Holly Knight
Holly Knight is an American songwriter and singer. She was a member of the 1980s pop rock groups Spider and Device, wrote or co-wrote several hit singles for other artists, such as "Rag Doll", "Obsession", "Love Is a Battlefield", "The Best", "Invincible", "Better Be Good To Me", "The Warrior", "Change". In 2013, she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, she has won thirteen ASCAP Awards and three Grammy Awards, has written hits for some of the most successful artists in music. Knight was born in New York City, she started playing classical piano at the age of four, continuing her studies for ten years at the Mannes School of Music. Knight started studying classical piano at age four and continued her studies for ten years at the Mannes School of Music, she left home at sixteen. Five years in the early 1980s, her band Spider, managed by Bill Aucoin, manager of Kiss and Billy Idol, among others, got a recording contract with Dreamland Records, released two albums: Spider and Between the Lines.
Dreamland president and record producer Mike Chapman urged her to leave the band and move to Los Angeles to pursue her songwriting career. She signed a publishing deal with his company signing to EMI Publishing. Knight and Chapman worked together on the Top 5 U. S. hit "Better Be Good to Me" by Tina Turner and "Love Is a Battlefield" by Pat Benatar, each of which won a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Knight has written hits for some of the most successful artists in music. For Pat Benatar, in addition to "Love Is a Battlefield", she wrote "Invincible". On her own and in collaboration with others, Knight wrote songs with Heart, Bonnie Tyler, Rod Stewart, many more. Tina Turner has recorded nine of her tunes, including "The Best", "Better Be Good to Me", "In Your Wildest Dreams", she was voted the Best Songwriter in Rolling Stone Magazine's 11th annual poll, along with Phil Collins, Paul Simon, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. Knight had a second band called Device in the mid-1980s, who had a hit with "Hanging on a Heart Attack" off their album 22B3.
Spider and Device both had Top 40 hits, while Device was on MTV's heavy-rotation playlist for four consecutive months. Knight released a self-titled solo album in 1988; this album featured her own rendition of the song she co-wrote, "Love Is a Battlefield", as well as the single "Heart Don't Fail Me Now", which featured background vocals from Daryl Hall. Her songs have featured on the soundtracks of numerous films, including Thelma & Louise, Vision Quest, Legend of Billie Jean, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, The Secret of My Success, Stuart Little II, 13 Going on 30, What the Bleep Do We Know!?, hit television shows such as Nip/Tuck, The Singing Bee, American Idol, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Simpsons, Family Guy, 30 Rock, South Park, Dallas Buyers Club, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Necessary Roughness, the 40th anniversary Saturday Night Live, the finale episode of The Voice, in which Cee Lo Green performed a duet of "Love Is a Battlefield" with one of the final contestants. Knight wrote the theme song for the popular Joss Whedon television show Angel, performed by Darling Violetta.
She wrote and produced the title theme for the sitcom Still Standing, performed by Will Hoge, which received the ASCAP award for recognition as one of the top TV music themes of 2003, as well as the same award again in 2004. In the 21st century, Knight has been active as a record producer. In 2009, she produced a jazz EP called Natural for Antonia Bennett, daughter of Tony Bennett, in 2012, an alternative pop record of original songs for her, entitled Ordinary Girl. In 2014, she produced a second full-length jazz record for Antonia Bennett of songs from the "Great American Songbook" called Embrace Me, on Perseverance records, she has produced tracks for Otep, Fefe Dobson, the Australian band, 2014 Tony Award winner Lena Hall. In 2017, she contributed a chapter to the book. Knight has two lives in Los Angeles. Holly Knight 22B3 Ace Frehley - "Hide Your Heart" Aerosmith - "Rag Doll" Angel - theme music Animotion - "Obsession".
Kenny Loggins
Kenneth Clark Loggins is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His early songs were recorded with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1970, which led to seven albums recorded as Loggins and Messina from 1972 to 1977; as a solo artist, Loggins experienced a string of soundtrack successes, including an Academy Award nomination for "Footloose" in 1984. His early soundtrack contributions date back to A Star Is Born in 1976, for much of the 1980s and 1990s he was known as the Soundtrack King. Home was released in 2013, shortly after Loggins formed the group Blue Sky Riders with Gary Burr and Georgia Middleman. Loggins was born in Everett, the youngest of three brothers, his mother was Lina, a homemaker, his father, Robert George Loggins, was a salesman. They lived in Seattle before settling in Alhambra, California. Loggins attended San Gabriel Mission High School, graduating in 1966, he formed a band, The Second Helping, that released three singles during 1968 and 1969 on Viva Records. Greg Shaw described the efforts as "excellent punky folk-pop records" that were written by Loggins, to be the bandleader and singer as well.
