1.
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
2.
XTC
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XTC were an English rock band formed in Swindon in 1972 and active until 2006. The band failed to maintain popular success in the UK and US and they nevertheless earned a devoted cult following. Under the name Star Park, the group began as a trio with drummer Terry Chambers, as the punk movement took off, they settled on the name XTC, debuting on Virgin Records in 1977. In 1982, the group stopped touring and became a studio-based project centred on Partridge, Moulding. A spin-off group, the Dukes of Stratosphear, was invented as an outlet for the bands excursions into 1960s psychedelic music, for most of the 1990s, XTC were mired in record label difficulties. The band ceased activity following the disintegration of Partridge and Mouldings creative partnership, XTCs only records that placed within the UK top 20 were the singles Making Plans for Nigel, Sgt. Rock and Senses Working Overtime, as well as the albums Black Sea, in the US, theyre also known for the songs Dear God and The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead, while Mayor of Simpleton was their highest charting US single. Skylarking is generally regarded as their finest album, first coming together in 1972, Colin Moulding and Terry Chambers asked Andy Partridge to join their new band and went through many band names over the next five years. As the Helium Kidz, they were featured in a small NME article as a band from Swindon. Drawing influence from the New York Dolls, particularly the Jetboy single, the band recorded a set at the Swindon Viewpoint studio in 1975. Keyboard player Barry Andrews joined in 1976, and the band settled on a name. In 1977, XTC were signed by Virgin Records and they recorded the 3D - EP that summer, and followed it up with their debut LP White Music in January 1978. These and future XTC releases found Partridge writing and singing about two-thirds of the material, while Colin Moulding would write and sing approximately one-third. White Music received favourable reviews and entered the British top 40 and their second album Go 2, released later in 1978, featured a typewriter-text cover and early pressings were accompanied by a bonus disc Go +, a collection of dub mixes of songs from the album. Following the release of Go 2, in January 1979 Barry Andrews left the group, XTC initially sought a new keyboard player - Thomas Dolby was among those considered - but Dave Gregory, guitarist and long-time friend of Partridges, was eventually selected as Andrews replacement. Gregorys 1960s-influenced guitar style steered the band on a path towards a traditional rock sound. Coinciding with Gregorys arrival, XTC scored their first charting single in the UK with Life Begins at the Hop and their third album Drums and Wires contained the bands first major hit single Making Plans for Nigel. Drums and Wires also marked their first sessions at Londons Townhouse Studios, the Lillywhite-Padgham connection also led to Dave Gregory contributing to Gabriels third solo album
3.
Woodstock, New York
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Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 at the 2000 census, Woodstock is in the northern part of the county, northwest of Kingston, and lies within the borders of the Catskill Park. The first non-indigenous settler arrived around 1770, the Town of Woodstock was established in 1787. Later, Woodstock contributed some of its territory to form the towns of Middletown, Windham, Shandaken, Woodstock played host to numerous Hudson River School painters during the late 1800s. The Arts and Crafts Movement came to Woodstock in 1902, with the arrival of Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Bolton Brown and Hervey White, who formed the Byrdcliffe Colony. In 1906, L. Birge Harrison and others founded the Summer School of the Art Students League of New York in the area, ever since, Woodstock has been considered an active artists colony. From 1915 through 1931, Hervey Whites Maverick Art Colony held the Maverick Festivals, in hundreds of free spirits gathered each summer for music, art, theater. A series of Woodstock Sound-Outs were staged at Pan Copelands Farm just over the line in Saugerties from 1967 to 1970. These featured folk and rock acts like Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, Dave van Ronk, Woodstock is also home to the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra Buddhist monastery, situated at the top of Meads Mountain Road. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has an area of 67.8 square miles, of which 67.3 square miles is land and 0.54 square miles. The north town line is the border of Greene County, as of the census of 2000, there were 6,241 people,2,946 households, and 1,626 families residing in the town. The population density was 92.5 people per square mile, there were 3,847 housing units at an average density of 57.0 per square mile. The racial makeup of the town was 94. 25% White,1. 30% Black or African American,0. 21% Native American,1. 57% Asian,0. 02% Pacific Islander,0. 79% from other races, and 1. 87% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2. 56% of the population,35. 5% of all households were made up of individuals and 10. 6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.10 and the family size was 2.71. In the town, the population was out with 18. 0% under the age of 18,3. 7% from 18 to 24,23. 0% from 25 to 44,38. 0% from 45 to 64. The median age was 48 years, for every 100 females there were 94.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.1 males, the median income for a household in the town was $49,217, and the median income for a family was $65,938
4.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
5.
Art rock
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Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that generally reflects a challenging or avant-garde approach to rock, or which makes use of modernist, experimental, or unconventional elements. Art rock aspires to elevate rock from teen entertainment to an artistic statement, influences may be drawn from genres such as experimental rock, avant-garde music, classical music, and jazz. The genres greatest level of popularity was in the early 1970s through British artists, art rock is most associated with a certain period of rock music, beginning in 1966–67 and ending with the arrival of punk in the mid 1970s. After, the genre would be infused within later popular music genres of the 1970s–90s, in the rock music of the 1970s, the art descriptor was generally understood to mean aggressively avant-garde or pretentiously progressive. Art rock is used synonymously with progressive rock. Historically, the term has been used to describe at least two related, but distinct, types of rock music, art rock emphasizes Romantic and autonomous traditions, in distinction to the aesthetic of the everyday and the disposable embodied by art pop. Common characteristics include album-oriented music divided into compositions rather than songs, with complicated and long instrumental sections. Its music was used within the context of concept records. Compared to progressive rock, art rock is more challenging, noisy and unconventional and less classically influenced, art rock can also to refer to either classically driven rock, or a progressive rock-folk fusion. S. Eliot than to Carl Perkins or Willie Dixon, the boundaries between art and pop music became increasingly blurred throughout the second half of the 20th century. The first usage of the art rock, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, was in 1968. As pop musics dominant format transitioned from singles to albums, many rock bands created works that aspired to make grand artistic statements, as it progressed in the late 1960s – in tandem with the development of progressive rock – art rock acquired notoriety alongside experimental rock. According to biographer Richard Williams, created a new concept, the producer as overall director of the creative process, Spector transformed rock music as a performing art to an art which could only exist in the recording studio, which paved the way for art rock. The Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson is also cited as one of the first examples of the music producer. Like Spector, Wilson was known as an eremitic studio obsessive who laboriously produced fantastical soundscapes through his mastery of recording technology. Biographer Peter Ames Carlin wrote that Wilson was the forerunner of a new kind of art-rock that would combine the transcendent possibilities of art with the accessibility of pop music. According to journalist Richard Goldstein, many musicians from California desired to be acknowledged as artists. They yearned for fame, as only needy people can, but they wanted to make art
6.
