Vs. (Pearl Jam album)
Vs. is the second studio album by American rock band Pearl Jam, released on October 19, 1993 through Epic Records. After a relentless touring schedule in support of their 1991 debut album Ten, Pearl Jam headed into the studio in early 1993 facing the challenge of following up the commercial success of its debut; the resulting album, Vs. featured a rawer and more aggressive sound compared with the band's previous release. It was the band's first collaboration with producer Brendan O'Brien and its first album with drummer Dave Abbruzzese. Pearl Jam decided to scale back its commercial efforts for Vs. including declining to produce music videos for any of the album's singles. Upon its release, Vs. set the record for most copies of an album sold in its first week, a record it held for five years. Vs. occupied the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart for five weeks, the longest duration for a Pearl Jam album. The album has been certified seven times platinum by the RIAA in the United States.
For its second album, Pearl Jam felt the pressure of trying to match the success of its debut album, Ten. In a 2002 interview, guitarist Mike McCready said, "The band was blown up pretty big and everything was pretty crazy." Vs. was the first Pearl Jam album to have production duties handled by Brendan O'Brien. It was the band's first album with drummer Dave Abbruzzese, who had joined the band in August 1991 and toured for the album Ten. Rehearsals for Vs. began in February 1993 at Potatohead Studio in Washington. The band moved to The Site in Nicasio, California in March 1993 to begin recording. Abbruzzese called the tranquil recording site "paradise" while lead vocalist Eddie Vedder said, "I fucking hate it here... I've had a hard time... How do you make a rock record here?"The band took the approach of recording one song at a time, agreed with O'Brien to mix the songs as each one was finished. O'Brien had the band members set up much as they do live, most of the songs were developed out of jam sessions.
Guitarist Stone Gossard said, "I think we allowed things to develop in a more natural, band-oriented sort of way, rather than me bringing in a bunch of stuff, arranged." Gossard added that most of the songs were arranged once Vedder joined in and started singing, elaborating, "You could tell when the music wanted to change just by the way he was singing." In a 2009 interview, Gossard stated, " was where it felt better recording wise. I saw how it could change and evolve which gave me a lot of inspiration to go we can do ballads, we can do fast stuff, we can do slow stuff, we can do punk stuff; that was where I realized there were going to be a lot of places to go with Ed."The first week of recording produced "Go", "Blood", "Rats", "Leash" before the band hit a lull. In order to keep up his intensity, Vedder traveled into San Francisco and began sleeping in his truck, as well as the sauna at the recording studio. Bassist Jeff Ament said, "Recording Vs. there was a lot more pressure on Ed. The whole follow-up.
I thought we were playing so well as a band that it would take care of itself... He was having a hard time finishing up the songs. Ament added that "toward the end it got intense" and that the band "tried to make it as uncomfortable for as we could." The band was able to get "back on track" according to Ament as Vedder was allowed "to get in the space of his songs." The album was finished in May 1993. Vedder said, "The second record, the one I enjoyed making the least... I just didn't feel comfortable in the place we were at because it was comfortable. I didn't like that at all." The album featured a much rawer sound compared to the band's debut album, Ten. Ament said, "When we made Vs. our second record, I remember thinking,'Man, I wish our first record sounded like this.' I thought it was more direct, more powerful." Besides the heavier songs, the album features two acoustic ballads in "Daughter" and "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town". A few songs incorporate elements of funk, including "Animal", "Blood", "Rats".
McCready stated that it wasn't that the band "sat down and decided to be funky," but rather it came from the band "exploring different directions and combining our influences." Paul Evans of Rolling Stone said "'Animal','Daughter' and'Blood'... are songs of a kind of ritual passion, tapping into something wild." In a 2002 interview, Gossard said, "We got our heavyosity out on that record."The songs on the album tackle personal as well as social and political concerns. Vedder said that "you write what comes to you... You try to reflect the mood of the songs." Topics on the album include child abuse, gun culture, police racism, the media. "Daughter", "Dissident", "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" are three storytelling songs. "Daughter" tells the story of a child, abused by her parents because they do not understand her learning disability. "W. M. A." was inspired by an incident that happened outside Pearl Jam's rehearsal studio in which Vedder got into an altercation with a group of police officers who hassled a black friend of his but ignored him.
