1.
Stevie Nicks
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Stephanie Lynn Stevie Nicks is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as the Queen of Rock n Roll, Nicks is best known for both her work as frontwoman of Fleetwood Mac and for her solo career and she is also known for her distinctive voice, mystical visual style, and symbolic lyrics. As a member of Fleetwood Mac, she was inducted into the Rock and she has garnered eight Grammy Award nominations and two American Music Award nominations as a solo artist. She has won awards with Fleetwood Mac, including a Grammy Award. Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975 along with her then boyfriend, the album remained at number one on the American albums chart for 31 weeks and reached Number One in various countries worldwide. The album won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978 and it produced four U. S. top-10 singles, with Nicks Dreams being the bands first and only U. S. number-one hit. She has released a total of eight studio albums to date, with her most recent titled 24 Karat Gold, Songs from the Vault. During her solo career, she has had a working relationship with Tom Petty. They served as a band for several tracks on each of her solo albums. The song Stop Draggin My Heart Around, performed by Nicks, Nicks was born at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, to Jess Nicks, former president of Greyhounds Armour-Dial, and Barbara Nicks, a homemaker. Nicks, Sr. a struggling country singer, taught Nicks to sing duets with him by the time she was four years old. Nickss mother was so protective that she kept her at home more than most people, the infant Stephanie could pronounce her own name only as tee-dee, which led to her nickname of Stevie. Her fathers frequent relocation as a business executive had the family living in Phoenix, Albuquerque, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles. With the Goya guitar that she received for her 16th birthday, Nicks wrote her first song, Ive Loved and Ive Lost and she spent her adolescence playing records constantly, and lived in her own little musical world. While attending Arcadia High School in Arcadia, California, she joined her first band, the Changing Times, Nicks first met her future musical and romantic partner, Lindsey Buckingham, during her senior year at Menlo-Atherton High School. When she saw Buckingham playing California Dreamin at Young Life club and she later recalled, I was a senior in high school and Lindsey was a junior. I thought he was a darling, I didnt see him again for two years and he called me up and asked if I wanted to be in a band. And so, I was in band with him for three and a half years ~ a band called Fritz
2.
Sunderland
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Sunderland is a city at the centre of the City of Sunderland metropolitan borough, in Tyne and Wear, North East England. It is a city at the mouth of the River Wear with adjoining beaches of Roker. The etymology of Sunderland is derived from Sundered-land with the river travelling through the city as opposed to sitting upon the river, historically in County Durham, there were three original settlements on the site of modern-day Sunderland. On the north side of the river, Monkwearmouth was settled in 674 when Benedict Biscop founded the Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, opposite the monastery on the south bank, Bishopwearmouth was founded in 930. A small fishing village called Sunderland, located toward the mouth of the river was granted a charter in 1179, over the centuries, Sunderland grew as a port, trading coal and salt. Ships began to be built on the river in the 14th century, by the 19th century, the port of Sunderland had grown to absorb Bishopwearmouth and Monkwearmouth. More recently, Sunderland has seen growth as a centre for the automotive industry, science & technology. A person who is born or lives around the Sunderland area is colloquially known as a Mackem. Sunderland was created a borough of County Durham in 1835. Under the Local Government Act 1888, it was given the status of a County Borough, independence from county council control. In 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, the county borough was abolished and its combined with that of other districts to form the Metropolitan Borough of Sunderland in Tyne. The metropolitan borough was granted city status after winning a competition in 1992 to celebrate the Queens 40th year on the throne, the population of this city taken at the 2011 Census was 275,506. Sunderland has the motto of Nil Desperandum Auspice Deo or Under Gods guidance we may neve despair Much of the city is located on a low range of running parallel to the coast. On average, it is around 80 metres above sea level, Sunderland is divided by the River Wear which passes through the middle of the city in a deeply incised valley, part of which is known as the Hylton gorge. The two road bridges connecting the north and south portions of the city are the Queen Alexandra Bridge at Pallion, to the west of the city, the Hylton Viaduct carries the A19 dual-carriageway over the Wear. Most of the suburbs of Sunderland are situated towards the west of the city centre with 70% of its living on the south side of the river. The city extends to the seafront at Hendon and Ryhope in the south, in Millfield, the streets are all associated with plants, e. g. Chester, Fern, Rose, Hyacinth etc. At 3,874 hectares, Sunderland is the 45th largest urban area in England by measure of area, according to statistics based on the 2001 census, 60% of homes in the Sunderland metropolitan area are owner occupied, with an average household size of 2.4 people
3.
Synthpop
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Synth-pop is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic, art rock, disco, and particularly the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late-1970s to the mid-1980s. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestras success opened the way for bands such as P-Model, Plastics. The development of polyphonic synthesizers, the definition of MIDI. This, its adoption by the acts from the New Romantic movement, together with the rise of MTV. Synth-pop is sometimes deployed interchangeably with electropop, but electropop may also denote a variant of synth-pop that places emphasis on a harder. In the late 1980s duos such as Erasure and Pet Shop Boys adopted a style that was successful on the US dance-charts. Some artists and bands were criticised for gender bending, Synth-pop was defined by its primary use of synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers, sometimes using them to replace all other instruments. Borthwick and Moy have described the genre as diverse but, many synth-pop musicians had limited musical skills, relying on the technology to produce or reproduce the music. The result was often minimalist, with grooves that were woven together from simple repeated riffs often with no harmonic progression to speak of. Early synth-pop has been described as eerie, sterile, and vaguely menacing, using droning electronics with little change in inflection, common lyrical themes of synth-pop songs were isolation, urban anomie, and feelings of being emotionally cold and hollow. Synthesizers were increasingly used to imitate the conventional and clichéd sound of orchestras, thin, treble-dominant, synthesized melodies and simple drum programmes gave way to thick, and compressed production, and a more conventional drum sound. Lyrics were generally optimistic, dealing with more traditional subject matter for pop music such as romance, escapism. According to music writer Simon Reynolds, the hallmark of 1980s synth-pop was its emotional, at times operatic singers such as Marc Almond, Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox. Because synthesizers removed the need for groups of musicians, these singers were often part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation. Later synth-pop saw a shift to a style influenced by other genres. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used practically in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, the portable Minimoog, which allowed much easier use, particularly in live performance was widely adopted by progressive rock musicians such as Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman of Yes
4.
New wave music
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New wave is a genre of rock music popular from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s with ties to 1970s punk rock. New wave moved away from smooth blues and rock and roll sounds to create pop music that incorporated electronic and experimental music, mod, initially new wave was similar to punk rock, before becoming a distinct genre. It subsequently engendered subgenres and fusions, including synth-pop, college rock, common characteristics of new wave music include the use of synthesizers and electronic productions, the importance of styling and the arts, as well as diversity. In the mid-1980s, differences between new wave and other genres began to blur. New wave has enjoyed resurgences since the 1990s, after a rising nostalgia for several new wave-influenced artists, subsequently, the genre influenced other genres. During the 2000s, a number of acts explored new wave and post-punk influences, such as the Strokes, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand and these acts were sometimes labeled new wave of new wave. The catch-all nature of new music has been a source of much confusion. The 1985 discography Whos New Wave in Music listed artists in over 130 separate categories, the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock calls the term virtually meaningless, while AllMusic mentions stylistic diversity. New wave first emerged as a genre in the early 1970s, used by critics including Nick Kent and Dave Marsh to classify such New York-based groups as the Velvet Underground. It gained currency beginning in 1976 when it appeared in UK punk fanzines such as Sniffin Glue and newsagent music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express. In November 1976 Caroline Coon used Malcolm McLarens term new wave to designate music by bands not exactly punk, the term was also used in that sense by music journalist Charles Shaar Murray in his comments about the Boomtown Rats. For a period of time in 1976 and 1977, the new wave. By the end of 1977, new wave had replaced punk as the definition for new music in the UK. As radio consultants in the United States had advised their clients that punk rock was a fad, like the filmmakers of the French new wave movement, its new artists were anti-corporate and experimental. At first, most U. S. writers exclusively used the new wave for British punk acts. Music historian Vernon Joynson claimed that new wave emerged in the UK in late 1976, in the U. S. the first new wavers were the not-so-punk acts associated with the New York club CBGB. CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, referring to the first show of the band Television at his club in March 1974, said, furthermore, many artists who would have originally been classified as punk were also termed new wave. A1977 Phonogram Records compilation album of the same name features US artists including the Dead Boys, Ramones, Talking Heads, New wave is much more closely tied to punk and came and went more quickly in the United Kingdom than in the United States
5.
