Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. He wrote hundreds of political and children's songs, along with ballads and improvised works, his album of songs about the Dust Bowl period, Dust Bowl Ballads, is included on Mojo magazine's list of 100 Records That Changed The World. Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jerry Garcia, Jay Farrar, Bob Weir, Jeff Tweedy, Bob Childers, Sammy Walker, Tom Paxton, AJJ, Brian Fallon, Sixto Rodríguez have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence, he performed with the slogan "This machine kills fascists" displayed on his guitar. Guthrie was brought up by middle-class parents in Okemah, until he was 14, when his mother Mary was hospitalized as a consequence of Huntington's disease, a fatal hereditary neurological disorder.
His father moved to Texas, to repay debts from unsuccessful real estate deals. During his early teens, Guthrie learned blues songs from his parents' friends, he married at 19, but with the advent of the dust storms that marked the Dust Bowl period, he left his wife and three children to join the thousands of Okies who were migrating to California looking for employment. He worked at Los Angeles radio station KFVD. Throughout his life, Guthrie was associated with United States Communist groups, although he did not appear to be a member of any. With the outbreak of World War II and the non-aggression pact the Soviet Union had signed with Germany in 1939, the owners of KFVD radio were not comfortable with Guthrie's Communist sympathies, he left the station, ending up in New York where he wrote and recorded his 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads, based on his experiences during the 1930s, which earned him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour". In February 1940 he wrote his most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land".
He said it was a response to what he felt was the overplaying of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on the radio. Guthrie was fathered eight children, his son Arlo Guthrie became nationally known as a musician. Guthrie died in 1967 from complications of Huntington's disease, his first two daughters died of the disease. During his years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentoring Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan. Guthrie was born 14 July 1912 in Okemah, a small town in Okfuskee County, the son of Nora Belle and Charles Edward Guthrie, his parents named him after Woodrow Wilson Governor of New Jersey and the Democratic candidate, elected as President of the United States in fall 1912. Charles Guthrie was an industrious businessman, owning at one time up to 30 plots of land in Okfuskee County, he was involved in Oklahoma politics and was a conservative Democratic candidate for office in the county.
Charles Guthrie was involved in the 1911 lynching of Laura and L. D. Nelson. Three significant fires occurred during Guthrie's early life, one that caused the loss of his family's home in Okemah; when Guthrie was seven, his sister Clara died after setting her clothes on fire during an argument with her mother, their father was burned in a fire at home. Guthrie's mother, was afflicted with Huntington's disease, although the family did not know this at the time. What they could see was dementia and muscular degeneration; when Woody was 14, she was committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane. At the time his father Charley was living and working in Pampa, Texas, to repay debts from unsuccessful real estate deals. Woody and his siblings were on their own in Oklahoma; the 14-year-old Woody Guthrie worked odd jobs around Okemah, begging meals and sometimes sleeping at the homes of family friends. Guthrie had a natural affinity for music, learning old ballads and traditional English and Scottish songs from the parents of friends.
Guthrie befriended an African-American shoeshine boy named "George", who played blues on his harmonica. After listening to George play, Guthrie began playing along with him, he used to busk for food. Although Guthrie did not do well as a student and dropped out of high school in his senior year before graduation, his teachers described him as bright, he was an avid reader on a wide range of topics. In 1929, Guthrie's father sent for Woody to join him in Texas, but little changed for the aspiring musician. Guthrie 18, was reluctant to attend high school classes in Pampa, he played at dances with his father's half-brother Jeff Guthrie, a fiddle player. His mother died in 1930 of complications of Huntington's disease while still in the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane. At age 19, Guthrie met and married his first wife, Mary Jennings, in Texas in 1931, they had three children together: Gwendolyn and Bill. Bill died at age 23 of an automo
USA Today
USA Today is an internationally distributed American daily, middle-market newspaper that serves as the flagship publication of its owner, the Gannett Company. The newspaper has a centrist audience. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, it operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters on Jones Branch Drive, in McLean, Virginia, it is printed at five additional sites internationally. Its dynamic design influenced the style of local and national newspapers worldwide, through its use of concise reports, colorized images, informational graphics, inclusion of popular culture stories, among other distinct features. With a weekly circulation of 1,021,638 and an approximate daily reach of seven million readers as of 2016, USA Today shares the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States with The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. USA Today is distributed in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, an international edition is distributed in Asia, Canada and the Pacific Islands.
