straw came when I visited Hawaii for the first time. It was night time when we got there, so I didn't get my first view of the scenery until I got up the next morning. The hotel room was quite high up so in the distance I could see the blue Pacific Ocean. I walked over to the balcony and there was the picture book scenery, palm tree swaying in the breeze and all. Then I looked down and there was this ugly concrete car park in the hotel grounds. I thought "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" and that's how the song "Big Yellow Taxi" was born."
|
#346
Number of acres in London’s Hyde Park. This is the location Bryan Ferry found himself one afternoon. While kicking leaves on a stroll through Hyde Park, Ferry began to hum a new melody which became Roxy Music’s song “Love is the Drug.”
|
#345
The price of a danish and a coffee at Tom's Restaurant on Broadway at 112th in New York City. The exterior of the restaurant was used for Monk's Cafe, where Jerry and his pals hung out on Seinfeld. Before that, though, the place was immortalized by Suzanne Vega in her 1987 song "Tom's Diner". Originally sung a capella, it was remixed and enhanced with beats by the British band The DNA Disciples.
|
#344
Kintore is a remote settlement in the Northern Territory of Australia. It was founded in 1981, when many Pintupi people who were then of the resident in the community of Papunya became unhappy with their circumstances in what they saw as foreign country, and decided to move back to their own country, from which many of them had been forcibly removed decades earlier prior to weapons testing. Papunya is a small Indigenous Australian community of 344 people and was brought to national attention by the Australian band Midnight Oil when they stated, “Four wheels scare the cockatoos From kintore east to yuendemu” in their song, "Beds Are Burning". Papunya is on restricted Aboriginal land and requires a permit to enter or travel through.
|
#343
The time in length (3:43) of the only song that ended up getting Matchbox Twenty sued. "3 am" was the focal point of bitterness between Rob Thomas and the band he had been in prior to Matchbox Twenty, Tabitha’s Secret. In 1995, the members of Tabitha's Secret were approached concerning a long-term record deal, which neither Tabitha members, Jay Stanley nor John Goff were interested in. Rob Thomas decided to take the offer. Having previously recorded the song with Tabitha’s Secret, Stanley and Goff sued Matchbox Twenty claiming fiduciary breach of contract. This lawsuit lasted five years and was settled in 2000. The song appears on both Matchbox Twenty’s album and Tabitha’s Secret album “Don’t Play With Matches.”
|
#342
The time in minutes and seconds which are left in the 8 minute song Stairway to Heaven before you finally hear the drums.
|
#341
The monthly rent $341 for a room at the Tropicana Hotel in Los Angeles in the mid 70’s when Rickie Lee Jones, Tom Waits and Chuck E. Weiss lived there. Chuck E. Weiss was the subject of Rickie's hit "Chuck E.'s in Love" from her 1979 debut album, in which she claims "Chuck E." is in love with "the little girl who's singing this song" (Jones says the song was fictional). At the time Jones was linked romantically to Tom Waits.
|
#340
The number painted on the hood of the green 1971 Plymouth Duster that graces the cover of Heartbeat City, the most successful album by The Cars. (The image was adapted from a painting called "Art-O-Matic Loop di Loop" by English pop artist Peter Phillips.)
|
#339
The number of months between the time the Rickenbacher Causeway opened to traffic connecting Miami to Key Biscayne and the song largely recognized as the Bee Gee’s "comeback" song, "Jive Talkin'"was released. This causeway and the sound car tires make crossing the Biscayne Bay into Miami was important to the development of the Bee Gees song in 1975: The song’s opening guitar chugs and overall general rhythm was modeled after thesound. The song was originally called "Drive Talking,” but producer Arif Mardin wished to market the song toward the teen market, and suggested to change the title to "Jive Talkin'."
|
#338
The minutes and seconds into Steely Dan’s "Do It Again" at which the electric sitar solo by guitarist Denny Dias gives way to the solo on the plastic organ, a.k.a. Melodica, played by lead singer Donald Fagen. (Denny Dias actually hired Walter Becker and Donald Fagen to play bass and keyboard for his band in New York. He was so impressed with their talent that he fired the rest of the band and the three of them moved to LA to start Steely Dan.)