Vedder said that "Rearviewmirror" is about being "in a car, leaving... a bad situation." Vedder stated that "Rats" is about the ide
Audio engineer
An audio engineer helps to produce a recording or a live performance and adjusting sound sources using equalization and audio effects, mixing and reinforcement of sound. Audio engineers work on the "...technical aspect of recording—the placing of microphones, pre-amp knobs, the setting of levels. The physical recording of any project is done by an engineer... the nuts and bolts." It's a creative hobby and profession where musical instruments and technology are used to produce sound for film, television and video games. Audio engineers set up, sound check and do live sound mixing using a mixing console and a sound reinforcement system for music concerts, sports games and corporate events. Alternatively, audio engineer can refer to a scientist or professional engineer who holds an engineering degree and who designs and builds audio or musical technology working under terms such as acoustical engineering, electronic/electrical engineering or signal processing. Research and development audio engineers invent new technologies and techniques, to enhance the process and art of audio engineering.
They might design acoustical simulations of rooms, shape algorithms for audio signal processing, specify the requirements for public address systems, carry out research on audible sound for video game console manufacturers, other advanced fields of audio engineering. They might be referred to as acoustic engineers. Audio engineers working in research and development may come from backgrounds such as acoustics, computer science, broadcast engineering, acoustical engineering, electrical engineering and electronics. Audio engineering courses at university or college fall into two rough categories: training in the creative use of audio as a sound engineer, training in science or engineering topics, which allows students to apply these concepts while pursuing a career developing audio technologies. Audio training courses give you a good knowledge of technologies and their application to recording studio and sound reinforcement systems, but do not have sufficient mathematical and scientific content to allow you to get a job in research and development in the audio and acoustic industry.
Audio engineers in research and development possess a bachelor's degree, master's degree or higher qualification in acoustics, computer science or another engineering discipline. They might work in acoustic consultancy. Alternatively they might work in audio companies, or other industries that need audio expertise, or carry out research in a university; some positions, such as faculty require a Doctor of Philosophy. In Germany a Toningenieur is an audio engineer who designs and repairs audio systems; the listed subdisciplines are based on PACS coding used by the Acoustical Society of America with some revision. Audio engineers develop audio signal processing algorithms to allow the electronic manipulation of audio signals; these can be processed at the heart of much audio production such as reverberation, Auto-Tune or perceptual coding. Alternatively, the algorithms might carry out echo cancellation on Skype, or identify and categorize audio tracks through Music Information Retrieval. Architectural acoustics is the engineering of achieving a good sound within a room.
For audio engineers, architectural acoustics can be about achieving good speech intelligibility in a stadium or enhancing the quality of music in a theatre. Architectural Acoustic design is done by acoustic consultants. Electroacoustics is concerned with the design of headphones, loudspeakers, sound reproduction systems and recording technologies. Examples of electroacoustic design include portable electronic devices, sound systems in architectural acoustics, surround sound and wave field synthesis in movie theater and vehicle audio. Musical acoustics is concerned with describing the science of music. In audio engineering, this includes the design of electronic instruments such as synthesizers. Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of. At the heart of audio engineering are listeners who are the final arbitrator as to whether an audio design is successful, such as whether a binaural recording sounds immersive; the production, computer processing and perception of speech is an important part of audio engineering.
Ensuring speech is transmitted intelligibly and with high quality. A variety of terms are used to describe audio engineers who install or operate sound recording, sound reinforcement, or sound broadcasting equipment, including large and small format consoles. Terms such as "audio technician," "sound technician," "audio engineer," "audio technologist," "recording engineer," "sound mixer" and "sound engineer" can be ambiguous; such terms can refer to a person working in music production.
