Live Aid
Live Aid was a dual-venue benefit concert held on Saturday 13 July 1985, an ongoing music-based fundraising initiative. The original event was organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the "global jukebox", the event was held at Wembley Stadium in London, United Kingdom and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, United States. On the same day, concerts inspired by the initiative happened in other countries, such as the Soviet Union, Japan, Austria and West Germany, it was one of the largest-scale satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time. The impact of Live Aid on famine relief has been debated for years. One aid relief worker stated that following the publicity generated by the concert, “humanitarian concern is now at the centre of foreign policy” for western governments. Geldof said Live Aid "created something permanent and self-sustaining", but asked why Africa is getting poorer; the organisers of Live Aid tried, without much success, to run aid efforts directly, so channelled millions to the NGOs in Ethiopia, much of which went to the Ethiopian government of Mengistu Haile Mariam – a brutal regime the UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wanted to “destabilise” – and was spent on guns.
The 1985 Live Aid concert was conceived as a follow-on to the successful charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", the brainchild of Geldof and Ure. In October 1984, images of hundreds of thousands of people starving to death in Ethiopia were shown in the UK in Michael Buerk's BBC News reports on the 1984 famine; the BBC News crew were the first to document the famine, with Buerk's report on 23 October describing it as "a biblical famine in the 20th century" and "the closest thing to hell on Earth". The report shocked Britain, motivating its citizens to inundate relief agencies, such as Save the Children, with donations, to bring the world's attention to the crisis in Ethiopia. Bob Geldof saw the report, called Midge Ure from Ultravox, together they co-wrote the song, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in the hope of raising money for famine relief. Geldof contacted colleagues in the music industry and persuaded them to record the single under the title'Band Aid' for free. On 25 November 1984, the song was recorded at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill and was released four days later.
It stayed at number one for five weeks in the UK, was Christmas number one, became the fastest-selling single in Britain and raised £8 million, rather than the £70,000 Geldof and Ure had expected. Geldof set his sights on staging a huge concert to raise further funds; the idea to stage a charity concert to raise more funds for Ethiopia came from Boy George, the lead singer of Culture Club. George and Culture Club drummer Jon Moss had taken part in the recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and in December 1984 Culture Club were undertaking a tour of the UK, which culminated in six nights at Wembley Arena. On the final night at Wembley, Saturday 22 December 1984, an impromptu gathering of some of the other artists from Band Aid joined Culture Club on stage at the end of the concert for an encore of "Do They Know It's Christmas?". George was so overcome by the occasion he told Geldof that they should consider organising a benefit concert. Speaking to the UK music magazine Melody Maker at the beginning of January 1985, Geldof revealed his enthusiasm for George's idea, saying, "If George is organising it, you can tell him he can call me at any time and I'll do it.
It's a logical progression from the record, but the point is you don't just talk about it, you go ahead and do it!"It was clear from the interview that Geldof had had the idea to hold a dual venue concert and how the concerts should be structured: The show should be as big as is humanly possible. There's no point just 5,000 fans turning up at Wembley, it would be great for Duran to play three or four numbers at Wembley and flick to Madison Square where Springsteen would be playing. While he's on, the Wembley stage could be made ready for the next British act like the Thompsons or whoever. In that way lots of acts could be featured and the television rights, tickets and so on could raise a phenomenal amount of money. It's not an impossible idea, one worth exploiting. Among those involved in organising Live Aid were Harvey Goldsmith, responsible for the Wembley Stadium concert, Bill Graham, who put together the American leg; the concert grew in scope. Tony Verna, inventor of instant replay, was able to secure John F. Kennedy Stadium through his friendship with Philadelphia Mayor Goode and was able to procure, through his connections with ABC's prime time chief, John Hamlin, a three-hour prime time slot on the ABC Network and, in addition, was able to supplement the lengthy program through meetings that resulted in the addition of an ad-hoc network within the US, which covered 85 percent of TVs there.
