I am a complete and total fraud...

[Jazzmoose]

Think back to high school. Remember the kid that was really into music, particularly rock, and knew who did what, when they did it, and could recite the complete career information for almost any rock musician the way some kids could for baseball players? I was that kid. Heck, considering the make up of this board, a lot of us were that kid. To give you an idea of when I was this kid (obviously, I'm not now, and haven't been for a long time!), I graduated from high school in 1975. I knew my seventies music, and I knew my sixties music. Anything post-Meet the Beatles was fair game, and I knew it all, at least in comparison to my fellow students. Now, I lived in a podunk, nowhere little town, and I knew the competition was weak. Shit, an obvious trivia question like "who was the Beatles first bass player" blew 95% of them out of the water, so this was no hotbed of rock information. However, something happened recently that has revealed to me that I was pretty much as ignorant of rock music as that dumb redneck jerk who thought that The Carpenter's We've Only Just Begun was the heighth of musical soul. Now, instead of identifying with Jack Black when I watch High Fidelity, I am forced to admit that I'm the clod who didn't own Blonde on Blonde...

You see, until three days ago, I thought Something in the Air was a Neil Young song.

Yes, anyone just a couple of years older than me with a functioning radio knew better, but I was a clueless moron, thinking I was cool because I listened to Mott the Hoople rather than the Starlight Vocal Band. Shit. I might has well have joined the rest of the fools and bought a Polyester Leisure Suit...

Edited September 14, 2008 by Jazzmoose

[JSngry]

Well, ok, I didn't even remember the song until I googled it.

[Jazzmoose]

No, no; don't try to make me feel better...I'm devastated. If this had happened when I was seventeen, I would have had to choose between suicide or being a business major: it's that upsetting!

[porcy62]

Dude, get that f*****g 'Blonde on Blonde' and stop complaining!

[sidewinder]

Starlight Vocal Band.

All together now...

"Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight gonna grab some afternoon delight. ...

Me - I was listening to 'Agharta' at the time

[mikelz777]

Hope this doesn't push anyone over the edge but it's Starland Vocal Band. Maybe I should be upset for knowing that.

[Jazzmoose]

Oops...well, that gives me hope anyway!

[mikelz777]

BTW, the Beatles first bassist - Stu Sutcliff? (sp?)

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

I might has well have joined the rest of the fools and bought a Polyester Leisure Suit...

Time's playing tricks on your memory 'cause you did buy one.....I saw it in your yearbook. Hey, no matter.....you were a pretty good lookin' kid back then.

[A Lark Ascending]

You see, until three days ago, I thought Something in the Air was a Neil Young song.

Great song...No 1 hit I believe in the UK in 1969. I associate it with walking to school in Newquay, Cornwall in the spring of that year, a good year or so before I started buying my own records. Very much a record that conjures up 'The Sixties' for me.

Was used in an advert here recently.

Thunderclap Newman were touted to be a really big thing...I think they managed another half-successful single and then vanished.

Restore your all-knowing pop credibility here:

http://www.thunderclapnewman.com/tn/

Even they are on the revival circuit!

[Actually, I can imagine Neil singing it....]

Edited September 14, 2008 by Bev Stapleton

[AllenLowe]

don't worry, I just finished a 50,000 word history of rock and roll and I never heard of that song -

Edited September 14, 2008 by AllenLowe

[paul secor]

I remember having a Thunderclap Newman album, but don't remember much about it, except for "Something in the Air". No longer in my collection, so I must have sold/traded it sometime in the 70's.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Shit, I must be a bigger rock geek. I knew "Something in the Air" was Thunderclap Newman and that it was the Starland Vocal Band.

However, I haven't a clue who played bass in the Beatles first band. D'oh.

[papsrus]

Hah! You amuse me with your trivial little worries. I'm still the low score on this IQ test. ... ... The fact that I'm apparently a few points above the average for all the morons who've ever taken it is no solace, and the whole debacle remains a public humiliation from which I'll recover only slowly over time ... or until someone has the guts to admit they got a lower score.

[medjuck]

Had you ever heard Neil Young? He sure doesn't sound like Thunderclap Newman. BTW didn't Pete Townsend produce that record?

[Chuck Nessa]

To slightly derail the topic, I remember countless people coming into my record store asking for the new Neil Young record "America, Horse With No Name".