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
7.
Neo-psychedelia
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Neo-psychedelia is a diverse style of music that originated in the 1970s as an outgrowth of the British post-punk scene. Its practitioners drew from the sounds of 1960s psychedelic music. After post-punk, neo-psychedelia flourished into a widespread and international movement of artists who applied the spirit of psychedelic rock to new sounds. Neo-psychedelia may also include forays into pop, jangly guitar rock, heavily distorted free-form jams. A wave of British alternative rock in the early 1990s spawned the subgenres dream pop, neo-psychedelic acts borrowed a variety of elements from 1960s psychedelic music. Some emulated the psychedelic pop of bands like the Beatles and early Pink Floyd, others adopted Byrds-influenced guitar rock, or distorted free-form jams and sonic experimentalism of the 1960s. Some neo-psychedelia has been focused on drug use and experiences, and like acid house of the same age, projects transitory, ephemeral. Other bands have used neo-psychedelia to accompany surreal or political lyrics, in the view of author Erik Morse, The distinctions between British and American neo-psychedelia were best described as the differences between primitivism and primalism. Psychedelic rock declined towards the end of the 1960s, as bands broke up or moved into new forms of music, including heavy metal music, like the psychedelic developments of the late 1960s, punk rock and new wave in the 1970s challenged the rock music establishment. At the time, new wave was a term used interchangeably with the nascent punk rock explosion, in 1978, journalist Greg Shaw categorized a subset of new wave music as neo-psychedelia, citing Devo, to an extent. The new darling of the new press and opion-makers, yet nothing about it is remotely punk. Shaw wrote that in England, neo-psychedelia was known as punk, noting self-advertised psychedelic punk band. By 1978–79, new wave was considered independent from punk and post-punk, author Clinton Heylin marks the second half of year 1977 and the first half of year 1978 as the true starting-point for English post-punk. Some of the bands, including the Soft Boys, the Teardrop Explodes. The early 1980s Paisley Underground movement followed neo-psychedelia, originating in Los Angeles, the movement saw a number of young bands who were influenced by the psychedelia of the late 1960s and all took different elements of it. The term Paisley Underground was later expanded to others from outside the city. The late 1980s would see the birth of shoegazing, which, among other influences, reynolds referred to this movement as a rash of blurry, neo-psychedelic bands in a 1992 article in The Observer. With loud walls of sound, where individual instruments and even vocals were often indistinguishable, major shoegaze acts included Ride, Lush, Chapterhouse, and The Boo Radleys, who enjoyed considerable attention in the UK but largely failed to break through in the US
8.
Virgin Records
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Virgin Records is a British-founded record label originally founded by English entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman in 1972. It was later sold to Thorn EMI in 1992, today, the operations of Virgin Records America, Inc. are still active and headquartered in Hollywood, California, as it operates exclusively under the Capitol Music Group since 2007. US artists include Knox Hamilton, LTric and Rise Against, in fact the first real store was above a shoe shop at the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford Street. After making the shop into a success, they turned their business into a fully fledged record label, the name Virgin, according to Branson, arose from Tessa Watts, a colleague of his, when they were brainstorming business ideas. She suggested Virgin – as they were all new to business – like virgins, the original Virgin logo was designed by English artist and illustrator Roger Dean, a young naked woman in mirror image with a large long-tailed serpent and the word Virgin in Deans familiar script. A variation on the logo was used for the spin-off Caroline Records label and this was soon followed by some notable krautrock releases, including electronic breakthrough album Phaedra by Tangerine Dream, and The Faust Tapes and Faust IV by Faust. The Faust Tapes album retailed for 49p and as a result allowed this relatively unknown band to reach number 12 in the album charts, other early albums include Gongs Flying Teapot, which Daevid Allen has been quoted as having never been paid for. Under the guidance of Tessa Watts, Virgins Head of Publicity, shortly afterwards, the Notting Hill record shop was raided by police for having a window display of the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks, Heres the Sex Pistols in the window. After modified versions of the label came the red, white and blue design introduced in 1975. The current Virgin logo was created in 1978, commissioned by Simon Draper, brian Cooke of Cooke Key Associates commissioned a graphic designer to produce a stylised signature. In 1983 Virgin purchased Charisma Records, renaming it Charisma/Virgin, then later Virgin/Charisma, before folding the label in 1986, in the process they acquired Genesis and comedy group Monty Python. The Charisma label was reactivated in the US in 1990 and enjoyed success with such as Maxi Priest, Right Said Fred,38 Special. When this Charisma label was retired in 1992, all of its artists were, as before, in 1987, Venture Records was created for new age and modern classical artists including Klaus Schulze, who had been associated with Virgin since the early 1970s. 10 Records Immortal Records Delabel Caroline Records was a label used from 1973 to 1977. The name and logo were used for some American editions of Virgin records in the 1980s and 1990s. Caroline was primarily used for independent distribution until the label was reactivated in 2013, today, Caroline Records acts as an independent label taking the place of EMI Label Services, after Virgins former parent company EMI was purchased by Universal Music Group. Front Line Records was a label for issuing Jamaican and English reggae music from 1978 to approximately 1987, a short-lived associated label, Dindisc, had Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and The Monochrome Set during its brief existence, after which its recordings became part of Virgins catalogue. Noo Trybe Records was a hip hop label that existed from 1994 to 1999
9.
