1.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
2.
Music journalism
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Music journalism is media criticism and reporting about popular music topics, including pop music, rock music, and related styles. Journalists began writing music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on what is now thought of as classical music. An influential English 19th-century music critic, for example, was James William Davison of The Times, the composer Hector Berlioz also wrote reviews and criticisms for the Paris press of the 1830s and 1840s. The 1840s could be considered a point, in that music critics after the 1840s generally were not also practicing musicians. However, counterexamples include Alfred Brendel, Charles Rosen, Paul Hindemith, in the early 1980s, a decline in the quantity of classical criticism began occurring when classical-music criticism visibly started to disappear from the media. Also of concern in classical music journalism was how American reviewers can write about ethnic and folk music from other than their own, such as Indian ragas. The performers be treated as human beings and their music be treated as human activity rather than a mystical or mysterious phenomenon, the review should show an understanding of the musics cultural backgrounds and intentions. A key finding in a 2005 study of journalism in America was that the profile of the average classical music critic is a white, 52-year old male. Demographics indicated that the group was 74% male, 92% white, davis, one of the most respected voices of the craft, said he had been forced out after 26 years. Music writers only started treating pop and rock music seriously in 1964 after the breakthrough of the Beatles, one of the early music magazines in Britain, Melody Maker, complained in 1967 about how newspapers and magazines are continually hammering pop music. Melody Maker magazine advocated the new forms of pop music of the late 1960s, by 1999, the quality press was regularly carrying reviews of popular music gigs and albums, which had a key role in keeping pop in the public eye. As more pop music critics began writing, this had the effect of legitimating pop as an art form, as a result, in the world of pop music criticism, there has tended to be a quick turnover. In the realm of music, as in that of classical music. Frank Zappa declared that, Most rock journalism is people who cant write, interviewing people who cant talk, in the 2000s, online music bloggers began to supplement, and to some degree displace, music journalists in print media. In 2006, Martin Edlund of the New York Sun criticized the trend, arguing that while the Internet has democratized music criticism, slate magazine writer Jody Rosen discussed the 2000s-era trends in pop music criticism in his article The Perils of Poptimism. Rosen noted that much of the debate is centered on a perception that rock critics regard rock as normative … the standard state of popular music … to which everything else is compared. At a 2006 pop critic conference, attendees discussed their guilty pop pleasures, reconsidering musicians and genres which rock critics have dismissed as lightweight. Rosen stated that this new paradigm is called popism — or, more evocatively
3.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
4.
Rock and roll
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While elements of rock and roll can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until the 1950s. For the purpose of differentiation, this deals with the first definition. The beat is essentially a blues rhythm with an accentuated backbeat, classic rock and roll is usually played with one or two electric guitars, a double bass or string bass or an electric bass guitar, and a drum kit. Beyond simply a style, rock and roll, as seen in movies and on television, influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes. In addition, rock and roll may have contributed to the civil rights movement because both African-American and white American teens enjoyed the music and it went on to spawn various genres, often without the initially characteristic backbeat, that are now more commonly called simply rock music or rock. The term rock and roll now has at least two different meanings, both in common usage, the American Heritage Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary both define rock and roll as synonymous with rock music. Encyclopædia Britannica, on the hand, regards it as the music that originated in the mid-1950s. In 1934, the song Rock and Roll by the Boswell Sisters appeared in the film Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round, in 1942, Billboard magazine columnist Maurie Orodenker started to use the term rock-and-roll to describe upbeat recordings such as Rock Me by Sister Rosetta Tharpe. By 1943, the Rock and Roll Inn in South Merchantville, in 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing this music style while popularizing the phrase to describe it. The origins of rock and roll have been debated by commentators. The migration of former slaves and their descendants to major urban centers such as St. The immediate roots of rock and roll lay in the rhythm and blues, then called race music, particularly significant influences were jazz, blues, gospel, country, and folk. The 1940s saw the use of blaring horns, shouted lyrics. In the same period, particularly on the West Coast and in the Midwest, similarly, country boogie and Chicago electric blues supplied many of the elements that would be seen as characteristic of rock and roll. Rock and roll arrived at a time of technological change, soon after the development of the electric guitar, amplifier and microphone. It was the realization that relatively affluent white teenagers were listening to music that led to the development of what was to be defined as rock. Because the development of rock and roll was a process, no single record can be identified as unambiguously the first rock. Other artists with rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis
5.
