Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American filmmaker and historian, whose career spans more than 50 years. Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian and Sicilian-American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, modern crime, gang conflict. Many of his films are known for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity. Part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking, he is regarded as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers in cinematic history. In 1990, he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation, he is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, has won an Academy Award, a Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award, Silver Lion, Grammy Award, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Directors Guild of America Awards. He has directed works such as the crime film Mean Streets, the vigilante-thriller Taxi Driver, the biographical sports drama Raging Bull, the black comedies The King of Comedy, After Hours, the religious epic drama The Last Temptation of Christ, the crime film Goodfellas, the psychological thriller Cape Fear and the crime film Casino, some of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro.
Scorsese has been noted for his successful collaborations with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, having directed him in five films, beginning with Gangs of New York and most The Wolf of Wall Street. Their third film together, The Departed, won Scorsese the Academy Award for Best Director in addition to the film winning the award for Best Picture, their collaborations have resulted in numerous Academy Award nominations for both as well as them winning several other prestigious awards. Scorsese's other film work includes the biographical drama The Aviator, the psychological thriller Shutter Island, the historical adventure drama Hugo and the religious epic Silence, his work in television includes the pilot episodes of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire and Vinyl, the latter of which he co-created. With eight Best Director Oscar nominations, he is the most nominated living director and is tied with Billy Wilder for the second-most nominations overall; as a fan of rock music, he has directed several documentaries on the subject, including The Last Waltz, No Direction Home, Shine a Light, George Harrison: Living in the Material World.
Scorsese was born on November 1942, in New York City's Queens borough. His family moved to Little Italy, his father, Charles Scorsese, mother, Catherine Scorsese, both worked in New York's Garment District. His father was a clothes presser and an actor, his mother was a seamstress and an actress, his father's parents emigrated from Polizzi Generosa, in the province of Palermo and his maternal grandparents were from Palermo from Ciminna. Scorsese was raised in a devoutly Catholic environment; as a boy, he had asthma and could not play sports or do any activities with other children, so his parents and his older brother would take him to movie theaters. As a teenager in the Bronx, Scorsese rented Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann from a store that had one copy of the reel. Scorsese was one of only two people who rented that reel. Scorsese has cited Victor Mature as his favorite actors during his youth, he has spoken of the influence of the 1947 Powell and Pressburger film Black Narcissus, whose innovative techniques impacted his filmmaking.
Enamored of historical epics in his adolescence, at least two films of the genre, Land of the Pharaohs and El Cid, appear to have had a deep and lasting impact on his cinematic psyche. Scorsese developed an admiration for neorealist cinema at this time, he recounted its influence in a documentary on Italian neorealism, commented on how Bicycle Thieves alongside Paisà, Open City inspired him and how this influenced his view or portrayal of his Sicilian roots. In his documentary, Il Mio Viaggio in Italia, Scorsese noted that the Sicilian episode of Roberto Rossellini's Paisà, which he first saw on television alongside his relatives, who were themselves Sicilian immigrants, made a significant impact on his life, he acknowledges owing a great debt to the French New Wave and has stated that "the French New Wave has influenced all filmmakers who have worked since, whether they saw the films or not." He has cited filmmakers including Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini as a major influence on his career.
His initial desire to become a priest attending preparatory seminary but failing after the first year while attending Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx gave way to cinema and Scorsese enrolled in NYU's Washington Square College, where he earned a B. A. in English in 1964. He went on to earn his M. F. A. from NYU's School of the Arts in 1966, a year after the school was founded. Scorsese attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts making the short films What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? and It's Not Just You, Murray!. His most famous short of the period is the darkly comic The Big Shave; the film is
Moshing
Moshing or slamdancing is a style of dance in which participants push or slam into each other performed in "aggressive" live music. Moshing happens in the center of the crowd closer to the stage, in an area called the "pit", it is intended to be full of body contact. The dance style originated in the hardcore punk scenes of California and Washington, D. C. around 1980. Through the 1980s it spread to other branches of punk rock as well as thrash metal and grunge, which exposed it to the mainstream. Since moshing has been performed to energetic music within a wide variety of genres, including alternative rock, EDM and hip hop, while remaining a staple at punk and heavy metal shows. Variations of moshing exist, including "pogoing", "circle pits", "wall of death". Dancing can be done alone as well as in groups; some moshers move their legs in a rhythmic fashion. While moshing is seen as a form of positive fan feedback or expression of enjoyment, it has drawn criticism over dangerous excesses occurring in offshoots.
