Its been a full six months since my last installment of ‘What the Kids are Listening To’ so I figured it’s due.
The long wait doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve missed out on a lot of chart-topping hits, however. Fewer songs than ever are cycling through the Billboard Hot 100. In fact, the issue has become so dire that Billboard just changed some of the guidelines for how long songs can stick around.
The week of November 16, 1965, found The Supremes atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘I Hear a Symphony,’ one of 12 #1 hits for the legendary girl group.
At #2 that week was Len Barry’s ‘1-2-3,’ a song that ended up embroiled in a copyright claim by those very same Supremes. Motown sued Barry and his co-writers, claiming that ‘1-2-3’ bore a strong resemblance to The Supremes’ ‘Ask Any Girl.‘ After two years in the courts, Motown’s Holland–Dozier–Holland writing team was awarded 15% of the royalties from this song.
Throwing back to the week of November 15, 1955, we find a couple of usual suspects atop the Billboard singles chart followed by Tennessee Ernie Jones at #3 with ‘Sixteen Tons.’ The song would ascend to #1 the following week and spend two months there.
This song was written and recorded by country singer Merle Travis a decade earlier. It is sung from the perspective of an Appalachian coal miner.
My final fictional artist is a band so renowned that it’s replacing Aerosmith as the musical accompaniment to Disney World’s Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster.
Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem made their debut on the pilot episode of The Muppet Show and found big-screen fame performing ‘Can You Picture That?’ in 1979’s The Muppet Movie. The sextet is fronted by Dr. Teeth on keyboard and vocals, with Floyd Pepper on bass, Janice on lead guitar, Zoot on saxophone, Lips on trumpet, and — of course — Animal on drums.
Almost Famous (2000) is a music movie that gets the music right. How could it not when writer/director Cameron Crowe spent his adolescence touring with rock bands and writing about them for Rolling Stone?
He channels those experiences into the story of William Miller, a young aspiring journalist who learns some hard lessons while hitting the road with Stillwater, a 70s band based on the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and others.
Meet Me In Montauk 