Verna designed the needed satellite schematic and became the Executive Director as well as the Co-Executive Producer along with Hal Uplinger. Uplinger came up with the idea to produce a four-hour video edit of Live Aid to distribute to those countries without the necessary satellite equipment to rebroadcast the live feed; the concert began at 12:00 British Summer Time at Wembley Stadium in the United Kingdom
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded in 1887, evolving from the American Graphophone Company, the successor to the Volta Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, the second major company to produce records. From 1961 to 1990, Columbia recordings were released outside North America under the name CBS Records to avoid confusion with EMI's Columbia Graphophone Company. Columbia is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels, alongside former longtime rival RCA Records, as well as Arista Records and Epic Records. Artists who have recorded for Columbia include Harry Styles, AC/DC, Louis Armstrong, Tony Bennett, Beyoncé, Dave Brubeck, The Byrds, Johnny Cash, Mariah Carey, The Chainsmokers, The Clash, Miles Davis, Rosemary Clooney, Neil Diamond, Celine Dion, Bob Dylan, Wind & Fire, Duke Ellington, 50 Cent, Erroll Garner, Benny Goodman, Adelaide Hall, Billy Joel, Janis Joplin, John Mayer, George Michael, Billy Murray, Pink Floyd, Lil Nas X, Frank Sinatra and Garfunkel, Bessie Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, Pharrell Williams, Bill Withers, Paul Whiteman, Joe Zawinul The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1887 by stenographer and New Jersey native Edward D. Easton and a group of investors.
It derived its name from the District of Columbia. At first it had a local monopoly on sales and service of Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders in Washington, D. C. Maryland, Delaware; as was the custom of some of the regional phonograph companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own, its catalogue of musical records in 1891 was 10 pages. Columbia's ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the North American Phonograph Company's breakup. Thereafter it sold only phonographs of its own manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced a molded brown wax record, to use up old stock. Columbia introduced black wax records in 1903. According to one source, they continued to mold brown waxes until 1904 with the highest number being 32601, "Heinie", a duet by Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan; the molded brown waxes may have been sold to Sears for distribution. Columbia began selling disc records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded only by their "Toy Graphophone" of 1899, which used small, vertically cut records.
For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound. In order to add prestige to its early catalog of artists, Columbia contracted a number of New York Metropolitan Opera stars to make recordings; these stars included Marcella Sembrich, Lillian Nordica, Antonio Scotti and Edouard de Reszke, but the technical standard of their recordings was not considered to be as high as the results achieved with classical singers during the pre–World War I period by Victor, England's His Master's Voice or Italy's Fonotipia Records. After an abortive attempt in 1904 to manufacture discs with the recording grooves stamped into both sides of each disc—not just one—in 1908 Columbia commenced successful mass production of what they called their "Double-Faced" discs, the 10-inch variety selling for 65 cents apiece; the firm introduced the internal-horn "Grafonola" to compete with the popular "Victrola" sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company.
During this era, Columbia used the "Magic Notes" logo—a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas. Columbia stopped recording and manufacturing wax cylinder records in 1908, after arranging to issue celluloid cylinder records made by the Indestructible Record Company of Albany, New York, as "Columbia Indestructible Records". In July 1912, Columbia decided to concentrate on disc records and stopped manufacturing cylinder phonographs, although they continued selling Indestructible's cylinders under the Columbia name for a year or two more. Columbia was split into one to make records and one to make players. Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, Ed Easton went with it, it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation. In late 1922, Columbia went into receivership; the company was bought by its English subsidiary, the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1925 and the label, record numbering system, recording process changed. On February 25, 1925, Columbia began recording with the electric recording process licensed from Western Electric.
"Viva-tonal" records set a benchmark in tone and clarity unequaled on commercial discs during the 78-rpm era. The first electrical recordings were made by Art Gillham, the "Whispering Pianist". In a secret agreement with Victor, electrical technology was kept secret to avoid hurting sales of acoustic records. In 1926, Columbia acquired Okeh Records and its growing stable of jazz and blues artists, including Louis Armstrong and Clarence Williams. Columbia had built a catalog of blues and jazz artists, including Bessie Smith in their 14000-D Race series. Columbia had a successful "Hillbilly" series. In 1928, Paul Whiteman, the nation's most popular orchestra leader, left Victor to record for Columbia. During the same year, Columbia executiv
Jools Holland
Julian Miles "Jools" Holland, OBE, DL is an English pianist, singer and television presenter. He was an original member of the band Squeeze and his work has involved him with many artists including Sting, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, George Harrison, David Gilmour, The The and Bono. Since 1992, he has hosted Later... with Jools Holland, a music-based show aired on BBC2, on which his annual show Hootenanny is based. Holland is a published author and appears on television shows besides his own and contributes to radio shows. In 2004, he collaborated with Tom Jones on an album of traditional R&B music. Holland regularly hosts the weekly programme Jools Holland on BBC Radio 2, a mix of live and recorded music and general chat and features studio guests, along with members of his orchestra. Holland was educated at Shooters Hill Grammar School, a former state grammar school on Red Lion Lane in Shooter's Hill, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich in southeast London, from which he was expelled for damaging a teacher's Triumph Herald.
