May 3, 2013

Greg's Top Ten Random Music Factoids:

1. The Robert Palmer song "Addicted to Love" actually was recorded with Chaka Khan as a duet. However, due to a contractual issue, her voice had to be removed and the version you hear now is the duet version with Khan's voice deleted out of it.

2. For years a tale has been told about Van Halen's inclusion of "No Brown M&Ms" in their tour rider. Many have thought that the band's mention of "No Brown M&Ms" was an arrogant request made by rock stars who felt they were entitled to silly requests. Truth is, the inclusion of the clause was due to the band's desire to have a road crew that was so attentive to detail they wouldn't miss something as seemingly trivial as "No Brown M&Ms." Due to the large number of on stage accidents due to road crews that were inattentive to safety protocols, Van Halen began including little details like this one into their rider to ensure the safety of the band. After all, if the crew won't pay attention to that clause, who knows what other more "important" measures they cut corners on.

3. Leo Fender, the inventor of the Stratocaster and Telecaster couldn't play the guitar.

4. Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" record stayed on the Billboard Top 200 charts for 741 weeks.

5. You could listen to the entire Beatles library of songs in 10 hours and 33 minutes.

6. The first single to ever be released online was Duran Duran's "Electric Barbarella" in 1997. Because the band released the single online instead of in stores, most retail outlets wouldn't sell the record in stores as a backlash for going behind their backs and selling the single online. The "Medazzaland" record the single comes from ended up being one of their worst selling albums ever.

7. Pat Benetar's "You Better Run" was the second video ever played on MTV. The first, well, if you don't know it by now...

8. The 1,000,000th video played on MTV was also it's first, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.

9. The first music video ever shot was was Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."

10. Eddie Van Halen plays the guitar solo in Michael Jackson's hit song "Beat It" but was not allowed to participate in the music video due to Warner Bros. not allowing one of its artists to be shown in a video for a rival studio's artist. Jackson was signed to Epic Records.