BY MIKEY MIGO
No matter how far fetched or ridiculous, we all love a good story. Good rumors are remembered. Great rumors become myths and legends. Over the past hundred years or so of modernized music there has been a shit load of remembered rumors about experiences with groupies, murder, obscure backstage riders, occult, and lots of drugs. Some of it might be true, but for the most part the most interesting myths are complete bullshit. Here's a few that stand out to me…
MYTH #1
There's sounds of MURDER in "Love Rollercoaster"
So when The Ohio Players were recording this awesome party track they unknowingly recorded the sound of a woman either in their apartment or in a next door apartment getting murdered by an intruder. Then there's the twist that it was the manager killing a cleaning woman. The craziest is that a photography shoot for an album cover went wrong and deformed a model and ruined her career. And that she came into the studio to raise hell and the manager killed her. Don't you think if ANY of this was true that there'd of been an arrest? I know celebrities and rich people have a way around these things, but surely the Ohio Players weren't on THAT level of OJ fame.
MYTH #2
Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor murdered on a low budget
This has to do with the video for "Down In It" from way back in 1989. There is a scene in it where it assumes that Trent Reznor fell off a building and died in the street. To get this shot on a low budget they used weather balloons to fly overhead and get the "from above" look. The ropes holding the camera snapped and flew away. It was found two hundred miles away by a farmer. He takes it to the police thinking it's a surveillance camera for weed, they look into it, and all hell breaks loose. Since Trent was covered in corn starch (something he used to do up until not too long ago), the pathologists in the lab came to the conclusion that Reznor was three weeks decomposed and the band members who can be seen in the footage are the gang members who killed him. There were periods in the 90's where I'd understand questioning if Reznor was in fact a zombie or not, but the guy is alive and healthy today.
MYTH #3
Song kills up to 200 people
"Gloomy Sunday" was written and recorded by two Hungarian men named Rezso Seress(music) and Laszlo Javor(lyrics) in the early 1930s. The rumor is that the song was attached to many suicides in their home country of Hungary. From there the folklore spread like gangbusters. American and other musicians all took their stab at it with what many consider an unjust translation. To add to that, Seress actually ended up committing suicide. Radio stations in the US played a long and presented it as if it was "banned" from airplay. Over the years the song's myth has grown and been embellished. Can a song REALLY have that much effect on someone to make them kill themselves? Maybe in some seriously fucked up individual situations, but for "up to 200" people to all be affected so dearly by one song…and not even an Ozzy song? I'm not buying it.
MYTH #4
Paul McCartney is dead
So apparently Paul McCartney died in 1966 after storming out of a studio and getting into a car accident after an argument with the Beatles. Then he was replaced by a impersonator. We know this is true because if you play certain songs backwards it tells us so! AND on the cover "Abbey Road" Paul is NOT wearing shoes and the other members are! Holy shit. It MUST be true. Lord knows that if you're barefoot you're not really the person you say you are. Oh wait… that makes no sense at all. The entire situation makes no sense. There is speculation that the band themselves started this rumor to increase album sales and draw interest. That seems a lot more likely and pretty well done if true. The whole thing sounds like a sci-fi plot, but it could also explain the "Revolver" album being so awesome.
MYTH #5
Oops! I pooped my pants!
So apparently there's a note that can be played that'll make all who hear it defecate on themselves. No, I'm not talking about Lil Wayne's vocoder voice. I'm talking about the legendary "brown note". Apparently the note is so low that the ears doesn't even absorb it as sound, but rather the body absorbs it as some sort of unsettling vibration. If you're good with audio then you're looking for an infrasound between 5 and 9 Hz's, but good luck with that. On the TV show "Mythbusters" they tried it out and the only "waste" involved was the viewers watching at home. I think this one can be marked up as a choir class urban legend. Don't you think that IF a sound really did exist like this that a lot of assholes would be taking advantage of it? No pun intended, but I'll take the cheap laugh.
What are some crazy myths of music that stand out to you?
|
