Wait, what?? huh
I thought stealers wheel “Stuck in the Middle with You” was a Bob Dylan song, as I hadn’t yet learned to identify all the different Dylan croons. A lot of people seemed to think “Horse With No Name” was a new Neil Young song at the time.
I hear ya. My oldest guitar friend still teases me about the first time I went into a guitar shop and commented on the Humdinger, not Humbucker, pickups.
Well, to be fair the name did refer to Harry. It was the wolf-whistle comment she’d get from construction workers after she started dyeing her hair( “hey, blondie!” ). After the band dissolved she was annoyed that she had been so democratic about the whole thing when the contracts were drawn up, as she was now enjoined from using the name despite it being her.
The first time a lot of us heard them was when they were musical guests on Fridays. During their second performance, one of the cast members came out holding a large sign that said “Be patient. Their albums haven’t come to the U.S. yet.”
ETA I just looked on Youtube. The sign actually said “Be patient. Their albums have not yet been released in America - The Stray Cats!”
I never found out until very recently :smack: that David Crosby sang, I always thought he was just a guitar player and the others of CSNY did all of the vocals. I had confused him with Jerry Garcia. The sharp-eyed among you may notice that Jerry Garcia also sings and wonder how my brain could ever make that contradictory association. I wonder that also.
This is not so dramatic a misconception, but it was only about a year or two ago that I decided to listen to Fleetwood Mac’s lps from their prime, late 70s years. Of course, a body can’t help but be familiar with their music if you grew up in the 70, 80s, or 90s as they were pretty ubiquitous. But for some reason, when I listened the actual records, I realized for the first time how big a part Christine McVie played in the band.
I had always considered her kind of like the George Harrison of the group - primarily an instrumentalist or backing vocalist, whom the other members would toss a bone and allow to sing lead once a record. I always figured Stevie was the big star and Lindsay Buckingham was the guiding musical force. Listening to “Fleetwood Mac”, “Rumors”, and “Tusk” from end to end, the main thing that stuck out was how prominent McVie’s part is in all of them. She sings lead a lot of the time, or has very prominent backing vocals. On their live Lp, she seems to do most of the interacting with the audience (though that’s perhaps because she was the least strung-out on cocaine by the time they recorded it.) Stevie Nicks on the other hand, does her diva number once or twice a record and seems to vanish.
Nitpick: Other than the title track, Built For Speed was not a new recording. It was a compilation of the best songs from the first two UK albums.
As for bands I mixed up, I thought “Justified and Ancient” by The KLF was the followup single to “Unbelievable” by EMF. 2 one-hit wonders with similar names that scored hits a few months apart.
Here’s a blast from the distant past: the Ray Charles Singers were formed by a white guy named Ray Charles. I always wondered why their music, and Brother Ray’s music sounded so different.
The band and the singer were both called ‘Alice Cooper’, and Vincent was always credited as that on the records.
They were The Spiders, then they were The Nazz, then they found out Todd Rundgren had a band called The Nazz so they changed it to Alice Cooper. Their fans thought that was the singers name, so he started using the name Alice. This all happened before they got their first record deal.
I had no idea Dobie Gray singing Drift Away was black.
I’d only heard it on the radio. It was at least twenty years before I saw the album cover.
Even worse there is a popular cover by a white guy.
I prefer the original.
Figuring out the Faces and the Small Faces still trips me up. I thought I had it down when I decided that if Rod Stewart sang, it was the Faces, and if not, Small Faces. But then I recently found out that Ronnie Wood also sang, and “Ooh La La” wasn’t a Small Faces song after all.
Speaking of the Faces, for a long time I thought that after they broke up, Ronnie Wood joined the Rolling Stones and Ronnie Lane went on to join Wings with Paul McCartney. Nope, that was Denny Laine, formerly of the Moody Blues.
That’s right. Those early bands had nothing do with the name ‘Alice Cooper’, and by the time they started releasing music properly, the singer was getting credited by the AC name both in personnel and songwriting listings.
What’s weird is to read (including on wikipedia) that VF ‘eventually’ changed his name to Alice Cooper in response to the confusion, when for 99% of people who know his music, they would have discovered him/them after he was already using the name for himself.
On their first two albums the songwriting credit went to Alice Cooper the band. It wasn’t until their third album that they started being credited individually.
Yes, he was using the name Alice on stage by the time their first “official” album was released, but that wasn’t the start of their existence. It was among their original regional fanbase that the misconception took place and Vincent’s subsequent adoption of the Alice moniker on stage happened after that. He didn’t change his name legally until he went solo. That’s where “eventually” comes in.
This one is confusing because the first album with Rod Stewart singing on it, First Step, was credited to The Small Faces in the US and (more logically) to the Faces in the UK.
I thought “Keep on Smilin” by Wet Willie was Van Morrison
The first two times I heard Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song “American Girl” I thought it was a Byrds song that had slipped my mind. Then when I heard it for the third time the same day, I knew the radio wasn’t playing an obscure song from 15 years ago.
Just pointing out some interesting connections…Jerry played pedal steel on the CSNY song “Teach Your Children” in trade for CSNY teaching the Dead how to sing better harmonies, lessons they used on the “American Beauty” and “Workingman’s Dead” albums.
For years I thought “Rebel Rebel” by David Bowie Was the Stones. I’m pretty sure I even got into a few arguments about it.