Loggins had a short gig playing guitar for the New Improved Electric Prunes in 1969 before writing four songs for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that were included on their album Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy. During his early twenties, he was in the band Gator Creek with Mike Deasy; the first recorded version of "Danny's Song" was included on their only album, released on Mercury Records. Jim Messina of Poco and Buffalo Springfield, was working as an independent record producer for Columbia Records in 1970 when he was introduced to Loggins a little-known singer-songwriter, signed to ABC-Dunhill; the two recorded a number of Loggins's compositions in Messina's home living room. When Columbia signed Loggins to a six-album contract, recording began in earnest for Loggins's debut album, with Messina as producer. In addition to providing rehearsal space and amps, Messina worked long hours with Loggins and encouraged him to buy an electric guitar to play on his debut album, he assembled The Kenny Loggins Band by summoning his old friends bassist Larry Sims and drummer Merel Bregante, violinist/multireedist Al Garth and multireedist Jon Clarke.
Keyboardist Michael Omartian played on the album, despite dropping out at the start of the touring, continued to play keyboards on the next two albums. Los Angeles-based session percussionist Milt Holland, described by Messina as a "ethnomusicologist" contributed. Messina intended to lend his name to the Loggins project only to help introduce the unknown Loggins to Messina's well-established Buffalo Springfield and Poco audiences, but by the time the album was completed, Messina had contributed so much to the album in terms of songwriting, arrangement and vocals that an "accidental" duo was born. Thus the full name of their first album was Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin' In; the album's first single release, the Caribbean-flavored "Vahevala", found top 3 success on WCFL on May 18, 1972. Although the album went unnoticed by radio upon release, it found success by autumn 1972 on college campuses where the pair toured heavily. Loggins and Messina's vocal harmonies meshed so well that what was begun as a one-off album became an entity in itself.
Audiences regarded the pair as a genuine duo rather than as a solo act with a well-known producer. Instead of continuing to produce Loggins as a sole performer, they decided to record as a duo, Loggins & Messina. "When our first album,'Sittin' In', came out, we started receiving a lot of excitement about the music and good sales," Messina recalled in 2005. "We had a choice. It was either I now go on and continue to produce him and we do the solo career or we stay together and let this work. For me, I did not desire to go back out on the road. I had had enough of that, I wanted to produce records, but Clive Davis intervened and said,'You know, I think you'd be making a mistake if you guys didn't take this opportunity. Things like this only happen once in a lifetime, it may merit you sleeping on it overnight and making a decision that will be in your best interest.' He was correct. Kenny made the decision as well, it delayed his solo career, but it gave him an opportunity, I think, to have one."Both members of the duo were guitarists: Loggins played rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar and harmonica, Messina played lead guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar and Dobro.
Over the next four years they produced five more albums of original material in the studio, plus one album of covers of other artists' material, two live albums. They sold 16 million records and were the most successful duo of the early 1970s, surpassed in the decade only by Hall & Oates, their work included Lynn Anderson's "Listen to a Country Song,", released in 1972 and reached No. 3 on the charts, Anne Murray's "Danny's Song", "A Love Song", which reached No. 12 in March 1974. A greatest-hits album, The Best of Friends, was released a year; the studio albums found Loggins and Messina more as two solo artists sharing the same record than as a genuine partnership. As they both noted in 2005, their collaboration became more a competition; the pair had by 1976 but amicably parted to pursue solo
Matthew Sweet
Sidney Matthew Sweet is an American rock singer-songwriter and musician. Part of the burgeoning music scene in Athens, during the 1980s before gaining commercial success in the 1990s, his latest albums, Tomorrow Forever and Tomorrow's Daughter, were followed by 2018's Wicked System of Things. Sweet was born in Nebraska, he attended Southeast High School in Lincoln, graduating in 1983. He moved to Georgia thereafter to attend college. In 1980, Sweet, a high school student and recorded songs on four-track cassettes, he joined the band The Specs and released his first recording on a battle of bands LP produced by a local radio station, fronted his own local band called The Dialtones>. After graduating, Sweet traveled to Athens, Georgia, to attend college during the vibrant Athens music scene; that same year, who had met the band R. E. M; when they played a show in his hometown the previous year, collaborated with frontman Michael Stipe in a duo group under the name Community Trolls, as well as played guitar in Stipe's sister Lynda Stipe's band, Oh-OK.
