#58: Oh Yeah by Yello
City: Calgary, Alberta
Radio Station: CFCN
Peak Month: October 1987
Peak Position in Calgary ~ #7
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #51
Peak Position on Cashbox Top 100 Singles ~ #49
YouTube.com: “Oh Yeah”
Lyrics: “Oh Yeah”
Yello is a Swiss electronic music band formed in Zurich in 1979. Boris Blank was born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1952. Before he joined Yello he was a truck driver. As a child he was very interested in music, but had no formal training. He never learned to read musical notation but always was interested in producing new sounds and samples. Blank began experimenting with tape loops and echo effects as a teenager. He recorded water sounds from a bucket of water and played sounds on a homemade bamboo flute. It was in this period he met Carlos Perón, who was born in Zurich in 1952. The third member to join the band was Deiter Meier. Born in 1945 in Zurich, Meier studied law in university, but never completed his degree. He went into banking and became a professional gambler. Blank and Perón approached Meier when they realized they needed a singer, as Blank’s vocals were better suited to backing vocals. The band’s name, Yello, was chosen as a neologism based on a comment made by Meier, “a yelled Hello”
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#67: Lovely Rita by the Beatles
City: Calgary, Alberta
Radio Station: CKXL
Peak Month: June 1967
Peak Position in Calgary ~ #9
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Lovely Rita”
Lyrics: “Lovely Rita”
Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool in 1942. He attended the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and met fellow classmates George Harrison on a school bus. When Paul was 14 his mom died from a blockage in one of her blood vessels. In his early teens McCartney learned to play trumpet, guitar and piano. He was left-handed and restrung the strings to make it work. In 1957, Paul met John Lennon and in October he was invited to join John’s skiffle band, The Quarrymen, which Lennon had founded in 1956. After Paul joined the group his suggested that his friend, George Harrison, join the group. Harrison became one of the Quarrymen in early 1958, though he was still only 14. Other original members of the Quarrymen, Len Garry, Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, Eric Griffiths and Pete Shotton left the band when their set changed from skiffle to rock ‘n roll. John Duff Lowe, a friend of Paul’s from the Liverpool Institute, who had joined the Quarrymen in early 1958 left the band at the end of school. This left Lennon, McCartney and Harrison as remaining trio. On July 15, 1958, John Lennon’s mother died in an automobile accident.
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