40 years ago I would walk to my local library, go to the Music aisle, and start checking the titles there. Dozens of books on rock and pop music, and also the latest (and back) issues of several music magazines. Every popular music act that had a claim to international fame up until that time was researchable. Easy and free access, as was the style at the time.
What prompted my reply was the claim that 40ish years ago there was no way to know that The Hollies were a British band that had nothing to do with Buddy Holly’s backing band. That is patently untrue, and would not have been dependent on the latest music business material to find out. A half-dozen old books at the community library would have done.
Yes, I think your library experience is perhaps atypical. We only had a bookmobile, once a week, for my early childhood. I loved my library but it wasn’t a main branch.
A couple of colorblind people on Reddit claim that the shade of red and green on traffic lights is different, so even colorblind people can tell which is which without regard to position. The interesting thing is that yellow and red traffic lights can look similar to colorblind people:
Speaking as a red-green colorblind person, in almost all circumstances I have no problem distinguishing red and green. I don’t know how typical I am in that respect. (Brown vs purple under artificial light, on the other hand, can be impossible.)
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ETA - interestingly
People with deuteranomaly and protanomaly are often incorrectly diagnosed collectively as ‘red-green’ colour blind because both types generally have difficulty distinguishing between reds, greens, browns and oranges. They also commonly confuse different types of blue and purple hues and many other colour combinations.
I believe 3 highly successful musicians performed in that production of Oliver!: Davy Jones, Phil Collins, and Roy Wood. Roy Wood may not be so well known in the US but he was enormously successful and influential through the 60s and 70s and into the 80s with The Move, ELO, and Wizzard, and we think of him (not fondly) at Christmas every year.
The members of the Monkees had very limited musical ability prior to their show and in the early years of the show. They produced some astonishingly good music later, however, which remains undervalued and underappreciated to this day because, well, it’s The Monkees.
Interesting pop music fact:
In 1987, Tiffany was at #1 in the Billboard Top 100 with a catchy number called “I Think We’re Alone Now”. I didn’t know this at the time, but the song was a cover, originally released in 1967 by Tommy James and the Shondells.
Tiffany was knocked off the #1 spot by Billy Idol belting out his rock anthem “Mony Mony”. I didn’t know this at the time, but the song was a cover, originally released in 1968 by…
All of the Monkees had experience as professional musicians before the show. Jones had an album (as David Jones) that reached 73 on the Cashbox chart. Tork was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist who traveled in the same Greenwich Village folk circles as Steven Stills. Nesmith had been in the songwriting and record business since 1963. Even Dolenz had his own Rock band before the show named Micky and the One-Nighters. He and Nesmith had both cut studio records before being cast in the Monkees.