The genesis of USA Today was on February 29, 1980, when a company task force known as "Project NN" met with Gannett Company chairman Al Neuharth in Cocoa Beach, Florida to develop a national newspaper. Early regional prototypes included East Bay Today, an Oakland, California-based publication published in the late 1970s to serve as the morning edition of the Oakland Tribune, an afternoon newspaper which Gannett owned at the time. On June 11, 1981, Gannett printed the first prototypes of the proposed publication; the two proposed design layouts were mailed to newsmakers and prominent leaders in journalism, for review and feedback. The Gannett Company's board of directors approved the launch of the national newspaper, titled USA Today, on December 5, 1981. At launch, Neuharth was appointed president and publisher of the newspaper, adding those responsibilities to his existing position as Gannett's chief executive officer. Gannett announced the launch of the paper on April 20, 1982. USA Today began publishing on September 15, 1982 in the Baltimore and Washington, D.
C. metropolitan areas for an newsstand price of 25¢. After selling out the first issue, Gannett expanded the national distribution of the paper, reaching an estimated circulation of 362,879 copies by the end of 1982, double the amount of sales that Gannett projected; the design uniquely incorporated color graphics and photographs. Only its front news section pages were rendered in four-color, while the remaining pages were printed in a spot color format; the paper's overall style and elevated use of graphics – developed by Neuharth, in collaboration with staff graphics designers George Rorick, Sam Ward, Suzy Parker, John Sherlock and Web Bryant – was derided by critics, who referred to it as "McPaper" or "television you can wrap fish in," because it opted to incorporate concise nuggets of information more akin to the style of television news, rather than in-depth stories like traditional newspapers, which many in the newspaper industry considered to be a dumbing down of the news. Although USA Today had been profitable for just ten years as of 1997, it changed the appearance and feel of newspapers around the world.
On July 2, 1984, the newspaper switched from predominantly black-and-white to full color photography and graphics in all four sections. The next week on July 10, USA Today launched an international edition intended for U. S. readers abroad, followed four months on October 8 with the rollout of the first transmission via satellite of its international version to Singapore. On April 8, 1985, the paper published its first special bonus section, a 12-page section called "Baseball'85," which previewed the 1985 Major League Baseball season. By the fourth quarter of 1985, USA Today had become the second largest newspaper in the United States, reaching a daily circulation of 1.4 million copies. Total daily readership of the paper by 1987 had reached 5.5 million, the largest of any daily newspaper in the U. S. On May 6, 1986, USA Today began production of its international edition in Switzerland. USA Today operated at a loss for most of its first four years of operation, accumulating a total deficit of $233 million after taxes, according to figures released by Gannett in July 1987.
On January 29, 1988, USA Today published the largest edition in its history, a 78-page weekend edition featuring a section previewing Super Bowl XXII. On April 15, USA Today launched a third international printing site, based in Hong Kong; the international edition set circulation and advertising records during August 1988, with coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics, selling more than 60,000 copies and 100 pages of advertising. By July 1991, Simmons Market Research Bureau estimated that USA Today had a total daily readership of nearly 6.6 million, an all-time high and the largest readership of any daily newspaper in the United States. On September 1 of that year, USA Today launched a fourth printsite for its international edition in London for the United Kingdom and the British Isles; the international edition's schedule was changed as of April 1, 1994 Monday through Friday, rather than from Tuesday through Saturday, in order to accommodate business travelers.
Cowboy (Kid Rock song)
"Cowboy" is a song by Kid Rock from his album Devil Without a Cause. The song, noted for its country rap style, reflects a cross-section of Kid Rock's country music, Southern rock and hip hop influences, having been described by the artist as a cross between Run DMC and Lynyrd Skynyrd. With its lyrics about pimping and traveling to California, the song is considered to be one of Kid Rock's best works, has been claimed as influencing modern country music and as the first country rap song. Musically, "Cowboy" is a fusion of country music, Southern rock and heavy metal. Billboard, as well as Kid Rock himself, described the song as a cross between Run DMC and Lynyrd Skynyrd; the song's music style has been described as "country rap", "cowboy rap" and "rap rock". AXS called it "the first country rap song"; the instrumentation includes blues harmonica and a piano solo. It contains a sample of vocals from the 1967 song "Different Strokes" by Syl Johnson, an interpolation of Ennio Morricone's main theme from the 1966 spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.