Injuries have been reported in mosh pits, a few deaths have occurred in "Wall of Death" moshing, an offshoot that developed when fans at thrash metal shows adopted punk-style slamdancing. The term mosh came into use in the early 1980s American hardcore scene in Washington, D. C. Early on, the dance was spelled mash in fanzines and record liner notes, but pronounced mosh, as in the 1982 song "Total Mash" by the D. C.-based hardcore band Scream. H. R. of the band Bad Brains, regarded as a band that "put moshing on the map," used the term mash in lyrics and in concert stage banter to both incite and to describe the aggressive and violent dancing of the scene. To "mash it up" was to go wild with the frenzy of the music. Due to his Jamaican-accented pronunciation of the word, fans heard this as mosh instead. By the mid-1980s, the term was appearing in print with its current spelling. By the time thrash metal band Anthrax used the term in their song "Caught in a Mosh", the word was a mainstay of hardcore and thrash scenes.
Scott Ian and Charlie Benante of Anthrax and S. O. D. have both been credited with the term originating from Vinnie Stigma of the New York hardcore band Agnostic Front. Through the mainstream success of bands like Anthrax, Stormtroopers of Death, multiple thrash metal bands in the late 1980's the term came into the popular vernacular; the first dance identifiable as moshing may have originated in Orange County, during the first wave of American hardcore. Examples of this early moshing can be seen in the documentaries Another State of Mind, Urban Struggle, The Decline of Western Civilization, American Hardcore, as well as footage from the shows of the era. At the time California hardcore punk bands such as the Circle Jerks, Black Flag and Dead Kennedys were popular in Orange County. By the end of the 1980s, the initial wave of American hardcore punk had waned and split into other subgenres; the Seattle-based grunge movement was among the many styles of music that directly evolved from hardcore.
Through the mainstream success of several grunge bands, the word mosh entered the popular North American vocabulary and the dance spread to many other music genres. According to John Linnell of They Might Be Giants, "it didn’t matter what kind of music you were playing or what kind of band you were, it was just kind of the enforced rule of going to concerts." Variations of moshing exist, can be done alone as well as in groups. Variations on the traditional mosh include "pogoing", "circle pits" and the more extreme "wall of death"; some moshers move their legs in a rhythmic fashion. Researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca studied the emergent behavior of crowds at mosh pits by analyzing online videos, finding similarities with models of 2-D gases in equilibrium. Simulating the crowds with computer models, they found out that a simulation dominated by flocking parameters produced ordered behavior, forming vortexes like those seen in the videos; the American post-hardcore band Fugazi opposed slamdancing at their live shows.
Members of Fugazi were reported to single out and confront specific members of the audience, politely asking them to stop hurting other audience members, or hauling them on stage to apologize on the microphone. Consolidated, an industrial dance group of the 1990s, stood against moshing. On their third album, Play More Music, they included the song "The Men's Movement", which proclaimed the inappropriate nature of slamdancing; the song consisted of audio recordings during concerts from the audience and members of Consolidated, arguing about moshing. In the 1990s, the Smashing Pumpkins took a stance against moshing, following two incidents which resulted in fatalities. At a 1996 Pumpkins concert in Dublin, Ireland, 17-year-old Bernadette O'Brien was crushed by moshing crowd members and died in the hospital, despite warnings from the band that people were getting hurt. At another concert, singer Billy Corgan said to the audience: I just want to say one thing to you, you young, college lughead-types.
