Sharon Shannon
Sharon Shannon is an Irish musician best known for her work with the accordion and for her fiddle technique. She plays the tin whistle and melodeon, her self-titled debut album, in 1991, Sharon Shannon was the best-selling album of traditional Irish music released there. Beginning with Irish folk music, her work demonstrates a wide-ranging number of musical influences, she won the lifetime achievement award at the 2009 Meteor Awards. Shannon was born in County Clare. At eight years old, she began performing with Disirt Tola, a local band, with which she toured the United States at the age of fourteen. Shannon worked as a competitive show jumper, but gave it up at the age of sixteen to focus on her music.. She abandoned studying at University College Cork. In the mid-1980s, Shannon studied the accordion with Karen Tweed and the fiddle with Frank Custy, performed with the band Arcady, of which she was a founding member. Shannon began her own recording career in 1989, working with producer John Dunford and musicians such as Adam Clayton, Mike Scott and Steve Wickham.
This led to Shannon's joining The Waterboys. She was with the band for eighteen months, contributed both accordion and fiddle to their Room to Roam album, her first world tour was with The Waterboys. She left the group shortly after Wickham's departure, as the band was forced back to a more rock and roll sound, her debut album, in 1991, Sharon Shannon is the best-selling album of traditional Irish music released there. Shannon's solo work has achieved remarkable airplay and commercial success in Ireland. After her inclusion on A Woman's Heart, a compilation album and a tribute to her work on The Late Late Show, Shannon's music received a great deal of exposure, contributing to the record-breaking sales of her debut album. Sharon's second album, Out The Gap, was produced by Dennis "Blackbeard" Bovell and had a distinctly reggae feel. Sharon's track, "Cavan Potholes", written by Dónal Lunny is featured on the 1996 compilation Common Ground: Voices of Modern Irish Music. Other stars on the album include Elvis Costello, Kate Bush and Bono.
Sharon's fourth album titled Spellbound was released in September 1998. This compilation featured new material, live tracks and tracks from previous albums. In 1998 Sharon was asked by violinist Nigel Kennedy to join a him in performing on his "Jimi Hendrix Suite" performing this work in some major European cities, her 2000 album, The Diamond Mountain Sessions, which included vocals from a wide variety of artists, was a commercial success, being certified triple platinum. Shannon recorded with Steve Earle on the song "The Galway Girl", released on both Earle's album Transcendental Blues, Shannon & Friends' The Diamond Mountain Sessions. Both albums were released in 2000. Another collaboration with Earle was the instrumental "Dominic Street", released on Earle's 2002 album Sidetracks. Shannon has worked with Jackson Browne, the band Coolfin, Dónal Lunny, Moya Brennan, Kirsty MacColl, Christy Moore, Sinéad O'Connor, Liam O'Maonlai and John Prine, amongst others. In 2004 Sharon Shannon released the album Libertango with guest spots from Róisín Elsafty, Sinéad O'Connor and the late Kirsty MacColl.
In 2005, she appeared on Tunes, a collaboration with Frankie Gavin, Michael McGoldrick, Jim Murray. In 2006 a celebration of 15 years of recording came out with The Sharon Shannon Collection 1990–2005. In 2007 Shannon has worked with Belinda Carlisle for her album Voila; as a solo musician, Sharon Shannon has toured Australia, Hong Kong, Japan. She has performed for politicians such as Bill Clinton, Mary Robinson and Lech Wałęsa. Shannon has played benefit concerts for causes, such as animal welfare, she continues to perform with her tour band, The Woodchoppers. A live version of Galway Girl recorded with Mundy was the most downloaded track in Ireland in 2007, winning a Meteor Award. In 2008, Shannon featured in the Transatlantic Sessions. In 2009, she played "Galway Girl" live at the Meteor Music Awards 2009, where she picked up a Lifetime Achievement Award and won Most Downloaded Track again for Galway Girl with Mundy. Shannon features playing accordion on The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra single "Bangarang", which features Dawn Penn as vocalist.