The lyrics feature Kid Rock rapping about moving to California to become a pimp, start an escort service "for all the right reasons", located at the top of the Four Seasons Hotel, as well as getting thrown out of bars and buying a yacht. In 2002, the music group Boys Don't Cry filed suit against Kid Rock, claiming the song "Cowboy" was derivative of their 1986 synth-pop track "I Wanna Be a Cowboy", alleged that Kid Rock, while DJ'ing in Detroit, had played the song. "Cowboy" was named one of the "ten worst songs about cowboys" by the Houston Press, while numerous other critics and journalists have called it one of Kid Rock's best songs, including writers for AXS and Billboard. The Village Voice writer Chaz Kangas called "Cowboy" a classic song, writing, "in the Clinton era when your most viable pop stars were pristine teen-pop sensations, raucous nu-metal antagonists or alternative-to-alternative-to-alternative rock weirdos, Rock stood alone. It’s been a surprising 15 years since, but'Cowboy' remains one track from this era that’s timeless without trying to be."
"Cowboy" is considered to be the first country rap song, was influential on the music styles described as "hick-hop" and "bro country". Cowboys & Indians claims. Country singer Kenny Chesney has covered the song in concert in 2009 and 2016, the latter with Kid Rock on Chesney's Spread the Love Tour. In 2017, Kid Rock joined country singer Chris Janson on stage for mashup of Janson's song "Buy Me A Boat" and "Cowboy". Kid Rock - vocals,banjo, acoustic guitar, harp Bobby East - slide guitar, electric guitar Matt O'Brien - bass guitar Kenny Tudrick - drums Misty Love - background vocals Shirley Hayden - background vocals Video on YouTube
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, except with a longer neck and scale length, four to six strings or courses. The four-string bass is tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar, it is played with the fingers or thumb, or striking with a pick. The electric bass guitar has pickups and must be connected to an amplifier and speaker to be loud enough to compete with other instruments. Since the 1960s, the bass guitar has replaced the double bass in popular music as the bass instrument in the rhythm section. While types of basslines vary from one style of music to another, the bassist plays a similar role: anchoring the harmonic framework and establishing the beat. Many styles of music include the bass guitar, it is a soloing instrument. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, an "Electric bass guitar a Guitar with four heavy strings tuned E1'-A1'-D2-G2."
It defines bass as "Bass. A contraction of Double bass or Electric bass guitar." According to some authors the proper term is "electric bass". Common names for the instrument are "bass guitar", "electric bass guitar", "electric bass" and some authors claim that they are accurate; the bass guitar is a transposing instrument, as it is notated in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds. In the 1930s, musician and inventor Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, developed the first electric bass guitar in its modern form, a fretted instrument designed to be played horizontally; the 1935 sales catalog for Tutmarc's electronic musical instrument company, featured his "Model 736 Bass Fiddle", a four-stringed, solid-bodied, fretted electric bass guitar with a 30 1⁄2-inch scale length, a single pick up. The adoption of a guitar's body shape 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 tune more than on fretless acoustic or electric upright basses.
Around 100 of these instruments were made during this period. Audiovox sold their “Model 236” bass amplifier. Around 1947, Tutmarc's son, 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 and George Fullerton developed the first mass-produced electric bass guitar; the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company began producing the Precision Bass in October 1951. The "P-bass" evolved from a simple, un-contoured "slab" body design and a single coil pickup similar to that of a Telecaster, to something more like a Fender Stratocaster, with a contoured body design, edges beveled for comfort, a split single coil pickup; the "Fender Bass" was a revolutionary new instrument for gigging musicians. In comparison with the large, heavy upright bass, the main bass instrument in popular music from the early 1900s to the 1940s, the bass guitar could be transported to shows.
