1.
Seattle
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Seattle is a seaport city on the west coast of the United States and the seat of King County, Washington. With an estimated 684,451 residents as of 2015, Seattle is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America. In July 2013, it was the major city in the United States. The city is situated on an isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, about 100 miles south of the Canada–United States border, a major gateway for trade with Asia, Seattle is the fourth-largest port in North America in terms of container handling as of 2015. The Seattle area was inhabited by Native Americans for at least 4,000 years before the first permanent European settlers. Arthur A. Denny and his group of travelers, subsequently known as the Denny Party, arrived from Illinois via Portland, the settlement was moved to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay and named Seattle in 1852, after Chief Siahl of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. Logging was Seattles first major industry, but by the late-19th century, growth after World War II was partially due to the local Boeing company, which established Seattle as a center for aircraft manufacturing. The Seattle area developed as a technology center beginning in the 1980s, in 1994, Internet retailer Amazon was founded in Seattle. The stream of new software, biotechnology, and Internet companies led to an economic revival, Seattle has a noteworthy musical history. From 1918 to 1951, nearly two dozen jazz nightclubs existed along Jackson Street, from the current Chinatown/International District, to the Central District, the jazz scene developed the early careers of Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Ernestine Anderson, and others. Seattle is also the birthplace of rock musician Jimi Hendrix and the alternative rock subgenre grunge, archaeological excavations suggest that Native Americans have inhabited the Seattle area for at least 4,000 years. By the time the first European settlers arrived, the people occupied at least seventeen villages in the areas around Elliott Bay, the first European to visit the Seattle area was George Vancouver, in May 1792 during his 1791–95 expedition to chart the Pacific Northwest. In 1851, a party led by Luther Collins made a location on land at the mouth of the Duwamish River. Thirteen days later, members of the Collins Party on the way to their claim passed three scouts of the Denny Party, members of the Denny Party claimed land on Alki Point on September 28,1851. The rest of the Denny Party set sail from Portland, Oregon, after a difficult winter, most of the Denny Party relocated across Elliott Bay and claimed land a second time at the site of present-day Pioneer Square, naming this new settlement Duwamps. For the next few years, New York Alki and Duwamps competed for dominance, david Swinson Doc Maynard, one of the founders of Duwamps, was the primary advocate to name the settlement after Chief Sealth of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. The name Seattle appears on official Washington Territory papers dated May 23,1853, in 1855, nominal land settlements were established. On January 14,1865, the Legislature of Territorial Washington incorporated the Town of Seattle with a board of managing the city
2.
Washington (state)
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It was admitted to the Union as the 42nd state in 1889. Washington is sometimes referred to as Washington State or the State of Washington to distinguish it from Washington, Washington is the 18th largest state with an area of 71,362 square miles, and the 13th most populous state with over 7 million people. Washington is the second most populous state on the West Coast and in the Western United States, Mount Rainier, an active stratovolcano, is the states highest elevation at almost 14,411 feet and is the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States. Washington is a leading lumber producer and its rugged surface is rich in stands of Douglas fir, hemlock, ponderosa pine, white pine, spruce, larch, and cedar. Manufacturing industries in Washington include aircraft and missiles, shipbuilding and other equipment, lumber, food processing, metals and metal products, chemicals. Washington has over 1,000 dams, including the Grand Coulee Dam, built for a variety of purposes including irrigation, power, flood control, the Washington Territory was named after George Washington, the first President of the United States. The area was part of a region called the Columbia District after the Columbia River. The area was renamed Washington in order to avoid confusion with the District of Columbia, Washington is the only U. S. state named after a president. To distinguish it from the U. S. capital, which is named for George Washington, Washington is sometimes referred to as Washington State, or, in more formal contexts. Washingtonians and other residents of the Pacific Northwest refer to the state simply as Washington, calling the nations capital Washington, D. C. or, often, Washington is the northwestern-most state of the contiguous United States. Washington is bordered by Oregon to the south, with the Columbia River forming the western part, to the west of Washington lies the Pacific Ocean. The high mountains of the Cascade Range run north-south, bisecting the state, from the Cascade Mountains westward, Western Washington has a mostly marine west coast climate, with mild temperatures and wet winters, autumns and springs, and relatively dry summers. The Cascade Range contains several volcanoes, which reach altitudes significantly higher than the rest of the mountains, from the north to the south, these major volcanoes are Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Adams. Mount Rainier, the tallest mountain in the state, is 50 miles south of the city of Seattle and it is also covered with more glacial ice than any other peak in the contiguous 48 states. Western Washington also is home of the Olympic Mountains, far west on the Olympic Peninsula and these deep forests, such as the Hoh Rainforest, are among the only temperate rainforests in the continental United States. Eastern Washington – the part of the state east of the Cascades – has a dry climate. It includes large areas of steppe and a few truly arid deserts lying in the rain shadow of the Cascades. Farther east, the climate becomes less arid, with annual rainfall increasing as one goes east to 21.2 inches in Pullman, the Okanogan Highlands and the rugged Kettle River Range and Selkirk Mountains cover much of the northeastern quadrant of the state
3.
