From column #275:

Q: Whatever happened to Stephen Bishop? He's put out some "Best Of" and demo albums but he hasn't had anything new in a long time.

A: Stephen Bishop is a singer and songwriter best known for his 1977 hit, “On and On”. After moving to Los Angeles in the early ‘70s, some of Bishop’s songs found their way to Art Garfunkel who included two of them on his 1975 Top Ten album, Breakaway. Soon, more artists like Barbra Streisand, the Four Tops, and Johnny Mathis were recording his songs. His biggest hit as a songwriter came in 1985 when “Separate Lives”, from the movie White Nights, became a No. 1 hit for Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin. Most recently, Bishop recorded an album of Brazilian music called Saudade, which was released in early 2007. The album features Latin artists Luciana Souza and Oscar Castro-Neves along with guitar work by Eric Clapton. Currently, Saudade can only be purchased at Target stores or www.target.com.

Q: I was flipping the radio dial recently and heard an old song by the Velvet Underground on a classic rock station, but a woman was singing the lead instead of Lou Reed. Who is the woman?

A: You are most likely referring to “Femme Fatale” from the band’s 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. The album is often referred to as “the banana album” because of its distinctive cover art by Andy Warhol, who also produced the album. The woman you hear on “Femme Fatale” is Christa Päffgen, otherwise known as Nico. Warhol, who had taken the Velvets (which included Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker) under his wing as part of his mixed-media Exploding Plastic Inevitable, had also recently extended his patronage to the mysterious fashion model-turned singer, and thought that her inclusion in the band would liven things up a bit. Nico was born on October 16, 1938, in Nazi-controlled Germany. In 1946, she and her mother fled the Russian occupation and found refuge in the American Sector of Berlin. By age 14, Christa was working as a model with a Berlin fashion house. At 15, a modeling assignment took her to the Spanish island, Ibiza, where she met photographer Herbert Tobias who christened her “Nico” after his ex-boyfriend, filmmaker Nico Papatakis. She only appeared with the Velvets on this one album, although she would continue an association with both Reed and Cale on subsequent solo albums. She died in July 1988 while visiting friends on Ibiza.

Q: I have never understood the second line in the song “It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas”. The first two lines are “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go, Take a look at the five and ten, glistening once again”. What is a “five and ten”?

A: A five and ten is a name for a store that carries inexpensive items that cost either five cents or ten cents. They were the equivalent of our modern-day “dollar stores”. The stores, also known as five and dime stores or dime stores, flourished from the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s. When Meredith Willson wrote the song in 1951, five and ten stores could be found in most cities in the U.S.

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