It was released on 26 May 2014. Beginning with Irish folk music, her work demonstrates a wide-ranging number of musical influences, including reggae, cajun music, Portuguese music, French Canadian music, her single ``. Sharon Shannon Track listing at irishtune.info. Out the Gap Track listing at irishtune.info Each Little Thing Track listing at irishtune.info Spellbound: The Best Of Sharon Shannon The Diamond Mountain Sessions Live in Galway Libertango Tunes Track listing at irishtune.info The Sharon Shannon Collection 1990–2005 Live at Dolans CD & DVD Renegade Saints & Scoundrels upside down Flying Circus – with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra In Galway with Alan Connor Sacred Earth Recorded and released on Irish record label Celtic Collections Live at Dolans In Galway with Alan Connor ^ "CD of the Month - The Celtic Times". The Celtic Times. Retrieved 29 Nov 2017. ^ a b "Sharon Shannon". RamblingHouse. Retrieved 30 October 2005. ^ "Sharon Shannon biography". Allmusic. Retrieved 30 October 2005. ^ "News".
The Daisy Label, archived at The Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 24 January 2005. Retrieved 6 July 2008. Official website
The Waterboys
The Waterboys are a British-Irish folk rock band formed in Edinburgh in 1983 by Scottish musician Mike Scott. The band's membership and present, has been composed of musicians from Scotland. Mike Scott has remained as the only constant member throughout the band's career, they have explored a number of different styles, but their music is a mix of folk music with rock and roll. They dissolved in 1993, they reformed in 2000, continue to release albums and tour worldwide. Scott emphasises a continuity between The Waterboys and his solo work, saying that "To me there's no difference between Mike Scott and the Waterboys, they mean myself and whoever are my current travelling musical companions."The early Waterboys sound became known as "The Big Music" after a song on their second album, A Pagan Place. This style was described by Scott as "a metaphor for seeing God's signature in the world." Waterboys chronicler Ian Abrahams elaborated on this by defining "The Big Music" as, "...a mystical celebration of paganism.
It's extolling the basic and primitive divinity that exists in everything and spiritual all encompassing. Here is something that can't be owned or built upon, something that has its existence in the concept of Mother Earth and has an ancestral approach to religion, and it takes in and embraces the feminine side of divinity, pluralistic in its acceptance of the wider pantheon of paganism.""The Big Music" either influenced or was used to describe a number of other bands specializing in an anthemic sound, including U2, Simple Minds, In Tua Nua, Big Country and Hothouse Flowers. In the late 1980s, the band became more folk influenced; the Waterboys returned to rock and roll, have released both rock and folk albums since reforming. The Waterboys have gone through three distinct phases, their early years, or "Big Music" period was followed by a folk music period, characterised by an emphasis on touring over album production and by a large band membership, leading to the description of the group as a "Raggle Taggle band".
After a brief return to the "Big Music" for one tour and the release of a mainstream rock and roll album with Dream Harder, the band dissolved until its rebirth in 2000. In the years since, the band has revisited both rock and folk music, continues to tour and release studio albums. Scott, the founder and only permanent member of The Waterboys, made a number of solo recordings in late 1981 and early 1982 while in a band named Another Pretty Face; these sessions at Redshop Studio are the earliest recordings that would be released under The Waterboys name. During the same period, Scott formed the short-lived band The Red and the Black, with saxophone player Anthony Thistlethwaite, after hearing him play on Waiting on Egypt, a Nikki Sudden album; the Red and the Black performed nine concerts in London. Thistlethwaite introduced Scott to drummer Kevin Wilkinson, who joined the Black. During 1982, Scott made a number of recordings, both solo and with Wilkinson; these recording sessions, both of Scott's solo work and the group performances, would be divided between The Waterboys' first and second albums.
In 1983 though Scott's record label, Ensign Records, expected his first album to be a solo effort, Scott decided to start a new band. He chose The Waterboys as its name from a line in the Lou Reed song "The Kids" on the album Berlin. In March 1983, Ensign released the first recording under the new band name, a single titled A Girl Called Johnny, the A-side of, a tribute to Patti Smith; this was followed in May by The Waterboys' first performance as a group, on the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test. The BBC performance included keyboard player Karl Wallinger; the Waterboys released their self-titled debut, The Waterboys, in July 1983. Their music, influenced by Patti Smith, Bob Dylan and David Bowie, was compared by critics to Van Morrison and U2 in its cinematic sweep; the band's earlier sound was described as new post-punk. After the release of their debut, The Waterboys began touring, their first show was at the Batschkapp Club in Frankfurt in February 1984. The band consisted of Mike Scott on vocals and guitar, Anthony Thistlethwaite on saxophone and mandolin, Wallinger on keyboards, Roddy Lorimer on trumpets, Martyn Swain on bass and Kevin Wilkinson on drums.
