TAKING WIKIPEDIA TO TASK for the seemingly endless number of mistakes in their pop music entries is like shooting the proverbial moose in a barrel. I could even make it a daily endeavor and turn this blog into a non-stop rant about Wikipedian boners. Fortunately, that does not interest me — at least, at this time. But there are some boners that do attract my attention.

But first, there may be a few younger readers wondering about the title of this article. Aside from its slang reference to a part (or a condition) of the male anatomy, Merriam-Webster defines a boner as “a foolish or careless mistake.” …

EACH YEAR I HIKE MOUNT RAINIER. I use the Carbon Glacier trail and I don’t ascend the whole mountain — that takes days and a team of other hikers. And I have to go it alone. This is just a vigorous day-hike that gets me up to about 7,000 feet where I can look down into the massive glacier.

I love the hike as it’s a rigorous outing through an often gloriously beautiful environment. But I have a specific reason to be on Ranier, on a specific date, alone. …

TWO THINGS: First, this is a follow-up to the article “Fake Rock & Roll Autographs May Outnumber the Real Ones!” previously published here on Tell It Like It Was. Second, like that article, this one was originally published several years ago on my Rather Rare Records blog. The issue of “authentically” singed items is as big a problem in 2020 as it was in 2015.

Now, onward . . .

FAKE AUTOGRAPHS were back in the news in 2106, this time featuring a mother-son combo forging signatures on thousands of sports items. They allegedly sold more than 27,000 fake items on eBay to thousands of victims who spent over $2 million.! This caught my attention because of the recent and unexpected deaths of two beloved superstars, David Bowie and Prince. So I though I would sound an alert to collectors of these two superstars and warn them to tread cautiously when buying autographed items as this is when fans are ripest for a rip-off. …

FINDING A NEW ITEM TO COLLECT in the world of Elvis records is a rather rare occurrence. After all, the man has been dead for more than forty years and RCA stopped mass-producing vinyl records more than twenty years ago. Nonetheless, “new” things do appear, such as a stash of unusual picture sleeves that recently turned up for sale on the internet.

The sleeve has four different photos of Elvis (see below) with one in the upper left and lower-right quarter of each side. The rest of the sleeve is a blue field with the titles of the songs on both sides of what appear to be thirty singles. …

BACK IN JANUARY, I was asked to answer a question on Quora: What was the first British #1 hit for Elvis Presley? My answer was short although not necessarily simple: I noted that some UK charts listed Heartbreak Hotel as reaching #1 while others only placed it at #2. The first single to reach #1 on all the major charts was All Shook Up.

My answer was derived from Elvis UK — The Ultimate Guide To Elvis Presley’s British Record Releases 1956–1985. Authored by John Townson, Gordon Minto, and George Richardson, it is an extraordinarily detailed look at every known variation of every known Elvis record released in the UK through 1986. …

I WAS NOT A FAN OF PUNK ROCK in the 1970s and ’80s. I admired the political aspect of the punk movement in the UK and the anybody-can-be-in-a-band spirit, but I didn’t connect with most of the music. (I still don’t care for most of it but have loosened up a bit with age.) I also didn’t care for the artwork that adorned the sleeves and jackets of punk records, although I did admire the anybody-can-be-an-artist spirit. (Please give a look-see at my article, “Did Sid Vicious, Elvis, and Sinatra Really Do It Their Way?”)

“Punk was just so different to me and seemed to give me a voice I lacked but didn’t know I lacked!” …

I don’t spend a lot of time on Quora but I will chime in every now and then, usually with the hope of directing a reader or two to one of my blogs. A question asked the other day was “What are some facts about Elvis that you won’t find on Wikipedia?” My answer was short and probably not what the questioner was looking for:

One fact that you will probably never learn on Wikipedia is that so, so many of the “facts” on Wikipedia — especially those that address popular music — just ain’t so. The articles addressing popular music — especially older rock & roll — are rife with errors and general misunderstandings of such things as the history of the genre and the criteria for RIAA Gold and Platinum Record Awards. …

WHILE I CONTINUE TO SLAVE AWAY over the rewriting of the nine previously published articles (with discographies and price guides) for the Elvis Gold Standard Series catalog, I do occasionally take a break and pay attention to other things. Such as Quora. The question that just appeared there is “How many Elvis albums are there.” Believe it or not, that is a rather difficult question to answer.

The topic was made more difficult by the fact that the first person to attempt to answer the question dragged sales figures into his answer. …