The Beatles
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The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960, with Stuart Sutcliffe initially serving as bass player. The core of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them. They acquired the nickname the Fab Four as Beatlemania grew in Britain the next year, from 1965 onwards, the Beatles produced increasingly innovative recordings, including the albums Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles and Abbey Road, after their break-up in 1970, they each enjoyed successful musical careers of varying lengths. McCartney and Starr, the members, remain musically active. Lennon was shot and killed in December 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in November 2001. The Beatles are the band in history, with estimated sales of over 600 million records worldwide. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act, according to the RIAA, the Beatles are also the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazines list of the all-time most successful Hot 100 artists, as of 2016 and they have received ten Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and they were also collectively included in Time magazines compilation of the twentieth centurys 100 most influential people. In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen after discovering that a local group was already using the other name. Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he, in February 1958, McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, after a month of Harrisons persistence, they enlisted him as their lead guitarist. By January 1959, Lennons Quarry Bank friends had left the group, the three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as Johnny and the Moondogs, were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. They used the name until May, when they became the Silver Beetles, before undertaking a tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer. By early July, they had changed their name to the Silver Beatles, allan Williams, the Beatles unofficial manager, arranged a residency for them in Hamburg, but lacking a full-time drummer they auditioned and hired Pete Best in mid-August 1960
6.
Order of the British Empire
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There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. Recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire were at first made on the nomination of the United Kingdom, the self-governing Dominions of the Empire, nominations continue today from Commonwealth countries that participate in recommending British honours. Most members are citizens of the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth realms that use the Imperial system of honours and awards. Honorary knighthoods are appointed to citizens of nations where the Queen is not head of state, occasionally, honorary appointees are, incorrectly, referred to as Sir or Dame – Bill Gates or Bob Geldof, for example. In particular, King George V wished to create an Order to honour many thousands of those who had served in a variety of non-combatant roles during the First World War, when first established, the Order had only one division. However, in 1918, soon after its foundation, it was divided into Military. The Orders motto is For God and the Empire, at the foundation of the Order, the Medal of the Order of the British Empire was instituted, to serve as a lower award granting recipients affiliation but not membership. In 1922, this was renamed the British Empire Medal, in addition, the BEM is awarded by the Cook Islands and by some other Commonwealth nations. The British monarch is Sovereign of the Order, and appoints all members of the Order. The next most senior member is the Grand Master, of whom there have been three, Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, Queen Mary, and the current Grand Master, the Duke of Edinburgh. The Order is limited to 300 Knights and Dames Grand Cross,845 Knights and Dames Commander, and 8,960 Commanders. There are no limits applied to the number of members of the fourth and fifth classes. Foreign recipients, as members, do not contribute to the numbers restricted to the Order as full members do. Though men can be knighted separately from an order of chivalry, women cannot, and so the rank of Knight/Dame Commander of the Order is the lowest rank of damehood, and second-lowest of knighthood. Because of this, Dame Commander is awarded in circumstances in which a man would be created a Knight Bachelor, for example, by convention, female judges of the High Court of Justice are created Dames Commander after appointment, while male judges become Knights Bachelor. The Order has six officials, the Prelate, the Dean, the Secretary, the Registrar, the King of Arms, the Bishop of London, a senior bishop in the Church of England, serves as the Orders Prelate. The Dean of St Pauls is ex officio the Dean of the Order, the Orders King of Arms is not a member of the College of Arms, as are many other heraldic officers. From time to time, individuals are appointed to a higher grade within the Order, thereby ceasing usage of the junior post-nominal letters
7.
Folk music
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Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century, but is applied to music older than that. Some types of music are also called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways, as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers and it has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. Starting in the century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times and this type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, folk metal, electric folk, and others. Even individual songs may be a blend of the two, a consistent definition of traditional folk music is elusive. The terms folk music, folk song, and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions and they are extensions of the term folklore, which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes. Traditional folk music also includes most indigenous music, however, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music is. Some do not even agree that the term Folk Music should be used, Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of old songs, with no known composers, the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character. Such definitions depend upon processes rather than abstract musical types, one widely used definition is simply Folk music is what the people sing. For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók, Folk music was already. seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear, particularly in a community uninfluenced by art music and by commercial and printed song. In these terms folk music may be seen as part of a schema comprising four types, primitive or tribal, elite or art, folk. Music in this genre is often called traditional music. Although the term is only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre
8.