John Caldwell from Another Pretty Face played guitar, Scottish singer Eddi Reader sang backing vocals for the band's first two concerts. The band made some new recordings and over-dubbed old material in late 1983 and early 1984 which were released as The Waterboys' second album, A Pagan Place, in June 1984; the "official" Waterboys line-up at this time, according to the sleeve of A Pagan Place, was Scott, Thistlethwaite and Wilkinson, with guest contributions from Reader and many others. A Pagan Place was preceded by the single The Big Music. "The Big Music", the name of the single's A-side track, was adopted by some commentators as a description of The Waterboys' sound, is still used to refer to the musical style of their first three albums. The release of the album was followed by further touring including support for The Pretenders and U2 and a show at the Glastonbury Festival; the band began to record new material in early 1985 for a new album, with Wilkinson leaving the band to join China Crisis.
Late in the sessions future Waterboy Steve Wickham added his violin to the track The Pan Within. The Waterboys released their th
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine is an American music critic and senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance writer contributing liner notes. Erlewine was born in Ann Arbor, is a nephew of the former musician and AllMusic founder Michael Erlewine, he studied at the University of Michigan, where he majored in English, was a music editor, arts editor, of the school's paper The Michigan Daily. He has contributed to a number of books, including All Music Guide to Rock: The Definitive Guide to Rock and Soul, All Music Guide to Hip-Hop: The Definitive Guide to Rap & Hip-Hop. Erlewine resides in Austin, with his wife and two step-daughters. "Stephen Thomas Erlewine - Staff - Pitchfork". Pitchfork.com. Retrieved 2 June 2018. "Stephen Thomas Erlewine". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2 June 2018. "Stephen Thomas Erlewine". Billboard.com. Retrieved 2 June 2018. "Stephen Thomas Erlewine - SPIN". Spin.com. Retrieved 2 June 2018
The Waterboys (album)
This eponymously named debut album from The Waterboys was recorded in several studio sessions between December 1981 and November 1982. Allmusic describes the sound of the album as "part Van Morrison, part U2"; the album cover is a photograph of lead singer Mike Scott by Panny Charrington and designed by Stephanie Nash. The Waterboys logo appears in the pale blue box in the upper right-hand corner of the original album cover; the symbol, which symbolizes water, continued to be used throughout the band's history. It was designed by Stephanie Nash of Island Records. In 1981 Mike Scott was working in the punk rock band Funhouse, who had changed their name from Another Pretty Face. Signed to the record label Ensign Records, the group had moved to London to record their music. Scott had been unsatisfied with the group's sound, which he described as "similar to a jumbo jet flying on one engine", in December 1981 decided to use Redshop Studio to record some of his own songs solo, after prompting from Ensign Records to consider a solo career.
With the help of a drum machine, Scott sang, played the piano and guitar on each of five songs. Two recordings from this studio demo session would make their way onto the first Waterboys album, "December" and "The Three Day Man"; the quality of the session convinced Scott to leave Funhouse. Scott made further series' of recordings on his own at Redshop in February and August 1982, which yielded the following tracks: "Savage Earth Heart", "It Should Have Been You", "Gala" and "Where Are You Now When I Need You?". In spite of his label's advice, Scott instead began forming a new band to work with. In early 1982 he recruited Anthony Thistlethwaite for the new project. Scott first heard Thistlethwaite on a Nikki Sudden album. Thistlethwaite brought in a friend of Kevin Wilkinson, as a drummer. Sudden describes the events as Scott "stealing" the two away, but notes that Scott could afford to pay Thistlethwaite and Wilkinson, whereas Sudden could not. Scott and Thistlethwaite recorded "A Girl Called Johnny" in Spring of 1982, with Wilkinson and bassist Nick Linden they recorded further new tracks in November 1982 at Redshop Studio, Islington, of which one, "I Will Not Follow", appears on this album.
