(Vocal/instrumental group, 1996–present) Canadian rockers Sum 41 – Deryck Whibley (vocals), Jason McCaslin (guitar), Tom Thacker (guitar, piano) and Steve Jocz (drums) – have struggled to shed the lightweight or ‘novelty act’ tag that often latched on to them. Certainly earlier albums All Killer No Filler (2001) and Does This Look Infected ? (2002) were high on infantile, ...
New-wave guitarist Bernard Sumner (b. 1956) was born in Salford, Manchester. Seeing the Sex Pistols in Manchester in June 1976 inspired Sumner and Peter Hook to acquire their first instruments, guitar and bass respectively. Originally called Warsaw, later Joy Division, they recruited drummer Stephen Morris and singer Ian Curtis for their band, making some self-produced records ...
One of the greatest achievements any guitar player can attain is an immediately recognizable signature tone and style. And though many guitarists have realized this goal, few have done it as emphatically as Police guitarist Andy Summers (b. 1942). From the chord stabs of ‘Roxanne’ and ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ to the arpeggios of ‘Message In A Bottle’ ...
(Guitar, vocals, b. 1931) Sumlin’s distinctive riffs are all over Howlin’ Wolf’s classic Chess recordings; Wolf plucked the Greenwood, Mississippi innovator from a band he had started with James Cotton, and Sumlin became an integral part of Wolf’s sound. After Wolf’s death in 1976, Sumlin joined saxophonist Eddie Shaw in his Wolf Gang band and ventured ...
With only a limited time to create an opera for the opening performance at the Aldeburgh Festival on 11 June 1960, Britten and Pears selected Shakespeare’s comic play, and by shortening and tightening it they were able to employ Shakespeare’s own text rather than rewriting it. The music, meanwhile, transforms the stage into the woods, and ...
Composed: 1946–52 Premiered: 1955, London Libretto by the composer Act I Mark asks the Ancients of the sanctuary for a new dance for his wedding to Jenifer. They warn him of the danger in meddling with tradition. Jenifer has run away from her father, King Fisher. She claims to want truth, not love, and disappears up a ...
(Vocals, b. 1984) Something of a mass of contradictions, Canada’s Lavigne has latterly been trying to shed the skater-pop image of her debut album Let Go (2002), which contained the massive single ‘Sk8er Boi’, in favour of a more mature, feminine approach. This was clear from her second album Under My Skin (2004), which displayed patently darker themes ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1996–present) Maryland’s Good Charlotte – Joel Madden (vocals), Benji Madden (guitar), Billy Martin (keyboards) and Paul Thomas (bass) – exist in much the same sphere as rockers such as Sum 41 and Blink-182, pop rock bands formed startlingly young, signed to majors and then reaping successes normally attributed to older bands. 2002’s The Young And The ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1999–present) Formed by school friends Jeff Stinco (guitar), Chuck Corneau (drums) and Pierre Bouvier (vocals) after the demise of their Reset project in Quebec, Simple Plan trade in a similar brand of punk to fellow countrymen Sum 41. Ever at loggerheads with their critics on charges of immaturity or ‘selling out’, the band referenced this in the ...
(Vocal group, 1998–present) The Sugababes’ body of work contains countless memorable singles – even their debut ‘Overload’ was a masterpiece of construction with sultry hooks. Line-up changes mean that none of the 2010 formation of Jade Ewen/Heidi Range/Amelle Berrabah is an original member. But top-class writing and production plus a subtle understanding (if not direct acknowledgement) of club culture, ...
Like the majority of their British counterparts, the original American punks had been making music for years before they began to receive acknowledgement in late-1975. In common with the Brits once again, the biggest problem was that nobody had a clue what to call it. Drawing their wild, high-energy style from such Detroit-based rock acts of the late-1960s ...
Broadly speaking, empiricism, from the Greek empeiria (‘experience’), is a philosophical tradition that accepts as fact only what can be verified by observation, or experience, through the use of the five senses. Galileo Galilei’s support of Copernican theory was a result of his observation of the planet Venus through a telescope. His insistence that what he saw ...
‘The Maid as Boss’ Composed: 1734 Premiered: 1734, Naples Libretto by Gennarantonio Federico Intermezzio I Uberto, a rich bachelor, is at his wits’ end regarding his servant, Serpina. She acts as though she is the mistress of the house and is disobedient, indecisive and opinionated. He decides to extricate himself from Serpina’s tyranny by taking a ...
c. 1620–c. 1660, Italian Singer Anna Renzi created the part of Ottavia, the neglected wife of Emperor Nero in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, in 1642, and she sang many other operatic roles in Venice. Renzi was one of the first female opera singers and also one of the first, if not the first, singers to ...
Many were those in 1972 who would have snorted at the idea that an artist so obsessed with superficiality and chart success would sustain a multi-decade career characterized by career-jeopardising innovation. Hours… (1999) saw Bowie co-writing with Tin Machine guitarist and subsequent frequent collaborator Reeves Gabrels. The album had originated in a commission to score a computer game called Omikron: The ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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