Santana (band)
Santana is an American rock band formed in San Francisco, California in 1966 by Mexican-American guitarist Carlos Santana. The band came to public attention with their performance of "Soul Sacrifice" at Woodstock in 1969; this exposure helped propel their first album named Santana, into a hit, followed in the next two years by Abraxas and Santana III. Lineup changes were common. Carlos Santana's increasing involvement with guru Sri Chinmoy took the band into more esoteric music, though it never lost its Latin influence. In 1998, the band Santana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Carlos Santana, José "Chepito" Areas, David Brown, Gregg Rolie, Mike Carabello, Michael Shrieve; the band has earned nine Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards, the latter all in 2000. Carlos Santana won a Grammy Award as a solo artist in 1988; the band has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling groups of all time. In 2013, Santana announced a reunion of the classic line-up for a new album, Santana IV, released in April 2016.
The band is tied with Michael Jackson for the record number of Grammy Awards won in one night. The band was formed in 1966 in San Francisco as the Santana Blues Band with the help of guitarist Tom Fraser; the first established members were Carlos Santana, Marcus Malone, Rod Harper, Gus Rodriguez and Gregg Rolie. The group's first audition with this line up was at the Avalon Ballroom in the late summer of 1967. After the audition, Chet Helms, in concert with the Family Dog, told the band that they would never make it in the San Francisco Music Scene playing Latin fusion and suggested Carlos keep his day job washing dishes at Tick Tock's Drive-In on 3rd Street. By the time Santana began work on its debut album Santana, Malone had left the band as he had been convicted of manslaughter and had started serving his sentence in Marin County's San Quentin State Prison. Ahead of Woodstock, Bill Graham was asked to help with logistics and planning. Graham agreed to lend his help only if a new band he was championing, an unknown band called Santana, was added to the bill.
Santana was announced as one of the performers at the Woodstock Festival. The band finished it in a month. Santana performed at the festival; that month, they released their debut album, which peaked at number 4 on the US Billboard 200 pop chart with the single "Evil Ways" being a top 10 single in the US. Santana started work on their next, Abraxas. Work began in mid-April 1970 at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco and was completed in early May 1970; the album, highlighted by a reworking of Fleetwood Mac's "Black Magic Woman" that peaked at number 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100, was released in September 1970 and rose to number 1 on the US Billboard 200. From January to July 1971 Santana worked on Santana III. Released in September 1971, the album reached number 1 on the US Billboard 200. At the peak of the band's popularity, the album was the last to feature its classic Woodstock era line-up. Before recording their fourth album Caravanserai, there had been multiple line-up changes. Bassist David Brown left in 1971 before recording started and was replaced by Doug Rauch and Tom Rutley.
Percussionist Michael Carabello left Santana and was replaced with two percussionists, Armando Peraza and Mingo Lewis. Keyboardist/vocalist Gregg Rolie was replaced by Tom Coster on a few songs. Caravanserai debuted at number 8 despite not spawning a hit single. 13 months after Caravanserai, Santana released Welcome. Welcome was the first of four consecutive albums to achieve gold certification, as opposed to the previous four, which all at least reached platinum status; the album peaked at number 25 on the lowest of the band's career so far. The next few albums contained a more experimental style than their previous work, beginning with Borboletta, which fared arguably worse than its predecessor, despite climbing five spots on the US charts; the group's 1976 release, was far more successful. Reaching number 10 on the US charts, hitting the top 10 in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands, it was a return to the success of their early albums. Festival, somewhat contradicted that new-found success, but was a short blip before another successful album, released in 1977.
The album was the most successful since Santana III, achieving 2x platinum in the US, being the first album since 1974's Borboletta, to break the top 10 in the UK. It was characterized by a stylistic shift for the band, as it contained heavier influences from the more conventional sound of the group's early work, while still maintaining the experimental sound of their last few albums, their next two releases, Inner Secrets and Marathon, released in 1978 and'79 were a further musical shift for the band, moving away from the Latin-fused rock music that had characterized their work in the late 1960s and the majority of the'70s, to move towards a more album-oriented, conventional rock sound. These albums, fared poorly commercially, although both achieved gold status in the US; the 1980s started brightly for Santana, with 1981's platinum-selling Zebop!, which reached the top 20 in several countries, continued the more conventional rock sound. The following year, Shangó was released; the group waited another three years to release the follow-up, the longest break for
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, is a Canadian singer-songwriter. After embarking on a music career in the 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles, where he formed Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and others. Young had released two solo albums and three as a member of Buffalo Springfield by the time he joined Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1969. From his early solo albums and those with his backing band Crazy Horse, Young has recorded a steady stream of studio and live albums, sometimes warring with his recording company along the way. Young's guitar work personal lyrics and signature tenor singing voice transcend his long career. Young plays piano and harmonica on many albums, which combine folk, rock and other musical styles, his distorted electric guitar playing with Crazy Horse, earned him the nickname "Godfather of Grunge" and led to his 1995 album Mirror Ball with Pearl Jam. More Young has been backed by Promise of the Real. Young directed films using the pseudonym Bernard Shakey, including Journey Through the Past, Rust Never Sleeps, Human Highway, CSNY/Déjà Vu.
