Robots and Vamps

Wikipedia trivia:”Faithfully” is a popular song and power ballad by the band Journey, and the second single from their album Frontiers. It peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100, giving the band their second consecutive top twenty hit from Frontiers. The music and lyrics were written by keyboardist Jonathan Cain. While the song was relatively successful on the charts, it has gone onto become one of their most recognizable songs, and has enjoyed lasting popularity.

The song describes the relationship of a “music man” on the road. The difficulties of raising and maintaining a family, two strangers having to fall in love again, and staying faithful while touring are brought up. However he suggests that he gets the “joy of rediscovering” her, and insists “I’m forever yours… Faithfully.”

The music video featured a “life on tour” theme parallel to the song’s lyrics, showing the band’s performances in different venues and their travels around the USA. Steve Perry can be seen shaving his short-lived but talked-about moustache in the video. This video utilized footage from the documentary video Journey: Frontiers and Beyond narrated by John Facenda, voice of NFL Films, shortly before he died. The concept of the “road video” has been utilized by several other bands, including Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, Genesis, Mötley Crüe and Richard Marx.

Wikipedia Trivia:Michael Lee Aday (born Marvin Lee Aday; September 27, 1947), better known by his stage name Meat Loaf, is an American rock musician and actor. He is noted for the Bat out of Hell album trilogy consisting of Bat Out of Hell, Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell and Bat out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose. Bat out of Hell has sold more than 34 million copies.Due to the success of Meat Loaf’s touring in the eighties, he and Steinman began work during the Christmas of 1990 on the sequel to Bat out of Hell. After two years, Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell was finished and became a success. It sold over 15 million copies, and the single “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” reached number one in 28 countries. Meat Loaf won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo in 1994 for “I’d Do Anything for Love”

This song stayed at #1 in the UK charts for seven consecutive weeks. The single features a female vocalist who was credited only as “Mrs. Loud.” Mrs. Loud was later identified as Lorraine Crosby, a performer from North East England. Meat Loaf promoted the song with American vocalist Patti Russo who performed lead female vocals on tour with him. In Germany, Meat Loaf became notably popular following the release of Bat out of Hell II but has enjoyed most of his success among pop/rock fans.

Michael Bay directed the music video. He also directed the videos for “Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer than They Are” and “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through”, also from Bat out of Hell II. Filming took place in Los Angeles County, California in July 1993; the opening chase was filmed at Chávez Ravine, with the interior mansion scenes filmed at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. The cinematographer was Daniel Pearl, particularly known for filming The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1973. Pearl says that this video “is one of my personal all-time favorite projects… I think the cinematography is pure, and it tells a story about the song.” He would later film the Chainsaw remake, which was produced by Bay.

The video is based on Beauty and the Beast and The Phantom of the Opera. Bob Keane did Meat Loaf’s make-up, which took up to two hours to apply. The make-up was designed to be simple and scary, yet “with the ability to make him sympathetic.” It went over budget, and was filmed in 90 °F (32 °C) heat, across four days. According to one executive, it “probably had the budget of Four Weddings and a Funeral.” It is the abridged seven minute single version, rather than the twelve minute (11:58) album version.

The actress in the video, Dana Patrick, is miming to Crosby’s vocals,however, as she would to Patti Russo’s in the 1995 song. According to the captions aired on Pop-up Video, Patrick received several offers for record deals after the video aired, by executives who assumed she was actually singing in the video.

Wikipedia Trivia: The music video, directed by Samuel Bayer, stars Heather DeLoach as the “Bee Girl” — a young tap dancer wearing a homemade bee costume and large glasses, modeled after the Blind Melon album’s cover: a family picture of Georgia Graham, younger sister of drummer Glen Graham.[1] The Bee Girl’s story is interspersed with footage of Blind Melon performing in a field against a clear blue sky.

It opens on the girl’s tap routine; the audience responds with laughter, and the girl runs off stage in tears. As the song plays, she wanders through a city, stopping to perform her dance for whoever will watch. Ultimately — at the point in the song where the word “escape” is repeated — she peeks through a gate, astonished, then runs through it to join a group of “bee people” of all shapes and sizes dancing joyfully in a green field.

As a result of the video, DeLoach appeared on the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards, and reprised her Bee Girl dance (in full costume) in the video for “Weird Al” Yankovic’s song “Bedrock Anthem.”

VH1 ranked the “No Rain” video 83rd on its “100 Greatest Videos of All Time” list; the song was also No. 99 on the channel’s “100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders” list.