Ensign flew Scott to New York to record with Lenny Kaye, as the producer. The recording session went poorly, the material was not released in favour of recordings from the various London sessions. After two single releases of "A Girl Called Johnny" in March 1983, The Waterboys was released that July. A remastered version of the album with a number of extra tracks was released on 23 April 2002 by Capitol Records. "A Girl Called Johnny" had been released both as a seven-inch and as a 12-inch single in March 1983, preceding the album by four months. The song, a tribute to Patti Smith, "narrowly failed" to become a hit; the B-side on the seven-inch was "The Late Train to Heaven", the "Rockfield mix" of, released on a re-issue of A Pagan Place, the group's next album. The twelve-inch contained "Ready for the Monkey House", the Another Pretty Face song "Out of Control" and an acoustic version of "Somebody Might Wave Back", the last of which would appear in a full studio version on A Pagan Place. "December" was released as a single in both seven-inch and twelve-inch formats, with similar commercial results.
The seven-inch's B-side was "Where are You Now When I Need You?", while the twelve-inch included an alternate recording of "The Three Day Man" and "Red Army Blues", a song that would be included on A Pagan Place. An extended live version of "Savage Earth Heart", a song which had become a "live show stopper" was re-released as a B-side on the single for "Is She Conscious?" from A Rock in the Weary Land. All songs written by Mike Scott; the original vinyl LP had eight tracks. "December" "A Girl Called Johnny" "The Three Day Man" "Gala" "I Will Not Follow" "It Should Have Been You" "The Girl in the Swing" "Savage Earth Heart" The original vinyl LP had five tracks. "A Girl Called Johnny" – 3:54 "I Will Not Follow" – 5:14 "It Should Have Been You" – 4:32 "December" – 6:45 "Savage Earth Heart" – 6:40 The 2002 re-release contained additional songs, from the original demo recordings, single releases, other early Waterboys work. "December" – 6:48 "A Girl Called Johnny" – 3:57 "The Three Day Man" – 4:08 "Gala" – 9:31 "Where are You Now When I Need You?"
– 5:06 "I Will Not Follow" – 5:18 "It Should Have Been You" – 4:30 "The Girl in the Swing" – 4:27 "Savage Earth Heart" – 6:40 "Something Fantastic" – 3:12 "Ready for the Monkeyhouse" – 3:59 "Another Kind of Circus" – 4:05 "A Boy in Black Leather" – 7:04 "December" – 6:49 "Jack of Diamonds" – 0:50 Mike Scott – vocals, guitar, Danelectro Bellzouki electric 12-string guitar, bass guitar, mandolin Anthony Thistlethwaite – saxophone, mandolin, drums Kevin Wilkinson – drums Delahaye – organ Nick Linden – bass guitar, background vocals Norman Rodger – bass guitar Ray Massey – drums Stephen W Tayler – bass, keyboardsTechnicalJason Stokes, Jim Preen, Stephen W Tayler - engineer Panni Charrington - photography
Katie Kim (Irish musician)
Katie Sullivan known as Katie Kim, is an Irish musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Born in London to Irish parents, Katie Kim was brought to Waterford in Ireland following her birth. In her late teens she moved to Dublin to attend university. Katie Kim performs atmospheric alternative folk rock music as a solo project, using a loop station and both classical and electric guitar, she performs with as part of an ensemble, playing guitar, bass and singing. Kim has released two studio albums and Cover & Flood. In addition she has composed a film score, an original soundtrack for The Seashell and the Clergyman. Commissioned by The Cork French Film Festival, Kim performed the score at the Pavilion, Cork in front of a live audience in 2011. In 2012, Katie releases a free album featuring unreleased tracks and alternative versions to released tracks the album'Vaults Vol 1' was released through her bandcamp website. On 15 August 2016 she released a track'Foreign Fleas' through her bandcamp site.'Salt' is her third studio album which Katie Kim plans on releasing in Ireland on 14 October 2016, the nine-track LP will be released as a download and on limited edition vinyl.