He contributed to the soundtracks of the films Philadelphia and Dead Man. Young has received several Grammy and Juno awards; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him twice: as a solo artist in 1995 and in 1997 as a member of Buffalo Springfield. In 2000, Rolling Stone named Young the 34th greatest rock'n roll artist, he retains Canadian citizenship. He was awarded the Order of Manitoba on July 14, 2006, was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on December 30, 2009. Neil Young was born on November 1945, in Toronto, Ontario, his father, Scott Alexander Young, was a journalist and sportswriter who wrote fiction. His mother, Edna Blow Ragland "Rassy" Young was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Although Canadian, his mother had French ancestry. Young's parents married in 1940 in Winnipeg and their first son, Robert "Bob" Young, was born in 1942. Shortly after Young's birth in 1945, his family moved to rural Omemee, which Young described fondly as a "sleepy little place". Young suffered from polio in 1951 during the last major outbreak of the disease in Ontario.
After his recovery, the Young family vacationed in Florida. During that period, Young attended Chisolm Elementary School in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. In 1952, upon returning to Canada, Young moved from Omemee to Winnipeg for a year, before relocating to Toronto and Pickering. Young became interested in popular music; when Young was twelve, his father, who had had several extramarital affairs, left his mother. His mother asked for a divorce, granted in 1960. Young went to live with his mother, who moved back to Winnipeg, while his brother Bob stayed with his father in Toronto. During the mid-1950s, Young listened to rock'n roll, doo-wop, R&B, western pop, he idolized Elvis Presley and referred to him in a number of his songs. Other early musical influences included Link Wray, Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs, The Ventures, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Chuck Berry, Hank Marvin, Little Richard, Fats Domino, The Chantels, The Monotones, Ronnie Self, the Fleetwoods, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Gogi Grant.
Young first began to play music himself on a plastic ukulele, before, as he would relate, going on to "a better ukulele to a banjo ukulele to a baritone ukulele – everything but a guitar."Young and his mother settled into the working-class area of Fort Rouge, where the shy, dry-humoured youth enrolled at Earl Grey Junior High School. It was there that he formed his first band, the Jades, met Ken Koblun. While attending Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, he played in several instrumental rock bands dropping out of school in favour of a musical career. Young's first stable band was the Squires, with Ken Koblun, Jeff Wuckert and Bill Edmondson on drums, who had a local hit called "The Sultan"; the band played in Fort William, where they recorded a series of demos produced by a local producer, Ray Dee, who Young called "the original Briggs". While playing at The Flamingo, Young met Stephen Stills, whose band the Company were playing the same venue, they became friends; the Squires played in several dance clubs in Winnipeg and Ontario.
After leaving the Squires, Young worked folk clubs in Winnipeg. Mitchell recalls Young as having been influenced by Bob Dylan at the time. Here he wrote some of his earliest and most enduring folk songs such as "Sugar Mountain", about lost youth. Mitchell wrote "The Circle Game" in response; the Winnipeg band The Guess Who had a Canadian Top 40 hit with Young's "Flying on the Ground is Wrong", Young's first major success as a songwriter. In 1965 Young toured Canada as a solo artist. In 1966, while in Toronto, he joined the Rick James-fronted Mynah Birds; the band managed to secure a record deal with the Motown label, but as their first album was being recorded, James was arrested for being AWOL from the Navy Reserve. After the Mynah Birds disbanded and the bass player Bruce Palmer decided to pawn the group's musical equipment and buy a Pontiac hearse, which they used to relocate to Los Angeles. Young admitted in a 2009 interview that he was in the United States illegally until he received a "green card" in 1970.