Folk rock
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It has also been influential in those parts of the world with close cultural connections to Britain and gave rise to the genre of folk punk. By the 1980s the genre was in decline in popularity. When English bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s defined themselves as electric folk they were making a distinction with the existing folk rock. Folk rock was what they had already been producing, American or American style singer-songwriter material played on instruments, as undertaken by Bob Dylan. They drew the distinction because they were focusing on indigenous songs, the result of this hybridisation was an exchange of specific features drawn from Traditional music and Rock music. For example, electric folk groups, while using traditional material as their source for lyrics and tunes. In the same year, The Beatles began incorporating overt folk influences into their music, the Beatles and other British Invasion bands, in turn, influenced the Californian band The Byrds, who began playing folk-influenced material and Bob Dylan compositions with rock instrumentation. The Byrds recording of Dylans Mr Tambourine Man was released in April 1965 and reached #1 on the U. S. and UK singles charts, setting off the mid-1960s folk rock movement. The Beatles late 1965 album, Rubber Soul, contained a number of songs clearly influenced by the American folk rock boom, such as Nowhere Man and If I Needed Someone. Folk rock became an important genre among emerging English bands, particularly those in the London club scene towards the end of the 1960s. Like the American revival, it was often overtly left wing in its politics, most important among their responses were the foundation of folk clubs in major towns, starting with London where MacColl began the Ballads and Blues Club in 1953. These clubs were usually urban in location, but the songs sung in them often hearkened back to a rural pre-industrial past, in many ways this was the adoption of abandoned popular music by the middle classes. This meant that there were, by the later 1960s, a group of performers with musical skill and knowledge of a variety of traditional songs. The result was an interpretation of the song A Sailors Life. The rapid expansion of electric folk that followed in the wake of Liege, five Hand Reel a band formed out of the remnants of Spencers Feat proved to be one of the more successful and influential folk rock bands. Releasing 4 albums with Topic/RCA records they were popular in Europe. He then quit that and eventually formed the Albion Country Band, later the Albion Band, a much smaller group of English bands were formed in emulation of existing electric rock bands. Fiddlers Dram were often dismissed as one hit wonders for their single Day Trip to Bangor, most of their career, from that point until they disbanded in 1979, was one of declining profile and sales
6.
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
7.
Synthesizer
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A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates electric signals that are converted to sound through instrument amplifiers and loudspeakers or headphones. Synthesizers may either imitate instruments like piano, Hammond organ, flute, vocals, natural sounds like ocean waves, etc. or generate new electronic timbres. Synthesizers without built-in controllers are called sound modules, and are controlled via USB, MIDI or CV/gate using a controller device. Synthesizers use various methods to generate electronic signals, synthesizers were first used in pop music in the 1960s. In the 1970s, synths were used in disco, especially in the late 1970s, in the 1980s, the invention of the relatively inexpensive, mass market Yamaha DX7 synth made synthesizers widely available. 1980s pop and dance music often made use of synthesizers. In the 2010s, synthesizers are used in genres of pop, rock. Contemporary classical music composers from the 20th and 21st century write compositions for synthesizer, the beginnings of the synthesizer are difficult to trace, as it is difficult to draw a distinction between synthesizers and some early electric or electronic musical instruments. One of the earliest electric musical instruments, the telegraph, was invented in 1876 by American electrical engineer Elisha Gray. He accidentally discovered the sound generation from a self-vibrating electromechanical circuit and this musical telegraph used steel reeds with oscillations created by electromagnets transmitted over a telegraph line. Gray also built a simple loudspeaker device into later models, consisting of a diaphragm in a magnetic field. This instrument was a remote electromechanical musical instrument that used telegraphy, though it lacked an arbitrary sound-synthesis function, some have erroneously called it the first synthesizer. In 1897, Thaddeus Cahill invented the Teleharmonium, which used dynamos, and was capable of additive synthesis like the Hammond organ, however, Cahills business was unsuccessful for various reasons, and similar but more compact instruments were subsequently developed, such as electronic and tonewheel organs. In 1906, American engineer, Lee De Forest ushered in the electronics age and he invented the first amplifying vacuum tube, called the Audion tube. This led to new entertainment technologies, including radio and sound films, ondes Martenot and Trautonium were continuously developed for several decades, finally developing qualities similar to later synthesizers. In the 1920s, Arseny Avraamov developed various systems of graphic sonic art, in 1938, USSR engineer Yevgeny Murzin designed a compositional tool called ANS, one of the earliest real-time additive synthesizers using optoelectronics. The earliest polyphonic synthesizers were developed in Germany and the United States, during the three years that Hammond manufactured this model,1,069 units were shipped, but production was discontinued at the start of World War II. Both instruments were the forerunners of the electronic organs and polyphonic synthesizers
8.
RCA Records
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RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. It is one of SMEs three flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, blues, jazz, the companys name is derived from the initials of the labels former parent company, the Radio Corporation of America. It is the second oldest recording company in US history, after sister label Columbia Records, RCAs Canadian unit is Sonys oldest label in Canada. It was one of only two Canadian record companies to survive the Great Depression, kelly, Enrique Iglesias, Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon, Kesha, Miley Cyrus, Giorgio Moroder, Jennifer Hudson, DAngelo, Pink, Tinashe, G-Eazy, Pitbull, Zayn and Wizkid. In 1929, the Radio Corporation of America purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the worlds largest manufacturer of phonographs and phonograph records. The company then became RCA Victor but retained use of the Victor Records name on their labels until the beginning of 1946 when the labels were finally switched over to RCA Victor. With Victor, RCA acquired New World rights to the famous Nipper His Masters Voice trademark, in Shanghai, China, in 1931, RCA Victors British affiliate the Gramophone Company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company to form EMI. This gave RCA head David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board, in September 1931, RCA Victor introduced the first 33⅓ rpm records sold to the public, calling them Program Transcriptions. In the depths of the Great Depression, the format was a commercial failure, during the early part of the depression, RCA made a number of attempts to produce a successful cheap label to compete with the dime store labels. The first was the short-lived Timely Tunes label in 1931 sold at Montgomery Ward, in 1932, Bluebird Records was created as a sub-label of RCA Victor. It was originally an 8-inch record with a blue label. In 1933, RCA reintroduced Bluebird and Electradisk as a standard 10-inch label, another cheap label, Sunrise, was produced. The same musical couplings were issued on all three labels and Bluebird Records still survives eight decades after Electradisk and Sunrise were discontinued, RCA also produced records for Montgomery Ward label during the 1930s. Besides manufacturing records for themselves, RCA Victor operated RCA Custom which was the leading record manufacturer for independent record labels, RCA Custom also pressed record compilations for The Readers Digest Association. RCA sold its interest in EMI in 1935, but EMI continued to distribute RCA recordings in the UK, RCA also manufactured and distributed HMV classical recordings on the RCA and HMV labels in North America. During World War II, ties between RCA and its Japanese affiliate JVC were severed, the Japanese record company is today called Victor Entertainment and is still a JVC subsidiary. From 1942 to 1944, RCA Victor was seriously impacted by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, virtually all union musicians could not make recordings during that period
9.
Bertelsmann Music Group
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Bertelsmann Music Group was a division of German media company Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Japans Sony Corporation of America on October 1,2008. It was established in 1987 to combine the music activities of Bertelsmann. The joint venture with Sony Music was set up in August 2004 and it reduced the Big Five record companies to the Big Four record companies. At that time, the company had a 21. 5% share in the music market. Sony Music and BMG remained separate in Japan, although BMG Music Japan was wholly owned by Sony BMG. Bertelsmann sold its 50% share of Sony BMG to Sony Corporation of America for a total of $1.5 billion, and it is focused mainly in BMGs European stronghold markets. The basis of the company was formed through BMGs decision to withhold selected European music catalogues from the former Sony BMG joint venture, also kept separate from the acquisition by Sony Corporation of America was Sony BMGs wholly owned and operated BMG Japan. Sony Music Japan remained independent from the Sony BMG joint venture, therefore BMG, during Sony BMGs buyout, BMG Japan was instead picked up by Sony Music Entertainment Japan. It briefly continued to operate as an entity until a reorganization in early 2009 folded the company into Sony Music Japan. Barry Weiss, President and Chief Executive Officer, Zomba Label Group CEO Now part of Sony Music Entertainment after the buyout of Bertelsmann AGs 50% stake in Sony BMG. BMG Music Publishing, which was not part of the Sony BMG merger, was a business of the Bertelsmann Music Group until it was sold to Universal Music Group for €1.63 billion in 2007. Universal then folded the company into Universal Music Publishing Group, the company was headquartered at 245 Fifth Avenue, 8th Floor New York, New York 10016 and had operations in 36 offices in 25 countries. BMG Music publishing controlled over one million copyrights, BMG Music Publishing was the global leader in Classical music and was number one in Contemporary Christian music. Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing is BMG Music Publishings Christian publisher and owns over 60,000 copyrights, BMG Music Publishing and its assets have now been completely absorbed and folded into Universal Music Publishing Group. After Sony bought out Bertelsmanns share in Sony BMG, Bertelsmann was allowed to keep the rights to recordings from the former joint venture. These songs served as the foundation to BMG Rights Management, BMG Rights Management now serves as a division within Bertelsmann and as a replacement to the defunct Bertelsmann Music Group. A settlement in 2002 included the publishers and distributors, Sony Music, Warner Music, Bertelsmann Music Group, EMI Music. In restitution for price fixing they agreed to pay a $67.4 million fine and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups and it is estimated customers were overcharged by nearly $500 million and up to $5 per album
10.