In August 2016, Katie Kim previewed some tracks from the album. She has worked with various musicians and bands, including Halves, Mike Scott and The Waterboys, David Kitt and Ed Harcourt; the majority of her music and album releases her self-released through her own label - Flaming June. Twelve Cover & Flood Salt "Radio" "Heavy Lighting" "The Feast" "Foreign Fleas" "Salt" The Seashell and the Clergyman The Nightsaver – David Kitt It Goes, It Goes – Halves An Appointment with Mr Yeats – The Waterboys Songs to Save a Life – Various artists Final Witness Beekeeper – Steve Wickham Official Katie Kim Website Katie Kim Facebook Page Katie Kim Bandcamp Site Katie Kim at AllMusic Katie Kim discography at Discogs
Single (music)
In the music industry, a single is a type of release a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record or an album. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, a single is a song, released separately from an album, although it also appears on an album; these are the songs from albums that are released separately for promotional uses such as digital download or commercial radio airplay and are expected to be the most popular. In other cases a recording released. Despite being referred to as a single, singles can include up to as many as three tracks; the biggest digital music distributor, iTunes Store, accepts as many as three tracks less than ten minutes each as a single, as does popular music player Spotify. Any more than three tracks on a musical release or thirty minutes in total running time is either an extended play or, if over six tracks long, an album; when mainstream music was purchased via vinyl records, singles would be released double-sided.
That is to say, they were released with an A-side and B-side, on which two singles would be released, one on each side. Moreover, only the most popular songs from a released album would be released as a single. In more contemporary forms of music consumption, artists release most, if not all, of the tracks on an album as singles; the basic specifications of the music single were set in the late 19th century, when the gramophone record began to supersede phonograph cylinders in commercially produced musical recordings. Gramophone discs were manufactured in several sizes. By about 1910, the 10-inch, 78 rpm shellac disc had become the most used format; the inherent technical limitations of the gramophone disc defined the standard format for commercial recordings in the early 20th century. The crude disc-cutting techniques of the time and the thickness of the needles used on record players limited the number of grooves per inch that could be inscribed on the disc surface, a high rotation speed was necessary to achieve acceptable recording and playback fidelity.
78 rpm was chosen as the standard because of the introduction of the electrically powered, synchronous turntable motor in 1925, which ran at 3600 rpm with a 46:1 gear ratio, resulting in a rotation speed of 78.26 rpm. With these factors applied to the 10-inch format and performers tailored their output to fit the new medium; the 3-minute single remained the standard into the 1960s, when the availability of microgroove recording and improved mastering techniques enabled recording artists to increase the duration of their recorded songs. The breakthrough came with Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone". Although CBS tried to make the record more "radio friendly" by cutting the performance into halves, separating them between the two sides of the vinyl disc, both Dylan and his fans demanded that the full six-minute take be placed on one side, that radio stations play the song in its entirety; as digital downloading and audio streaming have become more prevalent, it has become possible for every track on an album to be available separately.
The concept of a single for an album has been retained as an identification of a more promoted or more popular song within an album collection. The demand for music downloads skyrocketed after the launch of Apple's iTunes Store in January 2001 and the creation of portable music and digital audio players such as the iPod. In September 1997, with the release of Duran Duran's "Electric Barbarella" for paid downloads, Capitol Records became the first major label to sell a digital single from a well-known artist. Geffen Records released Aerosmith's "Head First" digitally for free. In 2004, Recording Industry Association of America introduced digital single certification due to significant sales of digital formats, with Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" becoming RIAA's first platinum digital single. In 2013, RIAA incorporated on-demand streams into the digital single certification. Single sales in the United Kingdom reached an all-time low in January 2005, as the popularity of the compact disc was overtaken by the then-unofficial medium of the music download.
Recognizing this, On 17 April 2005, Official UK Singles Chart added the download format to the existing format of physical CD singles. Gnarls Barkley was the first act to reach No.1 on this chart through downloads alone in April 2006, for their debut single "Crazy", released physically the following week. On 1 January 2007 digital downloads became eligible from the point of release, without the need for an accompanying physical. Sales improved in the following years, reaching a record high in 2008 that still proceeded to be overtaken in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Singles have been issued in various formats, including 7-inch, 10-inch, 12-inch vinyl discs. Other, less common, formats include singles on Digital Compact Cassette, DVD, LD, as well as many non-standard sizes of vinyl disc; the most common form of the vinyl single is the 45 or 7-inch. The names are derived from its play speed, 45 rpm, the standard diameter, 7 inches; the 7-inch 45 rpm record was released 31 March 1949 by RCA Victor as a smaller, more durable and higher-fidelity replacement for the 78 rpm shellac discs.