|
#337
In the summer of 1966, Hollywood’s Sunset Strip became a counter-culture gathering place. Go-Go dancers did their thing, and bands like The Doors, The Byrds, Love, The Seeds, Frank Zappa, and many others played at clubs like the Whisky a Go Go, Roxy, and the London Fog. Authorities tried to enforce a curfew on the kids, which led to the Sunset Strip curfew riots, also known as the "hippie riots": a series of clashes between police and young club-goers on the Strip. One of the most notorious incidents was a huge protest following the closing of the popular club Pandora’s Box. In the riots that followed, 337 kids were arrested, and Stephen Stills was inspired to write a song about the scene that still rings true when something’s going down in the streets.
|
#336
The city of Malibu is a 33.6 km strip of Pacific coastline; a beachfront community famous for its warm, sandy beaches, and for being the home of countless movie stars and others associated with the Southern California entertainment industries. It was on this stretch of beach where Cat Stevens nearly drowned in an accident in 1975, he reports having pleaded with God to save him. He formally converted to the Islamic faith in 1977 and took the name Yusuf Islam in 1978. His last hit in America was from his 1974 release, Buddha and the Chocolate Box.
|
#335
Jazz guitar legend Larry Carlton’s nickname is Mr. ES-335, because of his virtuosity on his sunburst 1968 Gibson ES-335 guitar. Beginning in the 1970s he was in constant demand as a studio session musician in L.A., appearing on dozens ofrock and jazz albums including Joni Mitchell’s Court & Spark, Billy Joel’s Piano Man, and numerous Steely Dan records, most notably his stellar solo on “Kid Charlemagne,” from The Royal Scam.
|
#334
The number of months between the time Bob Dylan wrote "Idiot Wind" and Hootie & The Blowfish wrote "I Only Want To Be With You". Five lines from "Idiot Wind" are quoted in the song, which led to a lawsuit. Thecharacter in the song was asking his girlfriend, whom he was singing about/to, about the quoted lines. Darius Rucker goes on in the song revealing Bob’s name and quotes "Tangled Up In Blue" as well.
|
#333
The 33 1/3 Or LP was first introduced in 1948 and served as the primary release format for recorded music until Compact Discs (CDs) began to significantly displace them in the 1980s. At that point, LPs began to serve a different purpose. Scratching was developed by early hip hop DJs from New York such as Grand Wizard Theodore and DJ Grandmaster Flash, who described scratching as, "nothing but the back-cueing that you hear in your ear before you push it [the recorded sound] out to the crowd." The earliest recorded scratching example was released in 1983, via prolific bassist and producer Bill Laswell on Herbie Hancock's hit song "Rockit" (co-written and produced by Laswell).
|
#332
The number of days between the time five men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the the Watergate Hotel complex in Washington, D.C. and the release of Paul Simon’s “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon” with the song “Loves Me Like A Rock” which obliquely references the dark cloud of the Watergate scandal involving the Nixon administration. The lyrics were “And if I was president, The minute congress call my name, Id say who do, Who do you think youre fooling? Ive got the presidential seal, I’m up on the presidential podium My mama loves me She loves me.”
|
#331
The number of hours it took Gary Numan to record the 1979 album The Pleasure Principle. This was a rock album with no guitars; instead, Numan used synthesisers fed through guitar effects pedals to achieve a phased, metallic tone. Self-producedfor very little money, The Pleasure Principle sounded like nothing else, and remains one of Numan's most highly-regarded efforts to date – mostly because of the standout smash hit, Cars.
|
#330
The number of years between the time fictional character, Robinson Crusoe was stranded on an island near the mouth of the Orinoco river and when Enya wrote her song about the Orinoco.
|
#329
The length in miles of highway A-1-A – the title given to the Jimmy Buffett album featuring A Pirate Looks At Forty. Buffett wrote the song about Phillips "Phil" Clark, a bartender at the Chart Room where Buffett first performed after his move to Key West, Florida.
|
#328
The episode of Saturday Night Live (October 3, 1992 – Season 18) when Sinead O’ Connor held up a picture of Pope John Paul II, exclaimed, "Fight the real enemy", and tore the picture to pieces. Subsequent airings have included the rehearsal taping of the song where Sinéad pulls out a picture of a starving African child before leaving the stage. Tim Robbins, who was raised Roman Catholic, did not thank O'Connor during the goodbyes/end credits.
|
#327
Months and days - three months, 27 days - between the death of Janis Joplin and the release of her biggest selling album, ‘Pearl.’ It became the biggest selling album of her short career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee.”
|
#326
The number of months between the release of Del Shannon’s “Runaway” and the release of Tom Petty’s song "Running Down a Dream" where he states, “Me and Del were singing “Little Runaway.”
|
Mountain By Numbers continues...
For more Mountain By Numbers click here.
|
