1.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
2.
Alternative rock
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Alternative rock is a genre of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s and 2000s. In this instance, the word refers to the genres distinction from mainstream rock music. The terms original meaning was broader, referring to a generation of musicians unified by their debt to either the musical style or simply the independent. Ethos of punk rock, which in the late 1970s laid the groundwork for alternative music, Alternative rock is a broad umbrella term consisting of music that differs greatly in terms of its sound, its social context, and its regional roots. Most of these subgenres had achieved minor mainstream notice and a few bands representing them, such as Hüsker Dü, with the breakthrough of Nirvana and the popularity of the grunge and Britpop movements in the 1990s, alternative rock entered the musical mainstream and many alternative bands became successful. By the end of the decade, alternative rocks mainstream prominence declined due to a number of events that caused grunge and Britpop to fade, emo attracted attention in the larger alternative rock world, and the term was applied to a variety of artists, including multi-platinum acts. Post-punk revival artists such as Modest Mouse and The Killers had commercial success in the early, before the term alternative rock came into common usage around 1990, the sort of music to which it refers was known by a variety of terms. In 1979, Terry Tolkin used the term Alternative Music to describe the groups he was writing about, in 1979 Dallas radio station KZEW had a late night new wave show entitled Rock and Roll Alternative. College rock was used in the United States to describe the music during the 1980s due to its links to the radio circuit. In the United Kingdom, dozens of small do it yourself record labels emerged as a result of the punk subculture, according to the founder of one of these labels, Cherry Red, NME and Sounds magazines published charts based on small record stores called Alternative Charts. The first national chart based on distribution called the Indie Chart was published in January 1980, at the time, the term indie was used literally to describe independently distributed records. By 1985, indie had come to mean a particular genre, or group of subgenres, at first the term referred to intentionally non–mainstream rock acts that were not influenced by heavy metal ballads, rarefied new wave and high-energy dance anthems. The use of alternative gained further exposure due to the success of Lollapalooza, for which festival founder, in the late 1990s, the definition again became more specific. Defining music as alternative is often difficult because of two conflicting applications of the word, the name alternative rock essentially serves as an umbrella term for underground music that has emerged in the wake of punk rock since the mid-1980s. Alternative bands during the 1980s generally played in clubs, recorded for indie labels. Sounds range from the gloomy soundscapes of gothic rock to the guitars of indie pop to the dirty guitars of grunge to the 1960s/1970s revivalism of Britpop. This approach to lyrics developed as a reflection of the social and economic strains in the United States and United Kingdom of the 1980s, by 1984, a majority of groups signed to independent record labels mined from a variety of rock and particularly 1960s rock influences. This represented a break from the futuristic, hyper-rational post-punk years
3.
Power pop
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Power pop is a pop rock music subgenre that draws its inspiration from 1960s British and American rock music. It typically incorporates a combination of devices such as strong melodies, clear vocals and crisp vocal harmonies, economical arrangements. Instrumental solos are usually kept to a minimum, and blues elements are largely downplayed, in the 1980s and 1990s, power pop continued as a commercially modest genre but by the mid-1990s through the 2000s, power pop was mainly in the underground. While its cultural impact has waxed and waned over the decades, Power pop is a more aggressive form of pop rock that is based on catchy, melodic hooks and energetic moods. The Small Faces are often cited as being among the progenitors of power pop, the Whos role in the creation of power pop has been cited by singer-songwriter Eric Carmen of the Raspberries, who has said, Pete Townshend coined the phrase to define what the Who did. For some reason, it didnt stick to the Who, but it did stick to these groups came out in the 70s that played kind of melodic songs with crunchy guitars. It just kind of stuck to us like glue, and that was okay with us because the Who were among our highest role models, other acts such as the Knickerbockers, the Easybeats and the Outsiders contributed iconic singles. Writer John Borack has noted, Its also quite easy to draw a line from garage rock to power pop. Although the formative influences on the genre were primarily British, the bands that developed and codified power pop in the 1970s were nearly all American. The Raspberries 1972 hit single Go All The Way is an almost perfect embodiment of the elements of power pop, the most influential group of the period may have been Big Star. The Replacements even recorded a song entitled Alex Chilton in honor of Big Stars frontman, spurred on by the emergence of punk rock and new wave, power pop enjoyed a prolific and commercially successful period in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although coined in the 1960s, and used as early as 1973 in reference to Sweet, as the novelist Michael Chabon has written, Power pop in its essential form. Did not come into existence for a number of years after it was first identified, like so much of the greatest work turned out by popular artists of the 1970s, true power pop is quintessential second-generation stuff. The term was used in reference to critics favorites Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. Los Angeles-based Bomp. magazine championed power pop in its March 1978 issue, tying the genres roots to 1960s groups like the Who, like their punk brethren, late–1970s power pop groups favored a leaner and punchier sound than their early–1970s predecessors. Some occasionally incorporated synthesizers into their music, though not to the degree as did their new wave counterparts. Representative singles from the period include releases from the Bomp, records label by 20/20, Shoes and the Romantics. Major label groups like Cheap Trick, the Cars and Blondie merged power pop influences with other styles and achieved their first mainstream success with albums released in 1978
4.