Surfdog Records
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Surfdog Records is an independent record label, music publishing company, merchandising company, and marketing company based in Encinitas, California, United States. Its roster is diverse and includes artists of the rock, punk, swing, rockabilly, reggae, lounge, Surfdog Records officially began as a record label in 1993. Today, in addition to being an Independent record label, other divisions of the company are Dave Kaplan Management Inc, Surfdog Music Publishing and Licensing, Surfdog Merchandising, Surfdog Entertainment Marketing and Surfdogs Java Hut. Rockabilly and big band jazz musician Brian Setzer, also managed by Dave Kaplan Management Inc. has released albums through Surfdog Records. Since 2000, Setzer has won three GRAMMY Awards, as well as receiving his seventh GRAMMY nomination in 2007 for his album Wolfgangs Big Night Out. Dave Stewart, best known for his work with British pop-rock duo Eurythmics, joined Surfdogs roster in 2007, followed by his 2011 release through Surfdog Records The Blackbird Diaries. British soul singer Joss Stone released her studio album LP1 through Surfdog Records in partnership with her own Stoned Records in 2011. Stone co-wrote and co-produced the album with Dave Stewart, campbell in 2012 received a GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to music throughout his 50 years plus career. In 2013, Surfdog announced the signing of a collaboration with rock and roll legend Eric Clapton for Claptons new record Old Sock, released in March 12,2013. On April 22,2014, Drake Bell released his first studio album since 2006s Its Only Time with Universal Motown Records, the record debuted at #182 on the Billboard 200, #50 on the Billboard Top Rock Albums, and #32 on the Billboard Top Independent Albums charts. It sold 2,000 copies in its first week of release, the record contains songs originally by Billy Joel, Queen, The Kinks, Stray Cats, and more. Brian Setzer, frontman of Stray Cats and also on the Surfdog roster, bull, a song on Ready Steady Go. was on the top 10 charts in Mexico for several weeks. On May 19,2014, Release of The Burning of Rome’s Year of The Ox, on July 29,2014, Eric Clapton & Friends released The Breeze, An Appreciation of JJ Cale. The Breeze is full of covers of songs originally by JJ Cale and contains vocals by Mark Knopfler, Willie Nelson, John Mayer, Tom Petty, the album received much attention, achieving a #2 debut on the Billboard Top 200 album charts. On August 12,2014, Brian Setzer released his newest record, the record contains new music from Setzer and was widely accepted by music critics. Lets Shake was the first single of the record, on October 6,2014, The Burning of Rome were one of the biggest winners at the 2014 San Diego Music Awards. Along with Jason Mraz they led the nomination pool and they won Best Live Performer, Best Alternative Album for Year of The Ox, and Song of the Year for God of Small Things. On October 21,2014, Brian Setzers 1959 Gretsch 6120 was inducted into the world-renowned Smithsonian Institution in Washington D. C
11.
Eurythmics
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Eurythmics were a British music duo consisting of members Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart. Stewart and Lennox were both previously in the band The Tourists, who split up in 1980, Eurythmics were formed that year in London. The duo released their first album, In the Garden, in 1981 to little fanfare, the title track was a worldwide hit, topping the charts in various countries including the US. The duo went on to release a string of hit singles, by this time Stewart was a sought-after record producer, while Lennox began a solo recording career in 1992 with her debut album Diva. After almost a decade apart, Eurythmics reunited to record their album, Peace. They reunited again in 2005 to release the single Ive Got a Life, as part of a new Eurythmics compilation album, Eurythmics have sold an estimated 75 million records worldwide. Lennox and Stewart met in 1975 in a restaurant in London and they first played together in 1976 in the punk rock band The Catch. After releasing one single as The Catch in 1977, the band evolved into The Tourists, Stewart and Lennox were also romantically involved. The Tourists achieved some success, but the experience was reportedly an unhappy one. Personal and musical tensions existed within the group, whose main songwriter was Peet Coombes and they were interested in creating pop music, but wanted freedom to experiment with electronics and the avant-garde. It was in a hotel in Wagga Wagga, Australia, while playing around with a portable mini-synthesizer that Lennox, the duo signed to RCA Records. At this time, Lennox and Stewart also split as a couple, during the period that Lennox and Stewart were in The Tourists, and later as Eurythmics, they were managed by Kenny Smith and Sandra Turnbull of Hyper Kinetics Ltd. They recorded their first album in Cologne with Conny Plank and this resulted in the album In the Garden, released in October 1981. The album mixed psychedelic, krautrock and electropop influences, and featured contributions from Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, drummer Clem Burke, Robert Görl, a couple of the songs were co-written by guitarist Roger Pomphrey. The album was not a commercial success, however, the three new singles they released that year all performed badly on initial release in the UK. Lennox apparently suffered at least one nervous breakdown during this period, Eurythmics commercial breakthrough came with their second album, Sweet Dreams, released in January 1983. The successful title track featured a dark and powerful sequenced synth bass line, the song reached no.2 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming one of the years biggest sellers, and later topped the US charts. The bands fortunes changed immensely from this moment on, and Lennox quickly became a pop icon and their previous single, Love Is a Stranger, was also re-released and became another chart success
12.
Shakespears Sister
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Shakespears Sister is a pop-rock project, formed by Irish-born singer–songwriter Siobhan Fahey in 1988, and based in the United Kingdom. Initially, Shakespears Sister was an act, but by 1989, it had become a duo with the addition of the American musician. Together they released two Top 10 albums and a string of Top 40 hits, including the 1992 hit Stay which peaked at No.1 in the UK for eight consecutive weeks. Detroit was fired from the band in 1993, leaving Fahey as the sole member again until she ended the project in 1996, after working under her own name for some years, Fahey revived the Shakespears Sister name in 2009. The name was adapted from the title of the song Shakespeares Sister by The Smiths, which was in turn a reference to Virginia Woolfs work A Room of Ones Own. According to Fahey, the spelling began with a misspelling on a woodcut sign, however she decided to keep it, because It made it sort of my thing. Fahey has described the meaning of the name being Siobhan Fahey is the mother, the sister, Fahey began writing and recording work for the project with producer Richard Feldman. An accomplished singer and multi-instrumentalist, Levy also made vocal and instrumental contributions to the sessions, Levy agreed, and restyled herself Marcella Detroit, a name shed use throughout her time with Shakespears Sister and afterwards. The debut Shakespears Sister single was Break My Heart /Heroine, Break My Heart had been intended to differentiate Faheys solo-artist persona from her past work with Bananarama. However, David A. Stewart had been impressed by the chemistry between Fahey and Detroit in the recording studio. Despite initial reluctance from both women, Detroit was invited to become a 50% member towards the end of the recording sessions and she would later recall by the time we did the last song on the first album, my role became more integral. I didn’t just want to be a background singer and it was Siobhan’s band, this was made perfectly clear. But I was cool with that – that’s the way it was, the second Shakespears Sister single, Youre History, gave the project its breakthrough hit. Youre History reached the top 10 in the UK in summer 1989, as did the debut Shakespears Sister album Sacred Heart, Two further singles were released from the album, Run Silent and Dirty Mind, though both failed to peak within the UK top 50. In October 1991, Shakespears Sister released the first single from Hormonally Yours, Goodbye Cruel World, the second single however, Stay, marked Shakespears Sisters first and only No. 1, staying at the top of the UK charts for eight weeks, and also found similar success in international charts. Notably, the song foregrounded Detroit, who sang the majority of lead vocals, Hormonally Yours was released the following month, and sold well on the strength of Stay, eventually being certified double platinum by the BPI. The duo continued to enjoy success with singles from Hormonally Yours
13.
Joss Stone
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Joscelyn Eve Stoker, better known by her stage name Joss Stone, is an English singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to fame in late 2003 with her debut album, The Soul Sessions. She became the youngest British female singer to top the UK Albums Chart and she released her fourth album, Colour Me Free. on 20 October 2009, which reached the top 10 on Billboard. Stone released her album, LP1, on 22 July 2011. She also made her acting debut in 2006 with the fantasy adventure film Eragon. Stone was the youngest woman on the 2006 Sunday Times Rich List—an annual list of the UKs wealthiest people—with £6 million, in 2012, her net worth was estimated to be £10 million, making her the fifth richest British musician under 30. The Soul Sessions Vol.2 is her fourth album to reach the top 10 on the Billboard 200. Stone was born at Buckland Hospital in Dover, Kent and spent her years in Ashill. She is the third of four born to Wendy and Richard Stoker. Her father owns a fruit and nut import/export business, her mother worked as Stones manager until October 2004, Stone made her first public appearance at the Uffculme Comprehensive School—which she attended—in Uffculme, Devon, with a cover version of Jackie Wilsons 1957 song Reet Petite. Stone has dyslexia and left school at age sixteen with only three GCSE qualifications and it wasnt that I was stupid. Im just a little bit dyslexic and I wasnt very academic, Stone grew up listening to a wide variety of music including 1960s and 1970s American R&B and soul music performed by such artists as Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin. As a result, she developed a style of singing like her idols. My first CD that I owned was Aretha Franklin, Greatest Hits, and I saw the advert on TV and it was just like little clips of her songs. I had no idea who she was—I was only like 10 so, I said, Oh yeah, that looks really good, so I wrote it down and I said to my mum, Can I have that for Christmas. So she told my friend Dennis, who gets me good music anyway. So that was one of my first albums that I loved and she would later tell MTV News, I kind of clicked into soul music more than anything else because of the vocals. Youve got to have good vocals to sing soul music and I always liked it ever since I was little, after passing her audition, she sang Donna Summers On the Radio for the broadcast, and eventually won the contest
14.