John Peel
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John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE, known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, fellow DJ Paul Gambaccini described Peel as the most important man in music for about a dozen years. In 2012 he was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles Sgt, peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. Another popular feature of his shows was the annual Festive Fifty countdown of his listeners favourite records of the year. Peel appeared occasionally on British television as one of the presenters of Top of the Pops in the 1980s and he became popular with the audience of BBC Radio 4 for his Home Truths programme, which ran from the 1990s, featuring unusual stories from listeners domestic lives. John Peel was born in Heswall Cottage Hospital in Heswall on the Wirral Peninsula, near Liverpool, the solitary Peel was an avid radio listener and record collector from an early age, cutting his teeth on fare offered by the American Forces Network and Radio Luxembourg. He later recalled an early desire to host a programme of his own so that I could play music that I heard. In his posthumously published autobiography, Peel revealed that he had been raped by an older pupil while at Shrewsbury, whilst in Rochdale Monday to Friday, he stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in the area of Milkstone Road and Drake Street and developed long-term associations with Rochdale through the years. In 1960, aged 21, he went to the United States to work for a producer who had business dealings with his father. Once this job finished, he took a number of others, including working as an insurance salesman. While in Dallas, Texas, where the company he worked for was based, he conversed with the presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. Johnson, who were touring the city during the 1960 election campaign and he later phoned in the story to the Liverpool Echo. While working for the company, Peel wrote programs for punched card entry for an IBM1410 computer. There, he presented the second hour of the Monday night programme Kats Karavan, following this, and as Beatlemania hit the United States, Peel got a job with the Dallas radio station KLIF as the official Beatles correspondent on the strength of his connection to Liverpool. He later worked for KOMA in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, until 1965 when he moved to KMEN in San Bernardino, California, using the name John Ravencroft to present the breakfast show. While in Dallas, in 1965, he married his first wife, Shirley Anne Milburn, then aged 15, the marriage was never happy and although she accompanied Peel back to Britain in 1967, they were soon separated. The divorce became final in 1973, Shirley Anne Milburn later took her own life. Peel returned to England in early 1967 and found work with the pirate radio station Radio London
9.
Cat Stevens
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Yusuf Islam, commonly known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, humanitarian, and education philanthropist. His 1967 debut album reached the top 10 in the UK, and his albums Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat were both certified triple platinum in the US by the RIAA. His musical style consists of folk, pop, rock, and his 1972 album Catch Bull at Four spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, and fifteen weeks at number one in the Australian ARIA Charts. He earned two ASCAP songwriting awards in 2005 and 2006 for The First Cut Is the Deepest, and his other hit songs include Father and Son, Wild World, Peace Train, Moonshadow, and Morning Has Broken. In 2007 he received the British Academys Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection, in December 1977, Stevens converted to Islam, and he adopted the name Yusuf Islam the following year. In 1979, he auctioned all his guitars for charity and left his career to devote himself to educational. He was embroiled in a controversy regarding comments he made in 1989 about the death fatwa on author Salman Rushdie. He has received two doctorates and awards for promoting peace from two organisations founded by Mikhail Gorbachev. In 2006, he returned to pop music – releasing his first album of new pop songs in 28 years, with that release and subsequent ones, he dropped the surname Islam from the album cover art – using the stage name Yusuf as a mononym. In 2009, he released the album Roadsinger, and in 2014, he released the album Tell Em Im Gone and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. His second North American tour since his resurgence, featuring 12 shows in intimate venues, steven Georgiou, born on 21 July 1948 in the Marylebone area of London, was the youngest child of a Greek Cypriot father, Stavros Georgiou, and a Swedish mother, Ingrid Wickman. He had a sister, Anita, and a brother. All family members worked in the restaurant and his parents divorced when he was about eight years old, but they continued to maintain the family restaurant and live above it. Although his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother a Baptist, Georgiou was sent to St. Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School, Macklin Street, which was closer to his fathers business on Drury Lane. Georgiou developed an interest in piano at a young age, eventually using the family baby grand piano to work out the chords. Inspired by the popularity of the Beatles, at 15 he extended his interest to the guitar, persuaded his father to pay £8 for his first instrument, Stevens emphasised that the advent of West Side Story in particular affected him, giving him a different view of life. He attended other local West End schools, where he says he was constantly in trouble and he was called the artist boy and mentions that I was beat up, but I was noticed. He went on to take a course of study at Hammersmith School of Art
10.
