I believe the title says it all, so I’m just going to dive into these musical curiosities. Sure, maybe you knew some of these things all along, but where is the fun in that?
Debbie Harry Was In A 60s Folk- Rock Band
When Blondie’s first album came out, Debbie Harry was 31 years old.
It stands to reason that she had a life before that band and her platinum glam punk image,
But a long-haired brunette playing tamboura and singing back up vocals in a hippie-ish psychedelic folk-rock band? Not what I would have pictured.
The band was called The Wind and The Willows, named after the popular children’s book.
They released one album in 1968 that charted at #195 on the Billboard Top 200.
There may be a reason why many people still don’t know about this part of Debbie’s past. The music is not very good, though I admittedly didn’t get too far. The first song, “Moments Spent,” was tolerable, but as soon as the kazoos entered into the picture on the second song, any good and happy thoughts began to rapidly vacate my being, and I had to shut it down.
I have since blasted Parallel Lines as a palette cleanser, so all is once again right in my world.
Mariah Carey’s Secret Alternative Rock Album
It’s called Someone’s Ugly Daughter and it was released in 1995, under the band name Chick.
Mariah was originally working on lead vocals for it, but execs from her label were worried it would harm her career, and they told her it wouldn’t be released if she was the lead singer.
Instead, she enlisted a friend, Clarissa Dane, to sing lead, and Mariah was relegated to backing vocals.
Mariah’s involvement in the project was virtually unknown until she acknowledged it in 2020 in an interview. In the credits for the album, Carey does not appear by name.
But it is safe to assume that she is the “D.Sue” who is listed as background vocalist and co-writer on all 10 original songs, which would match what she revealed in the interview.
W.Vlad, listed as the drummer and co-writer of all the originals, is definitely her main collaborator at the time, Walter Afanasieff.
The album was not successful, but if the label had kept Mariah’s lead vocals and allowed her to be associated with it, it likely would have done much better.
The songs are decent and stylistically, the part-grunge, part pop-punk sensibilities fit well with where alternative rock was in the mid-90s. Or it could have been simply seen as a weird and unnecessary left turn, a la Chris Gaines. Regardless of any of this, I will always love that it exists.
It is not on Spotify. You can hear it here.
As for the original version with Mariah’s lead vocals, apparently she has tracked down the recordings, but they have yet to see the light of day. One can hope.
Pat Boone Was In The Mood For Metal
Yes, this happened. To be accurate, it’s more like he was in the mood for a Vegas review version of metal, where searing lead guitar solos and a jazz big band co-exist uncharacteristically well.
What was even more surprising than the music was just how seriously Pat took it.
He was all in, decked out in leather, and at the American Music Awards, sporting a dog collar.
To what purpose, it was difficult to ascertain.
It was a good seven years after mainstream metal’s heyday, and the choice of material only served to profoundly confuse and even offend much if not all of his core fans, which skewed older and very conservative.
For everyone else, it was mostly passed off as a joke or a gimmick, and a misguided one at that.
Other than warped degenerates like me who take great delight in hearing classic songs reworked in a different style to the point of absurdity, it’s hard to know who the intended audience was for this in 1997.
Nevertheless, great care was taken with the arrangements and production, and many top-notch musicians contributed to it.
The band is absolutely smoking hot, and if you are fine with an aging singer (it was his 62nd studio album) with limited range sounding like a 2nd rate lounge crooner throughout, this is very listenable stuff.
That is not an insult to Pat, by the way; a second-rate lounge crooner is still very decent.
I’m just going to say it. I like this album, and I know I’m not alone. It did crack the Billboard Top 200, at #125.
Karen Carpenter, Ace Drummer
Growing up in the 70s, I heard plenty of the Carpenters’ music, but never actually saw them.
I knew Karen the way just about everyone did- as one of the most iconic voices of her generation, and eventually of all time.
Early on, she played drums in the band and sang at the same time, but this was all but phased out live, and aside from two albums, she only played sparsely on recordings, if at all. I was in my 30s when I found out she even played the drums, let alone that she was a dynamic force behind that kit.
Let me clarify that there is nothing odd or surprising about a highly skilled female drummer.
But in the early 70s, it was not something you would see often, if ever.
And again, picturing Karen Carpenter musically doing anything but singing mellow soft-rock and melting my heart with her tragically beautiful voice was disorienting. I can describe what made her a great drummer, but it’s better to see and hear for oneself. This is her as an 18-year-old:
And there is plenty more out there.
Alice Cooper, Devout Christian
In the throes of drug and alcohol addiction, Alice returned to his childhood faith sometime around 1983 and has not strayed from it, crediting that faith as the reason he was able to overcome addiction.
He took some time away from music for a couple of years to get his life together, and when he returned in 1986, it was with music that was arguably darker than ever, and a stage show that was so graphically gory that it was nearly banned in more than one country and caused outrage and controversy pretty much everywhere.
His Christian faith did not appear to alter his shock-rock persona in the slightest. If anything, it got worse.
It goes without saying, that this is not what normally happens when someone has a literal “come to Jesus” moment, but then again, when has Alice Cooper ever been normal about anything?
Mike Reid: NFL All-Pro Defensive Tackle, Turned Writer of #1 Country Hits
As a teenager, I worked at a grimy place where we would stuff the newspapers that were going to be delivered on Sunday.
The boss usually controlled the radio, which meant lots and lots of country. One of the songs that we would hear quite frequently was “Stranger in My House” by Ronnie Milsap.
Around that time, I was surprised to read in an article that the song was written by a guy who had been an All-Pro defensive tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals.