In addition, he formed another duo, The Buzz of Delight, with Oh-OK drummer David Pierce, releasing an EP, Sound Castles, in 1984 on DB Records. On the strength of this 12" vinyl, Sweet was signed to a solo recording contract with Columbia Records. In 1986, he released his debut album, to good reviews but little commercial success. In 1989, he released Earth after signing with A&M Records; this marked a personal and professional low period as his record company lost interest and his marriage failed. In 1990, A&M released Sweet from his contract, he signed with rival Zoo Entertainment, which evolved into Volcano Entertainment. Sweet formed a new band, together they spent that year assembling his next work titled Nothing Lasts. In 1991, Sweet released Girlfriend, the re-titled pop-rock album, considered an artistic breakthrough, it garnered impressive U. S. sales, spawning a Top 10 single with the title track. The music video for "Girlfriend" featured clips from the anime film, Space Adventure Cobra, while the video for "I've Been Waiting" used clips of the Urusei Yatsura character, Lum Invader.
In 1993, Sweet released Altered Beast, a harder rock album which drew mixed reactions with its intense and brooding tracks. The music video for the single "The Ugly Truth" featured the singer being chased in the desert by police while driving his own 1970 Dodge Challenger, while the video for "Time Capsule" was a literary homage to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In 1995, Sweet released 100% Fun, an alt-rock album best known for its lead-off track, the self-deprecating "Sick of Myself"; the album itself fared better commercially, made it onto Entertainment Weekly critic David Browne's year's-best list. In 1997, Sweet released Blue Sky on Mars, a new-wave album which featured the synth-laden singles "Where You Get Love" and "Come to California"; the music video for the former featured Sweet as an astronaut traveling through outer space. In 1999, Sweet released In Reverse, a psychedelic album which featured Wall of Sound tracks, including the singles "What Matters" and "Trade Places"; the album is noteworthy for its 10-minute closing track, "Thunderstorm", a combination of several demos.
In 2000, Sweet released Time Capsule: Best of 90/00, a retrospective compilation which featured two new tracks. In 2001, Sweet and Darius Rucker performed The Beach Boys song "Sail On, Sailor" on the special A Tribute to Brian Wilson. In 2002, Sweet released To Understand: The Early Recordings of Matthew Sweet, a retrospective compilation which featured unreleased material; that year, he formed supergroup The Thorns w/ Shawn Mullins and Pete Droge. In 2003, Sweet released Kimi Ga Suki, a garage-rock album released in Japan, where Sweet has a following. In 2004, he released Living Things, an acoustic album consisted of material he wrote while recording w/ The Thorns. In 2006, Sweet and Susanna Hoffs released Under the Covers, Vol. 1, which featured covers of popular 1960s songs. In 2008, Sweet released Sunshine Lies, his 10th studio album, which incorporated a 2-LP set featuring 4 bonus tracks. In 2009, Sweet and Hoffs released Under the Covers, Vol. 2, which featured covers of popular 1970s songs.
In 2010, the musical Girlfriend, using songs from Sweet's eponymous album, was staged by the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. In 2011, Sweet released Modern Art, a labyrinthine album which featured the single, "She Walks the Night". In 2012, Sweet celebrated the 20th anniversary of Girlfriend with a tour performing the entire album from start to finish. In 2013, Sweet and Susanna Hoffs released Under the Covers, Vol. 3, which features covers of popular 1980s songs. In 2014, Sweet was featured on the longest-running American sitcom, he wrote "Hopin' for a Dream", a song in the episode. Sweet and his wife Lisa were research consultants for the Tim Burton film Big Eyes, a biography on painter Margaret Keane. In 2015, Sweet and Susanna Hoffs released Completely Under the Covers, a limited 4-disc box set of all three Under the Covers albums, with 15 bonus tracks. In 2017, Sweet released Tomorrow Forever, a rootsy album funded by fans on Kickstarter. In 2018, Sweet released Tomorrow's Daughter o
Bill Bruford
William Scott Bruford is an English retired drummer, songwriter and record label owner who first gained prominence as the original drummer of the rock band Yes, from 1968 to 1972 and again from 1990 to 1992. After his departure from Yes, Bruford spent the rest of the 1970s playing in King Crimson, touring with Genesis and U. K. and forming his own group, Bruford. In the 1980s, Bruford returned to King Crimson for three years, collaborated with several artists including The Roches, Patrick Moraz, David Torn, formed his jazz band Earthworks in 1986, he played in Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, which led to his second stint in Yes. Bruford played in King Crimson for his third and final tenure between 1994 and 1997, after which he continued with Earthworks and further collaborations. On 1 January 2009, Bruford retired from public performance, barring one private gig in 2011, he released his autobiography, continues to speak and write about music. He operates his record labels and Winterfold Records.