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
4.
Post-grunge
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Post-grunge is a style of rock music that began in the 1990s and is considered a subgenre of alternative rock and hard rock. Originally, post-grunge was an informal and even pejorative label used to describe bands that emulated the sound of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, such as Bush, Candlebox. In the late 1990s, post-grunge morphed into a clearly defined style that married the sound. Post-grunge rose to prominence in the 1990s and continued to remain popular in the 2000s, Post-grunge bands such as Foo Fighters, Puddle of Mudd, Staind, Nickelback, Creed and Matchbox Twenty all achieved mainstream success. During the 1990s, a post-grunge sound emerged which emulated the attitudes and music of grunge, particularly its thick, distorted guitars, Post-grunge music tends to be in mid-tempo and is noted for having a polished, radio-ready production. Post-grunge tends to feature melodies and song structures that are common in pop music, sometimes post-grunge music features both an electric guitar and an acoustic guitar playing simultaneously. Post-grunge lyrics also tend to be about such as relationships, romance. According to Geffen, grunges frontmen posed with their addictions, post-grunges songwriters sought redemption for them, according to Geffen, artists such as Alanis Morissette, No Doubt and Sarah McLachlan all crystallized the songwriting strategy that would form the emotional core of the post-grunge moment. Post-grunge tends to have quality that is higher and cleaner than the quality in grunge. When grunge became a mainstream genre because of such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam. According to Tim Grierson of About, during the late 1990s, post-grunge morphed, becoming a derivative of grunge that combined characteristics of grunge with a more commercially accessible tone. During this time, post-grunge bands such as Creed and Nickelback emerged, Grierson wrote, Creed and Nickelback espoused a more conventional, almost conservative worldview built around the comforts of community and romantic relationships. Grierson also wrote, Post-grunge was a musical style, but bands like Nirvana. Post-grunge, by comparison, seemed to exist in order to court that very audience, in late 1992, Cobain was photographed in a T-shirt with Grunge is Dead printed on its front and the genres decline started to be widely discussed. The death of Cobain in 1994, as well as Pearl Jams touring problems, problems of addiction for Layne Staley of Alice in Chains led to the band cancelling scheduled dates in 1995. When grunge was mainstream, major labels began signing and promoting bands emulating the genre. In spite of the fact that such as Bush and Candlebox have been categorized as grunge. Collective Soul and Live are two other bands categorized as post-grunge that emerged along with Bush and Candlebox and its song Far Behind peaked at number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100
5.
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
6.
