Beech Tree News Network

Always Learning

In whatever field you focus or are an aficionado, you can always learn interesting little factoids.  Learning comes from any and every outlet in life.  From the obvious(school) to radio to print to television (yes, even television), you are always learning.  Even if you don’t realize you are, you in fact, are, learning.

Being a music buff, I take in information from any forum.  These facts, I fact-checked, are some you might not know.  There were a few I didn’t know.  One day, I heard a song while running that I immediately recognized.  I said loudly to myself, “Hey! That’s the Austin Powers theme song.  I think I was listening to The Blend.  I looked down at my phone and the song, which was indeed the Austin Powers theme, is “Soul Bossa Nova” by Quincy Jones.  

Are you a viewer of the Dan Patrick Show on NBC Sports Network or the Audience Network? I used to watch and always wondered what song was playing in the break from their intro to the show starting.  It was nothing more than bells ringing in tune.  I ask myself whenever I hear these bumpers, “what are these songs”? Some of these are taken from entire songs.   They had to pay to use it.  It is the intro to the 2000 Cypress Hill song “(Rock) Superstar”.  Listen to the song and you’ll notice the DP Show intro is the melody of the entire song.  

I move to SiriusXM’s 70’s on 7 for this fact.  One morning on the way to church, my mom and I were listening to their countdown.  They travel back in time and take Casey Kasem’s Top 40 from that week from a year in the ‘70’s.  The year they were on this particular Sunday was 1979(one of the best years of the decade)and the song “You Can’t Change That” by Raydio was next on the countdown.  What I loved about Kasey is that he always told some pretty cool stories about the artists of the day.  The story about Raydio that he told that day was: the reason it was spelled that way is that the lead singer was Ray Parker, Jr.  “Wait a minute”, I said to myself.  I pulled out my phone and went online.  This was the same Ray Parker, Jr who sang the Ghostbusters theme! My mind was blown!

Confession: lately I’ve been listening to the limited XM channel Yacht Rock Radio.  Don’t judge: I was brought up when a lot of those cheesy awesome tunes were popular.  They played a song called “I.G.Y(What a Beautiful World).  The song was released in 1987-I was 8 years old.  The singer of the song was Donald Fagen.  I thought to myself, “I know that voice.  It sounds like a Steely Dan song”.  There’s good reason for that: Fagen is the co-founder and singer/keyboardist of ‘70’s band Steely Dan.  

I love little-known facts like these.  There will be more to come in future columns.  Stay tuned!