Music Facts

It’s a big theme, but since I face the prospect of possibly travelling for three months sans an iPod or the like, I’ve been thinking about music a lot. Can a music-lover survive three months without constantly having access to tunes? I doubt it. I better get cracking and buy myself an MP3 player. Enough of my rant, here are some musical facts.

The Motown group The Supremes was originally called The Primettes.

The rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd took their name from a high school teacher named Leonard Skinner who had suspended several students for having long hair.

Tickets for Frank Sinatra's first solo performance at the Paramount Theatre in New York City in 1942, sold for 35 cents each.

The brass family of instruments include the trumpet, trombone, tuba, cornet, flügelhorn, French horn, saxhorn, and sousaphone. While they are usually made of brass today, in the past they were made of wood, horn, and glass.

When the Yardbirds broke up in 1968, Jimmy Page was left to honor the band's commitments, performing as The New Yardbirds. The group eventually evolved into Led Zeppelin.

The famous Russian composer Aleksandr Borodin was also a respected chemistry professor in St. Petersburg.

Dark Side of The Moon (a Pink Floyd album) stayed on the top 200 Billboard charts for 741 weeks. That is 14 years.

The Beatles played the Las Vegas Convention Center in 1964. Some 8,500 fans paid $4 each for tickets.

Warner Communications paid $28 million for the copyright to the song "Happy Birthday".

Jim Morrison found the name "The Doors" for his rock band in the title of Aldous Huxley's book "The Doors of Perception", which extolls the use of hallucinogenic drugs.

Monaco's national orchestra is bigger than it's army

January 2002, George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" replaced Aaliyah's "More Than A Woman" at #1 - the only time that a deceased artist has taken over from another deceased artist at #1.

Most toilets flush in E flat.