Led Zeppelin
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Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The group consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, after changing their name from the New Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin signed a deal with Atlantic Records that afforded them considerable artistic freedom. Their fourth album, which features the track Stairway to Heaven, is among the most popular and influential works in rock music, Page wrote most of Led Zeppelins music, particularly early in their career, while Plant generally supplied the lyrics. Jones keyboard-based compositions later became central to the catalogue, which featured increasing experimentation. The latter half of their career saw a series of record-breaking tours that earned the group a reputation for excess, in the decades that followed, the surviving members sporadically collaborated and participated in one-off Led Zeppelin reunions. The most successful of these was the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in London, Led Zeppelin are widely considered one of the most successful, innovative, and influential rock groups in history. They are one of the music artists in the history of audio recording. With RIAA-certified sales of 111.5 million units, they are the band in the US. Each of their nine studio albums placed in the top 10 of the Billboard album chart and they achieved eight consecutive UK number-one albums. Rolling Stone magazine described them as the heaviest band of all time, the biggest band of the Seventies, and unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, in 1966, London-based session guitarist Jimmy Page joined the blues-influenced rock band the Yardbirds to replace bassist Paul Samwell-Smith. Page soon switched from bass to guitar, creating a dual lead guitar line-up with Jeff Beck. Following Becks departure in October 1966, the Yardbirds, tired from constant touring and recording, Page wanted to form a supergroup with him and Beck on guitars, and the Whos Keith Moon and John Entwistle on drums and bass, respectively. Vocalists Steve Winwood and Steve Marriott were also considered for the project, the group never formed, although Page, Beck, and Moon did record a song together in 1966, Becks Bolero, in a session that also included bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones. The Yardbirds played their final gig in July 1968 at Luton College of Technology in Bedfordshire, Page and Dreja began putting a new line-up together. Pages first choice for the singer was Terry Reid, but Reid declined the offer and suggested Robert Plant. Plant eventually accepted the position, recommending former Band of Joy drummer John Bonham, Jones inquired about the vacant position at the suggestion of his wife after Dreja dropped out of the project to become a photographer. Page had known Jones since they were both musicians and agreed to let him join as the final member
11.
Pink Floyd
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Pink Floyd were an English rock band formed in London. They achieved international acclaim with their progressive and psychedelic music, Pink Floyd were founded in 1965 by students Syd Barrett on guitar and lead vocals, Nick Mason on drums, Roger Waters on bass and vocals, and Richard Wright on keyboards and vocals. Guitarist David Gilmour joined in December 1967, Barrett left in April 1968 due to deteriorating mental health. Waters became the primary lyricist and conceptual leader, devising the concepts behind their albums The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall. The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall became two of the albums of all time. Following creative tensions, Wright left Pink Floyd in 1979, followed by Waters in 1985, Gilmour and Mason continued as Pink Floyd, Wright rejoined them as a session musician and, later, a band member. The three produced two more albums—A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell —and toured through 1994, Barrett died in 2006, and Wright in 2008. The final Pink Floyd studio album, The Endless River, was recorded without Waters, Pink Floyd were inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. By 2013, the band had more than 250 million records worldwide. Roger Waters met Nick Mason while they were both studying architecture at the London Polytechnic at Regent Street and they first played music together in a group formed by Keith Noble and Clive Metcalfe with Nobles sister Sheilagh. Richard Wright, an architecture student, joined later that year. Waters played lead guitar, Mason drums, and Wright rhythm guitar, the band performed at private functions and rehearsed in a tearoom in the basement of the Regent Street Polytechnic. They performed songs by the Searchers and material written by their manager and songwriter, Mason moved out after the 1964 academic year, and guitarist Bob Klose moved in during September 1964, prompting Waters switch to bass. Sigma 6 went through several names, including the Meggadeaths, the Abdabs and the Screaming Abdabs, Leonards Lodgers, in 1964, as Metcalfe and Noble left to form their own band, guitarist Syd Barrett joined Klose and Waters at Stanhope Gardens. Barrett, two younger, had moved to London in 1962 to study at the Camberwell College of Arts. Waters and Barrett were childhood friends, Waters had often visited Barrett, Noble and Metcalfe left the Tea Set in late 1963, and Klose introduced the band to singer Chris Dennis, a technician with the Royal Air Force. In December 1964, they secured their first recording time, at a studio in West Hampstead, through one of Wrights friends, Wright, who was taking a break from his studies, did not participate in the session. When the RAF assigned Dennis a post in Bahrain in early 1965, later that year, they became the resident band at the Countdown Club near Kensington High Street in London, where from late night until early morning they played three sets of 90 minutes each
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