I've been watchin' people like you sluggin' around other people for seven years. And you know what? It's the same shit. I wish you'd understand that in an environment like this, in a setting like this, it's inappropriate and unfair to the rest of the people around you. I, we, publicly take a stand against moshing! Another fan died at a Smashing Pumpkins concert in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on September 24, 2007; the 20-year-old male was d
Billy Joel
William Martin Joel is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. Nicknamed the "Piano Man", he has been making music since the 1960s, releasing popular albums throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, he was born in 1949 in The Bronx, New York, grew up on Long Island, New York, both places that influenced his music. After dropping out of high school, Joel took part in two short-lived bands, The Hassles and Attila, before signing a record deal with Family Productions and kicking off a solo career in 1971 with his first release, Cold Spring Harbor. In 1972, Joel caught the attention of Columbia Records after a live radio performance of the song "Captain Jack" became popular in Philadelphia, prompting him to sign a new record deal with the company and release his second solo album, Piano Man, which contained his first hit single of the same name. After releasing two more albums, Streetlife Serenade and Turnstiles, Joel released his critical and commercial breakthrough album, The Stranger, in 1977.
In 1978, Joel's album 52nd Street was his first album to peak at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Joel released his seventh studio album, Glass Houses, in an attempt to further establish himself as a rock and roll artist, his next album, The Nylon Curtain, was released in 1982, stemmed from a desire from Joel to create more lyrically and melodically ambitious music. An Innocent Man, released in 1983, served as an homage to genres of music which Joel had grown up with in the 1950s, such as rhythm and blues and doo-wop. After releasing the albums The Bridge and Storm Front in 1986 and 1989 Joel released his twelfth and final solo album, River of Dreams, in 1993, he went on to release Fantasies and Delusions, a 2001 album featuring classical compositions composed by Joel and performed by British-Korean pianist Richard Hyung-ki Joo. Joel provided voiceover work in 1988 for the 27th animated Disney film, Oliver & Company, in which he provided the voice of the character Dodger, contributed to the soundtracks to several different films, including Easy Money, Ruthless People, Honeymoon in Vegas.
Across the 20 years of his solo career, Joel produced 33 Top 40 hits in the US, all of which he wrote himself, three of which managed to top the charts. He is a six-time Grammy Award winner, nominated for 23 Grammy Awards. With over 150 million records sold worldwide, he is one of the best-selling artists of all time as well as the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, his 1985 compilation album, Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2, is one of the best-selling albums in the US. Joel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Long Island Music Hall of Fame. In 2001, Joel received the Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2013, Joel received the Kennedy Center Honors, the nation's highest honor for influencing American culture through the arts. Since the advent of his solo career, Joel has held a successful touring career, holding live performances across the globe in which he sings several of his written songs.
In 1987, he became one of the first artists to hold a rock and roll tour in the Soviet Union following the country's alleviation of the ban on rock and roll music. Despite retiring from writing and releasing pop music following the release of River of Dreams, he continues to tour, he performs at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. Joel has been in several relationships, including marriages to Elizabeth Weber Small, model Christie Brinkley, Katie Lee. Since 2015, he has been married to his 4th spouse. William Martin Joel was born in the Bronx on May 9, 1949; when he was one year old, his family moved to the Long Island suburb of Hicksville, New York, in the Town of Oyster Bay, where he and his younger sister were raised in a section of Levitt homes. Joel's father, Howard Joel, a classical pianist and businessman, was born in Nuremberg, Germany, to a Jewish family, the son of a merchant and manufacturer, Karl Amson Joel. Helmut was educated in Switzerland, his father had created a successful mail order textile business, Joel Macht Fabrik.