Geffen Records
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Geffen Records is an American major record label, owned by Universal Music Group, which operates as one third of the Interscope Geffen A&M Records label. On March 23,2017, Billboard. com announced the label was relaunching with longtime A&R Neil Jacobson as President, Geffen Records was started in 1980 by music industry businessman David Geffen who, in the early 1970s, had founded Asylum Records. Geffen stepped down from Asylum in 1975, when he crossed over to film and was named a vice-president of Warner Bros and he was fired from Warner circa 1978, but remained locked in a 5-year contract, which prevented him from working elsewhere. He returned to work in 1980 and struck a deal with Warner Bros. Records to create Geffen Records, profits were split 50/50 between Geffen and the respective distributors. Geffen Records first artist was disco superstar Donna Summer, whose gold-selling album The Wanderer became the labels first release in 1980, the label followed it up with Double Fantasy by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It was Lennons first new album since 1975, two weeks after it entered the charts, Lennon was murdered in New York City. As the 1980s progressed, Geffen would go on to have success with acts as Kylie Minogue, Enya, Quarterflash, Oxo, Asia, Wang Chung. This prompted Geffen to create a label, DGC Records in 1990. Geffen also distributed the first incarnation of Def American Recordings through Warner Bros. from 1988 to 1990, after a decade of operating through Warner, when its contract with the company expired, the label was sold to MCA Music Entertainment in 1990. The deal ultimately earned David Geffen an estimated US$800 million in stock, following the sale, Geffen Records operated as one of MCAs leading independently managed labels. Geffen Records would distribute releases on the new operations DreamWorks Records subsidiary, Universal Music Group acquired PolyGram in 1999, resulting in a corporate reorganization of labels. Geffen Records, along with A&M Records, was merged into Interscope Records. Although Geffen would continue to exist as a brand, it was downsized to fit into the expansion of Interscope. At the same time, international distribution of Interscope and Geffen releases switched to ex-PolyGram label Polydor Records, meanwhile, DreamWorks Records also folded, with artists such as Nelly Furtado, Lifehouse and Rufus Wainwright being absorbed by Geffen as well. During this time, DGC Records was also folded into Geffen, at the end of 2007, however, Geffen was absorbed further into Interscope, laying off sixty employees. In 2009, it was announced that Geffen Records had signed an agreement with the Holy See to produce an album of Marian songs, jimmy Iovine relaunched the Geffen imprint in 2011, moving its headquarters from California to New York City
10.
Record producer
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A record producer or music producer oversees and manages the sound recording and production of a band or performers music, which may range from recording one song to recording a lengthy concept album. A producer has many roles during the recording process, the roles of a producer vary. The producer may perform these roles himself, or help select the engineer, the producer may also pay session musicians and engineers and ensure that the entire project is completed within the record companies budget. A record producer or music producer has a broad role in overseeing and managing the recording. Producers also often take on an entrepreneurial role, with responsibility for the budget, schedules, contracts. In the 2010s, the industry has two kinds of producers with different roles, executive producer and music producer. Executive producers oversee project finances while music producers oversee the process of recording songs or albums. In most cases the producer is also a competent arranger, composer. The producer will also liaise with the engineer who concentrates on the technical aspects of recording. Noted producer Phil Ek described his role as the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record, indeed, in Bollywood music, the designation actually is music director. The music producers job is to create, shape, and mold a piece of music, at the beginning of record industry, producer role was technically limited to record, in one shot, artists performing live. The role of producers changed progressively over the 1950s and 1960s due to technological developments, the development of multitrack recording caused a major change in the recording process. Before multitracking, all the elements of a song had to be performed simultaneously, all of these singers and musicians had to be assembled in a large studio and the performance had to be recorded. As well, for a song that used 20 instruments, it was no longer necessary to get all the players in the studio at the same time. Examples include the rock sound effects of the 1960s, e. g. playing back the sound of recorded instruments backwards or clanging the tape to produce unique sound effects. These new instruments were electric or electronic, and thus they used instrument amplifiers, new technologies like multitracking changed the goal of recording, A producer could blend together multiple takes and edit together different sections to create the desired sound. For example, in jazz fusion Bandleader-composer Miles Davis album Bitches Brew, producers like Phil Spector and George Martin were soon creating recordings that were, in practical terms, almost impossible to realise in live performance. Producers became creative figures in the studio, other examples of such engineers includes Joe Meek, Teo Macero, Brian Wilson, and Biddu
11.
Todd Rundgren
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Todd Harry Rundgren is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. Rundgren has often been at the forefront as a promoter of cutting edge recording technologies, although lesser known, Couldnt I Just Tell You has had a major influence on artists in the power pop musical genre. Rundgren was born in Upper Darby, at the city limits of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was of half Swedish and half Austrian descent and he began his career in Woodys Truck Stop, a Philadelphia-based group in the style of Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The group gained recognition with the Rundgren-penned songs Open My Eyes. Nazz released three albums during this time – Nazz, Nazz Nazz, and Nazz III, Open My Eyes gained belated recognition thanks to its inclusion in Nuggets, the genre-defining anthology of American 1960s garage punk and psychedelia compiled by musician Lenny Kaye. The groups second LP was originally intended as double album, Rundgren and Van Osten left the band shortly after. Particularly during the years of his career, Rundgrens songwriting was heavily influenced by the music of singer-songwriter Laura Nyro. I met her right after Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, I actually had arranged a meeting, just because I was so infatuated with her and I wanted to meet the person who had produced all this music. We got along, and we were kind of friendly, and actually, after I met her the first time, but the Nazz had just signed a record contract and I couldnt skip out on the band, even though it was incredibly tempting. Rundgrens debut solo album Runt includes the strongly Nyro-influenced Baby Lets Swing, Nazz manager Michael Friedman, who had joined Albert Grossman management brought Rundgren to the firm where he became both a solo artist and producer for many artists in the Grossman stable. He also apparently considered working as a computer programmer, subsequently, he became one of the first artists signed to Grossmans Bearsville Records label. D. Smart, with whom Rundgren worked on later projects. Rothchild, the result was Joplins swansong LP Pearl, which Rothchild pieced together from the session tapes. This was followed by an album for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. One of these was attended by a budding New York writer called Patti Smith and his work for The Band was followed by a second album for Winchester and the album Taking Care of Business by the James Cotton Blues Band. Rundgren himself wrote, produced, sang and played guitars, keyboards, Smart on the rest of the album. Furthermore, only Rundgren is pictured on the covers of albums, and both albums have been subsequently reissued with the same titles and cover art, but bearing the artist credit Todd Rundgren
12.
25 O'Clock
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25 OClock is the debut album by English rock band the Dukes of Stratosphear, side project of XTC, released in 1985. Also counted as XTCs eighth studio album, the Dukes indulged in the tropes of 1960s psychedelia. It was followed up in 1987 with the LP Psonic Psunspot, released on April Fools Day 1985, the mini-album was a tongue-in-cheek homage to the heyday of psychedelic rock. Several of the tracks were made to sound like individual bands, others were simply a pastiche of the styles of the period as a whole. Though recorded on 1980s equipment, the recording and mixing style closely replicate production techniques used in the mid-to-late 1960s, the album is also notable for its cover art which resembled the cover on the 1967 LP Disraeli Gears by Cream. The band issued a single and made a film for The Mole from the Ministry. The film contains references to Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles. A remastered and expanded version of 25 OClock was released on 20 April 2009 by Andy Partridges Ape House record label and this edition of 25 OClock is credited to XTC as The Dukes of Stratosphear All songs written and composed by Andy Partridge except What in the World. Also includes the video for The Mole from the Ministry as a QuickTime file. Sir John Johns - vocals, guitar The Red Curtain - electric bass, other Lord Cornelius Plum - mellotron, piano, organ, guitar, owen - drums Produced by Swami Anand Nagara and The Dukes
13.