Indie rock
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Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Originally used to independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock. In the mid-1980s, the term began to be used to describe the music produced on punk and post-punk labels. Some prominent indie rock record labels were founded during the 1980s, during the 1990s, Grunge bands broke into the mainstream, and the term alternative lost its original counter-cultural meaning. The term indie rock became associated with the bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status, by the end of the 1990s indie rock developed subgenres and related styles including lo-fi, noise pop, emo, slowcore, post-rock and math rock. In the 2000s, changes in the industry and in music technology enabled a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success. In the early 2000s, a new group of bands played a stripped-down. The commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands, The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives, emo also broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s. By the end of the 2000s the proliferation of bands was being referred to as indie landfill. The term indie rock, which comes from independent, describes the small and relatively low-budget labels on which it is released, the influences and styles of the artists have been extremely diverse, including punk, psychedelia, post-punk and country. Allmusic identifies indie rock as including a number of varying musical approaches compatible with mainstream tastes, in fact, there is an everlasting list of genres and subgenres of indie rock. Many countries have developed a local indie scene, flourishing with bands with enough popularity to survive inside the respective country. However, there are still indie bands that start off locally, Indie rock has been identified as a reaction against the macho culture that developed in alternative rock in the aftermath of Nirvanas success. However, Cortney Harding pointed out that this sense of equality is not reflected in the number of women running indie labels. The BBC documentary Music for Misfits, The Story of Indie pinpoints the birth of indie as the 1977 self-publication of the Spiral Scratch EP by Manchester band Buzzcocks, Indie pop and indie were originally synonymous. In the mid-1980s, indie began to be used to describe the music produced on post-punk labels rather than the labels themselves. The indie rock scene in the US was prefigured by the rock that dominated college radio playlists. In the United States, the term was associated with the abrasive, distortion-heavy sounds of the Pixies, Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr
5.