Holland played as a session musician before finding fame, his first studio session was with Wayne County & the Electric Chairs in 1976 on their track "Fuck Off". Holland was a founding member of the British pop band Squeeze, formed in March 1974, in which he played keyboards until 1981 and helped the band to achieve millions of record sales, before pursuing his solo career. Holland began issuing solo records in 1978, his first EP being Boogie Woogie'78, he continued his solo career through the early 1980s, releasing an album and several singles between 1981 and 1984. He branched out into TV. Holland achieved notoriety by inadvertently using the phrase, "be there, or be an ungroovey fucker" in an early evening TV trailer, live across two channels, for the show, causing him to be suspended from the show for six weeks, he referred to this in his sitcom The Groovy Fellers with Rowland Rivron. Holland appeared as a guest host on MTV. In 1983 Holland played an extended piano solo on The The's re-recording of "Uncertain Smile" for the album Soul Mining.
In 1985, Squeeze unexpectedly regrouped including Holland as their keyboard player. Holland remained in the band until 1990, at which point he again departed Squeeze to resume his solo career as a musician and a TV host. In 1987, Holland formed the Jools Holland Big Band, which consisted of himself and Gilson Lavis from Squeeze; this became the 18-piece Jools Holland's Rhythm and Blues Orchestra. Between 1988 and 1990 he performed and co-hosted along with David Sanborn during the two seasons of the music performance programme Sunday Night on NBC late-night television. Since 1992 he has presented the music programme Later... with Jools Holland, plus an annual New Year's Eve Hootenanny. In 1996, Holland signed a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records, his records are now marketed through Rhino Records. On 29 November 2002, Holland was in the ensemble of musicians who performed at the Concert for George, which celebrated the music of the late George Harrison. In January 2005 Holland and his band performed with Eric Clapton as the headline act of the Tsunami Relief Cardiff.
The Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, includes singers Louise Marshall and Ruby Turner and his younger brother, singer-songwriter and keyboard player, Christopher Holland. On 4 June 2012, Holland performed at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham Palace in London. In June 2012, he presented a programme about the popular songs of London on BBC Two, he presents a weekly programme on BBC Radio 2, combining guests and chat, with recorded and live music. On 24 June 2017 Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra played a set on the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival which included a special appearance from Chris Difford, a current member of his previous band Squeeze. In November 2017 Holland released a new album As You See Me Now, working alongside Jose Feliciano and embarked on a sell-out tour of 33 UK dates. In many interviews Jools described Feliciano as his true hero, saying: "When I heard his music, it had the same effect on me as Ray Charles, The Beatles and Motown. Hearing José sing and play was like an arrow straight to my heart."
On 29 August 2005, Holland married Christabel McEwen, his girlfriend of 15 years and daughter of artist Rory McEwen. Holland lives in the Westcombe Park area of Blackheath in southeast London, where he had his studio, Helicon Mountain, built to his design and inspired by Portmeirion, the setting for the 1960s TV series The Prisoner, he owns a manor house near medieval Cooling Castle in Kent. He appeared on the cover of Railway Modeller magazine in January 2019. In the attic of his house, Holland has spent ten years building a 100-foot model railway, it is full of miniature landscapes that stretch from Berlin to London. He started with paintings from early 1960s London. "In the evenings, he builds some trains and buildings before switching on some music, pouring a glass of wine and switching on the trains to watch them move around the room."He received an OBE in 2003 in the Queen's Birthday Honours list, for services to the British music industry as a television presenter and musician. In September 2006, Holland was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Kent.
