In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. *** Walter Murphy & The Big Apple Band – "A Fifth Of Beethoven" HIT : October 9, 1976 STAYED AT : 1 week One night in December of 1808, Ludwig Van Beethoven stepped onto the podium of Vienna's Theater An Der Wein. He was there to debut a whole new series of works he'd written, including his Fifth Symphony. That night, Beethoven conducted the orchestra himself. Things didn't go well. The orchestra played badly. The theater was freezing cold. It took Beethoven four hours to get through all his new shit. By the time he'd finished, people were restless. A year and a half later, though, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was published. Orchestras around the world started playing it. Its central four-note phrase eventually became, perhaps, the one piece of classical music that everyone recognizes, the one that

In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. *** Rick Dees And His Cast Of Idiots – "Disco Duck (Part 1)" HIT : October 16, 1976 STAYED AT : 1 week Five days before his song "Disco Duck" hit , Rick Dees was fired. At the time, Dees was working as a DJ on the Memphis AM station WMPS. He'd recorded "Disco Duck" as a sort of side-hustle goof, but the song had taken off. WMPS wouldn't let Dees play the song; they figured it would violate FCC rules about conflict of interest. Other Memphis stations wouldn't play the song, either; they didn't want to promote their competition. So "Disco Duck" was basically taking off everywhere except Memphis. But one morning on the air, Dees casually mentioned that this song he'd recorded might hit , and he also noted that he wasn't allowed to play it. Dees' station manager heard him, and he fired Dees on the

In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. *** Chicago – "If You Leave Me Now" HIT : October 23, 1976 STAYED AT : 2 weeks The year before Chicago first hit , the band already had enough big songs that they released a greatest-hits album. Chicago were the type of band who don't exactly need the pop charts. They did well on the pop charts — 10 top-10 singles before they scored that first . But they more or less existed as their own unit, one that could ignore pop-music trends and still sell vast numbers of albums to the mysterious American record-buying public. That first single was practically an accident. They would've been fine without it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9_d-sFhmRM Chicago had a context when they first started. The group came together in the city of Chicago in 1967, calling themselves the Big Thing and playing top-40

In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my

Motown Records turned 60 this year, and to celebrate the anniversary, the famed label is releasing Motown Unreleased: 1969, a digital-only compilation featuring 60 previously unreleased studio recordings from 1969. That includes unavailable or never-before-heard tracks from the likes of the Supremes, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Jackson 5, and Gladys Knight. "Motown is clearly evolving at this time," said Harry Weinger, Vice President of A&R at Universal Music Enterprises, who oversaw the project. "There's an opening for writers and producers to experiment with the Motown sound but, for certain topics, or musical ideas, or even artists, the company isn't ready. Or, it's a simple case of having only so many slots for releases. So, until now, those songs went unreleased." All of the tracks in the collection were mastered for the first time from their original analog tapes, and half of them were mixed for the first time for this release. A&R executives

The Cars released their self-titled debut album in 1978, when new wave had not yet become a commercial force. In a way, the Cars invented the truly pop version of new wave — the efficient, commercial, eternally catchy version of the genre that could compete with the studio-rock titans of the late-'70s. Generations of streamlined guitar-pop bands owe them a debt of gratitude, and most of them know it. Last week, Cars frontman Ric Ocasek died at the age of 75. And last night, one of his most famous and vocal fans paid tribute. Killers frontman Brandon Flowers has long been vocal about how important the Cars were to him, even as a young kid growing up long after the band broke up. The Killers have covered the Cars before, and last year, when the Cars were finally inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Flowers made the induction speech. A few days ago, after Ocasek's death, Flowers took to Twitter and shared the text of an email he sent to Ocasek a few years ago. In that email, he

In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. *** Rod Stewart – "Tonight's The Night (Gonna Be Alright)" HIT : November 13, 1976 STAYED AT : 8 weeks For the past few months, I've been writing an AV Club column about blockbuster movies, one that's not too different in concept from this column. And one of the weirdest things I've learned is this: In the '70s, people were going to see porn movies in vast numbers. I'd known that there'd been some cultural frisson around movies like Deep Throat. I had not known that Deep Throat and Behind The Green Door were among the highest-grossing movies of 1972. Box-office record-keeping from that era is spotty, but it definitely seems like those two movies — both of which were just straight-up no-joke porn — earned more money than Jeremiah Johnson or Cabaret or The Getaway, all of which were huge hits. Deep

Hundreds of fans who purchased tickets from reliable third-party vendors like StubHub, SeatGeek, and Vivid Seats were turned away from the Black Keys' tour opener at the Wiltern on Thursday night, The Los Angeles Times reports. Disgruntled ticketholders who were denied entry spilled out onto the sidewalk outside the LA venue, stuck on hold with representatives from ticket companies, uncertain who to blame for the problem. Not the Black Keys, say the Black Keys. "Last night's concert tickets were $25 and geared toward the fan club," the band explained in a statement yesterday. "This was our first show in over four years and the kickoff of the Let's Rock Tour. Because we were playing a venue far smaller than the rest of the venues on the tour as a warmup show, we turned off ticket transferability to ensure that our fans got in the door at the low ticket prices we set for them." The Black Keys went on to blame third-party vendors, whose ticket prices were inflated as much as 800%, for the

"I'm sick and tired of the way that I feel." That was how Christopher Owens introduced himself to the world. It's the opening line from "Hellhole Ratrace," the first Girls song that anyone heard. "Hellhole Ratrace" was a seven-minute sprawl, with Owens floating his tremulous gulp of a voice over an acoustic strum and a few dazed tremolo noodles. Halfway into the song, a rush of guitar-fuzz exploded into the mix, a great crashing goosebump moment. But the song refused to resolve into the anthem it could've been. It remained broken, hazy, off-kilter. Through a fog of echo, Owens sang about trying to escape depression and solitude, trying to find community and companionship: "I don't wanna cry my whole life through / I want to do some laughing too." In the grainy video, Owens and his friends drank and shoplifted and made out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcqwfFKagH4 I was smitten. A lot of people were smitten. "Hellhole Ratrace" came into the world at the end of 2008 — a mysterious

Thom Yorke opened up about his ex-partner's death on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, as The Guardian points out. His 23-year relationship to artist Rachel Owens ended in 2015, and she died of cancer the following year. They had two children together. "When the kids’ mum died, it was a very difficult period and we went through a lot," Yorke said in the interview. "It was very hard. She suffered a great deal and my ambition is to make sure that we have come out of it all right, and I hope that’s what’s happening. I’m lucky now because I have a new partner who has come and brought a light into all of it, which has taken a great deal of strength. And really if all that’s OK … If I’m able to make some music that expresses all that and is still important to people, that’s more than I can ask for." It's the most candid Yorke has been about her death publicly, though the band did dedicate the 2017 OK Computer reissues to Owen. Elsewhere in the program, Yorke described himself as a