‘Spaceman’, 1996 Another case of Levi’s jeans popularizing a song into a hit single – something they had done, not only with new songs, but also with reissues of classic soul songs in the 1980s – Babylon Zoo’s ‘Spaceman’ was an electro-pop hit that appealed instantly to a mid-1990s crowd, but would seem dated and clumsy today. Jas ...
(Yän Pe’-ter-sun Sva’-lingk) 1562–1621 Netherlandish composer Sweelinck was a composer, organist and teacher, numbering Scheidt among his pupils. He was enormously influential in the development of north and mid-German organ music, later prompting the most important writer on music of the German Baroque, Johann Mattheson (1681– 1764), to describe him as the ‘creator of Hamburg organists’. He worked ...
(Tenor, soprano and alto saxophones, 1925–85) John ‘Zoot’ Sims performed in the family vaudeville act as a child and was a professional musician at 15. His Lester Young-derived tenor sound and artful improvisations were heard to advantage in large and small bands. He worked with Benny Goodman intermittently over four decades, and was part of Woody Herman’s famous ...
‘I’ll Be There For You’, 1995 Thanks to its use as the theme tune to the mid-1990s (and then some) hit US comedy TV show Friends, ‘I’ll Be There For You’ is probably known to everyone on the planet over the age of 10. Initially, the song was written to fill the TV show’s opening credits, but as ...
On the face of it, the French Revolution failed when the House of Bourbon returned to rule France after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The face of it, however, was deceptive. The forces of liberalism unleashed by the Revolution had simply made a strategic withdrawal. In France, liberals, socialists and republicans remained opposed to extreme ...
Nabucco was originally named Nabucodonosor. An opera in four acts set in Jerusalem and Babylon in the sixth century bc, Nabucodonosor was first produced at La Scala, Milan on 9 March 1842 with Giuseppina Strepponi, who later became Verdi’s second wife, as Abigaille. The opera was not billed as Nabucco until 1844. It occasioned Verdi’s first serious ...
(Al-yek’-san’-der Kon-stan-te-no’-vich Gla’-zoo-nof) 1865–1936 Russian composer Glazunov was heir to the nationalism of ‘The Five’ and the cosmopolitanism of Tchaikovsky. He studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and completed many of Borodin’s works after he died, notating the overture to Prince Igor from memory. In the 1880s and 1890s he enjoyed international fame for works such as the tone-poem Stenka Razin (1885), the ballet ...
(Kär’-lo Ja-zoo-al’-do) c. 1561–1613 Italian composer Gesualdo may be more famous than he deserves to be. Everyone loves a good story and Gesualdo, who brutally murdered his wife and her lover, provides one of the most colourful and scandalous in all music history. A nobleman of minor rank, he found, strangely, that his marital history did not ...
(Singer-songwriter, b. 1968) Born near Manchester, the Dylanesque Gray toiled throughout the 1990s, while seemingly only Irish audiences listened. But mainstream success would not escape a songwriter with Gray’s talent, and soon chart hit after chart hit (‘Please Forgive Me’, ‘Babylon’) snatched mass radio airplay, bolstered by a middle-aged fan base and anyone who liked a ...
Malcolm John ‘Mac’ Rebennack Jr., a.k.a. ‘Dr. John the Night Tripper’, was born in New Orleans in November 1940. The singer and pianist began his professional career while he was still a teenager. He backed local favourites including Joe Tex and Professor Longhair on guitar and keyboards, produced and arranged sessions at Cosmio Studio, also frequented ...
(Frants fun Zoo-pa’) 1819–95 Austrian composer Suppé’s full name was Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé-Demelli. He came from Dalmatia, but received his musical education with Ignaz Xaver Seyfried (a pupil of Haydn) in Vienna, in whose famous theatres (an der Wien, Carl and Leopoldstadt) he conducted operetta. He composed over 150 operettas, including Boccaccio (1879), highly popular in ...
(Joo’-sep-pa Ver’-de) 1813–1901 Italian composer Verdi composed 28 operas over a period of 54 years. In his native Italy he became immensely popular early in his career, and by the time he died he was idolized as the greatest Italian composer of the nineteenth century. In other musical centres of Europe it took a little longer for Verdi’s genius to be ...
I’m having lunch in a Chelsea restaurant with a sprightly gent of 60-plus. His wits are quick and he’s a fabulous source of softly spoken gossip. He reflects a moment on one especially key evening in his life, early in 1963. ‘If you’re not sure who rock’n’roll belongs to,’ says Andrew Loog Oldham, ‘then it surely isn’t you ...
(Yo-han A’-dam Rin’-ken) 1623–1722 Netherlandish-German composer Reincken studied the organ with Heinrich Scheidemann (c. 1595–1663) at St Catharine’s, Hamburg, becoming his assistant then successor. Reincken was both teacher and virtuoso organist. Many musicians travelled to hear him play, including Georg Böhm (1661–1733), Buxtehude and J. S. Bach. In 1720 Bach himself played on the organ of St Catharine’s before ...
Like punk had never happened, the Stones continued into the 1980s as a juggernaut rock act. But like many 1960s and 1970s successes (Bob Dylan, David Bowie), they struggled to fit into a decade where technology was changing, music was changing and bands could be made or broken on the strength of a promotional video for MTV. Music ...
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David Bowie
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