Holland was appointed an honorary fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University at a ceremony held at Canterbury Cathedral on 30 January 2009. On 1 February 2011 he was appointed honorary colonel of 101 Engineer Regiment. In June 2006 Holland performed in Southend for HIV/AIDS charity Mildmay, in early 2007 he performed at Wells and Rochester Cathedrals to ra
Bob Geldof
Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof, is an Irish singer-songwriter, political activist and occasional actor. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s, alongside the punk rock movement; the band had Number One hits with his compositions "Rat Trap" and "I Don't Like Mondays". Geldof co-wrote "Do They Know It's Christmas?", one of the best-selling singles of all time, starred in Pink Floyd's 1982 film Pink Floyd – The Wall as "Pink". Geldof is recognised for his activism anti-poverty efforts concerning Africa. In 1984 he and Midge Ure founded the charity supergroup Band Aid to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia, they went on to organise the charity super-concert Live Aid the following year and the Live 8 concerts in 2005. Geldof serves as an adviser to the ONE Campaign, founded by fellow Irishman Bono, is a member of the Africa Progress Panel, a group of ten distinguished individuals who advocate at the highest levels for equitable and sustainable development in Africa.
A single father, Geldof has been outspoken for the fathers' rights movement. Geldof was appointed Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Elizabeth II, is a recipient of the Man of Peace title which recognises individuals who have made "an outstanding contribution to international social justice and peace", among numerous other awards and nominations. In 2005 he received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. Geldof was brought up in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland, a son of Robert and Evelyn Geldof, his paternal grandfather, Zenon Geldof, was a hotel chef. His paternal grandmother, Amelia Falk, was a British Jew from London; when Geldof was six or seven, his mother, Evelyn, 41, died of a cerebral haemorrhage. Geldof attended Blackrock College, where he was bullied for being a poor rugby player and for his middle name, Zenon. After work as a slaughterman, a road navvy and pea canner in Wisbech, he was hired as a music journalist in Vancouver, British Columbia, for The Georgia Straight.
He guest hosted the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation children's program Switchback. Returning to Ireland in 1975, he became lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, a rock group linked with the punk movement. In 1978, The Boomtown Rats had their first No. 1 single in the UK with "Rat Trap", the first new wave chart-topper in Britain. In 1979, they gained international attention with their second UK No. 1, "I Don't Like Mondays". This was both controversial. Geldof had written it in the aftermath of Brenda Ann Spencer's attempted massacre at an elementary school in San Diego, California in 1979. In 1980, The Boomtown Rats released the album Mondo Bongo, its single "Up All Night" was a huge hit in the U. S. and its video was played on MTV. Geldof became known as a colourful interview subject; the Boomtown Rats' first appearance on Ireland's The Late Late Show saw Geldof as deliberately brusque to host Gay Byrne and during his interview he attacked Irish politicians and the Catholic Church, which he blamed for many of the country's problems.
He responded to nuns in the audience who tried to shout him down by saying they had "an easy life with no material worries in return for which they gave themselves body and soul to the church". He criticised Blackrock College; the interview caused uproar. In January 2013, Geldof announced The Boomtown Rats would be reforming to play together for the first time since 1986 at that year's Isle of Wight Festival in June, they have subsequently announced further tour dates and released a new CD Back to Boomtown: Classic Rats Hits. Geldof left the Boomtown Rats in 1986, to launch a solo career and publish his autobiography, Is That It?, a UK best-seller. His first solo records sold reasonably well and spawned the hit singles "This Is The World Calling" and "The Great Song of Indifference", he occasionally performed with other artists, such as David Gilmour and Thin Lizzy. A performance of "Comfortably Numb" with Gilmour is documented in the 2002 DVD David Gilmour in Concert. In 1992, he performed at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert with the surviving members of Queen at the old Wembley Stadium, singing a song he jokingly claimed to have co-written with Mercury, called "Too Late God".
