Episode Transcript
I'm Bud's Night, the host of the Taking a Walk podcast, and welcome to another edition of This Week in Music History.
This is for the week of November the tenth, and I can't believe it's another week that we can conquer Master music Mayhem.
Harry Jacobs, Welcome to Taking a Walk.
I was hoping you were going master music Mayhem.
I really like it.
I really like it a lot.
Speaker 2Can I get you?
Speaker 1Do people still use business cards?
Would you like me to get you business cards that say that.
Speaker 2You know, I have some business cards in my car.
I don't you.
I mean, you know, we just don't.
That's something like the phone book.
They just kind of went away, you know.
People.
I've seen people with QR codes right, you know, on the phone they go, here's my information, get me this way.
But most people just say, hey, text me, here's my number.
You know, you exchange a message.
No more business cards.
Oh excuse me, I have to go over to my fax machine.
I'll be right back.
Yeah, exactly, facts of facts.
Speaker 1Let me get the miniograph cranked up.
Speaker 2Remember the original ones on the spool?
Oh gosh, all right, anyway, Yeah, we're here to talk about music.
I am the the con Yeah, amazing, mayhem.
Absolutely, I'm ready to rock and roll this up big week November tenth through the sixteenth.
We're going to start on November tenth.
In nineteen seventy five, and this was when Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here hit number one on the UK album charts.
And you know, I really one of the things I've been enjoying about doing this and about utilizing Claude AI and other resources that we have available to us, is that some of the information and kind of CNN would say, some of the factoids that are out there are really amazing.
The album was inspired and the song really was inspired by Sid Barrett, who had left the band in sixty eight and you know, he had obviously issues with drugs and the severe mental health issue.
He showed up at those sessions.
Did you ever hear that story?
No?
No, no, he showed up during the sessions.
I'm not sure how he knew what was going on or where they were, but the band members didn't recognize him immediately and it was just a weird thing like, hey, you know, you're you're leaving or you're fired, or you know, whatever it is.
And then several years later, you show up at this session, gained an incredible amount of weight, didn't look the same, and this album ended up being like a you know, a meditation on absence.
And really, I Wish You Were Here was for him.
The song was for him, right that.
Really I didn't know he was there cheat wow.
Yeah, he was there for at least part of it.
And the song.
I know.
I saw him perform the song with his daughter at a pub in Ireland.
But Polly Sampson is David Gilmour's wife who's an artist and an author, and the two of them performed that song in different places.
There's also been some interesting stuff with David Gilmore where he's showing off the synthesizers that they used in Dark Side of the Moon.
They were brilliant music.
They are brilliant musicians.
They're they're still with us.
But I figured you'd enjoy that little tidbit on Wish You Were Here.
That's wild, that's wild.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2I know.
Speaker 1There was some recent you know, further fur flying between the the Gilmore camp and the Roger Waters camp, essentially saying, you know, in their own words, hell will freeze over before there's any chance of those guys getting back together again.
And I think you said her name is Polly Sampson, David's wife, Is that right.
Speaker 2Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1Yeah.
I think she was in particular fire in some shots at Roger Waters.
So you know, let's not hold our breath for a reunion from Pink Floyd.
Speaker 2Yeah.
I've got a story about the Wall coming up and about Roger Waters at some point, and we'll get into it a little bit more.
Brilliant guy, but let's face it, Roger Waters is an anti semi anti jew, doesn't care what he says about anything kind of guy.
The police are fascists, thinks.
You know, it's just an issue with authority.
And by the way, the Wall really spoke to that issue.
So I don't blame I don't blame Polly and David for speaking out.
Waters has done it in a really ugly way, and it makes me sad because I love the music.
I saw him run through the That Wall tour in twenty twelve or eleven when they came through Vegas, So it's sad that it's come to that for such an unbelievable You think about what it would be like to see Pink Floyd.
Now you know what they do right, they do like five shows in the US at five big stadiums, and it would be something just crazy and epic and it would be amazing.
But when hell Frais is over right.
Nineteen seventy three November tenth, Elton's Goodbye Yellowbrook Road spent its second of eight weeks at number one on the Billboard two hundred.
The album, of course, was a big success, had a bunch of great songs on it, and then the biggest success to come out of that album was a re released version of Candle in the Wind.
You remember that, right, I do?
Speaker 1I Sure do Yeah.
Speaker 2In September of ninety seven, win hit number one on the UK charts.
