(Vocal group, 1979–82) Led by singer/bassist Julian Cope, Teardrop Explodes formed in Liverpool in 1979. Paul Simpson (keyboards), Mick Finkler (guitar) and Gary Dwyer (drums) were the first of many musicians to pass through the band’s ranks. Their brassy psychedelia gained three hits, but the albums Kilimanjaro (1980) and Wilder (1981) inexplicably failed to register. Teardrop Explodes imploded ...
(Guitar, singer-songwriter, b. 1948) Discovered by The Beatles’ Apple label, for whom he recorded his first album in 1968, Taylor moved back to America to seek a cure for heroin addiction. He signed to Warner Bros and unleashed the three-million-selling Sweet Baby James in 1970, featuring the No. 3 single ‘Fire And Rain’. Although his early ...
Punk was pronounced dead on many occasions, as early as 1977 when The Clash signed to CBS and when The Sex Pistols split up the following year. By 1979 there was a consensus that, although the original impetus had died down, a thriving post-punk environment had arisen. Liverpool spawned the new psychedelia of Echo & The Bunnymen and ...
Goblet and hourglass drums are commonly found in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. They are not normally tuned to a specific pitch, although the heads may be tightened to create different sonorities. The djembe is perhaps the best-known of this type of drum. Goblet and Hourglass Drums Goblet drums are single-headed drums shaped like a wineglass ...
Fiddles, generically, are bowed lutes. The term ‘fiddle’ denotes a stringed instrument with a neck, bearing strings that are sounded by the use of friction rather than plucking or striking. Playing the Fiddle In almost all fiddles the world over, friction is provided by a bow strung with rosined horsehair. The hair is tensioned by the springiness ...
The word ‘lute’ is the collective term for a category of instruments defined as ‘any chordophone having a neck that serves as string bearer, with the plane of the strings running parallel to that of the soundboard’. In other words, the lute is a soundbox with a neck sticking out. The strings of some are plucked, some are ...
The mandolin is a small, teardrop shaped, plucked stringed instrument. Its most famous form is the Neopolitan mandolin, beloved of all romantics for its use on Venetian gondolas. It is descended from the lute and, since its rejuvenation in the nineteenth century, has remained a popular and versatile instrument. Mandola The mandolin developed from the Italian ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1937) Fender was born Baldemar Huerta in the southernmost tip of Texas, but adapted his Anglo stage name in the late 1950s as he shifted from the Tex-Mex music he grew up on to rockabilly. After a marijuana conviction, however, he was reduced to working as an auto mechanic when producer Huey Meaux ...
(Dance/vocal group, 1987–present) Founders and exponents of a downtempo groove of trip hop, 3D (Robert Del Naja), Daddy G (Grant Marshall) and Mushroom (Andrew Vowles) began working together in Bristol in the late 1980s in a loose collective under the name of The Wild Bunch. Named after a line in a comic book, their debut album Blue Lines ...
While Louis Armstrong remained a pre-eminent jazz symbol in the public mind through the 1930s, and inspired many imitators (Taft Jordan, Hot Lips Page, Wingy Manone), younger and better-schooled musicians were coming up who could navigate the trumpet with great agility and dexterity. They would break through the perimeters that Armstrong had established in the 1920s and take ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
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