Grunge
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Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock and a subculture that emerged during the mid-1980s in the Pacific Northwest U. S. state of Washington, particularly in Seattle and nearby towns. The early grunge movement revolved around Seattles independent record label Sub Pop, the success of these bands boosted the popularity of alternative rock and made grunge the most popular form of rock music at the time. Grunge was also an influence on subsequent genres such as post-grunge, Grunge fuses elements of punk rock and heavy metal, such as the distorted electric guitar used in both genres, although some bands performed with more emphasis on one or the other. Like these genres, grunge typically uses electric guitar, bass guitar, a drummer, Grunge also incorporates influences from indie rock bands such as Sonic Youth. Lyrics are typically angst-filled and introspective, often addressing themes such as alienation, apathy, concerns about confinement. A number of factors contributed to decline in prominence. During the mid-late 1990s, many grunge bands broke up or became less visible, the word grunge was used in print in prior to the use of the term in mainstream publications to refer to the Seattle music genre. Rock has always been about it, Theres primal grunge. distortion. and fuzz. especially on the underground, a reference to distorted sounds in rock in a general sense. Mark Arm, the vocalist for the Seattle band Green River—and later Mudhoney—is generally credited as being the first to use the term grunge to describe the Seattle genre of music. Arm first used the term in 1981, when he wrote a letter under his given name Mark McLaughlin to the Seattle zine Desperate Times, criticizing his own band Mr. Epp and the Calculations as Pure grunge. Sub Pop called Green Rivers 1986 EP Dry as a Bone ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation, Everett True states that when Arm stated that the streets of Seattle paved with grunge, he was using the term disparagingly. In this use of the word grunge, Arm was using it as an adjective, Arm said years later, Obviously, I didnt make grunge up. I got it from someone else, the term was already being thrown around in Australia in the mid-80s to describe bands like King Snake Roost, The Scientists, Salamander Jim, and Beasts of Bourbon. Arm used grunge as a descriptive rather than a genre term. When grunge first developed, music journalists called it rock, due to the genres focus on impossibly. Evergreen State was a college which did not use grading. Bands from Portland, Oregon, such as the Wipers, also influenced the genres pioneers. Some bands associated with the genre, such as Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, have not been receptive to the label, preferring instead to be referred to as rock and roll bands
7.
Pop punk
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Pop punk is a punk rock music genre and a fusion genre that combines elements of punk rock with elements of pop music. Pop punk typically combines fast punk rock tempos, power chord changes and loud, distorted guitars with pop-influenced melodies. Pop-influenced punk rock emerged in the mid-1970s with a style that was stylistically similar to power pop. By the mid-1980s, several bands merged hardcore punk with pop music to create a new, faster pop punk sound such as Dag Nasty, Pop punk in the United States began to grow in popularity locally in California in the mid-to-late 1980s. Pop punk particularly thrived in California, where independent record labels adopted a do it approach to releasing music. By the mid-1990s, a few pop punk bands had started to sell millions of records and receive radio and television airplay. By 1994, pop punk was quickly growing in mainstream popularity, the late 1990s, exemplified by the 1999 release of Blink-182s Enema of the State, represented the genres mainstream peak, although some pop punk bands scored successful album chartings in the 2000s. In the mid-2000s, emo pop, a genre combining emo and pop punk. By the end of the 2000s, the pop sound of the 1990s had largely waned in mainstream popularity. Pop punk typically merges upbeat pop melodies with catchy hooks, catchy choruses, harmonies, speedy tempos, punk rock power chord changes and loud, distorted electric guitars. About. com has described second-wave pop punk bands as having a radio friendly sheen to their music, club, pop punk often pits sweet harmonies against bratty, rowdy riffs. Lyrical topics that are common in pop punk include love, lust, drunkenness, adolescence, cartoonish violence, some pop punk lyrics focus on jokes and humor. Some pop punk music features elements of rock, power pop. According to Ryan Cooper of About. com, pop punk is a style that more to the Beatles. It is not clear when the pop punk was first used. Protopunk and power pop bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s helped lay the groundwork for the pop punk sound, the Beatles, the Kinks and the Beach Boys all paved the way for pop punk. With their love of the Beach Boys and late 1960s bubblegum pop, the Ramones loud and fast melodic minimalism differentiated them from other bands in New York Citys budding art rock scene, but pop punk was not considered a separate subgenre until later. An early use of the pop punk appeared in a 1977 New York Times article, Cabaret
8.