When amplified, the bass guitar was less prone than acoustic basses to unwanted audio feedback. In 1953 Monk Montgomery became the first bassist to tour with the Fender bass guitar, in Lionel Hampton's postwar big band. Montgomery was possibly the first to record with the bass guitar, on July 2, 1953 with The Art Farmer Septet. Roy Johnson, Shifty Henry, were other early Fender bass pioneers. Bill Black, playing with Elvis Presley, switched from upright bass to the Fender Precision Bass around 1957; the bass guitar was intended to appeal to guitarists as well as upright bass players, many early pioneers of the instrument, such as Carol Kaye, Joe Osborn, Paul McCartney were guitarists. In 1953, following Fender's lead, Gibson released the first short-scale violin-shaped electric bass, with an extendable end pin so a bassist could play it upright or horizontally. Gibson renamed the bass the EB-1 in 1958. In 1958, Gibson released the maple arched-top EB-2 described in the Gibson catalogue as a "hollow-body electric bass that features a Bass/Baritone pushbutton for two different tonal characteristics".
In 1959 these were followed by the more conventional-looking EB-0 Bass. The EB-0 was similar to a Gibson SG in appearance. Whereas Fender basses had pickups mounted in positions in between the base of the neck and the top of the bridge, many of Gibson's early basses featured one humbucking pickup mounted directly against the neck pocket; the EB-3, introduced in 1961 had a "mini-humbucker" at the bridge position. Gibson basses tended to be smaller, sleeker instruments with a shorter scale length than the Precision. A number of other companies began manufacturing bass guitars during the 1950s: Kay in 1952, Hofner and Danelectro in 1956, Rickenbacker in 1957 and Burns/Supersound in 1958. 1956 saw the appearance at the German trade fair "Musikmesse Frankfurt" of the distinctive Höfner 500/1 violin-shaped bass made using violin construction techniques by Walter Höfner, a second-generation violin luthier. The design was known popularly as the "Beat
Big & Rich
Big & Rich is an American country music duo composed of Big Kenny and John Rich, both of whom are songwriters and guitarists. Before the duo's foundation, Rich was bass guitarist in the country band Lonestar, while Kenny was a solo artist for Hollywood Records, their first studio album, Horse of a Different Color, was released in 2004. This album produced four straight Top 40 country hits, including the number 11 "Save a Horse", plus collaborations with Cowboy Troy, Gretchen Wilson, Martina McBride. Comin' to Your City was released in November 2005 followed by another Top 20 single the Vietnam War-inspired "8th of November", two more Top 40 hits. Joining the duo on this album were Cowboy Troy and Kris Kristofferson. Between Raising Hell and Amazing Grace, released in 2007, produced their only No. 1 single, "Lost in This Moment". Both before and during the duo's hiatus, Rich has worked as a producer and songwriter for several other artists. After this album, both members went on hiatus and released solo albums in 2009—Big Kenny's The Quiet Times of a Rock and Roll Farm Boy and Rich's Son of a Preacher Man.
These produced the duo's first Top 40 solo entries—Big Kenny with "Long After I'm Gone" and Rich with "Shuttin' Detroit Down". In 2010, Big Kenny released his second solo country album, Big Kenny's Love Everybody Traveling Musical Medicine Show Mix Tape, Vol. 1 and in 2011, Rich released the extended plays For the Kids and Rich Rocks, the latter of which included the Top 40 country single "Country Done Come to Town". Big & Rich reunited in May 2011 to release "Fake ID", a cut from the soundtrack to the 2011 film Footloose. A year the duo released their fourth album, Hillbilly Jedi, which produced the Top 20 hit "That's Why I Pray". In July 2013, Rich announced that the duo had begun work on their fifth studio album, released independently. Another independent album, Did it For the Party, was announced in 2017 for release in September, led by the single "California." Prior to Big & Rich's foundation, John Rich was a founding member of the band Texassee, which became Lonestar. Rich alternated with Richie McDonald on lead vocals.