Elton performed the song at Princess Diana's funeral and it sold to get this right, Thank You Claude six hundred and sixty thousand copies in its first day, incredible, almost five million copies, and it was on the Billboard Top one hundred for over three months.
Twenty you know, four years later after the song came out because of its meaning with Princess Diana, it sold thirty three million worldwide.
There has not been an album, to the best of my recollection that was certified diamond or a song rather, and that was certified diamond.
We have platinum, we have gold, and this was the first diamond.
And the other fact about that song and that version of the either version of the song, is that Elton said he would never play it again unless one of Diana's kids asked him to play.
So the song has been retired.
Speaker 1Oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Well, in nineteen sixty nine, Sesame Street debuted on PBS, and this was a big deal to kids.
You know, I was born in sixty six, so you know I was a PBS kid, right.
I watched mister Rogers and I watched Sesame Street.
I remember clearly watching those shows.
When when I was a kid, you were too old for mister Rogers.
Correct.
Speaker 1Some would say, yeah.
Speaker 2That's not a shot, and I love to take shots at you on your age, but this is not a shot on you.
I'm just trying to do some math here in terms of you didn't want mister Rogers.
Wasn't part of your childhood?
No?
Speaker 1I actually I was locked in a closet for a part of my childhood.
Speaker 2This explains a lot.
I could be the maven of mental health.
We could do a special episode.
You never know it could be coming down the pike.
The Mister ra and Sesame Street was amazing.
Jim Henson was amazing.
But the Mister Rogers thing.
We may have talked about this at one point.
You know, we're coming up on a year of doing this, by the way, on this Week in Music History November, I think is a year.
But the Mister Rogers movie, to me was unbelievably moving and it made me really emotional to see it because it was a part of the fabric of my life and just understanding him now as an adult versus when I was a child and I watched it, and just his approach to life and who he was.
I mean, those shows Sesame Street and Mister Rogers, and I know it's a big deal with PBS right now in this country.
I think shows like that are so incredibly valuable.
I have fond memories, and you know, I'm almost sixty and I remember being you know, five, six seven years old when I didn't want to be weather man Don Kent from w b Z, holding a wooden spoon in my short pants in front of the TV.
I was watching mister Rogers in Sesame Street.
I love that that's a true story.
By the way that my father says, Harry wanted to be don Kent.
That is great.
Speaker 1I was traveling through, I believe, the Pittsburgh airport many moons ago, and there in the middle of the airport kind of looking around, but people coming up to him.
There was Fred Rogers.
Speaker 2How funny is that?
Yeah?
Speaker 1And by the way, picture of the chaos at the airport even then and at that airport, at that airport.
Speaker 2But yet he.
Speaker 1Couldn't have been someone looking like more grateful to be in the position that he was in and just nice to everybody and smiling and living with this aura.
So I hear what you're saying.
Speaker 2November eleventh, nineteen seventy, Bob Dylan released New Morning.
This was after what he went through at the Newport Folk Festival and really when he went from unplugged to plugged, and this was a more personal sound for him album wise, after You Know Self Portrait.
This it wasn't necessarily back to folk, but it was a little more storytelling.
It was a little more domestic stuff, not somewhat social commentary at this point, more domestic life and introspection.
I was never a huge Dylan fan.
Until I was an adult.
I was always around it because my father was a huge Dalan fan, had had the albums were all over the house.
I didn't get it when I was a kid, but this was an interesting album for him.
Were you a fan of this album?
Nemore still to this day?
And I love how over time.
Speaker 1Like a lot of artists, Bruce is one of him.
Dylan certainly is one who is never afraid to go into the archives and bring out alternate takes and everything.
And some of the takes from the New Morning Sessions that you know subsequently came out just brilliant, amazing.
Speaker 2Yeah.
In nineteen seventy eight, on November eleventh, Donna Summers MacArthur Park hit number one.
I don't spend a lot of time on pop music here on this week, but you know I'm a fan of the disco.
You know I'm a fan of the pop music, and that was a big, big deal.
It was kind of an epic song.
It started slow and built and just a great to media, great pop record.
Speaker 1I have a question, though, did you ever leave the cakeout in the rain?
Speaker 2I will take that as a shot across the bow.
I do have a very funny story speaking of that.
This has nothing to do with music or music history.
I've got a friend whose name is Michael Perna.
He's a new guy.
He's like straight out of the Sopranos, and he's always got a funny story about life when you talk to him.
And he tells the story once about something that happened twenty five years ago.
