I’ve been sitting on this one for a while because it’s the perfect example of thinking you know who’s singing that song you’ve heard a million times. “Rock Me Gently” has that flawless Neil Diamond vibe – a voice that both belts and croons, cornball lyrics, a Brill Building level of pop songcraft … but that’s not Neil Diamond. It’s Canadian singer/songwriter Andy Kim.

1974’s “Rock Me Gently” was Kim’s only #1 in the US, but he’s not a one-hit wonder either. Kim had a total of six other songs in the Top 40 between 1968 and 1974. “Baby, I Love You” got to #9 and “Be My Baby” hit #17 – both covers of hits originally by The Ronettes. Kim sings both of those in a higher register than “Rock Me Gently,” although he could have raided Neil Diamond’s closet for this TV appearance.

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I don’t remember the name of my fourth-grade music teacher (or maybe it was fifth grade).

I don’t remember any of the songs we sang from the official music book. What I remember is Teacher handing out purple ditto machine pages of current pop songs. Boys and girls together, we’d all sing in unison. Looking back, none of the songs were really appropriate for schoolkids.

“Seasons in the Sun?”  A dying man saying goodbye. “Rhinestone Cowboy?” A failed singer clinging to dreams. “Beth?” A rock star choosing the band over his girlfriend. Even “Sloop John B” is about a drunken fight, food poisoning, and LSD (“the worst trip I’ve ever been on.”) As a kid, I was just happy to be singing songs I knew from the radio. Complicated harmonies are magical, but there’s also something special about a big pack of children’s voices all singing the melody together in a big room with no acoustics.

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“Aruba, Jamaica, Ooh, I wanna take ya…”

It’s one of the sloppiest rhymes in pop music and The Beach Boys’ last #1 hit. You might remember “Kokomo” from the Tom Cruise flair bartending movie, “Cocktail,” but did you know the music video was shot in Orlando at Walt Disney World?

It’s 1988 and Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort was built, but not yet open. The white sand beach would be a perfect place to fake a Beach Boys concert and with no one staying there, production could make all the noise they wanted. A friend who was on-set tells me it was rainy all day, so the sunny concert scene turned into a nighttime bonfire party.

Some of the guys and gals dancing along with Mike Love and the Boys were recruited at Downtown Disney (now Disney Springs) and yes, big Disney fan John Stamos is playing various percussion in the back.

Non-Orlando trivia – Credited writers on “Kokomo” include Mike Love, Scott McKenzie (“San Francisco – Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair”), John Phillips (The Mamas & The Papas), and Terry Melcher (the song’s producer who also did The Byrds’ first two albums).

Who doesn’t like free? Sometimes, you write a blog post and you need a pic to draw those eyeballs, something colorful but also cheap. The New York Public Library has more than 600,000 images online at digitalcollections.nypl.org and if you click “Search only public domain materials,” anything you find is yours to download and use however you want for free. (Make sure you click “public domain.”)

The NYPL collection has everything from scans of menus to greeting cards to publicity photos to stereograph slides – which are like an early version of a View-Master disc. It’s two images that blend into a 3D picture in the right device. If you want to try it out on the image below, try crossing your eyes like one of those Magic Eye pictures that hides a sailboat. That might work too.

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We’re headed back to 2001 for today’s episode of “Man, that singer really sounds like that other singer.” You’re watching the first season of “Scrubs,” the episode guest-starring Sean Hayes as a new intern that might be cooler than JD. Toward the end, you hear “Camera One,” a song with a singer who sounds a lot like Michael Stipe. “Camera One” eventually makes it to Number 22 – and Number One on the Adult Album Alternative chart. You call your local radio DJ and ask for it. That’s when you find out “Camera One” isn’t REM, but Josh Joplin Group.

To be fair, only parts of “Camera One” are REMesque. I would say it’s solidly in the male singer-songwriter pocket that was popular at the time, even if that singer was backed by a band. Remember Semisonic? Five for Fighting? Train? Josh Joplin was right there, giving radio and MTV what they wanted.

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