The song was co-written by Karl Hyde. Geldof has worked as a DJ for XFM radio. In 1998, he erroneously announced Ian Dury's death from cancer due to hoax information from a listener, disgruntled at the station's change of ownership; the event caused music paper NME to call Geldof "the world's worst DJ". Along with U2's Bono, he has devoted much time since 2000 to campaigning for debt relief for developing countries, his commitments in this field, including the organisation of the Live 8 concerts, kept Geldof from producing any more musical output since 2001's Sex, Age & Death album. In 2002, he was listed as one of the 100 Greatest Britons in a poll conducted among the general public, despite the fact that he is not British. After Live 8, Geldof returned to his career as a musician by releasing a box set containing all of his solo albums entitled Great Songs of Indifference – The Anthology 1986–2001 in late 2005. Following that release, Geldof toured, albeit with mixed success. In July 2006, Geldof arrived at Milan's Arena Civica, a venue capable of holding 12,000 people, to play a scheduled concert to find that the organisers had not put the tickets on general sale and
Synth-pop
Synth-pop is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, art rock and the "Krautrock" of bands like Kraftwerk, it arose as a distinct genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, while the mid-1970s saw the rise of electronic art musicians. After the breakthrough of Gary Numan in the UK Singles Chart in 1979, large numbers of artists began to enjoy success with a synthesizer-based sound in the early 1980s. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestra introduced the TR-808 rhythm machine to popular music, the band would be a major influence on early British synth-pop acts; the development of inexpensive polyphonic synthesizers, the definition of MIDI and the use of dance beats, led to a more commercial and accessible sound for synth-pop.
This, its adoption by the style-conscious acts from the New Romantic movement, together with the rise of MTV, led to success for large numbers of British synth-pop acts in the US. "Synth-pop" is sometimes used interchangeably with "electropop", but "electropop" may denote a variant of synth-pop that places more emphasis on a harder, more electronic sound. In the mid to late 1980s, duos such as Erasure and Pet Shop Boys adopted a style, successful on the US dance charts, but by the end of the decade, the'new wave' synth-pop of bands such as A-ha and Alphaville was giving way to house music and techno. Interest in new wave synth-pop began to revive in the indietronica and electroclash movements in the late 1990s, in the 2000s synth-pop enjoyed a widespread revival and commercial success; the genre has received criticism for alleged lack of musicianship. Synth-pop music has established a place for the synthesizer as a major element of pop and rock music, directly influencing subsequent genres and has indirectly influenced many other genres, as well as individual recordings.
Synth-pop was defined by its primary use of synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers, sometimes using them to replace all other instruments. Borthwick and Moy have described the genre as diverse but "...characterised by a broad set of values that eschewed rock playing styles and structures", which were replaced by "synthetic textures" and "robotic rigidity" defined by the limitations of the new technology, including monophonic synthesizers. Many synth-pop musicians had limited musical skills, relying on the technology to produce or reproduce the music; the result was minimalist, with grooves that were "typically woven together from simple repeated riffs with no harmonic'progression' to speak of". Early synth-pop has been described as "eerie and vaguely menacing", using droning electronics with little change in inflection. Common lyrical themes of synth-pop songs were isolation, urban anomie, feelings of being cold and hollow. In its second phase in the 1980s, the introduction of dance beats and more conventional rock instrumentation made the music warmer and catchier and contained within the conventions of three-minute pop.
Synthesizers were used to imitate the conventional and clichéd sound of orchestras and horns. Thin, treble-dominant, synthesized melodies and simple drum programmes gave way to thick, compressed production, a more conventional drum sound. Lyrics were more optimistic, dealing with more traditional subject matter for pop music such as romance and aspiration. According to music writer Simon Reynolds, the hallmark of 1980s synth-pop was its "emotional, at times operatic singers" such as Marc Almond, Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox; because synthesizers removed the need for large groups of musicians, these singers were part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation. Although synth-pop in part arose from punk rock, it abandoned punk's emphasis on authenticity and pursued a deliberate artificiality, drawing on the critically derided forms such as disco and glam rock, it owed little to the foundations of early popular music in jazz, folk music or the blues, instead of looking to America, in its early stages, it consciously focused on European and Eastern European influences, which were reflected in band names like Spandau Ballet and songs like Ultravox's "Vienna".