Turned out he had penned dozens of songs that had charted for a variety of country artists and had also been a classical pianist performing with orchestras while he was still playing football.
He eventually launched a successful solo career in the early 90s and topped the country charts with the song “Walk on Faith”.
To put it mildly, none of this is the usual career arc of a professional football player. I’m here for it.
Van Halen featuring…Patty Smyth?!?
I so want to live in an alternate universe where Patty said yes to Eddie’s offer to join the band after Roth left.
But alas, I have not been randomly vaulted through a tear in the fabric of time and space to facilitate it.
So I will just have to imagine how the hair metal rock and roll landscape of the mid to late 80s would be forever altered.
(Closing my eyes and listening to the music in my head.) Oh yeah, it’s sounding legendary. Bring it, Patty. As for David Lee Roth and Van Hagar? Goodbye to you, I say!
Buckethead
Lead guitarists have a number of qualities that often make them stand out from the average musician.
But eccentric to the point of wearing a KFC bucket over their head at all times in public is not usually one of them.
Simply put, there isn’t a guitarist on the planet quite like Buckethead, and it certainly doesn’t stop at his odd appearance. I listened to exactly one album of his- Bucketheadland 2.
There are plenty of amazing shredders out there, but nobody that sounds like him and nobody that would put out an album whose theme is a macabre amusement park where very few make it out alive and no one with all of their limbs intact.
And mind you, this was the follow up album to Bucketheadland, which I can only assume was equally as disturbing and grotesque.
Without exaggerating in the slightest, it was the most amazing, mind-blowing guitar playing I had ever heard, and at same time, one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever had listening to an album.
I still have not been able to probe deeper into his catalog, as the one time I did left me emotionally scarred, but I doubt I will hear anything like him ever again.
Sting. You know, that rock… saxophonist…
Listening for the first time to the fourth album by the Police, Ghost in the Machine, it was not as much shocking, as it was like “oh, I guess Sting plays the saxophone. I wonder when that happened?”
Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal now, but it actually was something quite out of the blue. It was unusual for a band member to just pick up a new instrument and then have it all over the album.
Indeed, it’s featured on six different songs, most often as an entire horn section, with Sting overdubbing all the parts. It significantly altered the sound of the band, and Sting had only been playing it for six months.
Probably to even the most casual listener, it never seemed like he actually knew what he was doing with the instrument.
He was mostly playing rudimentary, repetitive parts, and then occasionally breaking out into these wild, atonal improvisations that sounded like he was just pressing random keys and playing really fast.
In case anyone thought the sax was just a passing phase for Sting, there he was doing it again on “Oh My God” on their next album, Synchronicity, except that the aimless noodling was now being multi-tracked. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, or the fact that I always dug that song and felt that the sax parts fit the mood, but I enjoy hearing it nowadays when I go back and listen.
Ronnie James Dio, Trumpet Player, (or, “The Devil and the Angels”)
It’s easy to just assume that Dio came into this world as a wild-eyed screaming heavy metal vocalist, raising his hands in “devil horn” formation.
So it was nothing short of bizarre to read the musician credits for the 60s girl group the Angels’ perky smash hit “My Boyfriend’s Back” and see Ronnie Dio listed as the trumpet player.
Even though I now know the story behind it, I still cannot wrap my head around this piece of information.
It just doesn’t compute.
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All of these are fun to think about. The Mariah one, in particular, reminds me of the music she made when she appeared in “Tennessee” in the late aughts.
Some fun stuff here. I thought Buckethead was a figure of fun when he joined Guns N’Roses, a sign of how far their stock had fallen that they had this joke of a character in Slash’s place.
I still assert that the KFC bucket remains a lousy gimmick but the guy can play. Maybe too much. His discography extends to many hundreds of albums. Its too impenetrable to know where to start. I’m not sure I’ve the lifespan to start at the beginning and work my way through, there’d probably be 50 more by the time I got to the end.
I applaud his dedication and knowing he exists makes the world a more colourful place. I just don’t feel the need to delve too deeply into the music.
It’s funny…it was just last week that I first heard that it was Sting playing the sax on Ghost in the Machine. And I like that album. I had heard most of this trivia before, but I didn’t know as much as I do now. And I don’t ever remember hearing that Ronnie James Dio played trumpet on “My Boyfriend’s Back”!
Good info!
I don’t think I ever noticed that “My Boyfriend’s Back” has a trumpet on it. I knew most of these oddities (and even owned In A Metal Mood) but the Ronnie James Dio and Mike Reid bits surprised me.
Similar to Debby Harry’s like before Blondie, Cyndi Lauper was in a band called Blue Angel before going solo. They’re worth checking out.
https://youtu.be/WfrxGMtLTyA
I really like this. Wasn’t aware of it. Cyndi’s amazing on it.
Marvin Gaye also started out as a drummer and played on some early Motown classics including “Dancing in the Street” by Martha & the Vandellas (which he also cowrote), “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes, and “Fingertips” by Little Stevie Wonder (both the studio version and the #1 live version).
I played The Wind in the Willows.
I was promised kazoos.
2nd track on the album.
Whaaaaat?? Pat Boone in Leather singing (or trying to) Metal is unbelievable good! Love the photo w him and Alice. Great tie in
I had no idea about Marvin Gaye co-composing those songs either. There is a documentary about Marvin and how he produced What’s Going On? And it really shows what a deeply talented arranger ha was in addition to composing and singing
One of my high school history teachers was friends with little Ronnie James Dio growing up. Thanks to his stories, I know Dio came into the world as the kid in the house where grandma hung sausages from the ceiling to cure.