It was revealed on VH1′s Behind The Music that Shannon Hoon was high on LSD during the video shoot.

Richard Shannon Hoon (September 26, 1967 – October 21, 1995) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. He rose to fame as frontman and lead singer of the band Blind Melon until his death from a drug overdose in 1995.

Wikipedia trivia:”Solsbury Hill” is a song by British musician Peter Gabriel, about a spiritual experience atop Solsbury Hill in Somerset, England. Gabriel wrote the song after his departure from the progressive rock band Genesis, of which he had been the lead singer since its inception, explaining the reasons behind his departure. It was his debut single. The single was a Top 20 hit in the UK and reached the Top 70 on the Billboard Hot 100.

It has been used in a number of movies, for example in the soundtracks of the 2001 film Vanilla Sky, and the 2004 film In Good Company. The song has been covered by many artists, including moe., Dave Matthews, Erasure, Sarah McLachlan, Saga, and Justin Hines, among others.

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The song uses a 7/4 time signature for the vast majority of the song. The last two measures of each chorus are in 4/4.

Wikipedia trivia:”Jack & Diane” is a 1982 hit song written and performed by American singer-songwriter, John Mellencamp, then performing as “John Cougar”. It appears on Mellencamp’s album American Fool. It was chosen by RIAA as one of the Songs of the Century. The single spent four weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982, and, to date, is the biggest hit single ever for Mellencamp, especially with its accompanying music video.

According to Mellencamp, “‘Jack & Diane’ was written after watching Splendor in the Grass, (a 1961 movie starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty). “‘Jack & Diane’ was a terrible record to make. When I play it on guitar by myself, it sounds great; but I could never get the band to play along with me. That’s why the arrangement’s so weird. Stopping and starting, it’s not very musical.” Mellencamp has also stated that the clapping wasn’t supposed to be included in the finished song. It was recorded with the clapping in order to help keep tempo and then it was to be removed. However, he realized the song didn’t work without it.

The song’s tone and lyrics are evocative of a nostalgia for the novelty of youth, influenced in part by Mellencamp’s own life experiences. Mellencamp has stated in interviews that “Jack and Diane” was originally about an interracial couple, but he realized that in the early ’80s there could be backlash over such a song. Ironically enough, the title track to his 2001 album Cuttin’ Heads was about an interracial couple.

Wikipedia Trivia: Despite the title, the song does not contain the phrase “what’s up?”, but has “what’s goin’ on?” in the chorus. This is due to the 1971 R&B song and album “What’s Going On”, by Marvin Gaye, which they feared would be confused with their song. They kept the name “What’s Up?”

Bassist Christa Hillhouse and guitarist Shaunna Hall had been roommates and met drummer Wanda Day when they joined a band she was playing in. When the three left that band they started playing as a three piece but after seeing Linda Perry sing at a solo performance Hillhouse and Hall asked her to join as vocalist. According to Perry, she and Hall were at Nightbreak, a San Francisco club, and when it was mentioned the threesome were looking for a vocalist Perry announced she was a singer to which Hall replied “I know”. Their first rehearsal was supposed to be at 6 PM on October 17, 1989, but shortly after 5 PM the Loma Prieta earthquake hit the San Francisco area.

The band picked the name, 4 Non Blondes, after an incident in a San Francisco park where the band members were having pizza. Apparently, a family was walking by, and their little boy wanted to grab some left over pizza to feed the birds. He was told by his parents, “No, don’t touch that, that’s dirty from all the birds and people around here,” and they proceeded to give the band members a dirty look. The family was supposedly “very blonde”, so they decided to call themselves 4 Non Blondes.[citation needed] The band was signed to Interscope in July 1991 following a performance at the Gavin Convention where the band opened for Primus on Valentine’s Day of the same year. As they started to record their debut album, according to Hillhouse, Wanda Day was fired from 4 Non Blondes because of alcohol addiction and was replaced by Dawn Richardson. Shaunna Hall left the band in 1992 while recording Bigger Better Faster, More! over musical differences, particularly with the producer David Tickle. She was replaced by Roger Rocha, who would stay with the band until 1995. After 4 Non Blondes, Day went on to join Malibu Barbi. Day died July 10, 1997.

An urban legend among people is, that while promoting the song “What’s Up”, lead singer Linda Perry, who wrote the song and had recently come out as a lesbian, displayed a “dyke” sticker prominently plastered on her guitar for a performance on Late Night with David Letterman. It is unlikely that the this actually happened, as the network would most likely have considered that the phrase “dyke” was not permissible as it was then considered derogatory towards homosexual females. Also, contemporary YouTube copies of the Late Show with David Letterman (not Late Night) performance do not show such a sticker on her guitar.