Ringo Starr
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Richard Starkey, MBE, known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for the Beatles. He occasionally sang lead vocals, usually for one song on an album, including With a Little Help from My Friends, Yellow Submarine and their cover of Act Naturally. He also wrote the Beatles songs Dont Pass Me By and Octopuss Garden, Starr was twice afflicted by life-threatening illnesses during childhood, and as a result of prolonged hospitalisations fell behind in school. In 1955, he entered the workforce and briefly held a position with British Rail before securing an apprenticeship at a Liverpool equipment manufacturer, soon afterwards, he became interested in the UK skiffle craze, developing a fervent admiration for the genre. In 1957, he cofounded his first band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, when the Beatles formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. After achieving moderate success with that band in the UK and Hamburg, he quit the Hurricanes and joined the Beatles in August 1962, Starr played key roles in the Beatles films and appeared in numerous others. After the bands break-up in 1970, he released several singles including the US number four hit It Dont Come Easy. In 1972, he released his most successful UK single, Back Off Boogaloo and he achieved commercial and critical success with his 1973 album Ringo, which was a top ten release in both the UK and the US. He has been featured in a number of documentaries and hosted television shows, since 1989, he has toured with twelve variations of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. Ringos popularity brought forth a new paradigm and we started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect. His parts are so signature to the songs that you can listen to a Ringo drum part without the rest of the music and he was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers named Starr the fifth-greatest drummer of all time. Starr, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a Beatle in 1988, was inducted for his solo career in 2015. Richard Starkey was born on 7 July 1940, at 9 Madryn Street, in Dingle and he is the only child of confectioners Elsie and Richard Starkey. Elsie enjoyed singing and dancing, a hobby that she shared with her husband, an avid fan of swing. Prior to the birth of their son, whom they nicknamed Ritchie, the couple had spent much of their time on the local ballroom circuit. Elsie adopted an approach to raising her son that bordered on fixation. Subsequently, Big Ritchie, as Starkeys father became known, lost interest in his family, choosing instead to spend hours drinking and dancing in pubs
15.
Daryl Hall
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In the 1970s and early 1980s, Hall scored several Billboard chart hits and is regarded as one of the best soul singers of his generation. Guitarist Robert Fripp, who collaborated with him in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has written, I have never worked with a more able singer. Since late 2007, he has hosted the web series, Live from Daryls House. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004, Daryl Franklin Hohl was born in Pottstown, a Pennsylvania borough 40 miles from Philadelphia. His parents each had a background in music, his father was a professional singer and he started recording while still a student at Owen J. Roberts High School, from which he graduated in 1965. In college at Temple University in Philadelphia, he majored in music, while continuing to record, working with Kenny Gamble, during his first semester at Temple, in the fall of 1965, he and four other white Temple University students formed the vocal harmony group the Temptones. They were popular additions to the largely black Philly soul scene, the Temptones recorded a handful of singles for Arctic Records, produced by Jimmy Bishop. While performing at the Uptown theatre, Hall formed creative affiliations with such artists as Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, in 1967, he met John Oates, who was also an undergraduate at Temple University. According to Daryl Hall, they met when We got in the middle of a fight at a dance - I have no idea what the fight was about, I guess the Greek letters on one gangs jackets didnt appeal to the other gang. We both beat it out the back and met on the elevator while leaving the place rather quickly, Hall was by then a senior, while Oates was a freshman. They played together until Oates transferred to a different school at age 19, in 1969, Hall again began recording songs by other artists, which led to the duo signing their first record contract in early 1972. Signed to Atlantic by Ahmet Ertegun and managed by Tommy Mottola in the early 1970s and their second album, Abandoned Luncheonette, produced by Arif Mardin and released in 1973, yielded the single, Shes Gone, which went to No.7 in the U. S. Top 10 on re-release in 1976 after reaching No.1 on the R&B charts when it was covered by Tavares, the duo recorded one more album with Atlantic, War Babies, before they were dropped and promptly signed to RCA. During their tenure at RCA the duo catapulted to international superstardom, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, Hall & Oates scored six U. S. The era also produced an additional six U. S, top 10 singles, Sara Smile, One on One, Family Man, You Make My Dreams, Say It Isnt So and Method of Modern Love. In 1972 Hall & Oates opened for David Bowie, who was doing an American Tour as Ziggy Stardust. Of his relationship with the British rocker, Daryl Hall reminisced “One time I ran into him in Jamaica. we went to the Playboy Club, after playing their set, they then went on to back Mick Jagger & Tina Turner, a highlight of the concert. The duo released a Christmas album in October 2006 titled Home for Christmas, the duo were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014
16.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are an American rock band from Gainesville, Florida. In 1976, the original lineup was Tom Petty as the lead singer and guitar player, Mike Campbell as the lead guitarist, Ron Blair on bass, Stan Lynch on drums. The band has maintained this lineup, with a few exceptions. In 1981, Blair, who was tired of the touring lifestyle, blairs replacement, Howie Epstein, stayed with the band for the next twenty years. Scott Thurston joined the band as a multi-instrumentalist, mostly rhythm guitar and second keyboards, Blair returned to the Heartbreakers in 2002, the year before Epsteins death. In 1994, Steve Ferrone replaced Lynch, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were on the forefront of the heartland rock movement, alongside artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger, which arose in the late 1970s and 1980s. Petty and the Heartbreakers are known for hit singles such as American Girl, Breakdown, The Waiting, Learning to Fly, Refugee, while the heartland rock movement fizzled in the 1990s, the band remained active and popular. They still tour regularly and continue to record albums and their most recent, Hypnotic Eye, was released on July 25,2014. Although most of their material is produced and performed under the name The Heartbreakers, in these releases, members of the band contributed as collaborators, producing and performing as studio musicians. Pettys early bands included the Sundowners, the Epics, and Mudcrutch, in 1974, Mudcrutch signed with Shelter Records and re-located to Los Angeles, California. The band released one single, Depot Street, in 1975, which failed to chart, in December 1975 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers formed. The Heartbreakers began their career with a self-titled album, released through the aforementioned Shelter label. Initially, the Heartbreakers did not gain traction in America. Early singles included Breakdown and American Girl, Breakdown was re-released in the USA and became a Top 40 hit in 1978, after word filtered back to the States that the band was creating a firestorm in the UK. Their 1978 second album, Youre Gonna Get It, marked the bands first gold album, and featured the singles I Need to Know and Listen To Her Heart. In 1979, the band was dragged into a dispute when ABC Records. Petty refused to be transferred to another record label and he held fast to his principles, which led to his filing for bankruptcy as a tactic against MCA. In 1979, after their dispute was settled, the Heartbreakers released their third album Damn the Torpedoes through MCAs Backstreet label
17.
Candy Dulfer
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Candy Dulfer is a Dutch smooth jazz, funk alto saxophonist and occasional singer who began playing at the age of six. She founded her band, Funky Stuff, when she was fourteen years old and her debut album Saxuality received a Grammy Award nomination. Dulfer has released nine albums, two live albums, and one compilation album. She hosted the Dutch television series Candy meets, in which she interviews fellow musicians. In 2013 she became a judge in the season of the Dutch version of The X Factor. Candy Dulfer was born on 19 September 1969 in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and she began playing the drums at the age of five. As a six-year-old she started to play the soprano saxophone, at the age of seven she switched to alto saxophone and later began playing in a local concert band Jeugd Doet Leven in Zuiderwoude. Dulfer played her first solo on stage with her fathers band De Perikels, at the age of eleven, she made her first recordings for the album I Didnt Ask of De Perikels. In 1982, when she was years old, she played as a member of Rosa Kings Ladies Horn section at the North Sea Jazz Festival. According to Dulfer, King encouraged her to become a leader herself. In 1984, at the age of fourteen, Dulfer started her own band Funky Stuff, dulfers band performed throughout the Netherlands and in 1987 was the opening act for two of Madonnas European concerts. In 1988 Prince invited Dulfer on stage to play a solo during one of his European shows. In 1989 Dulfer appeared in Princes Partyman video, Dulfer performed session work with Eurythmics guitarist and producer Dave Stewart and was a guest musician for Pink Floyd during the bands performance at Knebworth in 1990. Dulfers debut album, Saxuality, was released in 1990 and was nominated for a Grammy and her song Lily Was Here reached No.11 on American the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Though Dulfer has had smooth jazz chart hits such as For The Love of You and Finsbury Park, Cafe 67. Dulfer was also the featured saxophonist on Van Morrisons A Night in San Francisco, an album in 1993, Dulfer collaborated with her father Hans Dulfer on the duet album Dulfer Dulfer in 2001. She joined Princes band in 2004 for his Musicology Live 2004ever tour, in 2007, she released her ninth studio album Candy Store. The album reached a No.2 position in Billboards Top Contemporary Jazz charts and her song Candy Store and the song L. A. Citylights reached the No.1 position in Smooth Jazz National Airplay charts in the United States
18.