In 2016, after four-and-a-half years of study, Bruford earned a PhD in Music at the University of Surrey. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Yes in 2017. Bruford was born on 17 May 1949 in Sevenoaks, the third child of Betty and John Bruford, a local veterinary surgeon, he has a brother, a sister, Jane. He attended boarding school at Tonbridge School. Bruford decided to take up drumming at thirteen after watching American jazz drummers on the BBC2 jazz television series, Jazz 625, practised the instrument in the attic of his house, he cites Max Roach, Joe Morello, Art Blakey, Ginger Baker as his favourite and the most influential drummers as a youngster. Around this time, Bruford's sister bought him a pair of drum brushes as a birthday present, Bruford would practise using them on album sleeves after he was told the sound resembled a snare drum while watching Jazz 625. Bruford recalled it as "a perfect education". Though he was given a single snare drum at first, Bruford built a full drum kit.
He took a few lessons from Lou Pocock, a member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. During his time at boarding school, Bruford befriended several fellow jazz fans, one of them a drummer who gave Bruford lessons in improvisation and a tutorial book by American jazz drummer Jim Chapin, they performed as a four-piece named The Breed, a rhythm and blues and soul band that Bruford played with from 1966 to 1967 until he was unable to attend all their gigs, leaving the band to hire a second drummer. The Breed were formed by Stu Murray on guitar, Ray Bennett on bass, Mike Freeman on sax, Doug Kennard on guitar and vocals and Bill Bruford on drums. After he left boarding school, Bruford took a gap year before he intended to start an economics course at Leeds University in September 1968, he auditioned for a place in Savoy Brown on 16 January 1968 at a pub in Battersea. After he was unsuccessful in being able to join the band, Bruford "hung around until the end and told them they had the wrong guy...
I talked my way into it". His tenure lasted three gigs as he messed with the beat, joined Paper Blitz Tissue, a psychedelic rock band, for a short time. Bruford spotted an advertisement in a music shop from The Noise, who were looking for a drummer to play with them for a six-week residency at the Piper Club in Rome, Italy, he remembered the experience as "ghastly", felt his bandmates could not play properly, had to hitchhike back to London with his kit. Ray Bennett the bass player with The Breed, would play with Flash, a band formed by Peter Banks after he left Yes. Following his return to London, the nineteen-year-old Bruford settled into a flat in north London and placed an advertisement for drum work in the Melody Maker, it was spotted by singer Jon Anderson of Mabel Greer's Toyshop, a London-based psychedelic rock band that consisted of bassist Chris Squire and guitarist Clive Bayley, who sought a replacement for their departing drummer, Bob Hagger. The four first met on 7 June 1968, their entire set consisted of "In the Midnight Hour" by Wilson Pickett as it was the only song they all knew how to play through, but Bruford was impressed with the band's ability to sing in harmony.
Following the gig, Bruford had several offers to join soul bands, one of which earned as much as £30 a week, but chose to form a new, full-time group with Anderson and Squire. The four entered rehearsals, which ended in Peter Banks replacing Bayley on guitar, they changed their name to Yes with new recruit, keyboardist Tony Kaye. Bruford played on Yes's first five studio albums during his initial tenure: Yes, Time and a Word, The Yes Album and Close to the Edge, his first attempt at composition was "Five Per Cent for Nothing", recorded for Fragile. His main interest was allowing the drums to "be heard" as Squire tuned his bass high, so developed a style that involved unusual "beat placement" and time signatures, he developed his musical understanding during this time: "I learned how to read the horizontal lines, but not the vertical notes."Bruford recalled Yes being hot blooded and argumentative, with personality conflicts being the eventual reason for his exit. These, for him, included problems in understanding other members' accents, differences in social backgrounds, many other issues that set the band in a constant state of friction between Anderson and himself.