Psonic Psunspot
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Psonic Psunspot is the second album by English rock band the Dukes of Stratosphear, a sideproject of XTC, released in 1987. Also counted as XTCs tenth studio album, it is a follow-up to 25 OClock, in 2002, the website Pitchfork listed the album at 66 on their Top 100 Albums of the 1980s, calling the songs a surreal rock-opera of opaque, hallucinogenic wonder. Like the previous album 25 OClock, this album is inspired by 1960s psychedelia and it showcases a variety of songs meant to evoke specific groups of that period. During this time, another song entitled Martian Enslavement 1970 was written for the album, the album was released in its original form on vinyl and cassette, accompanied with the Youre A Good Man Albert Brown single and the promotional-only Vanishing Girl single. A simultaneous CD release entitled Chips from the Chocolate Fireball incorporated all of the tracks from 25 OClock, later, a remastered and expanded version of Psonic Psunspot was released on 20 April 2009 by Andy Partridges Ape House record label. This edition is credited to XTC as The Dukes of Stratosphear, all songs written and composed by Andy Partridge, except where noted. Also includes the video for Youre a Good Man Albert Brown as a QuickTime file. Sir John Johns - singing, guitar, brain buds The Red Curtain - electric bass, song stuff Lord Cornelius Plum - mellotron, piano, organ, owen - drum set Lily Fraser - narration Produced by John Leckie and The Dukes
14.
Single (music)
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In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record, an album or an EP record. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats, in most cases, a single is a song that is released separately from an album, although it usually also appears on an album. Typically, these are the songs from albums that are released separately for promotional uses such as digital download or commercial radio airplay and are expected to be the most popular, in other cases a recording released as a single may not appear on an album. As digital downloading and audio streaming have become prevalent, it is often possible for every track on an album to also be available separately. Nevertheless, the concept of a single for an album has been retained as an identification of a heavily promoted or more popular song within an album collection. Despite being referred to as a single, singles can include up to as many as three tracks on them. The biggest digital music distributor, iTunes, accepts as many as three tracks less than ten minutes each as a single, as well as popular music player Spotify also following in this trend. Any more than three tracks on a release or longer than thirty minutes in total running time is either an Extended Play or if over six tracks long. The basic specifications of the single were made in the late 19th century. Gramophone discs were manufactured with a range of speeds and in several sizes. By about 1910, however, the 10-inch,78 rpm shellac disc had become the most commonly used format, the inherent technical limitations of the gramophone disc defined the standard format for commercial recordings in the early 20th century.26 rpm. With these factors applied to the 10-inch format, songwriters and performers increasingly tailored their output to fit the new medium, the breakthrough came with Bob Dylans Like a Rolling Stone. Singles have been issued in various formats, including 7-inch, 10-inch, other, less common, formats include singles on digital compact cassette, DVD, and LD, as well as many non-standard sizes of vinyl disc. Some artist release singles on records, a more common in musical subcultures. The most common form of the single is the 45 or 7-inch. The names are derived from its speed,45 rpm. The 7-inch 45 rpm record was released 31 March 1949 by RCA Victor as a smaller, more durable, the first 45 rpm records were monaural, with recordings on both sides of the disc. As stereo recordings became popular in the 1960s, almost all 45 rpm records were produced in stereo by the early 1970s
15.
Dear God (XTC song)
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Dear God is a song on the 1986 album Skylarking by English band XTC. The song was inspired by a series of books with the same title, the first verse and closing line are sung by eight-year-old Jasmine Veillette, the daughter of a friend of producer Todd Rundgren. In the video a boy lip-syncs her vocals, the lyrics are addressed to God, and vividly describe the range of human suffering, which the narrator attributes to God. Partridge concludes every verse with the line I cant believe in you, the lyrics express doubt as to the existence of God, the omnibenevolence of God, and the value of the Bible as Gods word. Despite the song only barely managing to chart in the UK and never reaching the pop charts in the US, the song was featured in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Sarah McLachlan covered the song in 1995 for the XTC tribute album A Testimonial Dinner, the song also appears on her compilation album Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff
16.
Rock music
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It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by blues, rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of genres such as electric blues and folk. Musically, rock has centered on the guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature using a verse-chorus form, like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of subgenres, including new wave, post-punk. From the 1990s alternative rock began to rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures and this trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, Hammond organ and synthesizers. The basic rock instrumentation was adapted from the blues band instrumentation. A group of musicians performing rock music is termed a rock band or rock group, Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies are often derived from older musical modes, including the Dorian and Mixolydian, harmonies range from the common triad to parallel fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock, because of its complex history and tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources, including the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music and rhythm, as a result, it has been seen as articulating the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality, according to Simon Frith rock was something more than pop, something more than rock and roll. Rock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the concept of art as artistic expression, original. The foundations of music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music, with country. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, debate surrounds which record should be considered the first rock and roll record. Other artists with rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis
17.
Concept album
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A concept album is an album unified by a larger purpose or meaning to the album collectively than to its tracks individually. This may be achieved through a central narrative or theme. The exact criteria of a concept album varies, with no discernible consensus, in the 1960s, several well-regarded concept albums were released by various rock bands, which eventually led to the invention of progressive rock and the rock opera. Since then, many albums have been released across many different musical genres. Concepts are general ideas, thoughts, or abstract notions, there is no clear definition of what constitutes a concept album. Fiona Sturges of The Independent stated that the album was originally defined as a long-player where the songs were based on one dramatic idea –. A precursor to this type of album can be found in the 19th century song cycle which ran some of the same difficulties in classification. The extremely broad definitions of an album could potentially encompass all soundtracks, compilations, cast recordings, greatest hits albums, tribute albums, Christmas albums. The most common definitions refer to an approach to the rock album format. AllMusic writes, A concept album could be a collection of songs by a songwriter or a particular theme -- these are the concept LPs that reigned in the 50s. The phrase concept album is tied to the late 1960s. Author Jim Cullen describes it, a collection of discrete but thematically unified songs whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts, sometimes assumed to be a product of the rock era. Author Roy Shuker defines concept albums and rock operas as albums that are unified by a theme, in this form, the album changed from a collection of heterogeneous songs into a narrative work with a single theme, in which individual songs segue into one another. Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman considers the first concept album to be Woody Guthries 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads, the Independent regards it as perhaps one of the first concept albums, consisting exclusively of semi-autobiographical songs about the hardships of American migrant labourers during the 1930s. Singer Frank Sinatra recorded several albums prior to the 1960s rock era, including In the Wee Small Hours. Sinatra is sometimes credited as the inventor of the album, beginning with The Voice of Frank Sinatra. According to biographer Will Friedwald, Sinatra sequenced the songs so that the created a flow from track to track, affording an impression of a narrative. First pop singer to bring a consciously artistic attitude to recording, the author Carys Wyn Jones writes that the Beach Boys Pet Sounds, the Beatles Revolver and Sgt
18.