He was in New Jersey on a rainy Sunday.
He has twin girls.
He goes to the bakery to buy a birthday cake.
He comes out of the store, he puts the kids in their car seats, and he starts driving down the road.
And someone pulls up next to him and starts honking the horn, and he starts with the hands, what you want a piece of me?
You want a piece of me?
What's wrong?
The guy rolls down his window and says, no, you got a birthday cake on your roof and the rain.
Nineteen eighteen.
World War One ended with the armistice signed on the basically in the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, eleven eleven.
Pretty crazy.
I was not there, No, you weren't was this was just for your birth nineteen eighteen.
Thank you November twelfth, nineteen seventy one, led Zeppelin four was released Stairwoid Heaven, Black Dog, Rock and Roll When the Levee Breaks I mean just and and and sold thirty seven million copies worldwide.
In the US, it was certified twenty four times platinum, twenty four million units.
And the streaming info is crazy.
On Spotify alone, this is insane.
Two point four billion streams on Spotify.
Speaker 1And those that own the you know, the rights to that probably made about four hundred and fifty dollars from those streams.
Speaker 2It's disgusting what the artists get from the streams.
Speaker 1Maybe four hundred and fifty thousand, but probably not much more than that.
Speaker 2Whatever it is doesn't compare to the to the billions of streams that it's gotten.
YEP.
November twelfth, nineteen sixty eight, Jiman Hendricks Electric Lady Land hit one in the US.
Remember the cover of that album, how crazy that was just color and art and yep.
Fantastic album.
And November thirteenth, we go to the next day.
I got a shout out to Jason the Cheese guy, Justin Justin Sorry, I always you know, I always screw sometimes my short term memory buzz.
I'm sorry, Justin Justin the cheese guy, yep In Carlisle, No, well conquered, the cheese conquered.
You know what, I'm gonna put a sticky note on my screen.
It's gonna go at the top of our script.
Justin Conquered Cheese.
Send the bree nineteen sixty five, The Beatles Rubber Soul.
This concluded at Abbey Road Studios.
This is you've said this.
This is one of your favorite Beatles albums, No doubt.
I've just seen a face Norwegian Wood.
You won't see me so catchy.
Michelle was on that girl I'm Looking through You.
I love that In My Life is a great goodbye song, right, one of the greatest songs.
I mean, they're all great, but that's one of the greatest ever.
Yeah, and Run for Your Life a cool one.
Just one of those you could just throw on and that's right.
You know you're good to go.
November fourteenth.
In nineteen seventy, Santana's a Praxis hit number one on the Billboard two hundred.
There's an album with two really great songs.
Legendary Santana's songs Oye Cmova and Black Magic woman both on that album.
Speaker 1Love that band, Love Carlos still at it.
Speaker 2Yeah, and you know, a unique band similar to you know what Ted Nugent was at the beginning in others over the years where he's traded out different singers and he never sang and just played and traded out the vocals.
Speaker 1He loves to play.
He loves to play.
Speaker 2And he's a great player.
And I've heard him explain and talk about his guitar playing style, which I'm a geek for that.
I always enjoy watching him talk about his his playing and how he does things.
Nineteen ninety one, Freddie Mercury made what would be his final appearance at the unveiling of the brit Awards Queen Statue in London, and you know, I ended up passing away not long after that, about I think nine days or so.
On the on the twenty third he passed away.
He Freddy had AIDS and he announced on November I think November twenty third that he had AIDS and then on the twenty fourth he passed away.
Well, so it was ten days after the after that final appearance, but on the ninth day he said I am sick.
I do have AIDS.
And on the next day he did pass away.
He kept that diagnosis private.
I think we all knew something was going on with his health.
Yes, now, it wasn't like the internet is now, but you know you'd see him and go, he's not not looking good.
He was only forty five years old, and tragedy, an incredible tragedy, and at forty five, that would make you old enough to be his father.
At this point, Bus, I'm just saying, that's all.
I can't get through one of these episodes without taking a shot at you.
You could have been a young father.
You never know, you never know.
No, you don't, you don't.
Speaker 1Uh.
Speaker 2November fifteen, nineteen seventy five, Fleetwood Mac released their self titled album, Rhiannon Landslide, a song that Stevie dedicates to her dad, A really moving song.
Speaker 1But the song, it's such a great album, such a great song it's in.
I think it's one of her best, you know, best pieces of work Stevie's.