Once they reached Lo
R.E.M.
R. E. M. was an American rock band from Athens, formed in 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist/backing vocalist Mike Mills, lead vocalist Michael Stipe. One of the first alternative rock bands, R. E. M. was noted for Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style, Stipe's distinctive vocal quality and obscure lyrics, Mills' melodic basslines and backing vocals, Berry's tight, economical style of drumming. R. E. M. Released its first single—"Radio Free Europe"—in 1981 on the independent record label Hib-Tone; the single was followed by the Chronic Town EP in 1982, the band's first release on I. R. S. Records. In 1983, the group released its critically acclaimed debut album and built its reputation over the next few years through subsequent releases, constant touring, the support of college radio. Following years of underground success, R. E. M. Achieved a mainstream hit in 1987 with the single "The One I Love"; the group signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1988, began to espouse political and environmental concerns while playing large arenas worldwide.
By the early 1990s, when alternative rock began to experience broad mainstream success, R. E. M. was viewed by subsequent acts such as Pavement as a pioneer of the genre. The band released its two most commercially successful albums, Out of Time and Automatic for the People, which veered from the band's established sound and catapulted it to international fame. R. E. M.'s 1994 release, was a return to a more rock-oriented sound, but still continued its run of success. The band began its first tour in six years to support the album. In 1996, R. E. M. Re-signed with Warner Bros. for a reported US$80 million, at the time the most expensive recording contract in history. Its 1996 release, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, though critically acclaimed, fared worse commercially than its predecessors; the following year, Bill Berry left the band, while Stipe and Mills continued the group as a trio. Through some changes in musical style, the band continued its career into the next decade with mixed critical and commercial success, despite having sold more than 85 million albums worldwide and becoming one of the world's best-selling music artists of all time.
In 2007, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in their first year of eligibility. R. E. M. Disbanded amicably in September 2011, announcing the split on its website. In January 1980, Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in Wuxtry Records, the Athens record store where Buck worked; the pair discovered that they shared similar tastes in music in punk rock and protopunk artists like Patti Smith and the Velvet Underground. Stipe said, "It turns out that I was buying all the records, saving for himself." Through mutual friend Kathleen O'Brien and Buck met fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills and Bill Berry, who had played music together since high school and lived together in Georgia. The quartet agreed to collaborate on several songs, their still-unnamed band spent a few months rehearsing in a deconsecrated Episcopal church in Athens, played its first show on April 5, 1980, supporting The Side Effects at O'Brien's birthday party held in the same church, performing a mix of originals and 1960s and 1970s covers.
After considering Twisted Kites, Cans of Piss, Negro Eyes, the band settled on "R. E. M.", which Stipe selected at random from a dictionary. The band members dropped out of school to focus on their developing group, they found a manager in Jefferson Holt, a record store clerk, so impressed by an R. E. M. performance in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that he moved to Athens. R. E. M.'s success was immediate in Athens and surrounding areas. Over the next year and a half, R. E. M. Toured throughout the Southern United States. Touring was arduous because a touring circuit for alternative rock bands did not exist; the group toured in an old blue van driven by Holt, lived on a food allowance of $2 each per day. During April 1981, R. E. M. recorded its first single, "Radio Free Europe", at producer Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Distributing it as a four-track demo tape to clubs, record labels and magazines, the single was released in July 1981 on the local independent record label Hib-Tone with an initial pressing of 1,000 copies—600 of which were sent out as promotional copies.