To escape the Nazi regime, Helmut's family emigrated to Switzerland. His father was forced to sell his business at a fraction of its value; the family reached the United States via Cuba, because immigration quotas for German Jews prevented direct immigration at the time. In the United States, Helmut/Howard Joel always loved music. Joel's mother, was born in Brooklyn to Jewish parents and Rebecca Nyman, who had immigrated from England. Joel has said that neither of his parents had talked much about World War II, which were such dark years. After Rosalind and Howard Joel divorced in 1957, he returned to Europe, as he had never liked the United States, considering the people uneducated and materialistic, he settled in Austria. He remarried. Billy Joel has a half-brother, Alexander Joel, born to his father in Europe, who became a classical conductor there. Alexander Joel was the chief musical director of the Staatstheater Braunschweig from 2001 to 2014. Joel reluctantly began piano lessons at an early age, at his mother'
Enter Shikari
Enter Shikari is an English rock band formed in St Albans, England in 1999 under the name Hybryd by bassist Chris Batten, lead vocalist and keyboardist Roughton "Rou" Reynolds, drummer Rob Rolfe. In 2003, guitarist Liam "Rory" Clewlow joined the band to complete its current lineup, it adopted its current name. In 2006, they performed to a growing fanbase at Download Festival as well as a sold-out concert at the London Astoria, their debut studio album, Take to the Skies, was released in 2007 and reached number 4 in the Official UK Album Chart, has since been certified gold in the UK. Their second, Common Dreads, was released in 2009 and debuted on the UK Albums Chart at number 16. Both have since been certified silver in the UK; the band spent a considerable amount of time supporting the latter release through the A Flash Flood of Colour World Tour, before beginning work on a fourth studio album, The Mindsweep, released in 2015. Their fifth studio album The Spark was released in 2017. Enter Shikari have their own record label, Ambush Reality.
However, they have signed distribution deals with several major labels to help with worldwide distribution. Their eclectic musical style combines influences from rock music genres with those from various electronic music genres, they are considered key pioneers of electronicore. In 1999 a band named Hybryd formed, consisting of Rou Reynolds on guitar and vocals, Chris Batten on bass guitar, Rob Rolfe on drums, they released an EP called Commit No Nuisance, which featured the tracks "Perfect Pygmalion", "Look Inside", "Torch Song", "Honesty Box" and "Fake". In 2003, with the addition of guitarist Liam "Rory" Clewlow, Hybryd became Enter Shikari; the band was named after a boat belonging to vocalist Rou Reynolds' uncle. "Shikari is another word for hunter." After the band's lineup and name change, Reynolds focused his musical efforts on vocals and electronics instead of guitar. During 2003 and 2004, the band released three demo EPs that were available from their gigs and their website, featuring original versions of some songs that were rerecorded for their debut album, Take To The Skies.
They had another demo EP planned for release in 2005. For this the first versions of "Return To Energiser" and "Labyrinth" were recorded. Early versions of "OK Time for Plan B" and "We Can Breathe in Space" were recorded around this time but it's unclear if these were destined for the EP, it was at this time that Kerrang! Radio's Alex Baker picked up on the band, as he didn't have a physical release to play, he streamed "OK Time For Plan B" off the band's Myspace page, straight onto the airwaves. In August 2006 they released a video of the single "Mothership" which became the single of the week on the iTunes Store, their first physical single featured re-recorded versions of "Sorry You're Not a Winner/OK Time for Plan B", featured on one of the demo EPs. It was released on 30 October 2006, it was sold out within the first week of release. In mid January 2007, Enter Shikari's first single, "Mothership", entered the UK singles chart for one week at number 151, on Downloads only; this was followed a week by "Sorry You're Not a Winner/OK Time for Plan B", which charted at number 182 on the singles chart and number 146 in the Download Chart.
In addition "Sorry You're Not a Winner/OK Time for Plan B" featured on the EA Sports video game titles NHL 08 and Madden 08. Enter Shikari secured a spot on the Gibson/Myspace stage at 2006's Download Festival, they had interviews with popular music press such as Kerrang! and Rock Sound. On 4 November 2006, they became only the second unsigned band to sell out London Astoria, they made the NME's "New Noise 2007", a list of the bands it considers most to achieve success in the coming year. The next single released was "Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour", on 5 March 2007; this was the band's second single to be released from their forthcoming debut album. It contained a re-recorded version of the song "Anything Can Happen in the Next Half Hour", it reached 27 in the Official UK chart. The band released a compilation album titled The Zone just before the debut album, this contained various demo tracks and released singles; the band's debut album, Take to the Skies, was released on 19 March 2007 and on 25 March it reached number 4 in the UK Official Album Charts.