Annie Lennox
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Ann Annie Lennox, OBE is a Scottish singer, songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. With a total of eight Brit Awards, including Best British Female Artist six times and she has also been named the Brits Champion of Champions. Lennox embarked on a career in 1992 with her debut album, Diva. To date, she has released six studio albums and a compilation album. Aside from her eight Brit Awards, she has collected four Grammy Awards. In 2002, Lennox received a Billboard Century Award, the highest accolade from Billboard Magazine. In 2004, she won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Into the West, written for the soundtrack to the feature film The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King. In addition to her career as a musician, Lennox is also a political and social activist, notable for raising money and awareness for HIV/ AIDS as it affects women and children in Africa. In 2011, Lennox was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for her tireless charity campaigns, on 4 June 2012 she performed at the Queens Diamond Jubilee Concert in front of Buckingham Palace. Lennox performed the song Little Bird during the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony in London on 12 August 2012, Lennox has been named The Greatest White Soul Singer Alive by VH1 and one of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time by Rolling Stone. In 2012, she was rated No.22 on VH1s 100 Greatest Women in Music and she has earned the distinction of most successful female British artist in UK music history due to her commercial success since the early 1980s. As of June 2008, including her work within Eurythmics, Lennox had sold over 80 million records worldwide, Annie Lennox was born on Christmas Day 1954 in Summerfield Maternity hospital, Aberdeen, the daughter of Dorothy and Thomas Allison Lennox. In the 1970s, Lennox won a place at the Royal Academy of Music in London and she lived on a student grant and worked at part-time jobs for extra money. Lennox was unhappy during her time at the Royal Academy and spent her time wondering what direction she could take. Lennoxs flute teachers final report stated, Ann has not always sure of where to direct her efforts. She is very, very able, however, two years later, Lennox reported to the Academy, I have had to work as a waitress, barmaid, and shop assistant to keep me when not in musical work. She also played and sang with a few bands, such as Windsong, during the period of her course, in 2006, the academy made her an honorary Fellow. Lennox also was made a Fellow of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, in 1976, Lennox was flautist with a band called Dragons Playground, leaving before they appeared on TVs New Faces
19.
Brit Awards
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The Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industrys annual pop music awards. The name was originally a form of British, Britain or Britannia. In addition, an equivalent awards ceremony for music, called the Classic Brit Awards, is held each May. Robbie Williams holds the record for the most Brit Awards,13 as a solo artist, the awards originated as an annual event in 1982 under the auspices of the British record industrys trade association, the BPI. In 1989 they were renamed the Brit Awards, masterCard has been the long-term sponsor of the event. The Brit Awards were broadcast live until 1989, when Samantha Fox, in subsequent years, the event was recorded and broadcast the following night. From 2007, the Brit Awards reverted to a live broadcast on British television, on 14 February on ITV. In that year, comedian Russell Brand was presenter and three awards were dropped from the ceremony, Best British Rock Act, Best British Urban Act, on 18 February 2009, the venue for the BRITs was once again the Earls Court, London. The Brit Awards were held at The O2 in London for the first time in 2011, the Brit Award statuette given to the winners features Britannia, the female personification of Britain. The first awards ceremony was in 1977, as The BRITish Record Industry BRITannia Awards, there have been 36 editions to date. The 2016 Brit Awards was held on 24 February 2016, the 1988 BPI Awards was the first of the ceremonies to be broadcast on live television. The BBC had previously broadcast the ceremony from 1985, with the shows from 1982 to 1984 not broadcast on television, the BBC continued to broadcast the renamed BRIT Awards, live in 1989 and pre-recorded from 1990 to 1992. ITV have broadcast the awards since 1993, pre-recorded until 2006, BBC Radio 1 has provided backstage radio coverage since 2008. In 1987 the BPI Awards ceremony was held in the Great Room at the Grosvenor House Hotel, at the time there was a BBC electricians strike in effect, and the organisers decided to use a non-TV events production company, called Upfront, to manage the show. Despite the show being picketed, the event was transmitted as intended, for a while the outdoor broadcast scanner was rocked on its wheels by the protesters and they managed to shut off the power to one of the big GE video screen projectors. In 1989, the ceremony was broadcast live and presented by Fleetwood Macs Mick Fleetwood, the inexperience of the hosts, an ineffective autocue and little preparation combined to create an unprofessional show that was poorly received. The 1990 awards ceremony saw the last public appearance of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, Queen appeared at the ceremony to receive the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. Mercury did not make a speech, as Brian May did the talking on behalf of the other members, in 1992, dance/art band The KLF were awarded Best British Group and were booked to open the show
20.
Sunderland College
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Sunderland College, is a further education, higher education college based in Sunderland, North East England. The enrolment includes around 6,300 part-time learners and approximately 4,800 full-time students, a report following a January 2010 Ofsted inspection awarded the school a Grade 2 that included a Grade 1 on 3 inspection criteria. The college is a member of the Collab Group of high performing schools, the girls school had around 500 girls in the 1950s, and by the 1960s the boys school had 900 boys. Both of the schools were referred to, locally, as Bede School or The Bede. In more recent years, after the closure of the Shiney Row campus in August 2014 Bede Campus is now the specialist centre for the sports and visual and performing arts courses. The campuss ethos is strong on creativity, encouraging students to pursue their talents within the use of two new state of the art buildings which open in September 2014. The campus is equipped with language and science labs and large-scale computer sites and provides facilities to assist students with their studies, the Bede Campus is home to both Bede Sixth Form and the Sports Academy and the Visual and Performing Arts building. The campus also includes a Goals Soccer Centre with all-weather 3G 5-a-side pitches, headways Sixth Form currently has a partnership with Seaham School of Technology, Hetton School and Easington Academy. Hylton Campus The Hylton Campus is the centre on the north side of the River Wear in Sunderland. For students wishing to train for careers in numerous occupations it offers real life learning facilities, including a £1 million hospitality, the centre is home to The Lounge Restaurant and Conference Centre. Also there is a hair and beauty salon, which offers hands-on experience over the range of courses on offer. It currently has an arrangement with Monkwearmouth, Hylton Red House. Whilst these partnerships are in operation, the attendance of the Sixth Form is not restricted to those areas, anyone within range of the centre can attend. The campus was opened on 25 November 2008, by Steve Cram. The college also had an arrangement with Hays Travel that allows it to host a travel agency, Citysun Travel. Managed by a professional, Citysun Travel was open to the public and was ABTA bonded. Washington Campus In September 2006, Sunderland College opened its brand-new £10 million Washington campus on Stone Cellar Road in Washington, Tyne, the campus also won the award for Public Sector Building of the Year at The Journal Landmark Awards. It is on the site of the former Usworth School just off the A195 near the junction with the A194 in Usworth, Shiney Row Campus closed in August 2014
21.
The Rocket Record Company
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The Rocket Record Company was a record label founded by Elton John, along with Bernie Taupin, Gus Dudgeon, Steve Brown and others, in 1973. The company was named after the hit song Rocket Man, the label was originally distributed in the UK by Island and in the US by MCA Records, both of which Elton John was also signed to. The first artist who signed to the label was Stackridge, who completed two albums for The Rocket Record Company after moving from MCA, John offered to sign Iggy Pop & The Stooges to the label, but they declined. After John left his British label, DJM, in 1976, the label also attempted to attract talent from all over the UK and submitted an advertisement to Melody Maker for Bands to record their sound of today and get it out tomorrow. With an album called 4992139 they turned to the talents of Pete Waterman, in the US and Canada, Johns residency on his own label was short-lived. After only one album, Blue Moves, and a couple of singles, at this time, The Rocket Record Company switched its distribution to RCA after being dropped from MCA. The label was discontinued in the US in the early 1980s, then relaunching in 1995 with Johns Made in England album, 1997s The Big Picture and Candle In The Wind 1997 were distributed in the US by stepsister A&M Records. In the UK, Johns records were released by The Rocket Record Company from 1976 onwards. In 1978 the distribution moved to Phonogram Inc. then to Mercury Records in 1995, by this time, John was the only artist on the label. Worldwide distribution rights to Elton Johns music was consolidated when MCA Records then-parent Seagram acquired PolyGram, the owner of Island, Mercury, universal Music Group, which oversaw Seagrams recording operations, now co-owns the Elton John catalogue with the singer himself, continuing to distribute it worldwide. In 1999, The Rocket Record Company was absorbed by The Island Def Jam Music Group, however, the logo was still used on all new Elton John releases until 2007. The name was resurrected in 2006 for the eponymous Platinum Weird album. In 2011, John formed a company named Rocket Music Entertainment Group, otherwise, Rocket are primarily a management company handing established artists such as Ed Sheeran and Squeezes Chris Difford along with upcoming artists like Anne-Marie and Jake Issac
22.