After Lonestar released its second album, Rich departed from the band in 1998, leaving McDonald as the band's sole lead singer. Kenny Alphin was signed to Hollywood Records in 1998, where he recorded a rock album called Live a Little a year later. Although one of its songs was featured in the soundtrack to the film Gun Shy, Live a Little was not released, Hollywood Records held the rights to the songs for five years. In the meantime, The Mavericks recorded one of Alphin's songs on their 1998 album Trampoline, Danni Leigh recorded his "Beatin' My Head Against the Wall" on her album 29 Nights. Big Kenny befriended Rich after meeting him at a club, the two began writing songs together, their first songwriting collaboration was "I Pray for You," which they wrote in October 1998. Following his departure from Hollywood Records, Big Kenny recorded in a short-lived band called luvjOi, whose lead guitarist Adam Shoenfeld and drummer Larry Babb would become part of Big & Rich's road band. In 2000, Rich began recording as a solo artist as well.
He charted two singles of his own — "I Pray for You" and "Forever Loving You," which reached numbers 53 and number 46 on the U. S. Hot Country Songs charts — but his debut album, Underneath the Same Moon, was not released at the time; the two founded the MuzikMafia, a roundtable aggregation of singer-songwriters including Cowboy Troy, James Otto, Gretchen Wilson and Shannon Lawson. This group held its first official show at a Nashville, Tennessee nightclub in 2001. Among Big Kenny and John Rich's first outside cuts as songwriters was "Amarillo Sky", the title track to McBride & the Ride's 2002 album Amarillo Sky and a top 5 hit for Jason Aldean in 2007; the two wrote and sang backing vocals on "She's a Butterfly", recorded by Martina McBride on her album Martina. After McBride cut this song, manager Marc Oswald suggested that Rich and Big Kenny begin recording as a duo. Rich was apprehensive at first, as he had been told by BNA staff that he was "too rock for country" and was unsure of what major labels would think of Big Kenny's rock influences.
The two began recording songs together at a songwriting seminar. After they recorded a demo of "Holy Water", Rich was convinced, they met with Paul Worley, a record producer, the head of creative affairs at Warner Bros. Records Nashville, Worley helped sign Big & Rich to a recording contract in late 2003. In 2007, Reservoir Media Management acquired the publishing rights to Rich's and Kenny's song catalogs; the two began writing songs for their debut album. Among these was "Wild West Show," which they wrote before a trip to South Dakota; the duo decided to use wild West imagery to convey "an argument between a man and a woman." In February 2004, it was released as their debut single, going on to peak at number 21 on the Billboard country singles charts. It was the first release from their debut album Horse of a Different Color. Following the album's release, Big & Rich began touring with Tim McGraw. Big & Rich debuted their second single, "Save a Horse", at that year's Academy of Country Music awards.
For this song, Big & Rich employed Deaton-Flanigen Productions, a music video directing duo composed of Robert Deaton and George Flanigen IV. Deaton-Flanigen and Oswald, along with the duo, decided to make "a big, big show of a video", featuring cameo appearance
Roland TR-808
The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer known as the 808, is a drum machine manufactured by the Roland Corporation between 1980 and 1983. It was one of the first drum machines to allow users to program rhythms instead of using preset patterns. Unlike its nearest competitor at the time, the more expensive Linn LM-1, the 808 generates sounds using analog synthesis rather than playing samples. Launched when electronic music had yet to become mainstream, the 808 received mixed reviews for its unrealistic drum sounds and was a commercial failure. After building 12,000 units, Roland discontinued the 808 after its semiconductors became impossible to restock, but units remain in use around the world, it was succeeded in 1984 by the TR-909. Over the course of the 1980s, the 808 attracted a cult following among underground musicians for its affordability on the used market, ease of use, idiosyncratic sounds its deep, "booming" bass drum, it became a cornerstone of the emerging electronic and hip hop genres, popularized by early hits such as "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye and "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force.
The 808 was used on more hit records than any other drum machine. Its popularity with hip hop in particular has made it one of the most influential inventions in popular music, comparable to the Fender Stratocaster's influence on rock, its sounds are included with music software and modern drum machines, it has inspired numerous clones. In the late 1960s, the Hammond Organ Company hired American musician and engineer Don Lewis to demonstrate its products, including an electronic organ with a built-in drum machine designed by the Japanese company Ace Tone. At the time, drum machines were most used to accompany home organs, they had preset patterns such as bossa nova. Lewis was known for performances using electronic instruments he had modified himself, decades before the popularization of instrument "hacking" via circuit bending, he made extensive modifications to the Ace Tone drum machine, creating his own rhythms and wiring the device through his organ's expression pedal to accent the percussion.
