(Vocal/instrumental group, 1989–present) Ian Broudie produced bands as diverse as Echo And The Bunnymen and Icicle Works before his own success. The electronic hook of ‘Pure’ was recorded alone, becoming an unexpected hit in 1989. From here The Lightning Seeds then became a studio and touring act in support of a string of immaculate hit pop songs including ‘Three ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1965–72) This Los Angeles ‘garage band’ comprised Sky Saxon (vocals), Jan Savage (guitar), Daryll Hooper (organ) and Rick Andridge (drums). Slipping into the national Top 40 in 1965, their second single, ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’, triggered further grippingly slipshod exercises prior to ‘going psychedelic’ in 1967. A desperate in-concert album, Raw And Alive signalled the end ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1995–99, 2005–present) Crispian Mills (vocals), Jay Darlington (keyboards), Alonza Bevan (bass) and Paul Winter-Hart (drums) formed with the sole intention of making music that sounded as if it had been recorded in the 1960s. Their debut album K (1996) delivered this vision in spades and hits included a cover version of Deep Purple’s ‘Hush’. By second album ...
By the early 1990s British pop and alternative fans were crying out for homegrown pop that combined old-fashioned rock charisma with lyrics and a definitively British sound, to counteract the manufactured teen acts, Euro-dance novelties and US imports. This arrived in the mid-1990s in the shape of Britpop: a wave of guitar bands with short, sharp pop songs. ...
Drumming in West Africa is a rural indigenous art form, and it accompanies dance and singing. Master drummers are members of the griot class of professional musical entertainers. These men lead the drumming and promote the tradition by teaching students. The two main types of West African drum are goblet drums and hourglass drums made from a hollowed-out single log ...
The humanist principles of the Enlightenment removed opera from the extravagant world of baroque and landed it in entirely new territory. After 1720, Baroque became a target for changes initiated by the scholar Gian Vincenzo Gravina of the Arcadian Academy in Rome. Baroque operas based on classical myths had developed exaggerated and ultimately ludicrous forms. Under the Enlightenment principles that ...
The roots of country music are entwined with the roots of America itself. What we call ‘country music’ today was planted some 300 years ago by the earliest European explorers of the New World. Adventurers and exiles, religious dissenters and slave traders, farmers, merchants, freemen and women, indentured workers, slaves, criminals and members of ...
The schools of naturalism and realism had an immediate effect in Italy. With scant literary tradition to draw on from this period, Italian writers in the second half of the nineteenth century seized upon Zola’s beliefs as a potent dramatic source. The style they developed came to be known as verismo and was exemplified by writers such as Giovanni Verga ...
Kátya belongs to the final decade of Janáček’s work and was inspired by his muse, Kamila Stösslova. She was the magnificent obsession who received a steady stream of letters from the composer up until his death, some of them confirming that Kátya was written for her. The opera was based on Ostrovsky’s drama The Storm, which concerns a ...
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 ...
Semele was first performed at Covent Garden on 10 February 1744 in the manner of an oratorio, without action or scenery. Nevertheless, Handel’s occasional collaborator Charles Jennens regarded it as ‘a bawdy opera’. Congreve’s libretto, based on a story from Ovid, had originally been set as an opera by John Eccles in 1707, but it was ...
The elaborate attempt to stage Rinaldo in London aroused interest from satirists Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in the Spectator. Addison, after examining the printed wordbook, reported: ‘The Opera of Rinaldo is filled with Thunder and Lightning, Illuminations, and Fireworks; which the Audience may look upon without catching Cold, and indeed without much danger of being ...
(An-ton’-yo Ve-val’-de) 1678–1741 Italian composer and violinist Vivaldi was born in Venice. After learning the violin with his father, and possibly other teachers too, he joined the orchestra of St Mark’s. He was ordained in 1703, later acquiring the nickname Il prete rosso (‘the Red Priest’), because of his red hair. Partly because of fragile health and partly perhaps ...
The bluesman who took the blues into the mainstream, B.B. King (b. 1925) is also its ambassador to the world. His solid, seasoned style is heard internationally. King’s style draws on the Mississippi blues of Elmore James and Muddy Waters, the Chicago blues of Buddy Guy and Magic Sam, and the West-Coast blues of T-Bone Walker ...
When the great Mississippi musician Riley King left the cotton fields to seek his fortune in Memphis in 1946, he had $2.50 in his pocket and a battered guitar in his hand. Today, his name is synonymous with blues music itself, yet his ascendance to the zenith of the blues world never altered his friendly, downhome ...
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An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
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Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.