Mistaken beliefs about music you had when you were younger

So did I. BOY WERE WE WRONG!

"Once there was this world competition for all the best beat bands and Poland's Czerwone Gitary took the second place there, whereas the Beatles only came third. Everybody had expected the Beatles to win real easy but they didn't, for they didn't sing properly, they just screamed and screamed and screamed. Moreover, all of them Beatles weren't even there, half of them were already in the army."

vow. i was impressed. even despite the fact that my friend's exceptional piece of knowledge 'bout pop history didn't reveal who was the winner then...

now, i'm not entirely sure where exactly he picked up this story, though i suspect that his elder sister, who was studying in a nearby town and was going out with geetar-playing hairy geezers, may have imported it into our village

(Sorry, couldn't resist the shameless allusion to great, nay downright AWESOME Frehley-penned track).

("Younger" here = "until last month")

I didn't know that "Van" was a first name. I thought "Van Morrison" was the guy's last name, like "Van Halen."

I thought the same thing, but about the pianist Van Cliburn.

Saxophones in rock songs = cool

Leather=cool

Sci-fi videos=cool

There was a grossest man in the world contest and Alice Cooper took a S-H-I-T on stage and said, "I'm the grossest man in the world!"

Then Gene Simmons came out and ate it.

(It wasn't until 15 years later that I would hear about GG Allin.)

This reminds me of a story I once heard Robert Forster tell about his parents calling R.E.M. "Rem"..

Back when I was twelve I thought:

• a Bass Guitar was just a normal guitar with the strings from an Upright Bass (the Cello-like monster that Jazzbos dig so much) strung onto it.
  
• Drumsticks had little microphones in the tips.
  
• Boy George was a Shemale
  
• Lou Reed wore shades because -- like Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Ronnie Milsap -- he was as blind as a stone and must've had really ugly cataract clouded eyeballs.
  
• Frank Sinatra ran the mob.
  
• That Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog" was a cover of the version by the Sex Pistols.
  
• That Sid Vicious co-wrote the pistols songs with Johnny Rotten.
  
• That Mick Jagger was dead.
  
• Prince was reaallly, realllly tall.
  

later on, I mistakenly believed that

• Robert Smith was very skinny and wore really baggy clothes.
  
• I suspected that Richard Butler was David Bowie's son.
  
• and I didn't know that Aerosmith wrote "Walk This Way", I just thought that Run DMC were fans and wanted to hire an out-of-it 70s metal band to sing the choruses on their song.

Sad, No?

I thought Jimmy Somerville did the low vocal on "Don't Leave Me This Way" and the girl did the high one.

I thought Chris de Burgh was a poet of some reknown.

I've since thought better.

Then Gene Simmons came out and ate it.

It's a common urban legend, also told of Frank Zappa. See here.

Ya mean they don't?

I'm guilty of this one too.

By the way, life would be FAR cooler if this was ACTUALLY how guitars worked.

funniest thread *ever* btw

I thought Paul Stanley and/or Ace Frehley might possibly have been women.

I thought the scream on "Love Rollercoaster" was a woman being killed in the park where the song was recorded. I since realized that the song was not actually recorded at an amusement park, and that no females were harmed during its recording.

The first time I heard Bruce Springsteen (my brother in the room next door playing "The River"), I thought it was a new Kiss album, with Peter Criss singing.

Yes, I was a wee bit obsessed with Kiss.

Nothing wrong with that.