In July 1972, after Close to the Edge had been recorded, Bruford quit to join King Crimson. Rehearsals began followed by an extensive UK tour, his instinct to rem
Theremin
The theremin is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the thereminist. It is named after the Westernized name of its Soviet inventor, Léon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928; the instrument's controlling section consists of two metal antennas that sense the relative position of the thereminist's hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, amplitude with the other. The electric signals from the theremin are sent to a loudspeaker; the sound of the instrument is associated with eerie situations. Thus, the theremin has been used in movie soundtracks such as Miklós Rózsa's Spellbound and The Lost Weekend, Bernard Herrmann's The Day the Earth Stood Still, Justin Hurwitz's First Man, as well as in theme songs for television shows such as the ITV drama Midsomer Murders; the theremin is used in concert music, in popular music genres such as rock. The theremin was the product of Soviet government-sponsored research into proximity sensors; the instrument was invented by a young Russian physicist named Lev Sergeyevich Termen in October 1920 after the outbreak of the Russian Civil War.
After a lengthy tour of Europe, during which time he demonstrated his invention to packed houses, Theremin moved to the United States, where he patented his invention in 1928. Subsequently, Theremin granted commercial production rights to RCA. Although the RCA Thereminvox was not a commercial success, it fascinated audiences in America and abroad. Clara Rockmore, a well-known thereminist, toured to wide acclaim, performing a classical repertoire in concert halls around the United States sharing the bill with Paul Robeson. During the 1930s, Lucie Bigelow Rosen was taken with the theremin and together with her husband Walter Bigelow Rosen provided both financial and artistic support to the development and popularisation of the instrument. In 1938, Theremin left the United States, though the circumstances related to his departure are in dispute. Many accounts claim he was taken from his New York City apartment by NKVD agents, taken back to the Soviet Union and made to work in a sharashka laboratory prison camp at Magadan, Siberia.
He reappeared 30 years later. In his 2000 biography of the inventor, Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage, Albert Glinsky suggested the Russian had fled to escape crushing personal debts, was caught up in Stalin's political purges. In any case, Theremin did not return to the United States until 1991. After a flurry of interest in America following the end of the Second World War, the theremin soon fell into disuse with serious musicians because newer electronic instruments were introduced that were easier to play. However, a niche interest in the theremin persisted among electronics enthusiasts and kit-building hobbyists. One of these electronics enthusiasts, Robert Moog, began building theremins in the 1950s, while he was a high-school student. Moog subsequently published a number of articles about building theremins, sold theremin kits that were intended to be assembled by the customer. Moog credited what he learned from the experience as leading directly to his groundbreaking synthesizer, the Moog.
Since the release of the film Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey in 1993, the instrument has enjoyed a resurgence in interest and has become more used by contemporary musicians. Though many theremin sounds can be approximated on many modern synthesizers, some musicians continue to appreciate the expressiveness and uniqueness of using an actual theremin; the film itself has garnered excellent reviews. Both theremin instruments and kits are available from manufacturers such as Moog Music Inc. Burns Theremins, Harrison Instruments, Inc. Theremaniacs LLC, PAiA Corporation USA, Jaycar Electronics; some inexpensive theremins may only have a pitch control and may be harder to play because of a non-linear relationship between the distance of the hand and resultant pitch, as well as a short span of hand-to-antenna distance for producing the available range of pitch. The theremin is distinguished among musical instruments in that it is played without physical contact; the thereminist stands in front of the instrument and moves his or her hands in the proximity of two metal antennas.
