1.
Saga (band)
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Saga are a Canadian rock band, formed in Oakville, Ontario. Jim Crichton and Welsh-born vocalist Michael Sadler have been the songwriters for Saga. Ian Crichton is the bands guitarist, apart from his work with Saga, the bands keyboardist, Scottish-born Jim Daryl Gilmour, joined Saga in December 1979 after Greg Chadd left the band in August 1979. After the 2003 Marathon tour, Steve Negus, Sagas original drummer, christian Simpson, a Canadian-American, replaced Negus for 2004s Network album, until sidelined by a neurological condition that affected his drumming. In late 2005, former Helix member Brian Doerner became Sagas third drummer in as many years, Doerner suffered a heart attack in 2007 and was replaced by Chris Sutherland for the 10,000 Days Tour and Contact DVD, more recently Mike Thorne has joined the band. Lead singer Michael Sadler left Saga for family reasons at the end of the 2007 tour, Rob Moratti replaced Sadler in April 2008, after an Internet talent search, spanning Europe and both Americas, failed to yield a potential lead vocalist. On January 28,2011, a statement was made announcing Michael Sadlers return as the lead singer of Saga. Saga have been awarded gold and platinum albums worldwide and have more than 8 million albums. Originally known as Pockets, Saga formed in 1977 from the nucleus of Canadian rock band Fludd, in June 1978, they released their self-titled debut album Saga. A modest success in Canada, it would sell over 30,000 copies in Germany as an import. It also became a seller in Puerto Rico, after a local stereo equipment store featured the guitar-keyboard duet of the bands single, Humble Stance as part of its radio advertisements. Two other songs, How Long. and The Perfectionist, also became local favourites and their 1979 follow-up album Images at Twilight gave them their first charting single in Canada with the song Its Time peaking at No.84 in the Canadian Charts. From the album, the songs See Them Smile and Slow Motion became strong radio favourites elsewhere, Sagas next album, Silent Knight was released in 1980 and included the singles Dont Be Late and Careful Where You Step. In 1981, the bands 4th album Worlds Apart was released, the lead single Wind Him Up, finally broke them into the Top 40, peaking at No.22 on the Canadian Charts in January 1982. 26 on the Billboard Charts in March 1983, Wind Him Up became the second single in America, peaking at No.64 on Billboard the following month. Eventually, Worlds Apart was certified Gold in the USA in 1983, the band opened for Jethro Tull on their North American tour in 1982. Following on the success of Worlds Apart, the won the 1982 Juno Award for Most Promising Group of the Year. A 5th album Heads or Tales was released in late 1983, the lead single The Flyer fared well in Canada and also became their final U. S. hit, peaking at No.79 on Billboard in November 1983
2.
Album
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Album, is a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century, first as books of individual 78rpm records, vinyl LPs are still issued, though in the 21st century album sales have mostly focused on compact disc and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used from the late 1970s through to the 1990s alongside vinyl, an album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. Recording may take a few hours to years to complete, usually in several takes with different parts recorded separately. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed live, the majority of studio recordings contain an abundance of editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, historically, the term album was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, the LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. It was adopted by the industry as a standard format for the album. Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, the term album had been carried forward from the early nineteenth century when it had been used for collections of short pieces of music. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, as part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some commenters have declared that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs, Albums such as Tubular Bells, Amarok, Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield, and Yess Close to the Edge, include fewer than four tracks. There are no rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as albums. These are known as box sets, material is stored on an album in sections termed tracks, normally 11 or 12 tracks. A music track is a song or instrumental recording. The term is associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks. When vinyl records were the medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves
3.