Double entendre
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A double entendre is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to be understood in two ways, having a double meaning. Typically one of the meanings is obvious, given the context whereas the other may require more thought, the innuendo may convey a message that would be socially awkward, sexually suggestive, or offensive to state directly. A double entendre may exploit puns to convey the second meaning, double entendres generally rely on multiple meanings of words, or different interpretations of the same primary meaning. They often exploit ambiguity and may be used to introduce it deliberately in a text, sometimes a homophone can be used as a pun. When three or more meanings have been constructed, this is known as a triple entendre, etc. A person who is unfamiliar with the hidden or alternative meaning of a sentence may fail to detect its innuendos, the expression comes from French double = double and entendre = to listen. However, the English formulation is a corruption of the authentic French expression à double entente, modern French uses double sens instead, the phrase double entendre has no real meaning in the modern French language. In Homers The Odyssey, when Odysseus is captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus, when Odysseus attacks the Cyclops later that night and stabs him in the eye, the Cyclops runs out of his cave, yelling to the other cyclopes that No-one has hurt me. Which leads the other cyclopes to take no action under the assumption that Polyphemus blinded himself by accident, allowing Odysseus, some of the earliest double entendres are found in the Exeter Book, or Codex exoniensis, at Exeter Cathedral in England. The book was copied around 975 AD, in addition to the various poems and stories found in the book, there are also numerous riddles. The Anglo-Saxons did not reveal the answers to the riddles, some riddles were double-entendres, such as Riddle 25 which suggests the answer a penis but has the correct answer an onion. Examples of sexual innuendo and double-entendre occur in Geoffrey Chaucers The Canterbury Tales, the most famous of these may be her use of the word queynte to describe both domestic duties and genitalia. Sometimes, it is whether a double entendre was intended. For example, the character Charley Bates from Charles Dickens Oliver Twist is frequently referred to as Master Bates, the word masturbate was in use when the book was written, and Dickens often used colourful names related to the natures of the characters. The title of Damon Knights story To Serve Man is a double entendre which could mean to perform a service to humanity or to serve a human as food. An alien cookbook with the title To Serve Man is featured in the story which could imply that the aliens eat humans, the story was the basis for an episode of The Twilight Zone. At the end of the episode the line Its a cookbook, shakespeare frequently used double entendres in his plays. The title of Shakespeares play Much Ado About Nothing is a pun on the Elizabethan use of no-thing as slang for vagina
19.
Alauda
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Alauda is a genus of larks found across much of Europe, Asia and in the mountains of north Africa, and one of the species endemic to the islet of Raso in the Cape Verde Islands. Further, at least two species are known from the fossil record. The current genus name is from Latin alauda, lark, pliny the Elder thought the word was originally of Celtic origin. The genus Alauda has four extant and at least two extinct species, formerly, many other species have also been considered to belong to the genus
20.
Royal Navy
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The Royal Navy is the United Kingdoms naval warfare force. Although warships were used by the English kings from the medieval period. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century, from the middle decades of the 17th century and through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and later with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. From the mid 18th century it was the worlds most powerful navy until surpassed by the United States Navy during the Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing the British Empire as the world power during the 19th. Due to this historical prominence, it is common, even among non-Britons, following World War I, the Royal Navy was significantly reduced in size, although at the onset of the Second World War it was still the worlds largest. By the end of the war, however, the United States Navy had emerged as the worlds largest, during the Cold War, the Royal Navy transformed into a primarily anti-submarine force, hunting for Soviet submarines, mostly active in the GIUK gap. The Royal Navy is part of Her Majestys Naval Service, which includes the Royal Marines. The professional head of the Naval Service is the First Sea Lord, the Defence Council delegates management of the Naval Service to the Admiralty Board, chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence. The strength of the fleet of the Kingdom of England was an important element in the power in the 10th century. English naval power declined as a result of the Norman conquest. Medieval fleets, in England as elsewhere, were almost entirely composed of merchant ships enlisted into service in time of war. Englands naval organisation was haphazard and the mobilisation of fleets when war broke out was slow, early in the war French plans for an invasion of England failed when Edward III of England destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of Sluys in 1340. Major fighting was confined to French soil and Englands naval capabilities sufficed to transport armies and supplies safely to their continental destinations. Such raids halted finally only with the occupation of northern France by Henry V. Henry VII deserves a large share of credit in the establishment of a standing navy and he embarked on a program of building ships larger than heretofore. He also invested in dockyards, and commissioned the oldest surviving dry dock in 1495 at Portsmouth, a standing Navy Royal, with its own secretariat, dockyards and a permanent core of purpose-built warships, emerged during the reign of Henry VIII. Under Elizabeth I England became involved in a war with Spain, the new regimes introduction of Navigation Acts, providing that all merchant shipping to and from England or her colonies should be carried out by English ships, led to war with the Dutch Republic. In the early stages of this First Anglo-Dutch War, the superiority of the large, heavily armed English ships was offset by superior Dutch tactical organisation and the fighting was inconclusive
21.