Dusty Springfield
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Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette OBrien, OBE, better known as Dusty Springfield, was an English pop singer and record producer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s. She is a member of the US Rock and Roll and UK Music Halls of Fame, international polls have named Springfield among the best female rock artists of all time. Her image, supported by a peroxide blonde bouffant hairstyle, evening gowns, born in West Hampstead to a family that enjoyed music, Springfield learned to sing at home. In 1958 she joined her first professional group, The Lana Sisters and her solo career began in 1963 with the upbeat pop hit, I Only Want to Be with You. Among the hits that followed were Wishin and Hopin , I Just Dont Know What to Do with Myself, You Dont Have to Say You Love Me, and Son of a Preacher Man. Although she was never considered a Northern Soul artist in her own right and she was the first UK singer to top the New Musical Express readers poll for Female Singer. To boost her credibility as a soul artist, Springfield went to Memphis, Tennessee, to record Dusty in Memphis, an album of pop and soul music with the Atlantic Records main production team. Released in 1969, it has ranked among the greatest albums of all time by the US magazine Rolling Stone and in polls by VH1 artists, New Musical Express readers. The album was awarded a spot in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Despite its current recognition, the album did not sell well and after its release, however, in collaboration with Pet Shop Boys, she returned to the Top 10 of the UK and US charts in 1987 with What Have I Done to Deserve This. Two years later, she had two other UK hits on her own with Nothing Has Been Proved and In Private, subsequently, in the mid-1990s, owing to the inclusion of Son of a Preacher Man on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, interest in her early output was revived. Springfield was born Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette OBrien on 16 April 1939 in West Hampstead and her older brother, Dionysius P. A. OBrien, was later known as Tom Springfield. Springfields father, who had raised in British India, worked as a tax accountant and consultant. Her mother came from an Irish family, originally from Tralee, County Kerry, Springfield was brought up in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire until the early 1950s, and later lived in Ealing. She attended St Annes Convent School, Northfields, a traditional all-girl school, Springfield and her brother were both prone to food-throwing as adults. She was given the nickname Dusty for playing football with boys in the street, Springfield was raised in a music-loving family. Her father would tap out rhythms on the back of her hand and she listened to a wide range of music, including George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Glenn Miller. A fan of American jazz and the vocalists Peggy Lee and Jo Stafford, at the age of twelve, she made a recording of herself performing the Irving Berlin song When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam at a local record shop in Ealing
23.
I Only Want to Be with You
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I Only Want to Be with You is a rock and roll song written by Mike Hawker and Ivor Raymonde. The debut solo single released by British singer Dusty Springfield under her long-time producer Johnny Franz, I Only Want to Be with You has also been recorded by a wide range of artists, several of whom sing the song with lyrics translated from the original English. Ryder, who would later be a member of the Breakaways, had been a member of a vocal chorale, reportedly, she and Hawker had intended that she herself would record I Only Want to Be With You. However, no arrangement for this eventuality had apparently been made by the autumn of 1963. Springfield had already recorded nine tracks, none of which was deemed the right vehicle to launch her solo career. With Ryders permission, Hawker submitted I Only Want to Be With You to Franz, jean Ryder was included in the vocal chorale on the session. In the US, Dusty Springfield was the second artist of the British Invasion, after the Beatles, to have a hit, entering the Billboard chart at number 77 in the last week of January 1964. Raymondes arrangement is unmistakable, with its relentless ticker-ticker beat and cascading drum rolls, full-on choirs and it set the production standard for Springfields later hits, such as Stay Awhile and Little by Little. Springfield also recorded the song with an almost identical arrangement in German, the song was performed by Springfield on the first-ever edition of the BBCs Top of the Pops, on 1 January 1964. The song was re-released in 1988, coinciding with its use in a soft-drink commercial and it peaked at number 83 in the UK. The Bay City Rollers recorded I Only Want to Be with You for their 1976 album Dedication recorded in June and July 1976 at Soundstage Studio in Toronto with producer Jimmy Ienner. Dedication was the first Bay City Rollers recorded under the auspices of Arista Records, Jimmy Ienner was chosen by Davis to produce the Bay City Rollers on the basis of Ienners work with the Raspberries. Issued in the UK as a single on 3 September 1976, I Only Wanna Be with You - so entitled - reached number 4 UK, affording the Bay City Rollers a tenth. Conversely in the US the Bay City Rollers remake had a Billboard Hot 100 tenure of 15 weeks while the Springfield original had maintained a Hot 100 presence for 10 weeks in total. In 1979, the song was covered by The Tourists. This was the bands first and biggest hit, the song was used on a montage of stars when Thames Television went off the air in 1992. In 1988, Samantha Fox covered the song as I Only Wanna Be with You for her album I Wanna Have Some Fun and it was released as the second single in the United States and Europe from her third studio album I Wanna Have Some Fun. The song was hit for Fox, reaching number 16 in the United Kingdom
24.
Peace (Eurythmics album)
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Peace is the ninth and final studio album by the British band Eurythmics, released in October 1999. It was the bands first album of new material in ten years, following their first performance together in eight years at a record company party in 1998, David A. Stewart and Annie Lennox began writing and recording together for the first time since 1989. The title was designed to reflect the ongoing concern with global conflict. The record was promoted with a concert on the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior II, a 24-date world tour followed soon after, with all profits donated to Amnesty International and Greenpeace. The final show of the tour, on 6 December 1999 at the London Docklands Arena, was filmed and released on video, I Saved the World Today was the lead single from the album, reaching number eleven on the UK singles chart. Another single,17 Again, was released in January 2000 and it reached the UK Top 30 and topped the US dance chart. Critics were generally impressed with the record, although NME commented that it lacked the power of their previous releases, on 14 November 2005, SonyBMG repackaged and released Eurythmics back catalogue as Deluxe Edition Reissues. Each of their eight studio albums original track listings were supplemented with bonus tracks, for unknown reasons, many songs on the 2005 reissue of Peace are alternate mixes compared to the original 1999 release. The most dramatically different mix is Ive Tried Everything, which is upbeat with additional drums. Other songs with mix differences include,17 Again, I Saved the World Today, Power to the Meek, Peace Is Just a Word, all tracks written by Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart, except Something in the Air by Speedy Keen
25.
Ultimate Collection (Eurythmics album)
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Ultimate Collection is the second greatest hits compilation album by the British pop duo Eurythmics, and was released in November 2005. This set preceded the re-issuing of all eight Eurythmics back-catalogue albums originally released by RCA Records and these re-issues include remastered tracks and bonus material. The fact that the Ultimate Collection was closely connected to these re-issues is also the reason for the omission of Sexcrime. While that song gave Eurythmics a No, unlike 1991s Greatest Hits, Ultimate Collection contains two newly recorded songs Ive Got a Life and Was It Just Another Love Affair. and all of the tracks have been remastered. Also unlike the 1991 compilation, Ultimate Collection contains no tracks from the duos 1989 album We Too Are One, One of the new songs recorded for this collection, Ive Got a Life, was released as a single. It entered the UK Singles Chart at number 14 and spent three weeks at one on the Hot Dance Club Play chart in the United States. Ultimate Collection peaked at No.5 on the UK Albums Chart and has since been certified triple Platinum by the BPI and it peaked at No.116 on the US Billboard 200. All tracks written by Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart, except When Tomorrow Comes co-written by Patrick Seymour
26.
Terry Hall (singer)
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Terence Edward Terry Hall is an English musician and the lead singer of The Specials, and formerly of Fun Boy Three, The Colourfield, Terry, Blair & Anouchka and Vegas. Born and raised in Coventry, England, Hall left school before his birthday, taking various short-term jobs – bricklayer, quantity surveyor. He became a member of the burgeoning Coventry music scene of the late 1970s, playing in a local punk band called Squad. Hall has stated one of his grandfathers was a Jewish watchmaker from Germany. The band then went on to release their album, The Specials, which also contained the hits A Message to You, Rudy. In October 1980, The Specials released their album, More Specials. The single Ghost Town, released in June 1981, spent three weeks at one and ten weeks in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart. The double a-side song, Friday Night Saturday Morning, penned by Terry Hall, described a night out at the Coventry Locarno. After The Specials last single, Ghost Town, was released, the Fun Boy Threes first hit single, The Lunatics, was released in 1981 and was followed-up in 1982 with It Aint What You Do, a duet with Bananarama. Fun Boy Three then provided guest vocals for Bananaramas single, Really Saying Something. That same year, Hall and his bandmates appeared in the video for Driving in My Car by Madness and released their debut album, Fun Boy Three. In February 1983, Fun Boy Three released their album, Waiting. The latter was a song Hall had written with Jane Wiedlin, in 1984, Hall formed The Colourfield, releasing the album Virgins & Philistines in 1985, which included the hit single Thinking of You. The album spent seven weeks in the UK chart, peaking at No.12 and this new musical direction would culminate in collaborations with Ian Broudie and Hall contributing a number of songs to Broudies albums as The Lightning Seeds. Hall also co-wrote the song Smoke Ring for Broudies debut solo album Tales Told, a second Colourfield album, Deception, was released in 1987, reaching No.95 in the UK Albums Chart. In 1989, Hall teamed up with American actress Blair Booth and jeweller Anouchka Groce and began recording under the moniker of Terry, Blair & Anouchka. After two singles which both scraped into the Top 80 of the UK Singles Chart, the released the Ultra Modern Nursery Rhymes album. In 1992, Terry joined forces with Dave Stewart, most famous for his role as one half of Eurythmics, the duo took on the name Vegas and released Vegas, a slick electronic pop album that was heavily promoted by their label BMG
27.