Synth-pop saw a shift to a style more influenced by other genres, such as soul music. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, around the same time as rock music began to emerge as a distinct musical genre; the Mellotron, an electro-mechanical, polyphonic sample-playback keyboard was overtaken by the Moog synthesizer, created by Robert Moog in 1964, which produced electronically generated sounds. The portable Minimoog, which allowed much easier use in live performance was adopted by progressive rock musicians such as Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman of Yes. Instrumental prog rock was significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Faust to circumvent the language barrier, their synthesizer-heavy "Kraut rock", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy M
Paul Young
Paul Antony Young is an English singer and musician. The frontman of the short-lived bands Kat Kool & the Kool Cats, Streetband and Q-Tips, he was turned into a 1980s teen idol by subsequent solo success, he is famous for hit singles such as "Love of the Common People", "Wherever I Lay My Hat", "Come Back and Stay", "Every Time You Go Away" and "Everything Must Change", all reaching the top 10 of the UK Singles Chart. Released in 1983, his debut album No Parlez, the first of three UK number-one albums, made him a household name, his smooth yet soulful voice belonged to a genre known as "blue-eyed soul". At the 1985 Brit Awards, Young received the award for Best British Male. In July 1985, Young appeared at Live Aid held at Wembley Stadium, performing the Band Aid hit "Do They Know It's Christmas?", his own hits "Come Back and Stay" and "Every Time You Go Away", with Alison Moyet joining him on stage to perform "That's The Way Love Is". "Every Time You Go Away" reached number one in the US in 1985, won Best British Video at the 1986 Brit Awards.
Since the mid-1990s, he has performed with his band Los Pacaminos. Paul Young was born in Luton, England, he has an older brother, a younger sister, Joanne. As a youth, after school, he played football for the Vauxhall Motors factory and in his spare time played in several bands as a bass guitarist; the first group for which he became lead singer was The Kool Kats. In the late 1970s he joined Streetband, who had one Top 20 hit in the UK, with the humorous, novelty track "Toast". In December 1979, Streetband disbanded; the ex-Streetbanders added new recruits Dave Lathwell on guitar and Baz Watts on drums and became Q-Tips. In addition, a four piece brass section was created by Steve Farr, Richard Blanchard, Stuart Van Blandamer and Tony Hughes who all hailed from the North London and Hertfordshire area, while organist Ian Kewley lived in Essex. Q-Tips' name derived from a well-known brand of cotton buds. Q-Tips's first rehearsals took place in November 1979, their first concert was on 18 November 1979 at the Queens Arms Hotel in Harrow.
This was followed by another at the Horn of Plenty in St Albans - a regular gig for Streetband during 1978 - and a total of 16 in their first month of existence. Some personnel changes occurred during the first six months, with Blanchard and Lathwell leaving the band. By 1 April 1980, the band had recorded two tracks, "SYSLJFM", "Having a Party", both recorded at the Livingstone Studios in Barnet. Constant touring and concert appearances had built a strong fan base by mid-1981, when the small amount of soul music covers were outnumbered by the band's own tracks; the professionalism of the band had attracted the attention of several record labels, with the late Mickie Most confirming on BBC Radio 1's Round Table programme that Q-Tips "...are the best live band working at the moment". In August 1980, the British music magazine NME reported that Q-Tips had released their debut, eponymous album. In time, Garth Watt Roy replaced John Gifford on guitar, Blandamer was replaced by Nick Payne; this line-up remained for the rest of the band's career.
They appeared on BBC Television's In Concert, Rock Goes to College and The Old Grey Whistle Test in the latter part of 1981. Other television appearances included children's Saturday morning TV. Q-Tips opened for The Knack, Thin Lizzy, Bob Marley and the Average White Band; the band toured with After the Fire, supported The Who on their 12-date UK tour in 1980. In 1981, Q-Tips played the Montreux Jazz Festival. With poor record sales after the release of two albums and seven singles, the Q-Tips broke up in early 1982 when Paul Young signed a solo recording contract with CBS. In late 1982 and early 1983, the brass section and drummer of Q-Tips toured with Adam Ant on the UK and US legs of his Friend or Foe tour, some remained for Ant's 1984 Strip tour. Young teamed up again with Q-Tips for a reunion tour in 1993; the Q-Tips disbanded in 1982, Young was signed by Columbia Records as a solo performer. Young's new backing band The Royal Family included keyboardist Kewley, fretless bass player Pino Palladino, guitarist Steve Bolton, drummer Mark Pinder, backing singers Maz Roberts and Kim Leslie AKA'The Fabulous Wealthy Tarts'.
