As the genre’s name so boldly implies, timing and image were both of critical importance to the realm of nu metal. In pure musical terms there was little to unite the scene’s leading exponents, save for the radical detuning of their instruments and a desire to distance themselves from such old-school hard rock favourites as Iron Maiden and Metallica. ...
One of the best-known Renaissance music manuscripts, the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, was compiled by the musician Francis Tregian (1574–1619) during his imprisonment in London for recusancy from 1609 until his death. The manuscript contains an unusually wide-ranging collection of nearly 300 keyboard pieces by English composers (many of them also known for their Catholic sympathies), including Tallis, Byrd ...
Eddie Van Halen redefined the sound of heavy metal at the end of the 1970s. His high-velocity solos, distinguished by his finger-tapping technique and tremolo-bar effects, on Van Halen’s 1978 debut album heralded a new era in hard-rock guitar that rejected the clichés of a jaded genre. His solo on Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ in 1982, which effectively ...
As a guitarist and songwriter, Nuno Bettencourt draws from many styles and influences. Born in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores in 1966, Bettencourt grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. As a teenager, he began playing drums, bass and keyboards, but ultimately chose guitar as his primary instrument, drawing heavy influence from Eddie Van Halen ...
When singer-guitarist Dave Mustaine was dismissed from the original Metallica line-up, it opened the door for a young Bay Area-based guitarist named Kirk Hammett (b. 1962) to come in and lead the thrash-metal charge. What Hammett and his mates in Metallica would accomplish from that point, no one could have predicted. Born in San Francisco, California, Hammett ...
Theodore ‘Ted’ Nugent (b. 1948), the Motor City Madman, first gained fame as the lead guitarist of The Amboy Dukes. With The Dukes, and later as a solo artist, Nugent’s intense playing formed the backbone of songs like ‘Journey To The Center Of The Mind’, ‘Stranglehold’, ‘Free For All’, ‘Cat Scratch Fever’, ‘Motor City Madhouse’, ‘Paralyzed’ and ‘Wango ...
(Kärl Fe’-lip E-ma’-noo-el Bakh) 1714–88 German composer In the eighteenth century, ‘Bach’ usually meant C. P. E. Bach, not his father Johann Sebastian. Born in Weimar, he studied under his father, then read law at the university in Frankfurt an der Oder. He took up a post in Berlin at the court of Prince Frederick, later Frederick ...
The term ‘manufactured pop’ is, in many ways, a red herring. Despite the changes in our perception of pop talent brought about by The Beatles, much mainstream pop has been based on the ‘Tin Pan Alley’ tradition, in which teams of producers, composers and music-business moguls find young, attractive performers (mainly singers) to front potential ...
The term ‘heavy metal’ came from the controversial US Beat Movement novel, Naked Lunch, in which the author, William Burroughs, talked about ‘heavy metal thunder’. This phrase was used in Steppenwolf’s 1968 single ‘Born To Be Wild’, and helped christen an emerging sub-genre of hard rock. The origins of heavy metal are heard in the hard rock ...
Speed and thrash metal sprang to prominence in America during the early 1980s, with fans around the globe forming their own groups. Equally indebted to the do-it-yourself ethos of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and the underground spirit of hardcore punk, the style’s original progenitors were frighteningly young, but had spent years sharpening their musicianship. Speed ...
Death metal and grindcore both had roots in the decaying thrash metal scene of the mid-1980s. As that decade concluded, musicians on both sides of the Atlantic were looking for new and horrific ways to shock. The styles ended up gravitating towards one another, but began life as very different entities. Death metal bands like Morbid Angel and Death ...
Canadian trio Rush had little idea of the magnitude of their actions when they released Caress Of Steel in September of 1975. Just seven months after the group’s second album, Fly By Night, it saw them board a creative wave that for many fans would peak with their next studio release, 1976’s conceptual album 2112. Though still recognizeable ...
By the end of the 1980s, thrash metal was on its last legs. Metallica and Slayer were on the path towards acceptance by the mainstream and it seemed as though heavy metal was in danger of losing not only the extremity upon which it had been founded, but also its shock value. How ill-founded those assumptions turned out to ...
Funk stars of the 1970s like The Ohio Players, Sly & The Family Stone and Funkadelic didn’t realize for a decade that hard rock ears had been paying attention. That same decade, Aerosmith’s combination of white-boy electric blues and propulsive arena hard rock had been deemed as unique, with just Grand Funk Railroad working along the similar lines. ...
(E-ma-el’ Shab-re-a’) 1841–94 French composer After hearing Wagner’s Tristan in Munich in 1879 with D’Indy and Duparc, Chabrier resigned his government post to become a full-time composer. The spectacular success of España (1883), a scintillating symphonic poem, proved him a master orchestrator. He composed two successful opéras comiques, L’étoile (‘The Star’, 1877) and Le roi malgré lui (‘King in ...
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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.