Boston
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Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Boston is also the seat of Suffolk County, although the county government was disbanded on July 1,1999. The city proper covers 48 square miles with a population of 667,137 in 2015, making it the largest city in New England. Alternately, as a Combined Statistical Area, this wider commuting region is home to some 8.1 million people, One of the oldest cities in the United States, Boston was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston. Upon U. S. independence from Great Britain, it continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education, through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the original peninsula. Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing over 20 million visitors per year, Bostons many firsts include the United States first public school, Boston Latin School, first subway system, the Tremont Street Subway, and first public park, Boston Common. Bostons economic base also includes finance, professional and business services, biotechnology, information technology, the city has one of the highest costs of living in the United States as it has undergone gentrification, though it remains high on world livability rankings. Bostons early European settlers had first called the area Trimountaine but later renamed it Boston after Boston, Lincolnshire, England, the renaming on September 7,1630 was by Puritan colonists from England who had moved over from Charlestown earlier that year in quest of fresh water. Their settlement was limited to the Shawmut Peninsula, at that time surrounded by the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River. The peninsula is thought to have been inhabited as early as 5000 BC, in 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colonys first governor John Winthrop led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, a key founding document of the city. Puritan ethics and their focus on education influenced its early history, over the next 130 years, the city participated in four French and Indian Wars, until the British defeated the French and their Indian allies in North America. Boston was the largest town in British America until Philadelphia grew larger in the mid-18th century, Bostons harbor activity was significantly curtailed by the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812. Foreign trade returned after these hostilities, but Bostons merchants had found alternatives for their investments in the interim. Manufacturing became an important component of the economy, and the citys industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance by the mid-19th century. Boston remained one of the nations largest manufacturing centers until the early 20th century, a network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region facilitated shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a network of railroads furthered the regions industry. Boston was a port of the Atlantic triangular slave trade in the New England colonies
9.
Street performance
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Street performance or busking is the act of performing in public places for gratuities. In many countries the rewards are generally in the form of money but other such as food. Street performance is practiced all over the world by men, women and children, People engaging in this practice are called street performers or buskers. Performances are anything that people find entertaining, the term busking was first noted in the English language around the middle 1860s in Great Britain. The verb to busk, from the word busker, comes from the Spanish root word buscar, the Spanish word buscar in turn evolved from the Indo-European word *bhudh-skō. It was used for many acts, and title of a famous Spanish book about one of them. Today, the word is used in Spanish but mostly relegated for female street sex workers. There have been performances in places for gratuities in every major culture in the world. For many musicians street performance was the most common means of employment before the advent of recording and personal electronics. Prior to that, a person had to any music or entertainment, save for a few mechanical devices such as the barrel organ, the music box. Organ grinders were commonly found busking in the old days, Busking is common among some Romani people, who are called gypsies, a description that is no longer socially acceptable in some societies. Romantic mention of Romani music, dancers and fortune tellers are found in all forms of poetry, prose. The Roma brought the word busking to England by way of their travels along the Mediterranean coast to Spain and the Atlantic Ocean and then up north to England, in medieval France buskers were known by the terms troubadours and jongleurs. In northern France they were known as trouveres, in old German buskers were known as Minnesingers and Spielleute. In obsolete French it evolved to busquer for seek, prowl and was used to describe prostitutes. In Russia buskers are called skomorokh and their first recorded history appears around the 11th century, mariachis, Mexican bands that play a style of music by the same name, frequently busk when they perform while traveling through streets and plazas, as well as in restaurants and bars. Around the mid-19th century Japanese Chindonya started to be using their skills for advertising. Another Japanese street performance form dating from the Edo period is Nankin Tamasudare, in the United States, medicine shows proliferated in the 19th century
10.