It contained re-recordings of many of the songs that had featured on the demo EPs and singles that were released prior to the release of the album. During the month of March 2007 it was announced they would be playing at Download Festival and Leeds Festivals, Give it a Name, Glastonbury Festival, Oxegen festival in Ireland and Rock am Ring in Germany. On 30 March 2007, Enter Shikari announced that their next single would be "Jonny Sniper" and would be released on 18 June; the song's video was premiered on 21 May. The single received bad reviews from NME. Enter Shikari had performed over 500 times by 2007 and played on the Gibson/MySpace stage at 2006's Download Festival. On 14 May 2007, Enter Shikari started their first North America tour; this was followed by three more North American tours. On 13 May 2008, the band released the first in a seri
Games Without Frontiers (song)
"Games Without Frontiers" is a song written and recorded by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel. It included backing vocals by Kate Bush; the song's lyrics are interpreted as a commentary on war and international diplomacy being like children's games. The single became Gabriel's first top-10 hit in the United Kingdom. 4, – tied with 1986's "Sledgehammer" – his highest-charting song in the United Kingdom. It peaked at No. 7 in Canada, but only No. 48 in the United States. The B-side to the single was two tracks combined into one: "Start" and "I Don't Remember"; the song's title refers to Jeux Sans Frontières, a long-running TV show broadcast in several European countries, in which teams of residents representing a town or city in one of the participating countries would compete in games of skill while dressed in bizarre costumes. While some games were simple races, others allowed one team to obstruct another; the British version was titled. The sentence construction and content of the lyrics "Adolf builds a bonfire/Enrico plays with it" are evocative of a passage from the diaries of Evelyn Waugh in which he wryly refers to his own children playing with fire.
The song was Gabriel's first UK Top 10 as a solo artist. Gabriel's first two solo albums were distributed in the US by Atlantic Records, but they rejected his third album, telling Gabriel he was committing "commercial suicide". Atlantic dropped him but tried to buy the album back when "Games Without Frontiers" took off in the UK and started getting airplay in the US. At this point, Gabriel wanted nothing to do with Atlantic and let Mercury Records distribute the album in America; the track features Kate Bush on backing vocals. The whistling is performed by Gabriel, along with producers Steve Hugh Padgham; the video includes film clips of Olympic events and scenes from the 1951 educational film Duck and Cover, which used a cartoon turtle to instruct US school children on what to do in case of nuclear attack. Such forlorn imagery tends to reinforce the song's antiwar theme; the album version of the song includes the line "Whistling tunes we piss on the goons in the jungle" after the second verse and before the second chorus.
This was replaced for the single release with a more radio-friendly repeat of the line "Whistling tunes we're kissing baboons in the jungle" from the first chorus. The BBC censored the video, resulting in two versions being released. Gabriel's 1991 performance of the song from the Netherlands was beamed via satellite to Wembley Stadium in England as part of "The Simple Truth" concert for Kurdish refugees. Peter Gabriel – vocals, synth bass, whistles David Rhodes – guitar Jerry Marotta – drums, percussion Larry Fast – synthesizer, synth bass Kate Bush – backing vocals Steve Lillywhite – whistles Hugh Padgham – whistles "Games Without Frontiers" was licensed as the title music for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC computer game The Race Against Time, which in turn was the official game of the charity event Sport Aid'88; the Thirteenth Winter X Games introduced Gabriel's and Lord Jamar's remix of the song, redubbed "X Games Without Frontiers", which became the theme for subsequent games.
The song is featured prominently over the closing montage of "The Colonel", the first season finale of the FX spy thriller series The Americans
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United Kingdom. With roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock, acid rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, overall loudness; the genre's lyrics and performance styles are sometimes associated with machismo. In 1968, three of the genre's most famous pioneers, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple were founded. Though they came to attract wide audiences, they were derided by critics. During the mid-1970s, Judas Priest helped spur the genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues influence. Beginning in the late 1970s, bands in the new wave of British heavy metal such as Iron Maiden and Def Leppard followed in a similar vein. Before the end of the decade, heavy metal fans became known as "metalheads" or "headbangers". During the 1980s, glam metal became popular with groups such as Mötley Crüe.
