Trav's Staying Out of the Dungeon Trivia Meme

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to:

1. Choose a category from one of these: Television, Stage & Screen, Nightly News, Publishing, Lives & Times, Music

2. Find 8 bits of trivia about your selected category

3. Be sure to let me know when...ok, if...you decide to play along so I can see what you come up with.

4. You may tag, or simply offer the meme for borrowing or stealing as you like.

Please see Trav's blog if you want to know more - and please take the tag if you fancy doing the meme! http://travsthoughts.blogspot.com/

CAT STEVENS

By no means my specialist subject!

I had heard Cat Stevens songs before, and have an album he released as Yusaf Islam.

However last weekend when entertaining McTiny on our way back to the car after playing in the park we passed my boyfriend's favourite shop, a CD shop called Fopp.

We went in and I set McTiny (I had to give him a name.. wee man can only do for so long) off looking for a CD for £5.00. He found a couple - and then selected this one finally. It has quite a child-friendly cover.

So at the age of 28 I heard for the first time 'Tea for the Tillerman', and I loved it.

1. This (track above) is the last track on the album Tea for the Tillerman. It's so short, yet this burst of music made me happy despite the early hour at which I was heading to work this morning.

2. Cat Stevens was born 21 July 1948 in london, named Steven Georgiou. He was a pop singer in the late 60's and still performs today. The most famous of his songs over here is probably Father and Son. According to Wikipedia (the best source of information in all things... what was it Turnbaby... Wikimedia?) Wild World was the big hit in the USA. (?)



3. In 1975 he released a concept album entitled 'Numbers' about a planet in space. The album went alongside a book which he illustrated.

4. In 1977 Cat Stevens converted to Islam, and in 1978 he became known as Yusuf Islam. I have no interest in religion so this makes no difference to me, but on reading up (on the internet) it seems that he turned his back on music for a while in the 90's. And on reading comments left on Youtube I can see why - as there are several comments criticising him for use of instruments which are forbidden in the religion.

5. "...Yusuf volunteered his services to the hugely successful Live Aid concert in 1985. He even wrote a song especially for the occasion. Alas, Elton John's appearance ran too long, and to bring the schedules back for the American audience Yusuf's appearance was dropped from the line-up. Not to be deterred, he began writing and composing again. An album called A is for Allah was produced for the instruction of children and he also created his own record label: Mountain of Light." Quote from BBC.co.uk (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A30044585)

6. In 2004 Yusuf Islam was refused entry to the USA when he was mistaken for someone on the authorities' terrorist watch list who shared his name.

7. His interest in promoting peace has earnt Yusuf the "Man for Peace" award, which was presented to him by Mikhail Gorbachev at the opening of a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates (in 2004 too I think).



8. In 2006 the album Another Cup was released. It's a bit patchy. There's new stuff I'm not so keen on, and it turns out this is the album I had heard already. It includes a re-release of I think I see the Light, which is a cool tune.