The Specials
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The Specials, also known as The Special AKA, are an English 2 Tone and ska revival band formed in 1977 in Coventry. Their music combines a danceable ska and rocksteady beat with punks energy, lyrically they present a more focused and informed political and social stance than most other ska groups. The band wore mod-style 1960s period rude boy outfits, in 1980, the song Too Much Too Young, the lead track on their The Special AKA Live. EP, reached No.1 in the UK, in 1981, the unemployment-themed single Ghost Town also hit No.1 in the UK Singles Chart. After seven consecutive UK Top 10 singles between 1979 and 1981, three members of the abruptly left to form Fun Boy Three. Continuing on as The Special AKA, a substantially revised Specials line-up issued new material through 1984, afterwards, founder and songwriter Jerry Dammers dissolved the band and pursued political activism. The group reformed in 1993, and have continued to perform, the group was formed in 1977 by songwriter/keyboardist Dammers, vocalist Tim Strickland, guitarist/vocalist Lynval Golding, drummer Silverton Hutchinson and bassist Horace Panter. Strickland was replaced by Terry Hall shortly after the bands formation, the band was first called the Automatics, then the Coventry Automatics. Vocalist Neville Staple and guitarist Roddy Byers joined the band the year. Joe Strummer of the Clash had attended one of their concerts and this performance gave the Special AKA a new level of national exposure, and they briefly shared the Clashs management. The Specials began at the time as Rock Against Racism. According to Dammers, anti-racism was intrinsic to the formation of the Specials, in that the band was formed with the goal of integrating black and white people. Many years later Dammers stated, Music gets political when there are new ideas in music. punk was innovative, so was ska, and that was why bands such as the Specials, the record became a Top 10 hit that summer. The band had begun wearing mod/rude boy/skinhead-style two-tone tonic suits, along with elements of late 1960s teen fashions. Changing their name to the Specials, they recorded their eponymous album in 1979. Horn players Dick Cuthell and Rico Rodriguez were featured on the album, the Specials led off with Dandy Livingstones Rudy, A Message to You and also had covers of Prince Buster and Toots & the Maytals songs from the late 1960s. In 1980, the EP Too Much Too Young was a No.1 hit in the UK Singles Chart, despite controversy over the songs lyrics, which reference teen pregnancy and promote contraception. Female backing vocalists on the Specials first two albums included, Chrissie Hynde, Rhoda Dakar, and Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin
28.
Vegas (Vegas album)
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Vegas is a one-off collaborative album between British solo-artist Terry Hall - formerly of the 2 Tone and ska revival band The Specials - with Dave Stewart formerly of Eurythmics. The duo working with Eurythmics assistants engineer and drummer Olle Romo, Vegas includes the singles Possessed, She and Walk into the Wind. Of the three only Possessed charted in the UK Top 40, receiving positive reviews the album was released on CD, Cassette and vinyl LP by the major record label RCA/BMG in October 1992, but failed to chart. The album has since been deleted, the album was written by Hall and Stewart with the exception of the musical standard She. No performer credits are provided, Allmusic speculates that Vegas is almost certainly a Dave Stewart production, Dave Stewart likely was responsible for the lions share of the musical backing with assistance from Romo and Guiot and Hall contributing his vocal. Following the albums commercial failure the group split, Hall subsequently launched a solo-career, releasing Home in 1994. Stewart also returned to solo-work, releasing Greetings from the Gutter in 1994, the pair re-united in 1997 to support Bob Dylan during his Never Ending Tour for a pair of concerts in Japan
29.
Apple Inc.
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Apple is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Apples consumer software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the media player, the Safari web browser. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. in January 1977, Apple joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in March 2015. In November 2014, Apple became the first U. S. company to be valued at over US$700 billion in addition to being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. The company employs 115,000 full-time employees as of July 2015 and it operates the online Apple Store and iTunes Store, the latter of which is the worlds largest music retailer. Consumers use more than one billion Apple products worldwide as of March 2016, Apples worldwide annual revenue totaled $233 billion for the fiscal year ending in September 2015. This revenue accounts for approximately 1. 25% of the total United States GDP.1 billion, the corporation receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors and its environmental and business practices, including the origins of source materials. Apple was founded on April 1,1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the Apple I kits were computers single-handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard, which was less than what is now considered a personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66, Apple was incorporated January 3,1977, without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple, during the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, the Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16,1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics. While early Apple II models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II. The Apple II was chosen to be the platform for the first killer app of the business world, VisiCalc. VisiCalc created a market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II. Before VisiCalc, Apple had been a distant third place competitor to Commodore, by the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line
30.
Macintosh
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The Macintosh (/ˈmækᵻntɒʃ/ MAK-in-tosh, is a series of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. Steve Jobs introduced the original Macintosh computer on January 24,1984 and this was the companys first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse. This first model was renamed to Macintosh 128k for uniqueness amongst a populous family of subsequently updated models which are also based on Apples same proprietary architecture. Since 1998, Apple has largely phased out the Macintosh name in favor of Mac, Macintosh systems still found success in education and desktop publishing and kept Apple as the second-largest PC manufacturer for the next decade. In the 1990s, improvements in the rival Wintel platform, notably with the introduction of Windows 3.0, then Windows 95, gradually took market share from the more expensive Macintosh systems. The performance advantage of 68000-based Macintosh systems was eroded by Intels Pentium, even after a transition to the superior PowerPC-based Power Macintosh line in 1994, the falling prices of commodity PC components and the release of Windows 95 saw the Macintosh user base decline. In 1998, after the return of Steve Jobs, Apple consolidated its multiple consumer-level desktop models into the all-in-one iMac G3, since their transition to Intel processors in 2006, the complete lineup is entirely based on said processors and associated systems. Its current lineup comprises three desktops, and three laptops and its Xserve server was discontinued in 2011 in favor of the Mac Mini and Mac Pro. Apple also develops the operating system for the Mac, currently macOS version 10.12 Sierra, Macs are currently capable of running non-Apple operating systems such as Linux, OpenBSD, and Microsoft Windows with the aid of Boot Camp or third-party software. Apple does not license macOS for use on computers, though it did license previous versions of the classic Mac OS through their Macintosh clone program from 1995 to 1997. The Macintosh project was begun in 1979 by Jef Raskin, an Apple employee who envisioned an easy-to-use, in 1978 Apple began to organize the Apple Lisa project, aiming to build a next-generation machine similar to an advanced Apple III or the yet-to-be-introduced IBM PC. In 1979, Steve Jobs learned of the work on graphical user interfaces taking place at Xerox PARC. He arranged a deal in which Xerox received Apple stock options in return for which Apple would license their designs, the basic layout of the Lisa was largely complete by 1982, at which point Jobs continual suggestions for improvements led to him being kicked off the project. At the same time that the Lisa was becoming a GUI machine in 1979, the design at that time was for a low-cost, easy-to-use machine for the average consumer. Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project in September 1979 and his initial team would eventually consist of himself, Howard, Joanna Hoffman, Burrell Smith, and Bud Tribble. Smiths design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, which production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 kB by means of soldering sixteen IC sockets to accept 256 kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final products screen was a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel monochrome display, burrels innovative design, combining the low production cost of an Apple II with the computing power of Lisas Motorola 68000 CPU, began to receive Jobs attentions
31.
Security hacker
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A security hacker is someone who seeks to breach defenses and exploit weaknesses in a computer system or network. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground, there is a longstanding controversy about the terms true meaning. The black-hat meaning still prevails among the general public, in computer security, a hacker is someone who focuses on security mechanisms of computer and network systems. While including those who endeavor to strengthen such mechanisms, it is often used by the mass media. That is, the media portrays the hacker as a villain, nevertheless, parts of the subculture see their aim in correcting security problems and use the word in a positive sense. White hat is the given to ethical computer hackers, who utilize hacking in a helpful way. White hats are becoming a part of the information security field. Accordingly, the term bears strong connotations that are favorable or pejorative, the subculture around such hackers is termed network hacker subculture, hacker scene or computer underground. It initially developed in the context of phreaking during the 1960s and it is implicated with 2600, The Hacker Quarterly and the alt.2600 newsgroup. In 1980, an article in the August issue of Psychology Today used the term hacker in its title and it was an excerpt from a Stanford Bulletin Board discussion on the addictive nature of computer use. In the 1982 film Tron, Kevin Flynn describes his intentions to break into ENCOMs computer system, CLU is the software he uses for this. By 1983, hacking in the sense of breaking computer security had already been in use as computer jargon, but there was no public awareness about such activities. However, the release of the film WarGames that year, featuring a computer intrusion into NORAD, the Newsweek article appears to be the first use of the word hacker by the mainstream media in the pejorative sense. Pressured by media coverage, congressman Dan Glickman called for an investigation, as a result of these laws against computer criminality, white hat, grey hat and black hat hackers try to distinguish themselves from each other, depending on the legality of their activities. These moral conflicts are expressed in The Mentors The Hacker Manifesto, use of the term hacker meaning computer criminal was also advanced by the title Stalking the Wily Hacker, an article by Clifford Stoll in the May 1988 issue of the Communications of the ACM. Later that year, the release by Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. of the so-called Morris worm provoked the popular media to spread this usage, the popularity of Stolls book The Cuckoos Egg, published one year later, further entrenched the term in the publics consciousness. Several subgroups of the underground with different attitudes use different terms to demarcate themselves from each other. Eric S. Raymond, author of The New Hackers Dictionary, yet, those people see themselves as hackers and even try to include the views of Raymond in what they see as a wider hacker culture, a view that Raymond has harshly rejected
32.