OK Go
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OK Go is an American rock band originally from Chicago, Illinois, now based in Los Angeles, California. The band is composed of Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind, Dan Konopka and Andy Ross, the band is known for its often quirky and elaborate one-take music videos. The original members formed as OK Go in 1998 and released two albums before Duncans departure. The bands video for Here It Goes Again won a Grammy Award for Best Music Video in 2007, the bands lead singer, Damian Kulash, met bassist Tim Nordwind at Interlochen Arts Camp when they were 11. Kulash was in for graphic design, Nordwind for music, the band name comes from an art teacher of the band members saying, OK. They kept in touch after camp, often exchanging mixtapes which influenced each others musical taste and they met the bands future guitarist and keyboardist Andy Duncan in high school. Nordwind and Duncan moved to Chicago for college, where they formed the band Stanleys Joyful Noise with drummer Dan Konopka, the name OK Go was adopted in 1998, when Kulash moved to Chicago to join the band. At the end of 2000, the band was invited by radio host Ira Glass to serve as the band for live performances of This American Life in Boston, New York. The band self-released two EPs, titled Brown EP and Pink EP, which were culled from an albums worth of songs recorded in February 2000 with producer Dave Trumfio, to serve as demos. Though the members of OK Go eventually left for Los Angeles and New York, in a 2011 interview, Kulash described the bands formative years, “As far as the band is concerned, we only have one home town. We all live in L. A. Chicago had such a close-knit, the Empty Bottle was where it all started for us. We played at the Metro and the Double Door as well, the band released its debut album, OK Go, on September 17,2002, after it was pushed back by the label from its original June release date. To promote the release, the label sent out miniature ping pong tables to press outlets, in the United States, the album reached #1 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart and #107 on the Billboard 200 Chart. In the United Kingdom, the first single Get Over It debuted at no,27, in the UK singles chart on March 16,2003, and the band performed it on that weeks edition of Top of the Pops. Also that week, the video was named video of the week by Q magazine. The bands second album, Oh No, was recorded in Malmö, Sweden in the fall of 2004 and was produced by Tore Johansson and mixed by Dave Sardy. After recording, in February 2005, Andy Duncan left the band citing creative differences, major label pressures, and the bands rigorous touring schedule. Ross introduced himself to the fans by writing a blog entitled The Will To Rock
6.
Frodus
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Frodus was a Washington, D. C. -based post-hardcore band. Frodus was founded in 1993 by vocalist/guitarist Shelby Cinca and drummer Jason Hamacher, the band went through numerous bassists over the course of their career. They are described by critics as one of the most influential bands of the 1990s. Their mixture of rock and hardcore punk plus their lyrical themes, frequently dark and dissonant and seen as esoteric for the time, proved to be influential to bands such as Thrice. Frodus first releases were self-distributed cassettes and 7 inches, such as Babe, Tzo-Boy, two other releases, on now defunct indie labels, followed. Frodus later signed with Tooth and Nail Records, an independent label out of Seattle, the name Frodus came from the last episode of TV series The Monkees called Mijacogeo. After Frodus broke up in 1999, it took two years to find a label to release their final album, the first label, MIA Records, shut down due to the owner having to settle a long-standing lawsuit. Afterwards, long-time Frodus friend Tony Weinbender offered to release Frodus final album, Shelby Cinca briefly joined the band Bluebird as a second guitarist following the breakup of Frodus, but left before recording any material with them. In 2000, Nathan went on to form The Out Circuit and Night Is Invisible, in 2003, the founding members Shelby Cinca and Jason Hamacher along with bassist Joe Lally of Fugazi joined to form The Black Sea. They later changed their name to Decahedron, Lally left shortly after the completion of their debut album and was replaced by Jonathan Ford. Continually plagued by bassist fluctuation anomalies, Ford quit in 2004 and was replaced by Jake Brown. In 2005, they suspended operations after the release of their EP entitled 2005, Shelby Cinca then focused on his Swedish project Frantic Mantis with Håkan Johansson and Per Stålberg of Division of Laura Lee, and completed the third album by The Cassettes. In 2006, Jason Hamacher started a project with Mike Schliebaum of Darkest Hour called Zealot, Cinca began releasing IDM, made on a Game Boy with the Nanoloop software, under his own name. 2006 also saw the relaunch of the Frodus web-presence and consolidation of its MySpace entities, the site is an ongoing project of archiving all known interviews, previous website designs, press clippings, and digital transfers for media content. Shelby Cinca also began remastering out-of-print releases and adding them to the iTunes library, in 2010, Frodus released a new 7″ of material, Soundlab 1, recorded in 2009 with Liam Wilson on bass, as a limited edition 7″ vinyl on Lovitt Records. In 2015, there were rumours of a reissue of the final album. Gordon Liddy Show Call Soundlab 1 Compilation Appearances Squirrel – 22-d10 The Art of Rocketry – Malcontent It Goes Without Saying – Dec, – There Will Be No More Scum Torch Benefit – Suspicion Breeds Confidence Frodus
7.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