Underground scenes produced an array of more aggressive styles: thrash metal broke into the mainstream with bands such as Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax, while other extreme subgenres of heavy metal such as death metal and black metal remain subcultural phenomena. Since the mid-1990s popular styles have further expanded the definition of the genre; these include groove metal and nu metal, the latter of which incorporates elements of grunge and hip hop. Heavy metal is traditionally characterized by loud distorted guitars, emphatic rhythms, dense bass-and-drum sound, vigorous vocals. Heavy metal subgenres variously alter, or omit one or more of these attributes; the New York Times critic Jon Pareles writes, "In the taxonomy of popular music, heavy metal is a major subspecies of hard-rock—the breed with less syncopation, less blues, more showmanship and more brute force." The typical band lineup includes a drummer, a bassist, a rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist, a singer, who may or may not be an instrumentalist.
Keyboard instruments are sometimes used to enhance the fullness of the sound. Deep Purple's Jon Lord played an overdriven Hammond organ. In 1970, John Paul Jones used a Moog synthesizer on Led Zeppelin III; the electric guitar and the sonic power that it projects through amplification has been the key element in heavy metal. The heavy metal guitar sound comes from a combined use of heavy distortion. For classic heavy metal guitar tone, guitarists maintain moderate levels gain at moderate levels, without excessive preamp or pedal distortion, to retain open spaces and air in the music. Thrash metal guitar tone has scooped mid-frequencies and compressed sound with lots of bass frequencies. Guitar solos are "an essential element of the heavy metal code... that underscores the significance of the guitar" to the genre. Most heavy metal songs "feature at least one guitar solo", "a primary means through which the heavy metal performer expresses virtuosity"; some exceptions are nu grindcore bands, which tend to omit guitar solos.
With rhythm guitar parts, the "heavy crunch sound in heavy metal... palm muting" the strings with the picking hand and using distortion. Palm muting creates a tighter, more precise sound and it emphasizes the low end; the lead role of the guitar in heavy metal collides with the traditional "frontman" or bandleader role of the vocalist, creating a musical tension as the two "contend for dominance" in a spirit of "affectionate rivalry". Heavy metal "demands the subordination of the voice" to the overall sound of the band. Reflecting metal's roots in the 1960s counterculture, an "explicit display of emotion" is required from the vocals as a sign of authenticity. Critic Simon Frith claims; the prominent role of the bass is key to the metal sound, the interplay of bass and guitar is a central element. The bass guitar provides the low-end sound crucial to making the music "heavy"; the bass plays a "more important role in heavy metal than in any other genre of rock". Metal basslines vary in complexity, from holding down a low pedal point as a foundation to doubling complex riffs and licks along with the lead or rhythm guitars.
Some bands feature the bass as a lead instrument, an approach popularized by Metallica's Cliff Burton with his heavy emphasis on bass guitar solos and use of chords while playing bass in the early 1980s. Lemmy of Motörhead played overdriven power chords in his bass lines; the essence of heavy metal drumming is creating a loud, constant beat for the band using the "trifecta of speed and precision". Heavy metal drumming "requires an exceptional amount of endurance", drummers have to develop "considerable speed and dexterity... to play the intricate patterns" used in heavy metal. A characteristic metal drumming technique is the cymbal choke, which consists of striking a cymbal and immediately silencing it by grabbing it with the other hand, producing a burst of sound; the metal drum setup is much larger than those employed in other forms of rock music. Black metal, death metal and some "mainstream metal" bands "all depend upon double-kicks and blast beats". In live performance, loudness—an "onslaught of sound", in sociologist Deena Weinstein's description—is considered vital.