Metalworks Studios
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Metalworks Studios is a music recording studio in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1978 by Gil Moore of the Canadian rock group Triumph, over a span of more than 30 years, Metalworks has become one of Canadas best recording studios and is the 17 time recipient of Canadian Music Weeks Studio of the Year. Since 1978 Metalworks Studios, has expanded into a six studio facility offering in-house tracking, mixing and mastering, as well as video editing, in 2004, Metalworks Studios launched an adjacent educational facility, Metalworks Institute. Metalworks Studios offers a classic Neve and multiple SSL consoles with an assortment of vintage analogue and digital outboard gear for tracking, overdubs and/or mixing. Combined with a staff of engineers and sonically treated rooms, Metalworks has been key in providing Multi-Platinum award-winning music that spans a wide array of artists. Metalworks Studios has won 17 Studio of the Year awards at Canadian Music Week from 1998-2015, Metalworks has a total of six studios, including four with live rooms for in-house recording and mixing, a mastering suite, and a sixth facility dedicated to video editing. The control room in Studio 1 features a vintage 32x8x32 Neve 8036 console that was re-engineered by Stuart Taylor, the tracking room features a 1, 200-square-foot solid maple studio floor, combined with a high ceiling surrounded by wood and stone walls. The control room in Studio 2 features an 80-input Solid State Logic 4080 G+ console with Ultimation, the adjacent 280-square-foot tracking room features an oak floor and high ceiling. Studio 2 also includes a private lounge, the control room in Studio 3 features the Solid State Logic 4040 G/E console. The adjoining ISO-Booth is designed for instrumental overdubs as well as work. Studio 5 is a suite featuring, Steinberg WaveLab, Pro Tools HD3, Manley, Avalon, Apogee, Studer A820 1/2 Tape Machine, Weiss, TC System 6000, Waves, Mark Levinson, Duntech. Online mastering services are provided by this facility. The control room in Studio 6 features an 80 input Solid State Logic 9080 J console with Ultimation and this large-scale mixing facility is capable of recording and mixing in 5.1 with a Pro Tools 10 HD3 accel system. A9 ft film screen and Sony video monitors are available for DVD and Film/TV applications, the adjacent 550-square-foot tracking room features a stone fireplace and high ceiling, and is surrounded by an oak paneled private lounge and billiard area. The recording studios at Metalworks provide tracking, mixing, digital editing, audio post-production, video editing and DVD/Blu-ray authoring services are also made available by a dedicated video editing facility in Studio 4. Metalworks Institute is an official Digidesign pro school, Metalworks Production Group is the live event division to its sister companies, Metalworks Studios and Metalworks Institute. It offers complete production services including audio, video, lighting and staging systems, along with experienced production personnel, Metalworks Production Group specializes in small to large scale events, ranging from major concerts and festivals, tours, corporate galas and conferences
4.
Progressive rock
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Progressive rock is a broad subgenre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States throughout the mid to late 1960s. Prog is based on fusions of styles, approaches and genres, Prog saw a high level of popularity in the early-to-mid 1970s, but faded soon after. Conventional wisdom holds that the rise of rock caused this. Music critics, who labelled the concepts as pretentious and the sounds as pompous and overblown. Early groups who exhibited progressive features are described as proto-prog. In 1967, progressive rock constituted a diversity of loosely associated style codes, the Canterbury scene, originating in the late 1960s, denoted a subset of prog bands who emphasised the use of wind instruments, complex chord changes and long improvisations. Rock in Opposition, from the late 1970s, was more avant-garde, in the 1980s, a new subgenre, neo-progressive rock, enjoyed some commercial success, although it was also accused of being derivative and lacking in innovation. Post-progressive draws upon newer developments in music and the avant-garde since the mid 1970s. The term progressive rock is synonymous with art rock, classical rock, historically, art rock has been used to describe at least two related, but distinct, types of rock music. Similarities between the two terms are that they describe a mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility. However, art rock is likely to have experimental or avant-garde influences. Prog was devised in the 1990s as a term, but later became a transferable adjective. Although a unidirectional English progressive style emerged in the late 1960s, by 1967, critics of the genre often limit its scope to a stereotype of long solos, overlong albums, fantasy lyrics, grandiose stage sets and costumes, and an obsessive dedication to technical skill. Author Kevin Holm-Hudson believes that rock is a style far more diverse than what is heard from its mainstream groups. They each do so largely unconsciously, academic John S. Cotner contests Macans view that progressive rock cannot exist without the continuous and overt assimilation of classical music into rock. Debate about the criteria and scope of the genre continues in the 2010s. In early references to the music, progressive was partly related to progressive politics, Cotner also says that progressive rock incorporates both formal and eclectic elements, It consists of a combination of factors – some of them intramusical, others extramusical or social. One way of conceptualising rock and roll in relation to music is that progressive music pushed the genre into greater complexity while retracing the roots of romantic
5.