Andy Partridge
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Andrew John Andy Partridge is an English singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was a member, guitarist and chief songwriter of the rock band XTC. He lives in Swindon, Wiltshire, where he was brought up, in addition to his work with XTC, Partridge has released one solo album on Virgin Records in 1980 called Take Away / The Lure of Salvage. Partridge has also released demos of his songs under his own name in The Official Fuzzy Warbles Collectors Album, eight volumes of Fuzzy Warbles are now available, as well as the Fuzzy Warbles Collectors Album, which includes a bonus ninth disc Hinges. He has collaborated with recording artists, including Martin Newell, with whom he recorded and produced an album in 1993 entitled The Greatest Living Englishman released in Japan as a duo album. In 2010, Partridge released a limited edition CD of music inspired by science fiction illustrator Richard M. Powers art titled Powers. In 2012, Partridges worked with Mike Keneally on the album Wing Beat Fantastic, Partridge was producer for the English band Blur during the recording of Modern Life Is Rubbish. He was replaced by Stephen Street at the insistence of their record label, according to Partridge he was unpaid for the sessions and received his expenses only. Partridge also wrote four songs for Disneys version of James and the Giant Peach, in 2004, Partridge contributed the song I Wonder Why the Wonder Falls as the theme music to the short-lived TV comedy Wonderfalls. In 2006, a song he and Robyn Hitchcock collaborated on Cause Its Love, was released on the Robyn Hitchcock & the Venus 3 album Olé. He has also released music as part of a known as Monstrance, made up of his guitar, Barry Andrews on keyboards. The group has released an album of the name, as well as a download-only EP known as Fine Wires Humming a New Song. Partridge also wrote a song You Bring The Summer for the Monkees 50th, anniversary album Good Times in 2016. Partridge mixed recordings for the band Captains of Industry, in 2007 he collaborated with former XTC bandmate Barry Andrews on the Shriekback album Glory Bumps. In 2008, Partridge began working on an album with Robyn Hitchcock and Mike Keneally, Partridge was a regular performer on BBC Radio 1 in the mid-1980s. He has also presented the pilot for an ITV childrens quiz show, Partridge and his ex-wife Marianne have two children, Harry and Holly. Harry is an animator, with one of his more well-known animations being the comedic short Saturday Morning Watchmen, since his divorce, Partridge has been in a long-term relationship with Erica Wexler. Multiple songs written by Partridge, including Another Satellite and Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her have been attributed by Partridge to aspects of their ongoing relationship, Partridge met Wexler in 1984, shortly after she had split from artist Roy Lichtenstein
22.
Polarization (waves)
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Polarization is a parameter applying to transverse waves that specifies the geometrical orientation of the oscillations. In a transverse wave the direction of the oscillation is transverse to the direction of motion of the wave, a simple example of a polarized transverse wave is vibrations traveling along a taut string for example in a musical instrument like a guitar string. Depending on how the string is plucked, the vibrations can be in a direction, horizontal direction. Transverse waves that exhibit polarization include electromagnetic waves such as light and radio waves, gravitational waves, in some types of transverse waves the wave displacement is limited to a single direction, so these also dont exhibit polarization. For example, in waves in liquids the wave displacement of the particles is always in a vertical plane. In linear polarization the fields oscillate in a single direction, in circular or elliptical polarization the fields rotate at a constant rate in a plane as the wave travels. Polarized light can be produced by passing unpolarized light through a polarizing filter, some of these are used to make polarizing filters. Light is also partially polarized when it reflects from a surface, according to quantum mechanics, electromagnetic waves consist of particles called photons. When viewed in this way, the polarization of a wave is determined by a quantum mechanical property of photons called their spin. A photon has one of two spins, it can either spin in a right hand sense or a left hand sense about its direction of travel. Circularly polarized electromagnetic waves are composed of photons with one type of spin. Linearly polarized waves consist of numbers of right and left hand spinning photons. Polarization is an important parameter in areas of science dealing with transverse waves, such as optics, seismology, radio, especially impacted are technologies such as lasers, wireless and optical fiber telecommunications, and radar. And incoherent states can be modeled stochastically as a combination of such uncorrelated waves with some distribution of frequencies, phases. Considering a monochromatic wave of optical frequency f, let us take the direction of propagation as the z axis. Being a transverse wave the E and H fields must then contain components only in the x and y directions whereas Ez=Hz=0. Using complex notation, we understand the instantaneous electric and magnetic fields to be given by the real parts of the complex quantities occurring in the following equations. Here ex, ey, hx, and hy are complex numbers, in the second more compact form, as these equations are customarily expressed, these factors are described using the wavenumber k =2 π n / λ and angular frequency ω =2 π f
23.
Rolling Stone
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Rolling Stone is an American biweekly magazine that focuses on popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner, who is still the publisher. It was first known for its coverage and for political reporting by Hunter S. Thompson. In the 1990s, the magazine shifted focus to a readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors. In recent years, it has resumed its traditional mix of content, Rolling Stone magazine was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and Ralph Gleason. To get it off the ground, Wenner borrowed $7,500 from his own family and from the parents of his soon-to-be wife, Jane Schindelheim. The first issue carried a date of November 9,1967. Some authors have attributed the name solely to Dylans hit single, At Gleasons suggestion, Rolling Stone initially identified with and reported the hippie counterculture of the era. In the very first edition, Wenner wrote that Rolling Stone is not just about the music, in the 1970s, Rolling Stone began to make a mark with its political coverage, with the likes of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson writing for the magazines political section. Thompson first published his most famous work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas within the pages of Rolling Stone, where he remained a contributing editor until his death in 2005. In the 1970s, the magazine also helped launch the careers of prominent authors, including Cameron Crowe, Lester Bangs, Joe Klein, Joe Eszterhas, Patti Smith. It was at point that the magazine ran some of its most famous stories. One interviewer, speaking for a number of his peers, said that he bought his first copy of the magazine upon initial arrival on his college campus. In 1977, the magazine moved its headquarters from San Francisco to New York City, editor Jann Wenner said San Francisco had become a cultural backwater. During the 1980s, the magazine began to shift towards being an entertainment magazine. Music was still a dominant topic, but there was increasing coverage of celebrities in television, films, the magazine also initiated its annual Hot Issue during this time. Rolling Stone was initially known for its coverage and for Thompsons political reporting. In the 1990s, the changed its format to appeal to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors
24.
Pitchfork (website)
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Pitchfork is an American online magazine launched in 1995 by Ryan Schreiber, based in Chicago, Illinois and owned by Condé Nast. The site generally concentrates on new music, but Pitchfork journalists have also reviewed reissues, in late 1995, Ryan Schreiber, a recent high school graduate, created the magazine in Minneapolis. Influenced by local fanzines and KUOM, Schreiber, who had no writing experience. At first being Turntable, the site was updated monthly with interviews and reviews, in May 1996, the site began publishing daily and was renamed Pitchfork, alluding to Tony Montanas tattoo in Scarface. In early 1999, Schreiber relocated Pitchfork to Chicago, Illinois, by then, the site had expanded to four full-length album reviews daily, as well as sporadic interviews, features, and columns. It had also begun garnering a following for its coverage of underground music and its writing style. In October, the added a daily music news section. Pitchfork has launched a variety of subsidiary websites, Pitchfork. tv, a website displaying videos related to many independent music acts, launched in April 2008. It features bands that are found on Pitchfork. In July 2010, Pitchfork announced Altered Zones, a blog devoted to underground. On 21 May 2011, Pitchfork announced a partnership with Kill Screen, Altered Zones was closed on November 30. On December 26,2012, Pitchfork launched Nothing Major, a website that covered visual arts such as fine art, Nothing Major closed in October 2013. On October 13,2015, Condé Nast announced that it had acquired Pitchfork, following the sale, Schreiber remained as editor-in-chief. On March 13,2016, Pitchfork was redesigned, some publications have cited Pitchfork in having played a part in breaking artists such as Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Interpol, The Go. Conversely, Pitchfork has also seen as being a negative influence on some indie artists. A dismissive 0.0 review of former Dismemberment Plan frontman Travis Morrisons Travistan album led to a sales drop. On the other hand, an endorsement from Pitchfork – which dispenses its approval one-tenth of a point at a time, up to a maximum of 10 points – is very valuable, indeed. Examples of Pitchforks impact include, Arcade Fire is among the bands most commonly cited to have benefited from a Pitchfork review
25.