Hackers (film)
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Hackers is a 1995 American crime film directed by Iain Softley and starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Renoly Santiago, Matthew Lillard, Jesse Bradford, Lorraine Bracco, and Fisher Stevens. The film follows a group of high school hackers and their involvement in a corporate extortion conspiracy. Made in the 1990s when the internet was unfamiliar to the public, it reflects the ideals laid out in the Hacker Manifesto quoted in the film. The world of the electron and the switch We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias. and my crime is that of curiosity. Hackers has achieved cult classic status, in 1988, 11-year-old Dade Zero Cool Murphy is arrested and charged with crashing 1,507 computer systems in a single day and causing a single-day 7-point drop in the New York Stock Exchange. His family is fined $45,000 for the events and he is banned from using computers or touch-tone telephones until he is 18 years old, seven years later, Dade, is now living with his divorced mother in New York City. However, Dades intrusion is countered by another hacker on the same network, Dade enrolls in a local high school where he meets Kate Libby who pranks Dade by claiming that theres a pool on the roof of the school. Soon after, Dade exacts revenge for the prank by scheduling a test of the schools sprinkler system the next day. Dade begins integrating himself into Phreaks circle of friends, Emmanuel Cereal Killer Goldstein, Paul Lord Nikon Cook, and Joey Pardella. At a party, Dade learns that Kate is Acid Burn, meanwhile, Joey, out to prove his skills, successfully breaks into The Gibson, an Ellingson Mineral Company supercomputer. He attempts to download a file as proof of his feat. However, prior to Joeys disconnection, the companys IT employee Hal detects this unauthorized entry and summons computer security officer Eugene The Plague Belford, while going through the files, Plague realizes the garbage file being downloaded is a worm he inserted to defraud Ellingson. The Plague pretends the hackers are to blame and enlists the US Secret Service to recover the file, in fact, The Plague had inserted the virus as a red herring to cover for his worm. Soon after, Joey is arrested and his computer is searched, in response, Dade and Kate decide to settle their disagreements with a bet, with Dade choosing a date with Kate as his prize and Kate electing to have Dade perform menial computing tasks. The hacking duel focuses on harassing Secret Service Agent Richard Gill, Hacker enemy number one, after being released on parole, Joey reveals the disk to Phreak in a public park, but they quickly realize that they are being followed by the Secret Service. The next day, Phreak is arrested and uses his phone call to inform Kate that he hid the disk in a bathroom at school. That evening, Kate and Cereal Killer ask Dade for his help, Kate then asks Dade to copy the disk so that, if anyone else is arrested, they have the disk as un-tampered evidence. After determining that Dade is not the one who hacked into Ellingson, first, he sends Dade a high-powered laptop that displays a video message from The Plague encouraging Dade to join him
33.
BT Group
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BT Group plc is a holding company which owns British Telecommunications plc, a British multinational telecommunications services company with head offices in London, United Kingdom. It has operations in around 180 countries, BTs origins date back to the founding of the Electric Telegraph Company in 1846 which developed a nationwide communications network. In 1912, the General Post Office, a government department, the Post Office Act of 1969 led to the GPO becoming a public corporation. British Telecommunications, trading as British Telecom, was formed in 1980, British Telecommunications was privatised in 1984, becoming British Telecommunications plc, with some 50 percent of its shares sold to investors. The Government sold its stake in further share sales in 1991 and 1993. BT has a listing on the London Stock Exchange, a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange. BT controls a number of large subsidiaries, BT announced in February 2015 that it had agreed to acquire EE for £12.5 billion, and received final regulatory approval from the Competition and Markets Authority on 15 January 2016. The transaction was completed on 29 January 2016, BTs origins date back to the establishment of the first telecommunications companies in Britain. Among them was the first commercial service, the Electric Telegraph Company. As these companies amalgamated and were taken over or collapsed, the companies were transferred to state control under the Post Office in 1912. These companies were merged and rebranded as British Telecom, in January 1878 Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his recently developed telephone to Queen Victoria at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. John Hudson, with his premises in nearby Shudehill. As the number of installed telephones across the country grew it became sensible to consider constructing telephone exchanges to allow all the telephones in each city to be connected together, the first exchange was opened in London in August 1879, closely followed by the Lancashire Telephonic Exchange in Manchester. From 1878, the service in Britain was provided by private sector companies such as the National Telephone Company. In 1896, the National Telephone Company was taken over by the General Post Office, in 1912 it became the primary supplier of telecommunications services, after the Post Office took over the private sector telephone service in GB, except for a few local authority services. Those services all folded within a few years, the exception being Kingston upon Hull. Converting the Post Office into an industry, as opposed to a governmental department, was first discussed in 1932 by Lord Wolmer. In 1932 the Bridgeman Committee produced a report that was rejected, in 1961, more proposals were ignored
34.
Rhona Mitra
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Rhona Natasha Mitra is an English actress, model, singer, and songwriter. Mitra began her career as a model and she came to prominence as the Lara Croft model between 1997 and 1998. Rachel Scott in the first two seasons of The Last Ship, Mitra was born in Hampstead, London, the daughter of Anthony Mitra, a cosmetic surgeon, and Nora Downey. Her father is of Bengali descent, while her mother is Irish and she has a brother, Jason, who is two years older, and a younger brother, Guyan, who is a travel writer for Lonely Planet and The Sunday Times. Mitra appeared as the action model for Lara Croft, the lead character in Eidos Interactives Tomb Raider video game series before Angelina Jolie took the role for the two Tomb Raider films. Mitra was ranked No.46 on the Maxim Hot 100 Women of 2001 and she played the romantic interest of Christopher Lambert in Beowulf. Her first main role came as Scott Wolfs illicit love interest on Party of Five, in 2000, Mitra had a small role in the film Hollow Man, as a neighbour sexually assaulted by Kevin Bacons character. She had a role in the medical drama Gideons Crossing. Mitra then had roles in Ali G Indahouse, Sweet Home Alabama, Stuck on You, Mitra appeared in the final season of The Practice as Tara Wilson, and continued that role into its spin-off Boston Legal, but left not long into the second season. In 2005, Mitra played the role of Kit McGraw during Season 3 of Nip/Tuck, Mitra then went on to appear in Skinwalkers, The Number 23 and Shooter. While filming, she grew fond of her vampire fangs, even declining to remove them when they couldnt be seen, I put those fangs on the first day and I felt they should always have been there, its strange. So I kept them in through the time of shooting, throughout all my dialogue. She also appeared in three episodes of Stargate Universe and she stars in the 2010 Anders Anderson thriller film Stolen, alongside Josh Lucas, Jon Hamm and James Van Der Beek. She portrayed Claire Radcliff in the 2010 ABC supernatural series The Gates and she played Major Rachel Dalton on Cinemaxs series Strike Back, Project Vengeance, replacing Amanda Mealing. In 2014 and 2015, she played Dr. Rachel Scott in the first two seasons of Michael Bays post-apocalyptic television series, The Last Ship, Rhona Mitra was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2006 from Boston Legal TV Series. She was also nominated in 2009 for Scream Awards for Best Actress from Underworld, come Alive Female Icon Getting Naked Rhona Mitra at the Internet Movie Database
35.
Nelson Mandela
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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the countrys first black head of state and the first elected in a representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by tackling institutionalised racism, ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress party from 1991 to 1997. A Xhosa, Mandela was born in Mvezo to the Thembu royal family and he studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. There he became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943, after the National Partys white-only government established apartheid—a system of racial segregation that privileged whites—he and the ANC committed themselves to its overthrow. Mandela was appointed President of the ANCs Transvaal branch, rising to prominence for his involvement in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he joined the banned South African Communist Party. Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961, in 1962, he was arrested for conspiring to overthrow the state and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial. Mandela served 27 years in prison, initially on Robben Island, amid growing domestic and international pressure, and with fears of a racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk negotiated an end to apartheid and organised the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to victory, internationally, he acted as mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial and served as Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999. He declined a presidential term and in 1999 was succeeded by his deputy. Mandela became a statesman and focused on combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the charitable Nelson Mandela Foundation. Mandela was a figure for much of his life. Widely regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he received more than 250 honours—including the Nobel Peace Prize—and became the subject of a cult of personality. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba. Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in the village of Mvezo in Umtata, given the forename Rolihlahla, a Xhosa term colloquially meaning troublemaker, in later years he became known by his clan name, Madiba. His patrilineal great-grandfather, Ngubengcuka, was king of the Thembu people in the Transkeian Territories of South Africas modern Eastern Cape province, one of Ngubengcukas sons, named Mandela, was Nelsons grandfather and the source of his surname. In 1926, Gadla was also sacked for corruption, but Nelson was told that his father had lost his job for standing up to the magistrates unreasonable demands
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