New wave music
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New wave is a genre of rock music popular from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s with ties to 1970s punk rock. New wave moved away from smooth blues and rock and roll sounds to create pop music that incorporated electronic and experimental music, mod, initially new wave was similar to punk rock, before becoming a distinct genre. It subsequently engendered subgenres and fusions, including synth-pop, college rock, common characteristics of new wave music include the use of synthesizers and electronic productions, the importance of styling and the arts, as well as diversity. In the mid-1980s, differences between new wave and other genres began to blur. New wave has enjoyed resurgences since the 1990s, after a rising nostalgia for several new wave-influenced artists, subsequently, the genre influenced other genres. During the 2000s, a number of acts explored new wave and post-punk influences, such as the Strokes, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand and these acts were sometimes labeled new wave of new wave. The catch-all nature of new music has been a source of much confusion. The 1985 discography Whos New Wave in Music listed artists in over 130 separate categories, the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock calls the term virtually meaningless, while AllMusic mentions stylistic diversity. New wave first emerged as a genre in the early 1970s, used by critics including Nick Kent and Dave Marsh to classify such New York-based groups as the Velvet Underground. It gained currency beginning in 1976 when it appeared in UK punk fanzines such as Sniffin Glue and newsagent music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express. In November 1976 Caroline Coon used Malcolm McLarens term new wave to designate music by bands not exactly punk, the term was also used in that sense by music journalist Charles Shaar Murray in his comments about the Boomtown Rats. For a period of time in 1976 and 1977, the new wave. By the end of 1977, new wave had replaced punk as the definition for new music in the UK. As radio consultants in the United States had advised their clients that punk rock was a fad, like the filmmakers of the French new wave movement, its new artists were anti-corporate and experimental. At first, most U. S. writers exclusively used the new wave for British punk acts. Music historian Vernon Joynson claimed that new wave emerged in the UK in late 1976, in the U. S. the first new wavers were the not-so-punk acts associated with the New York club CBGB. CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, referring to the first show of the band Television at his club in March 1974, said, furthermore, many artists who would have originally been classified as punk were also termed new wave. A1977 Phonogram Records compilation album of the same name features US artists including the Dead Boys, Ramones, Talking Heads, New wave is much more closely tied to punk and came and went more quickly in the United Kingdom than in the United States
6.
Polydor Records
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Polydor is a British record label and company, that operates as part of Universal Music Group. It has a relationship with Universals Interscope Geffen A&M label. In turn, Polydor distributes Interscope releases in the United Kingdom, Polydor Records Ltd. was established in London in 1954 as a British subsidiary of German company Deutsche Grammophon GmbH. The Polydor label was founded on 2 April 1913 by German Polyphon-Musikwerke AG in Leipzig, during World War I on 24 April 1917, Polyphon-Musikwerke AG acquired the German Deutsche Grammophon-Aktiengesellschaft record plant and company from the German government. The German state was taken over Grammophon and the British holdings as enemies property during World War I, Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Polyphon-Grammophon-Konzern group. It was used as a label since 1924. The British and German branches of the Gramophone Company were so departed during World War I, in turn, Deutsche Grammophon records exported from Germany were released on the Polyphon Musik and Polydor labels. The new foreign branches were founded for example into Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Polydor became a popular music label in 1946, while the new Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft label was to become a classical music label in 1949. The previously used label, Grammophon, was disbanded, DGG gave, with an agreement dated 5 July 1949, an exclusive license from 1 July 1951 to use the