Punk rock
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Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed in the early to mid-1970s in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in 1960s garage rock and other forms of what is now known as proto-punk music, Punk bands typically produced short or fast-paced songs, with hard-edged melodies and singing styles, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY ethic, many bands self-produce recordings and distribute them through informal channels, the term punk was first used in relation to rock music by some American critics in the early 1970s, to describe garage bands and their devotees. The following year saw punk rock spreading around the world, for the most part, punk took root in local scenes that tended to reject association with the mainstream. An associated punk subculture emerged, expressing youthful rebellion and characterized by distinctive styles of clothing and adornment, by the beginning of the 1980s, faster, more aggressive styles such as hardcore and street punk had become the predominant mode of punk rock. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also pursued a range of other variations, giving rise to post-punk. At the end of the 20th century, punk rock had been adopted by the mainstream, as pop punk and punk bands such as Green Day. The first wave of rock was aggressively modern, distancing itself from the bombast. According to Ramones drummer Tommy Ramone, In its initial form, unfortunately, what happens is that people who could not hold a candle to the likes of Hendrix started noodling away. Soon you had endless solos that went nowhere, by 1973, I knew that what was needed was some pure, stripped down, no bullshit rock n roll. In critic Robert Christgaus description, It was also a subculture that rejected the political idealism. Technical accessibility and a DIY spirit are prized in punk rock, in the early days of punk rock, this ethic stood in marked contrast to what those in the scene regarded as the ostentatious musical effects and technological demands of many mainstream rock bands. Musical virtuosity was often looked on with suspicion, according to Holmstrom, punk rock was rock and roll by people who didnt have very many skills as musicians but still felt the need to express themselves through music. In December 1976, the English fanzine Sideburns published an illustration of three chords, captioned This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. The title of a 1980 single by the New York punk band Stimulators, inscribed a catchphrase for punks basic musical approach. The previous year, when the rock revolution began in Great Britain, was to be both a musical and a cultural Year Zero. As a Clash associate describes singer Joe Strummers outlook, Punk rock is meant to be our freedom, were meant to be able to do what we want to do. Scholar Daniel S. Traber argues that attaining authenticity in the identity can be difficult, as the punk scene matured, he observes
26.
Psychedelic music
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Psychedelic music may also aim to enhance the experience of using these drugs. Numerous spiritual successors followed in the decades, including progressive rock, krautrock. Since the 1970s, revivals have included psychedelic funk, neo-psychedelia, psychedelic as an adjective is often misused, with many so-called acts playing in a variety of styles. Dechronicization permits the user to move outside of conventional perceptions of time. Depersonalization allows the user to lose the self and gain an awareness of undifferentiated unity, dynamization, as Leary wrote, makes everything from floors to lamps seem to bends, as familiar forms dissolve into moving, dancing structures. Music that is truly psychedelic mimics these three effects, a number of features are quintessential to psychedelic music. Exotic instrumentation, with a fondness for the sitar and tabla are common. Songs often have disjunctive song structures, key and time signature changes, surreal, whimsical, esoterically or literary-inspired, lyrics are often used. There is often an emphasis on extended instrumental segments or jams. There is a strong presence, in the 1960s this especially using electronic organs, harpsichords, or the Mellotron. In the 1960s there was a use of electronic instruments such as early synthesizers. Later forms of electronic psychedelia also employed repetitive computer-generated beats, R. Veysey, they profoundly influenced the thinking of the new generation of youth. The psychedelic lifestyle had already developed in California, particularly in San Francisco, by the mid-1960s, with the first major underground LSD factory established by Owsley Stanley. There was already a culture of use among jazz and blues musicians. One of the first musical uses of the term psychedelic in the scene was by the New York-based folk group The Holy Modal Rounders on their version of Lead Bellys Hesitation Blues in 1964. His nineteen-minute The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party anticipated elements of psychedelia with its nervy improvisations, similarly, folk guitarist Sandy Bulls early work incorporated elements of folk, jazz, and Indian and Arabic-influenced dronish modes. His 1963 album Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo explores various styles, soon musicians began to refer to the drug and attempted to recreate or reflect the experience of taking LSD in their music, just as it was reflected in psychedelic art, literature and film. This trend ran in parallel in both America and Britain and as part of the folk, folk rock and rock scenes
27.
The Big Express
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The Big Express is the seventh studio album by the English band XTC, released in 1984. It was one of XTCs harder-edged albums, in contrast to the pastoral Mummer, initial copies of the LP were released in a round sleeve. Working titles considered for the album were Coalface, Head of Steam, Shaking Skin House, Bastard Son of Hard Blue Rayhead, The Known World, the singles released from the album were All You Pretty Girls, This World Over and Wake Up. The album reached No.38 on the UK Albums Chart, the seventh track, I Bought Myself a Liarbird is about their former manager, Ian Reid. The fourth track, Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her was written by Partridge on the bands mellotron and it inspired the name of the Japanese indie rock band, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her. All songs written and composed by Andy Partridge, except where noted, in the U. S. the album spent 7 weeks on the Billboard 200 album charts and reached its peak position of No.178 in December 1984
28.
