Obscure Non-Prog Music Facts

I was thinking, since the Obscure Prog Facts thread has been so interesting, what about obscure knowledge regarding non-Prog music?  Other types of rock or jazz or classical-anything non prog?

Non Prog Rock

     Former singer for the Canadian heavy rock band Moxy, the late Buzz Shearman, was the number one pick for a replacement for AC/DCs Bon Scott, but due to his difficulties with his vocal chords (due no doubt  to drugs and drink) he was passed over

Former seventies UK hard rock band Dirty Tricks were the very original backing band for the solo Ozzy Osbourne

Former lead singer for Dirty Tricks, Kenny Stewart, now fronts a Zeppelin cover band called Stairway To Zeppelin

Former Skid Row, Lonestar, and more famously UFO guitarist Paul Chapman later joined a band made up of some members of southern US band Molly Hatchet

classical music

During Anton Bruckner's funeral service, Brahms stood outside and refused to go in to pay his respects, bitterly muttering, "Soon it will be my turn", and the following year, he was dead

 In 1911, conductor Felix Mottl was conducting a Wagner opera, and in the middle of it, he dropped dead of a heart attack-years later in 1968 at the same concert hall and podium, while conducting the same Wagner opera, conductor Joseph Keilberth dropped dead of a heart attack AT THE SAME BAR OF MUSIC as Mottl had!

Thomas Edison made a recording of Johannes Brahms' voice




Edited by presdoug - December 12 2010 at 18:00

It took the Zeps a week or two to record their first album. 

presdoug wrote: I was thinking, since the Obscure Prog Facts thread has been so interesting, what about obscure knowledge regarding non-Prog music?  Other types of rock or jazz or classical-anything non prog?  In 1911, conductor Felix Mottl was conducting a Wagner opera, and in the middle of it, he dropped dead of a heart attack-years later in 1968 at the same concert hall and podium, while conducting the same Wagner opera, conductor Joseph Keilberth dropped dead of a heart attack AT THE SAME BAR OF MUSIC as Mottl had!

Canadian rock band Loverboy's singer Mike Reno's real name was Mike Rynoski, and he had previously sang on Canadian heavy rock band Moxy's fourth album Under The Lights in 1978.

Neil Young and Burton Cummings (The Guess Who) both went to the same high school in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I'm not sure if they associated with each other though.


Edited by Fox On The Rocks - May 20 2012 at 11:37

Victoria Adams, married one football player with the name Beckham, and changed her last name :O

Composer Richard Strauss was an enigmatic figure at times. He was not anti-Semitic, and had no problem in working with Jews in the music world, and personally felt the Nazis to be dilettantes and barbarians, but became the Nazis  Generalmusikdirektor.

Jewish conductor Bruno Walter, famous for conducting Anton Bruckner's Fourth, and last three symphonies, also did the Fifth Symphony, even doing a radio broadcast of it in New York City in the early 1930s.

Conductor Arturo Toscanini, upon looking at Gustav Mahler's 5th Symphony, condemned the composer as "not sincere" and in his long career, he never conducted any Mahler.

German conductor Hans Knappertsbusch, in his long and distinguished career, never came to North America to conduct, as many of his colleagues eventually did.

presdoug wrote: When conductor Sir Thomas Beecham toured Germany with his orchestra in the mid 1930s, Hitler attended, and later met privately with Beecham. Sir Thomas came away from that by commenting, "Now i KNOW what is wrong with Germany."

   In the rivalry between conductors Herbert von Karajan and Wilhelm Furtwangler, Furtwangler disliked Karajan so much, that he could not even refer to him by name, and called him "That man K".
             This was one sided, though. Karajan admired Furtwangler as a conductor.

        When Herbert von Karajan visited the monastery of St. Florian in Austria, where Anton Bruckner's body was interred, Karajan was allowed to go down into the vault, and spent a couple of hours "just himself and Bruckner's bones".

       One time when Wilhelm Furtwangler was sitting in the front row of a Toscanini concert where Beethoven's 9th Symphony was being played, after a few moments of the music, he called out "Bloody time beater!", and left the hall.

        Furtwangler was Hitler's favorite conductor. (Poor Furtwangler!) The conductor would do his best to be "out of town" when it was Hitler's birthday, so he would not have to conduct  for it.

         Conductor Oswald Kabasta had a special relationship with Anton Bruckner's 8th Symphony, and when barred from conducting after WW2, he wrote his beloved Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, saying, "remember me especially when you play Bruckner's 8th."  Alas, there are no recordings of Kabasta doing the symphony.


Edited by presdoug - May 29 2012 at 17:22

While auditioning to be the guitarist for the Melvins, Kurt Cobain was rejected.