Lewis was approached by Ace Tone president and founder Ikutaro Kakehashi, who wanted to know how he had achieved the sounds using the machine Kakehashi had designed. In 1972, Kakehashi formed the Roland Corporation, hired Lewis to help design drum machines. By the late 1970s, microprocessors were appearing in instruments such as the Roland MC-8 Microcomposer, Kakehashi realized they could be used to program drum machines. In 1978, Roland released the CompuRhythm CR-78, the first drum machine with which users could write and replay their own patterns. With its next machine, the TR-808, Roland aimed to develop a drum machine for the professional market, expecting that it would be used to create demos. Though the engineers aimed to emulate real percussion, the prohibitive cost of memory drove them to design sound-generating hardware instead of using samples. Kakehashi deliberately purchased faulty transistors that created the machine's distinctive "sizzling" sound. Chief engineer Makoto Muroi credited the design of the analog voice circuits to "Mr. Nakamura" and the software to "Mr. Matsuoka".
The 808 produces sounds in imitation of acoustic percussion: the bass drum, toms, rimshot, handclap, cowbell, hi-hat. Rather than playing samples, the machine generates sounds using analog synthesis. Users can program up to 32 patterns using the step sequencer, chain up to 768 measures, place accents on individual beats, a feature introduced with the CR-78. Users can set the tempo and time signature, including unusual signatures such as 54 and 78; the 808 was the first drum machine with which users could program a percussion track from beginning to end, complete with breaks and rolls. It includes volume knobs for each voice, numerous audio outputs, a DIN sync port to synchronize with other devices through the Digital Control Bus interface, considered groundbreaking, its three trigger outputs can synchronize with other equipment. The 808's sounds do not resemble real percussion, have been described as "clicky and hypnotic", "robotic", "spacey", "toy-like" and "futuristic". Fact described them as a combination of "synth tones and white noise... more akin to bursts coming from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop a proper rhythm section".
The machine is noted for its powerful bass drum sound, built from a sine oscillator, low-pass filter, voltage-controlled amplifier. The bass drum decay control allows users to lengthen the sound, creating uniquely low frequencies that flatten over time not by design. According to the New Yorker, "Less a product of engineering than a force of nature, this bass-rolling subsonic boom has come to be what people mean when they refer to'an 808'." The 808 launched in 1980 with a list price of US$1,195. Roland marketed it as an affordable alternative to the Linn LM-1, manufactured by Linn Electronics, which used samples of real drum kits; the 808 sounded synthetic by comparison. Many reports state that one review dismissed the machine as sounding like "marching anteaters", though this was referring to machines that predated it. Contemporary Keyboard wrote a positive review, predicting that it would become "the standard for rhythm machines of the future". Despite some early adopters, the 808 was a commercial failure and fewer than 1
Chuck Eddy
Chuck Eddy is an American music journalist. Chuck Eddy was born in Michigan. After starting his journalism career with The Village Voice and Creem, where he published one of the first national interviews with the Beastie Boys in the mid-1980s, Eddy wrote for Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and other national and local publications, he authored two books: Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, The Accidental Evolution of Rock and Roll. In 1999 he was hired as the music editor at The Village Voice. After being terminated on grounds of "taste" upon Village Voice Media's merger with New Times in 2006, he wrote a thrice-weekly heavy metal blog for MTV's URGE and a monthly page of capsule CD reviews in Harp magazine called "The Last Roundup". From 2006 to 2007, he worked as a senior editor for Billboard magazine. Eddy freelances from Austin, Texas, he contributes a regular "Essentials" column to Spin. He has programmed several artist-specific web radio stations for Clear Channel.
He has published book chapters in several anthologies, including The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll. Chuck It All In: Rhapsody blog Singles Again: Blurt blog Entertainment Weekly reviews Harp reviews Spin reviews Singles Jukebox reviews Rolling Stone Songs of the Day Podcast on Rolling Stone record guides, Part 1 Chuck Eddy articles archived at Rock's Back Pages Final Word: Best Singles Of The'80s Michael Jackson essay, 1991 Talk Eddy to Me - The World's Most Iconoclastic Rock Critic Speaks Out, By Scott Woods Chuck E... So Addictive, By Steven Ward A review of the Violator not listened to by Chuck