The distance from one antenna determines frequency, the distance from the other controls amplitude. Higher notes are played by moving the hand closer to the pitch antenna. Louder notes are played by moving the hand away from the volume antenna. Most the right hand controls the pitch and the left controls the volume, although some performers reverse this arrangement; some low-cost theremins use a conventional, knob operated volume control and have only the pitch antenna. While called antennas, they are not used for receiving or broadcasting radio waves, but act as plates of capacitors; the theremin uses the heterodyne principle to generate an audio signal. The instrument's pitch circuitry includes two radio frequency oscillators set below 500 kHz to minimize radio interference. One oscillator operates at a fixed frequency; the frequency of the other oscillator is identical, is controlled by the performer's distance from the pitch control antenna. The
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital of the U. S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. It is the 4th-most populous city in Texas, it is the fastest growing large city in the United States, the second most populous state capital after Phoenix and the southernmost state capital in the contiguous United States. As of the U. S. Census Bureau's July 1, 2017 estimate, Austin had a population of 950,715 up from 790,491 at the 2010 census; the city is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan statistical area, which had an estimated population of 2,115,827 as of July 1, 2017. Located in Central Texas within the greater Texas Hill Country, it is home to numerous lakes and waterways, including Lady Bird Lake and Lake Travis on the Colorado River, Barton Springs, McKinney Falls, Lake Walter E. Long. In the 1830s, pioneers began to settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River. In 1839, the site was chosen to replace Houston as the capital of the Republic of Texas and was incorporated under the name "Waterloo."
Shortly afterward, the name was changed to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas" and the republic's first secretary of state; the city grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas at Austin. After a severe lull in economic growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its steady development, by the 1990s it emerged as a center for technology and business. A number of Fortune 500 companies have headquarters or regional offices in Austin including, 3M, Amazon.com, Apple Inc. Cisco, eBay, General Motors, Google, IBM, Oracle Corporation, PayPal, Texas Instruments, Whole Foods Market. Dell's worldwide headquarters is located in Round Rock. Residents of Austin are known as Austinites, they include a diverse mix of government employees, college students, high-tech workers, blue-collar workers, a vibrant LGBT community. The city's official slogan promotes Austin as "The Live Music Capital of the World," a reference to the city's many musicians and live music venues, as well as the long-running PBS TV concert series Austin City Limits.
The city adopted "Silicon Hills" as a nickname in the 1990s due to a rapid influx of technology and development companies. In recent years, some Austinites have adopted the unofficial slogan "Keep Austin Weird," which refers to the desire to protect small and local businesses from being overrun by large corporations. In the late 19th century, Austin was known as the "City of the Violet Crown," because of the colorful glow of light across the hills just after sunset. Today, many Austin businesses use the term "Violet Crown" in their name. Austin is known as a "clean-air city" for its stringent no-smoking ordinances that apply to all public places and buildings, including restaurants and bars. U. S. News & World Report named Austin the #1 place to live in the U. S. for 2017 and 2018. In 2016, Forbes ranked Austin #1 on its "Cities of the Future" list in 2017 placed the city at that same position on its list for the "Next Biggest Boom Town in the U. S." In 2017, Forbes awarded the South River City neighborhood of Austin its #2 ranking for "Best Cities and Neighborhoods for Millennials."
WalletHub named Austin the #6 best place in the country to live for 2017. The FBI ranked Austin as the #2 safest major city in the U. S. for 2012. Austin, Travis County and Williamson County have been the site of human habitation since at least 9200 BC; the area's earliest known inhabitants lived during the late Pleistocene and are linked to the Clovis culture around 9200 BC, based on evidence found throughout the area and documented at the much-studied Gault Site, midway between Georgetown and Fort Hood. When settlers arrived from Europe, the Tonkawa tribe inhabited the area; the Comanches and Lipan Apaches were known to travel through the area. Spanish colonists, including the Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre expedition, traveled through the area for centuries, though few permanent settlements were created for some time. In 1730, three missions from East Texas were combined and reestablished as one mission on the south side of the Colorado River, in what is now Zilker Park, in Austin; the mission was in this area for only about seven months, was moved to San Antonio de Béxar and split into three missions.
Early in the 19th century, Spanish forts were established in what are now San Marcos. Following Mexico's independence, new settlements were established in Central Texas, but growth in the region was stagnant because of conflicts with the regional Native Americans. In 1835 -- 1836, Texans won independence from Mexico. Texas thus became an independent country with its own president and monetary system. After Vice President Mirabeau B. Lamar visited the area during a buffalo-hunting expedition between 1837 and 1838, he proposed that the republic's capital in Houston, be relocated to the area situated on the north bank of the Colorado River. In 1839, the Texas Congress formed a commission to seek a site for a new capital to be named for Stephen F. Austin. Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the newly formed Republic of Texas, advised the commissioners to investigate the area named Waterloo, noting the area's hills and pleasant surroundings. Waterloo was selected, "Austin" was chosen as the town's new name.
The location was seen as a convenient crossroads for trade routes between Santa Fe and Galveston Bay, as well as routes between northern Mexico and the Red River. Edwin Wall