In his book Metalheads, psychologist Jeffrey Arnett refers to heavy me
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer and record producer who rose to fame as the original lead singer and flautist of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, Gabriel launched a successful solo career with "Solsbury Hill" as his first single, his 1986 album, So, is his best-selling release and is certified triple platinum in the UK and five times platinum in the U. S; the album's most successful single, "Sledgehammer", won a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards and, according to a report in 2011, it was MTV's most played music video of all time. Gabriel has been a champion of world music for much of his career, he co-founded the WOMAD festival in 1982. He has continued to focus on producing and promoting world music through his Real World Records label, he has pioneered digital distribution methods for music, co-founding OD2, one of the first online music download services. Gabriel has been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts. In 1980, he released the anti-apartheid single "Biko".
He has participated in several human rights benefit concerts, including Amnesty International's Human Rights Now! tour in 1988, co-founded the Witness human rights organisation in 1992. Gabriel developed The Elders with Richard Branson, launched by Nelson Mandela in 2007. Gabriel has won three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1987, six Grammy Awards, thirteen MTV Video Music Awards, the first Pioneer Award at the BT Digital Music Awards, the Q magazine Lifetime Achievement, the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Polar Music Prize, he was made a BMI Icon at the 57th annual BMI London Awards for his "influence on generations of music makers". In recognition of his many years of human rights activism, he received the Man of Peace award from the Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. AllMusic has described Gabriel as "one of rock's most ambitious, innovative musicians, as well as one of its most political".
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010, followed by his induction as a solo artist in 2014. In March 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of South Australia in recognition of his achievements in music. Peter Brian Gabriel was born on 13 February 1950 in Surrey, his father, Ralph Parton Gabriel, was an electrical engineer, his mother, Edith Irene, from a musical family, taught him to play the piano at an early age. His great-great-great-uncle, Sir Thomas Gabriel, 1st Baronet, was Lord Mayor of London from 1866 to 1877. Gabriel attended a private primary school in Woking, he played drums in his first rock bands, Mike Rutherford commented in 1985 that "Pete was—and still is, I think—a frustrated drummer". Gabriel founded Genesis in 1967 with fellow Charterhouse pupils Tony Banks, Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford, drummer Chris Stewart; the name of the band was suggested by fellow Charterhouse alumnus, the pop music impresario Jonathan King, who produced their first album, From Genesis to Revelation.
Gabriel has said to be influenced by many different sources in his way of singing, such as Family lead singer Roger Chapman and theatrical singer Arthur Brown. In 1970, he played the flute on Mona Bone Jakon. Genesis drew some attention in Britain and also in Italy, Belgium and other European countries due to Gabriel's flamboyant stage presence, which involved numerous bizarre costume changes and comical, dreamlike stories told as the introduction to each song; the concerts made extensive use of black light with the normal stage lighting off. A backdrop of fluorescent white sheets and a comparatively sparse stage made the band into a set of silhouettes, with Gabriel's fluorescent costume and make-up providing the only other sources of light. Early Genesis concerts were hampered by a bad PA system that made it difficult for audiences to understand what Gabriel was singing. According to Mike Rutherford, this drove Gabriel to find other ways to impress his personality on the audience, leading to his performing in various costumes.
In an episode of the 2007 British documentary series Seven Ages of Rock, Steve Hackett recalled the first appearance of Gabriel "in costume". It was the fox-headed entity immortalised on the cover of Foxtrot. Hackett and the rest of the band had no inkling that Gabriel was going to do this, at the time Hackett worried that it would ruin the performance, it was a success. Among Gabriel's many famous costumes, which he developed to visualise the musical ideas of the band as well as to gain press coverage, were "Batwings" for the band's usual opening number, "Watcher of the Skies". Other costumes included "The Flower" and "Magog", which were both alternately worn for "Supper's Ready" from the album Foxtrot. "Britannia" was worn for "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight", "The Reverend" for "The Battle of Epping Forest". "The Old Man" was worn for "The Musical Box" from Nursery Cryme. "The Slipperman" and "Rael" were worn during "The Colony of Slippermen", in which "Rael" was the protagonist of the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
Gabriel's departure from Genesis on 15 August 1975, which stunned fans of the group and left many commentators wondering if the band could survive, was the result of several factors. His statu