The first 45
A-side and B-side
The terms A-side and B-side refer to the two sides of 78, 45, 331⁄3 rpm phonograph records, or cassettes, whether singles, extended plays, or long-playing records. The A-side featured the recording that the artist, record producer, or the record company intended to receive the initial promotional effort and receive radio airplay to become a "hit" record; the B-side is a secondary recording that has a history of its own: some artists released B-sides that were considered as strong as the A-side and became hits in their own right. Others took the opposite approach: producer Phil Spector was in the habit of filling B-sides with on-the-spot instrumentals that no one would confuse with the A-side. With this practice, Spector was assured that airplay was focused on the side he wanted to be the hit side. Music recordings have moved away from records onto other formats such as CDs and digital downloads, which do not have "sides", but the terms are still used to describe the type of content, with B-side sometimes standing for "bonus" track.
The first sound recordings at the end of the 19th century were made on cylinder records, which had a single round surface capable of holding two minutes of sound. Early shellac disc records records only had recordings on one side of the disc, with a similar capacity. Double-sided recordings, with one selection on each side, were introduced in Europe by Columbia Records in 1908, by 1910 most record labels had adopted the format in both Europe and the United States. There were no record charts until the 1930s, radio stations did not play recorded music until the 1950s. In this time, A-sides and B-sides existed. In June 1948, Columbia Records introduced the modern 331⁄3 rpm long-playing microgroove vinyl record for commercial sales, its rival RCA Victor, responded the next year with the seven-inch 45 rpm vinylite record, which would replace the 78 for single record releases; the term "single" came into popular use with the advent of vinyl records in the early 1950s. At first, most record labels would randomly assign which song would be an A-side and which would be a B-side.
Under this random system, many artists had so-called "double-sided hits", where both songs on a record made one of the national sales charts, or would be featured on jukeboxes in public places. As time wore on, the convention for assigning songs to sides of the record changed. By the early sixties, the song on the A-side was the song that the record company wanted radio stations to play, as 45 rpm single records dominated the market in terms of cash sales, it was not until 1968, for example, that the total production of albums on a unit basis surpassed that of singles in the United Kingdom. In the late 1960s, stereo versions of pop and rock songs began to appear on 45s; the majority of the 45s were played on AM radio stations, which were not equipped for stereo broadcast at the time, so stereo was not a priority. However, the FM rock stations did not like to play monaural content, so the record companies adopted a protocol for DJ versions with the mono version of the song on one side, stereo version of the same song on the other.
By the early 1970s, double-sided hits had become rare. Album sales had increased, B-sides had become the side of the record where non-album, non-radio-friendly, instrumental versions or inferior recordings were placed. In order to further ensure that radio stations played the side that the record companies had chosen, it was common for the promotional copies of a single to have the "plug side" on both sides of the disc. With the decline of 45 rpm vinyl records, after the introduction of cassette and compact disc singles in the late 1980s, the A-side/B-side differentiation became much less meaningful. At first, cassette singles would have one song on each side of the cassette, matching the arrangement of vinyl records, but cassette maxi-singles, containing more than two songs, became more popular. Cassette singles were phased out beginning in the late 1990s, the A-side/B-side dichotomy became extinct, as the remaining dominant medium, the compact disc, lacked an equivalent physical distinction.
However, the term "B-side" is still used to refer to the "bonus" tracks or "coupling" tracks on a CD single. With the advent of downloading music via the Internet, sales of CD singles and other physical media have declined, the term "B-side" is now less used. Songs that were not part of an artist's collection of albums are made available through the same downloadable catalogs as tracks from their albums, are referred to as "unreleased", "bonus", "non-album", "rare", "outtakes" or "exclusive" tracks, the latter in the case of a song being available from a certain provider of music. B-side songs may be released on the same record as a single to provide extra "value for money". There are several types of material released in this way, including a different version, or, in a concept record, a song that does not fit into the story lin