Wikipedia trivia:”In the Air Tonight” is a song by Phil Collins which first appeared on his 1981 album, Face Value. It was the first single of Collins’ solo career, and remains one of his best known hits.

The recording is notable for its atmospheric production and macabre theme. Released in January 1981 in the UK, the single was an instant hit, quickly climbing to Number 2 in the Singles Chart. It was also an international hit, reaching the top 20 on the Billboard Chart in the summer of 1981.

“In the Air Tonight” remains, alone among Collins’ solo oeuvre, a popular selection on many classic rock radio stations. It is the song most often associated with Collins’ solo career, and he has performed versions of it at many events, notably at Live Aid, where he played the song on the same calendar day in both Philadelphia and London.

Collins wrote the song in the wake of a failing relationship with his then-wife. Collins has described obtaining the drum machine specifically to deal with these personal issues through songwriting, telling Mix magazine: “I had to start writing some of this music that was inside me.”

The song’s popularity in the 1980s increased after a nearly complete recording of it was featured in the pilot episode of the American television show Miami Vice (“Brother’s Keeper”), thus becoming one of the first pop/rock songs to be featured as part of a TV programme in this manner. On the heels of this successful merging of media, Collins became associated with the show; other Collins tracks including “Take Me Home” were later featured and Collins himself also acted in an episode, “Phil the Shill”.

An urban legend has arisen around “In the Air Tonight”. According to the legend, the lyrics are based on a tragic event Collins witnessed, usually a drowning (as in the song’s lyrics), in which a man could have helped the victim, but did not do so (an alternate version of the legend has the onlooker a murderer, intentionally drowning the victim, rather than a bystander). A common ending is that Collins invites this man to a show and sings the song to him, often with a spotlight pointed at him. Afterward, the man is arrested or, in some versions, is wracked with guilt and has a heart attack or commits suicide. Other versions of the story involve Collins discovering his wife having sex with (or being raped by) another man, often a close friend; the man subsequently drowns while Collins himself watches.

Years later, Collins commented on the legends about the song in a BBC World Service interview:

“ I don’t know what this song is about. When I was writing this I was going through a divorce. And the only thing I can say about it is that it’s obviously in anger. It’s the angry side, or the bitter side of a separation. So what makes it even more comical is when I hear these stories which started many years ago, particularly in America, of someone come up to me and say, ‘Did you really see someone drowning?’ I said, ‘No, wrong’. And then every time I go back to America the story gets Chinese whispers, it gets more and more elaborate. It’s so frustrating, ‘cos this is one song out of all the songs probably that I’ve ever written that I really don’t know what it’s about, you know. ”

Collins later stated on VH1 Classic’s “Classic Albums” series that he came up with “99 percent” of the lyrics on the spot, based on what he felt the vibe was of the dark chords he had improvised over the ominous drum beat. He was “just messing around for fun”, completely unaware that what he was creating would ultimately be the staple song from his next album.

Wikipedia trivia:”Mickey” is a 1982 hit U.S. pop song recorded by singer and choreographer Toni Basil. Written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn as “Kitty,” it was first recorded by UK pop group Racey in 1979.

Basil’s crush on actor and Monkee Micky Dolenz during her work as a choreographer/dancer on the set of the Monkees 1968 movie Head prompted her to change the lyrics to “Mickey” to better suit her real-life experience, and the gender from female to male. The single reached number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and number two in the UK singles chart. The song was Basil’s only top 40 hit, making her a one hit wonder.

Trivia per Wikipedia: “The Unforgiven” is a single from Metallica’s self-titled album, Metallica (also known as the Black Album). Released in 1991, it is one of the slower songs on the album.

Trivia per Wikipedia: “Uptown Girl” is a song performed by musician Billy Joel, whose lyrics deal with a working-class “downtown man” attempting to woo a wealthy “uptown girl”. The song was first released in 1983 on his album An Innocent Man. It peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts in the US and #1 in the UK; in 1988, Rolling Stone ranked “Uptown Girl” #99 on their list of the 100 most important singles of the period 1963-1988. The style of music, including the doo-wop beat, the close harmonies and Joel’s frequent use of falsetto singing, is reminiscent of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The song also has the uncommon feature of changing key from the original two times before giving back, for a total of three keys.