[GregK]

To slightly derail the topic, I remember countless people coming into my record store asking for the new Neil Young record "America, Horse With No Name".

Common mistake. Even Scott Young, Neil's own father, called him to congratulate him on another #1 song when he heard it.

[RDK]

To slightly derail the topic, I remember countless people coming into my record store asking for the new Neil Young record "America, Horse With No Name".

Common mistake. Even Scott Young, Neil's own father, called him to congratulate him on another #1 song when he heard it.

Now that's funny!

And yes, Pete produced "Something in the Air." I think it was Pete's brother or close friend in the band and Townshend really helped them along.

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

Hah! You amuse me with your trivial little worries. I'm still the low score on this IQ test. ... ... The fact that I'm apparently a few points above the average for all the morons who've ever taken it is no solace, and the whole debacle remains a public humiliation from which I'll recover only slowly over time ... or until someone has the guts to admit they got a lower score.

Jesus, you're still moping around over that? Okay, here....3 questions to boost your score 2 points:

1) Dick & Jane play with a dog named :

a) SACD b) Spot c) E. Digby Baltzell

2) George Patton is buried in:

a) Luxembourg b) Luxembourg c) Luxembourg

3) The topless dancers featured at the start of a James Bond film were at:

a) A Dunkin Donuts in Butte, Montana b) The 'Bottoms Up' Club in Hong Kong c) Thursday evening reading at The Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore.

[randissimo]

Starlight Vocal Band.

All together now...

"Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight gonna grab some afternoon delight. ...

Me - I was listening to 'Agharta' at the time

I was listening to Weather Report

[Jazzmoose]

Had you ever heard Neil Young? He sure doesn't sound like Thunderclap Newman. BTW didn't Pete Townsend produce that record?

I've been listening to Neil Young for close to forty years, and I've got to say, while Thunderclap Newman doesn't sound like good Neil Young vocals, it sounds a lot like bad Neil Young vocals to me. At least on this song. Besides, who else could it have been?

Edited September 14, 2008 by Jazzmoose

[Jazzmoose]

BTW, the Beatles first bassist - Stu Sutcliff? (sp?)

Sorry; if I was to confirm your answer (add an "e" to the end of the last name), I would feel obligated to do it in a condescending, dismissive manner, and since I'm no longer entitled to do that, it just wouldn't be the same...

[Ted O'Reilly]

I am completely ingnorant of pop music after, say, the Everly Brothers and early, early Elvis. But that's because as a teenager, I really got into jazz of all eras.

Until this forum, I had never heard of "Something In The Air", but I knew that the RAF Dance Orchestra No. ! (aka The Squadronaires) had a theme song called "There's Something In The Air". (See hep CD 44, track 14)

Given the confessional attitude here, is that worse, or better?

(I once dated Neil Young's cousin Stephanie, who really COULD sing...)

[porcy62]

Starlight Vocal Band.

All together now...

"Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight gonna grab some afternoon delight. ...

Me - I was listening to 'Agharta' at the time

I was listening to Weather Report

I was listening to Pink Floyd and Deep Purple.

[randissimo]

Starlight Vocal Band.

All together now...

"Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight gonna grab some afternoon delight. ...

Me - I was listening to 'Agharta' at the time

I was listening to Weather Report

By the summer of 1972 after starving in a band house, with a krazy and failed rock act known as Stark Raven for almost a year in Ann Arbor, I was diillusioned and had pretty much lost interest in the glitter of the rock/pop scene, and when I heard Weather Report, Chick Corea, Mile's album Bitches Brew, Herbie Hancock, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra I was absolutely blown away and started listening to jazz and the fusion evolution and only listening at times to a few on the rock/pop scene like Stevie Wonder, Traffic, Jethro Tull, Zappa, Beefheart, King Crimson, Steely Dan, and funk bands like James Brown, Funkadelics, Dreams, Cold Blood, Tower Of Tower, and Earth, Wind, & Fire.

Back then some of my friends and mostly girlfriends sometimes would dawg me for not knowing or caring what was happening with the rock and pop music scenes.. One girlfriend in 1976 couldn't believe I didn't even know who Thin Lizzy or Twisted Sister was!

Edited September 15, 2008 by randissimo