His first two singles, "Iron Out the Rough Spots" and a cover of "Love of the Common People", had no success, but the third, a cover of the Marvin Gaye song "Wherever I Lay My Hat", reached No. 1 in the UK singles chart for three weeks in the summer of 1983, the first of 14 British Top 40 singles. The song was included on the soundtrack of the 1992 British comedy film Peter's Friends. Similar success followed all over Europe. In the UK, follow-up single "Come Back and Stay" reached No. 4, a re-release of "Love of the Common People" made it to No. 2 and received radio airplay in the United States, his debut album No Parlez was certified platinum in various countries. Young's style at the time was a warm, approachable blue-eyed soul, though he sometimes received playful criticism for his fashion decisions. However, his choice of an Antony Price silk suit for the cover of No Parlez proved to be impractical for the concert stage, where his energetic shows dictated more robust clothing; the year 1984 was a difficult one for Young, as his first heavy promotional and live concert tour of America strained his vocal cords to the extent that he was forced to rest his voice and did not sing for much of the year.
He recovered sufficiently to become involved with the Ba
Van Morrison
Sir George Ivan Morrison OBE, better known as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and record producer. His professional career began as a teenager in the late 1950s playing a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of that time. Van Morrison rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he recorded the garage band classic "Gloria", his solo career began under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967. After Berns's death, Warner Bros. Records bought out his contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks. Though this album garnered high praise, it was a poor seller. Moondance established Morrison as a major artist, he built on his reputation throughout the 1970s with a series of acclaimed albums and live performances, he continues to record and tour, producing albums and live performances that sell well and are warmly received, sometimes collaborating with other artists, such as Georgie Fame and The Chieftains.
Much of Morrison's music is structured around the conventions of soul music and R&B, such as the popular singles "Brown Eyed Girl", "Jackie Wilson Said", "Domino" and "Wild Night". An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, loosely connected, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition and stream-of-consciousness narrative, such as the album Astral Weeks and the lesser known Veedon Fleece and Common One; the two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic soul". He has received two Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, the 2017 Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was knighted for services to tourism in Northern Ireland, he is known by the nickname Van the Man to his fans. George Ivan "Van" Morrison was born on 31 August 1945, at 125 Hyndford Street, Belfast, Northern Ireland, as the only child of George Morrison, a shipyard electrician, Violet Stitt Morrison, a singer and tap dancer in her youth.
Morrison's family were working class Protestants descended from the Ulster Scots population that settled in Belfast. From 1950 to 1956, who began to be known as "Van" during this time, attended Elmgrove Primary School, his father had what was at the time one of the largest record collections in Ulster and the young Morrison grew up listening to artists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Solomon Burke. Those guys were the inspiration. If it wasn't for that kind of music, I couldn't do what I'm doing now."His father's record collection exposed him to various musical genres, such as the blues of Muddy Waters. When Lonnie Donegan had a hit with "Rock Island Line", written by Huddie Ledbetter, Morrison felt he was familiar with and able to connect with skiffle music as he had been hearing Lead Belly before that. Morrison's father bought him his first acoustic guitar when he was eleven, he learned to play rudimentary chords from the song book The Carter Family Style, edited by Alan Lomax.
In 1957, at the age of twelve, Morrison formed his first band, a skiffle group, "The Sputniks", named after the satellite, Sputnik 1, launched earlier that year by the Soviets. In 1958, the band played at some of the local cinemas, Morrison took the lead, contributing most of the singing and arranging. Other short-lived groups followed – at fourteen, he formed Midnight Special, another modified skiffle band and played at a school concert; when he heard Jimmy Giuffre playing saxophone on "The Train and The River", he talked his father into buying him a saxophone, took lessons in tenor sax and music reading. Now playing the saxophone, Morrison joined with various local bands, including one called Deanie Sands and the Javelins, with whom he played guitar and shared singing; the line-up of the band was lead vocalist Deanie Sands, guitarist George Jones, drummer and vocalist Roy Kane. The four main musicians of the Javelins, with the addition of Wesley Black as pianist, became known as the Monarchs.
Morrison attended Orangefield Boys Secondary School. As a member of a working-class community, it was expected he would get a regular full-time job, so after several short apprenticeship positions, he settled into a job as a window cleaner—later alluded to in his songs "Cleaning Windows" and "Saint Dominic's Preview". However, he had been developing his musical interests from an early age and continued playing with the Monarchs part-time. Young Morrison played with the Harry Mack Showband, the Great Eight, with his older workplace friend, Geordie Sproule, whom he named as one of his biggest influences. At age 17, Morrison toured Europe for the first time with the Monarchs, now calling themselves the International Monarchs; this Irish showband, with Morrison playing saxophone and harp, in addition to back-up duty on bass and drums, toured steamy clubs and US Army bases in Scotland and Germany, of