The single sold out, another 6,000 copies were pressed due to popular demand, despite the original pressing leaving off the record label's contact details. Despite its limited pressing, the single garnered critical acclaim, was listed as one of the ten best singles of the year by The New York Times. R. E. M. recorded the Chronic Town EP with Mitch Easter in October 1981, planned to release it on a new indie label named Dasht Hopes. However, I. R. S. Records acquired a demo of the band's first recording session with Easter, circulating for months; the band turned down the advances of major label RCA Records in favor of I. R. S. with whom it signed a contract in May 1982. I. R. S. Released Chronic Town that August as its first American release. A positive review of the EP by NME praised the songs' auras of mystery, concluded, "R. E. M. Ring true, it's great to hear something as unforced and cunning as this."I. R. S. First paired R. E. M. with producer Stephen Hague to record its debut album. Hague's emphasis on technical perfection le
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin formed in 1976. The group consists of Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr.. Rooted in post-punk, U2's musical style has evolved throughout their career, yet has maintained an anthemic quality built on Bono's expressive vocals and the Edge's effects-based guitar textures, their lyrics embellished with spiritual imagery, focus on personal and sociopolitical themes. Popular for their live performances, the group have staged several ambitious and elaborate tours over their career; the band formed as teenagers while attending Mount Temple Comprehensive School, when they had limited musical proficiency. Within four years, they released their debut album, Boy. Subsequent work such as their first UK number-one album and the singles "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Pride" helped establish U2's reputation as a politically and conscious group. By the mid-1980s, they had become renowned globally for their live act, highlighted by their performance at Live Aid in 1985.
The group's fifth album, The Joshua Tree, made them international superstars and was their greatest critical and commercial success. Topping music charts around the world, it produced their only number-one singles in the US to date: "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". Facing creative stagnation and a backlash following their documentary/double album and Hum, U2 reinvented themselves in the 1990s through a new musical direction and public image. Beginning with their acclaimed seventh album, Achtung Baby, the multimedia-intensive Zoo TV Tour, the band integrated influences from alternative rock, electronic dance music, industrial music into their sound, embraced a more ironic, flippant image; this experimentation continued through their ninth album and the PopMart Tour, which were mixed successes. U2 regained critical and commercial favour with the records All That You Can't Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which established a more conventional, mainstream sound for the group.
Their U2 360° Tour of 2009–2011 is the highest-attended and highest-grossing concert tour in history. The group most released the companion albums Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, the former of which received criticism for its pervasive, no-cost release through the iTunes Store. U2 have released 14 studio albums and are one of the world's best-selling music artists in history, having sold an estimated 150–170 million records worldwide, they have won 22 Grammy Awards, more than any other band, in 2005, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. Rolling Stone ranked U2 at number 22 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Throughout their career, as a band and as individuals, they have campaigned for human rights and social justice causes, including Amnesty International, Jubilee 2000, the ONE/DATA campaigns, Product Red, War Child, Music Rising. In 1976, Larry Mullen Jr. a 14-year-old student at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin, posted a note on the school's notice board in search of musicians for a new band.
Six people met at Mullen's house on 25 September. Set up in the kitchen, Mullen was on drums, with: Paul Hewson on lead vocals. Mullen described it as "'The Larry Mullen Band' for about ten minutes Bono walked in and blew any chance I had of being in charge." Martin, who had brought his guitar and amplifier to the first practice but could not play, did not remain with the group, McCormick was dropped after a few weeks. The remaining five members settled on the name "Feedback" for the group because it was one of the few technical terms they knew. Most of their initial material consisted of cover songs, which they admitted was not their forte; some of the earliest influences on the band were emerging punk rock acts, such as the Jam, the Clash and Sex Pistols. The popularity of punk rock convinced the group that musical proficiency was not a prerequisite to success. In April 1977, Feedback played their first gig for a paying audience at St. Fintan's High School. Shortly thereafter, the band changed their name to "The Hype".
Dik Evans, older and by this time at college, was becoming the odd man out. The rest of the band was leaning towards the idea of a four-piece ensemble. In March 1978, the group changed their name to "U2". Steve Averill, a punk rock musician and family friend of Clayton's, had suggested six potential names from which the band chose "U2" for its ambiguity and open-ended interpretations, because it was the name that they disliked the least; that same month, U2, as a four-piece, won a talent contest in Limerick sponsored by Harp Lager and the Evening Press. The prize consisted of £500 and studio time to record a demo which would be heard by CBS Ireland, a record label; the win was an important affirmation for the fledgling band. Within a few days, Dik Evans was phased out of the band with a farewell concert at the Presbyterian Church Hall in Howth. During the show, which featured the group playing cover songs as the Hype, Dik ceremonially walked offstage; the remaining four band members returned in the concert to play original material as U2.
Dik soon joined the Virgin Prunes, which comprised mutual friends of U2's.