Speaker 2You know when you see video of Stevie and Lindsay on stage just playing it together, and you know the way she looks at him, Yeah, you know, you could tell the love that was there between the two of them two.
Speaker 1Yeah, now they can't be even anywhere near the same zip code.
Speaker 2Probably now they're hatfields of McCoys.
Oh yeah, well I'll tell you I'll tell you this.
There's stuff going on.
The rumor mill says there' stuff going on with Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham, which is not true.
Lindsay is working on some stuff with Mick Fleetwood.
Oh okay, so there's a there's a solo project that Mick is doing.
Oh okay, and that's about it.
I will tell you this that one of the things that they are saying is that that things have cooled or have softened between the bandmates, the remaining bandmates at this point.
Will we ever see another you know, Fleetwood Mac show with Lindsay.
Probably not.
You know, Mike Campbell.
I think Mike Campbell and t Bone stepped in when Lindsay ended up getting the boot from the vand yeah, that's right, tour right, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1And by the way, one of my favorite bits ever on Saturday Night Live, What's up with That?
Speaker 2Lindsay?
Yeah, Lindzah, What's up with that?
Was so funny.
I forgot about Lindsay on.
Speaker 1What's It with that Lindsay Lindsay even appeared as Lindsay.
Speaker 2He did, He did.
It was a great.
Nineteen fifty six, Elvis made his film debut debut.
This is a mistake across the board.
Elvis did a lot of things really well, shook his ass real well, sayg Greg but an actor, he was not well.
It was bad.
Speaker 1I feel like there was a role or two that wasn't him being a parody of himself.
But I guess I will I will generally agree with you on that.
Speaker 2He was so so affable, like when you see him on television interviews or you know, I watched the stuff on the sixty eight special, and you know you see him kind of talking to the crowd and just being his charming self.
Polite, very polite, Yeah, very polite, very charming.
And I just think them pushing him into acting as a way to make money and build his popularity was you know, it was not great.
It wasn't It wasn't the good That no good, Colonel Parker, Yeah, money Grubber.
November sixteenth, nineteen seventy four, John Lennon topped the Billboard Hot one hundred with his only number one single during his lifetime as a solo artist.
Do you know what that song is?
John Lennon only number one single is a solo artist?
Imagine, I don't think you're gonna know.
That's what I thought too.
Whatever gets you through the night?
Speaker 1Oh my god?
Speaker 2Okay, great song, but awesome?
Did it seem like a number one right?
Right?
Nineteen eighty one, the Police released Ghost in the Machine and among other songs that were on there, every Little Thing she Does is Magic was on there.
Always thought that was a fun song that one crossed over right.
The rock radio stations played it.
We played I was working at an AC station, you know, we played that song.
One of the things that's happening online in one of the Instagram feeds that I follow is called Drummyoh are you familiar with that dru m?
Speaker 1E O No, I don't think so.
Speaker 2You know, they'll take a drummer and they'll say, okay, we're gonna play you.
You know, we're gonna play you do you Love Me by Kiss?
So we're gonna play shout it out loud by kiss or you know someone from different worlds and they play it without the drum track, and they let these famous drummers play other people's songs, oh well, which is really kind of cool.
But the other thing that they do is they will take an artist like you know, Stuart Copeland, and they will ask him to play along with something.
And they did a whole series with him.
But the clip I saw was him recreating the drums and every little thing she does it's magic.
I'm just a geek for that stuff.
I like watching how even though I don't play drums, I like watching that kind of stuff.
If you're a music fan, check them out on Instagram.
Drummyoh, this is the last one for the week.
And I think I know the answer to this, but I don't know, because there are a lot of people that like this and it surprises me often when I hear that they do.
But in two thousand and one, the first Harry Potter film came out.
Were you ever into Harry Potter?
Speaker 1No, my daughter was for a period, but no, I was not.
I think I actually went to one of the the openings or whatever with her and took a very healthy nap at that particular show.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's what I figured.
I'm in the same boat.
I wouldn't watch it.
The books were epic.
The books were like eight hundred pages.
I believe.
Not only did I not read the books, I didn't go see the movie.
Speaker 1Yeah, there you go, but a phenomenon, so.
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure.
Absolutely So with that, that will bring to a close this week, the week in November tenth through the sixteenth, and music history.
Speaker 1Well, thank you, Harry, it's quite a week.
As always, you took us through it brilliantly.
Thank you for all your work, and thanks to all of you for listening to the Taking a Walk podcast and this episode of This Week in Music History.