Nipper-dog with gramophone to the original owners company Electrola, the German branch of EMI. In 1970, Polydor acquired the Hong Kong-based Diamond Records, which had owned and founded by the local Portuguese merchant Ren da Silva in the late 1950s. In 1972, The Grammophon-Philips Group reorganized to create PolyGram, the Polydor label continued to run as a subsidiary label under the new company. The name PolyGram is a portmanteau of Polydor and PhonoGram, into the 1980s, Polydor continued to do respectable business, in spite of becoming increasingly overshadowed by its PolyGram sister label Mercury Records. Polydor took over management of British Deccas pop catalog, A&R manager Frank Neilson was able to score a major top ten hit in March 1981 for the label with Do The Hucklebuck by Coast to Coast as well as signing Ian Dury and Billy Fury to the company. In 1984, the name was parodied in the rockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap. By the early 1990s, Polydor had begun to underperform, in 1994, as Island Records recovered from its sales slump, PolyGram dissolved most of PLG into it. Meanwhile, Polydor Records and Atlas Records merged, briefly called Polydor/Atlas, in 1995, Polydor/Atlas became simply Polydor Records again. Over the next few years, Polydor tried to keep itself afloat with new artist signings, new releases, in 1998, PolyGram was purchased by Seagram and absorbed into its Universal Music Group. Today, in America, the Polydor Records name and logo is used on reissues of older material from its 1960s and 1970s heyday
7.
Portrait Records
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Portrait Records was a sister label of Epic Records and later of Columbia Records. Cyndi Lauper and Sade signed with Portrait, but their contracts were absorbed by Epic after that incarnation of the label was shuttered, Portrait began in 1976 as a sister label of Epic, its initial signings were Joan Baez, Burton Cummings, and the McCrarys. Cummings Stand Tall was the lead-off single, baezs Blowin Away album and the McCrarys self-titled debut bowed in early 1977. The label design was similar to that of Columbias singles, design on it was in grey tones and this was also the launch of Epic/Portrait/Associated under the CBS moniker. One of the signings the label had was the band Heart, the band had been signed with Mushroom Records, but left after a dispute in advertising their Dreamboat Annie album. The print ads led some fans to think that the sisters Ann, Portrait snatched the group up quickly, releasing the single Barracuda before Little Queen was to hit the shelves. The McCrarys also scored big with You, by 1979, however, Epic was looking to consolidate some of its low-end producing labels and, for a short time, Portrait and Epic had both names on the same label. In 1980, only Heart was picked up from Portrait, releasing Bébé le Strange, in 1982, the label was relaunched again tapping into the new wave scene and other music not gaining any airplay. It signed artists such as Altered Images, Aldo Nova, Accept, Arc Angel, Hawaiian Pups, The Elvis Brothers, Eddy Grant, Orion the Hunter, The Producers, Saga, the label was completely black but the red logo stayed intact. Portrait struck gold again with the signings of Cyndi Lauper and Sade, americans wouldnt get Sade until a year later. Aldo Nova did make some headway with the songs Fantasy and Monkey on Your Back from his Subject. Aldo Nova album, Saga also found success with the songs On the Loose and Wind Him Up, which would gain the band gold and platinum albums worldwide. In 1985, British singer Toyah released her album Minx on Portrait, in 1986, British guitarist and songwriter Bill Nelson released Getting the Holy Ghost Across on the label. By the end of 1986, the only act making money on this label was Lauper and her album True Colors went platinum, but it wasnt enough to keep the label afloat. At the end of 1986, Portrait was shuttered again, in 1988, the label re-emerged once more but as a contemporary jazz outfit, with signings as diverse as Stanley Clarke, Ornette Coleman, Prime Time and Japanese import T-Square. This time the label had two, the one was a painted P with the word portrait in a red block. This one was gone by 1990, in 2000, Iron Maiden signed with Portrait in conjunction with Columbia Records in the US. Finally, after trying so hard to keep it afloat, Portrait dissolved in 2002 after the US release of Iron Maidens Rock in Rio album. Burton Cummings Saga Heart Cyndi Lauper Eddy Grant Sade Joan Baez Toyah Cinderella Great White Ratt Jackie Evancho Natalie Imbruglia The Piano Guys List of record labels