Bass guitar
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The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb, by plucking, slapping, popping, strumming, tapping, thumping, or picking with a plectrum, often known as a pick. The bass guitar is similar in appearance and construction to a guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length. The four-string bass, by far the most common, is tuned the same as the double bass. The bass guitar is an instrument, as it is notated in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds to avoid excessive ledger lines. Like the electric guitar, the guitar has pickups and it is plugged into an amplifier and speaker on stage, or into a larger PA system using a DI unit. Since the 1960s, the guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music as the bass instrument in the rhythm section. While types of basslines vary widely from one style of music to another, many styles of music utilise the bass guitar, including rock, heavy metal, pop, punk rock, country, reggae, gospel, blues, symphonic rock, and jazz. It is often a solo instrument in jazz, jazz fusion, Latin, funk, progressive rock and other rock, the adoption of a guitar form made the instrument easier to hold and transport than any of the existing stringed bass instruments. The addition of frets enabled bassists to play in more easily than on acoustic or electric upright basses. Around 100 of these instruments were made during this period, around 1947, Tutmarcs son, Bud, began marketing a similar bass under the Serenader brand name, prominently advertised in the nationally distributed L. D. Heater Music Company wholesale jobber catalogue of 1948, however, the Tutmarc family inventions did not achieve market success. In the 1950s, Leo Fender, with the help of his employee George Fullerton and his Fender Precision Bass, which began production in October 1951, became a widely copied industry standard. This split pickup, introduced in 1957, appears to have been two mandolin pickups, the pole pieces and leads of the coils were reversed with respect to each other, producing a humbucking effect. Humbucking is a design that electrically cancels the effect of any AC hum, the Fender Bass was a revolutionary new instrument, which could be easily transported, and which was less prone to feedback when amplified than acoustic bass instruments. Monk Montgomery was the first bass player to tour with the Fender bass guitar, roy Johnson, and Shifty Henry with Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five, were other early Fender bass pioneers. Bill Black, playing with Elvis Presley, switched from bass to the Fender Precision Bass around 1957. The bass guitar was intended to appeal to guitarists as well as upright bass players, following Fenders lead, in 1953, Gibson released the first short scale violin-shaped electric bass with extendable end pin, allowing it to be played upright or horizontally. In 1959 these were followed by the more conventional-looking EB-0 Bass, the EB-0 was very similar to a Gibson SG in appearance
11.
Beck
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Beck Hansen, known mononymously as Beck, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and multi-instrumentalist. He is mostly known for his composition, as well as a palette of sonic genres. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style. Today, he musically encompasses folk, funk, soul, hip hop, alternative rock, country and he has released 12 studio albums, as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music. Born in Los Angeles in 1970, Beck grew towards hip-hop and folk in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and he moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the citys small fiery anti-folk movement. Returning to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single Loser, which became a hit in 1994, and released his first major album, Mellow Gold. Odelay, released in 1996, produced hit singles, topped critic polls and he released the psychedelic Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The soft-acoustic Sea Change in 2002 showcased a more serious Beck and he is reportedly working on a thirteenth studio album, with the singles Dreams and Wow having already been released. Two of Becks most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change, the four-time platinum artist has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks. Beck is married to actress Marissa Ribisi, and is an active Scientologist, Beck was born in Los Angeles, to David Campbell, a Canadian-born musician, and Bibbe Hansen, a visual artist and former Warhol superstar. Bibbes mother was half Jewish, while Bibbes father, Al Hansen, was partly of Norwegian descent, Beck has said that he was raised celebrating Jewish holidays, and that he considers himself Jewish. Becks mother grew up amid New Yorks Andy Warhol Factory art scene of the 1960s, but moved to California at age 17 and his father is a Canadian-born arranger, composer and conductor who worked on hundreds of albums and numerous films. Beck began life in a house near downtown Los Angeles. As a child, he lived in a neighborhood just off Hollywood Boulevard. By the time we left there, they were ripping out miles of houses en masse and building low-rent, giant apartment blocks, the lower-class family struggled financially, moving to Hoover and Ninth Street, a neighborhood populated primarily by Koreans and Salvadorian refugees. He was sent for a time to live with his grandparents in Kansas. Since his paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, Beck grew up influenced by church music, Beck also spent time in Europe with his maternal grandfather, Al Hansen, a visual collage artist and a pioneer in the avant-garde Fluxus movement. Beck obtained his first guitar at 16 and became a street musician, during his teens, Beck discovered the music of Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore and X, but remained uninterested in most music outside folk until many years into his career
