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20 Curious But True
Facts You Might Not Know About Dean Friedman
1.
After it was banned by the BBC, Dean
Friedman’s song, ‘McDonald’s Girl’,
off his ‘Rumpled Romeo’ album, was covered by the Canadian band,
Barenaked Ladies and became
the band’s first radio hit in Canada:
https://youtu.be/VkEKSBoKkeA
2.
Dean Friedman designed and programmed the
world’s first Virtual Reality
(VR) Video Game ever to appear on national TV, for
Nickelodeon TV:
https://youtu.be/OHsKv6Ecd6U
3.
Dean Friedman wrote, performed and
produced the musical soundtrack to the hit TV series,
‘Boon’, starring
Michael Elphick and
Neal Morrissey.
https://youtu.be/VhSgfnkxg_c [All
music, except for Jim Diamond’s opening theme song, written, performed
and produced by Dean Friedman for five seasons.]
4.
Dean Friedman wrote the first consumer
guide for music synthesizers in 1985,
‘The Complete Guide to Synthesizers, Sequencers and Drum Machines’
[AMSCO]:
http://amzn.com/082562410X
5.
Dean Friedman’s follow up
book, ‘Synthesizer Basics’
became a classic text book at universities and music conservatories
around the world and his three part video series,
‘Intro to Synthesis’
eventually went viral on YouTube, 30 years after it was produced!:
https://youtu.be/atvtBE6t48M
6.
Dean Friedman wrote,
performed and produced the musical soundtrack to the cult-horror-classic
film, ‘I Bought a Vampire
Motorcycle’, starring Boon leads, Neal Morrissey and Michael Elphick:
https://youtu.be/fbvqz-nv7Zw
7.
Dean Friedman invented
the ‘Music Atrium’ - a
musical playground for kids - a half-dozen strange and whimsical
musical instruments, with names like the
Booble, the
Boing-D-Boing, the
Jingle-Lingle-Lily, the
Honkblatt, the
Tone Stones and the
Laser Harp, that were
originally featured at the
Eureka! Children’s Museum, in Halifax, UK and were subsequently
reproduced at leading children’s museums and theme parks around the
world.
https://youtu.be/_qiQfA4cgGI
8.
Thirty years after it was
it was officially banned by the BBC, Dean Friedman’s song,
‘McDonald’s Girl’ suddenly
went viral on YouTube, covered by A Capella groups around the world,
leading, eventually, to its being featured in a national TV/Radio
campaign for McDonald’s,
performed by The Blenders who
had a #1 hit with the song in Norway:
https://youtu.be/EGqQLWqo48c
9.
Dean Friedman was one of the very first
recording artists to crowdfund
his own albums when, back in 2002 - a full six years before Kickstarter
was launched – Friedman invited his fans to pre-order his next CD,
‘The Treehouse Journals’. The
only other previous crowdfunded album project was by the British band,
Marillion, the previous year. Friedman has been crowdfunding all of his
independently released albums ever since.
10.
In 2005, Dean Friedman’s
UK Tour was almost cancelled after he issued a press release stating that
the first 10 people to purchase his ‘Squirrels
in the Attic’ CD would receive a free packet of cannabis seeds, which
had been donated by his sponsor,
Goldenseed.co.uk, an online distributor of cannabis seeds. The CD
featured a track titled, ‘Doint,
Doint, It’s Just a Little Joint’, espousing the virtues and relative
benign attributes of cannabis as compared to the infinitely more lethal
toxicity of alcohol:
http://www.deanfriedman.com/media/media_pressrelease_0101506_UKTourAlmostCancelled-01.htm
11.
The comedian,
David Baddiel, wrote an
entire episode of his SKY TV series,
‘The Baddiel Syndrome’, based
on attending a Dean Friedman gig and its aftermath, which featured
Friedman playing himself in an hilarious cameo performance: Part 1 of 2:
https://youtu.be/U3pBFC2eBlc ;
Part 2 of 2:
https://youtu.be/Yp7x1HGwDd8
12.
Dean Friedman was once smuggled onto the
set of The Big Breakfast at
6:30am to surprise the host and an ardent Friedman fan,
Gaby Roslin. The surprise
followed weeks of ‘Dean Friedman Days’ on the show, during which the
studio crew dressed up as Friedman wearing Dean Friedman mustaches and
wigs to tease, Gaby. The surprise culminated with Friedman jumping out of
a box and joining Gaby for a rendition of ‘Lucky Stars’:
https://youtu.be/aYAD4F0c6n8
13.
Dean Friedman was once introduced on TV by
Britain’s Prime Minister,
Harold Wilson, as seen at
49:05 on VH1’s ‘I Love the 70’s’:
https://youtu.be/y0fTwiPKz7E?t=46m40s.
14.
The legendary British punk band,
Half Man, Half Biscuit, had a
bestselling EP which contained an infamous track, written by its lead
singer/songwriter, Nigel
Blackwell, entitled, ‘The
Bastard Son of Dean Friedman’:
https://youtu.be/ZE_CUkUeWk8 Friedman vehemently denied ever having
met Nigel’s mum and answered with his own recording of ‘A
Baker’s Tale’ – the hitherto untold tale of Nigel Blackwell’s dubious
origins:
https://youtu.be/29Y8CwIRQM4 Friedman was invited to perform his
comical repost, ‘A Baker’s Tale’, at a Half Man, Half Biscuit gig in
Wolverhampton in what Biscuit fans have described as ‘an iconic moment in
rock & roll history!’:
https://youtu.be/FquVTumC0Us
15.
The great,
Kenny Everett, once
introduced Dean Friedman on The
Kenny Everett Video Show while
hanging upside down in the TV studio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw0m6h6Tvks
16.
BBC Radio Presenter,
Janey Lee Grace, once
performed the duet ‘Lucky Stars’ with Friedman on
Top of the Pops 2, while
unbeknownst to TV viewers she was
8 ½ months pregnant, a fact cleverly disguised by deft camera angles:
https://youtu.be/mCSkkCiBOOY
17.
Lenny Henry once flew Friedman from NY to England to surprise his
then wife, Dawn French, for
her 50th birthday party, after she accused him of ‘accidently’
throwing away her favorite Dean Friedman album during a house move. Dawn
French has described Friedman as the
Stephen Sondheim of popular
music, for his literary lyrics and deft songwriting.
18.
Dean Friedman once performed his classic
song, ‘Lucky Stars’ with the world renown,
Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets:
https://youtu.be/6LDVQkVYiHs
19.
Dean Friedman’s next door neighbors
actually moved out of the
neighborhood after hearing this song written by Friedman off his
album, ‘Squirrels in the Attic’, entitled,
‘Death to the Neighbors’:
https://youtu.be/tB0Xnsaj8pE
20.
Despite scurrilous rumors to the contrary,
Dean Friedman’s penis is ‘Just
the Right Size’!:
https://youtu.be/oUE6LlSM1QQ Seriously.
https://soundcloud.com/deanfriedman/sets/dean-friedman-words-music/s-CiYtF
For hi-res pics and bio go to media
page:
www.deanfriedman.com/media/media_home.html
For more info contact Steve Schwartz: media@deanfriedman.com
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