Hermit of Mink Hollow
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Hermit of Mink Hollow is Todd Rundgrens eighth solo album, released in 1978. It was his first album to be written and recorded entirely by Rundgren alone, the album is reminiscent of the artists earlier, more pop-oriented records and marks a lyrical return to the subject of relationships, as well as his views on social inequality. It remains one of his most popular albums, Mink Hollow refers to a valley, and the road that runs through it, in Lake Hill, New York just west of Woodstock, NY. Rundgren recorded this album while living in a house on Mink Hollow Road. While many think that the referred to in the title is Todd, it actually originated and refers to the character and events from a local legend centered on Mink Hill Road in Lake Hill. The legend involved a 3-legged dog, a girl and an escaped mental patient hiding in the surrounding forested mountains. Rundgren intended the songs on the album to be performed on piano with minimal arrangements, apart from the bass, drums, in that sense, he stated that the songwriting process appeared to be fairly conventional. Most of the songs on the record didnt have lyrics until completed, the original track listing for the album, which can be found on the back of the album jacket, was rejected by Bearsville as being too haphazard. Bearsville re-listed the songs in a more Pop Friendly sequence, comprising the lighter poppy songs on The Easy Side, all songs written by Todd Rundgren. Frank responds, It rhymes with Hermit of Mink Hollow
29.
New York Dolls (album)
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New York Dolls is the 1973 debut studio album by American hard rock band the New York Dolls. By the time of the recording, the band had developed a following by playing regularly in lower Manhattan after forming in 1971. However, they were unappealing to record companies because of their onstage cross-dressing and vulgarity, for shock value, the group was photographed in exaggerated drag on the album cover. Despite stories of conflicts during the sessions, lead singer David Johansen. New York Dolls was released by Mercury on July 27,1973, to critical acclaim but sold poorly. The band proved difficult to market outside their native New York, the band was meant to be a temporary project for the members, who were club-going youths that had gone to New York City with different career pursuits. As Sylvain recalled, We just said Hey, maybe this will get us some chicks and that seemed like a good enough reason. The group soon began playing regularly in lower Manhattan and earned a following within a few months with their reckless style of rock music. Nonetheless, record companies were hesitant to them because of their onstage cross-dressing. In October 1972, they garnered the interest of critics when they opened for English rock band the Faces at the Empire Pool in Wembley, however, on the New York Dolls first tour of England that year, Murcia died after consuming a lethal combination of alcohol and methaqualone. They enlisted Jerry Nolan as his replacement, while managers Marty Thau, Steve Leber and we acted like we were already rock stars. Arthur even called his bass Excalibur after King Arthur and their performance at the Mercer Arts Center was attended by journalist and Mercury Records publicity director Bud Scoppa, and Paul Nelson, an A&R executive for the label. Scoppa initially viewed them as an amusing but inferior version of the Rolling Stones, Paul stuck around for the second set, though, and after show he called me and said, You should have stayed. Then, after that, I fell in love with them anyway, in March 1973, the group signed a two-album deal with a US $25,000 advance from Mercury. According to Sylvain, some of the parents had to sign for them because they were not old enough to sign themselves. For the New York Dolls debut album, Mercury wanted to find a producer who could make the most out of the groups sound. At the bands first board meeting in Chicago, Johansen fell asleep in Mercurys conference room while record executives discussed potential producers. Rundgren had socialized at venues such as Maxs Kansas City and first saw the New York Dolls when his girlfriend at the time, model Bebe Buell, brought him there to see them play
30.
Colin Moulding
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Colin Ivor Moulding is a bassist, songwriter and vocalist. He is a member of the band XTC. Though less prolific than bandmate Andy Partridge, Moulding wrote their first three charting UK singles - Life Begins at the Hop, Making Plans for Nigel, and Generals and Majors. Making Plans For Nigel was also a Top 20 hit in Canada, mouldings bass playing is self-taught, learning 1970s rock riffs at 15 years old. He cites Andy Fraser of Free as a musical influence and has stated a preference for an intuitive approach to writing and playing rather than study. When writing songs Moulding has used guitars and keyboards rather than the bass guitar, outside his work with XTC, Moulding released a non-charting solo single in 1980 under the pseudonym The Colonel. In 2012 he appeared on Sherwoods tribute album to Supertramp, in February 2007, Partridge told music website Pitchfork Media that Moulding was not interested in music any more, and doesnt want to write. Moulding concurred in having a recent loss of interest in music, in November 2008 Moulding emerged for an interview about Making Plans For Nigel for an installment in the series of interviews by Todd Bernhardt. He also gave a interview in December 2008 on the Todd Rundgren fansite. Moulding made vocal contributions to a Billy Sherwood Progressive Rock album, according to recent postings on Andy Partridges Twitter feed, Colin is teaming up with former band-mate Terry Chambers on an EP due for release in 2017
31.
The Beach Boys
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The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California in 1961. The groups original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, distinguished by their vocal harmonies and early surf songs, they are one of the most influential acts of the rock era. The Beach Boys began as a band managed by the Wilsons father Murry. Emerging at the vanguard of the California Sound, they performed material that reflected a southern California youth culture of surfing, cars. After 1964, they abandoned the surfing aesthetic for more personal lyrics, in 1966, the Pet Sounds album and Good Vibrations single vaulted the group to the top level of rock innovators and established the band as symbols of the nascent counterculture era. Following Smiles dissolution, Brian gradually ceded production and songwriting duties to the rest of the band, reducing his input because of mental health and substance abuse issues. The continued success of their greatest hits albums during the mid 1970s precipitated the transition into an oldies act. Since the 1980s, much-publicized legal wrangling over royalties, songwriting credits, Dennis drowned in 1983 and Carl died of lung cancer in 1998. After Carls death, many live configurations of the band fronted by Mike Love, Even though Wilson and Jardine have not performed with Love and Johnstons band since their one-off 2012 reunion tour, they remain a part of the Beach Boys corporation, Brother Records Inc. The Beach Boys are one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful, the group had over eighty songs chart worldwide, thirty-six of them US Top 40 hits, four reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. They received their only Grammy Award for The Smile Sessions, the core quintet of the three Wilsons, Love and Jardine were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. At the time of his birthday on June 20,1958, Brian Wilson shared a bedroom with his brothers, Dennis and Carl – aged thirteen and eleven. He had watched his father, Murry Wilson, play piano, after dissecting songs such as Ivory Tower and Good News, Brian would teach family members how to sing the background harmonies. For his birthday that year, Brian received a tape recorder. He learned how to overdub, using his vocals and those of Carl, Brian played piano with Carl and David Marks, an eleven-year-old longtime neighbor, playing guitars they had each received as Christmas presents. Soon Brian and Carl were avidly listening to Johnny Otis KFOX radio show, inspired by the simple structure and vocals of the rhythm and blues songs he heard, Brian changed his piano-playing style and started writing songs. His enthusiasm interfered with his studies at school. Family gatherings brought the Wilsons in contact with cousin Mike Love, Brian taught Loves sister Maureen and a friend harmonies
32.
Sequential Circuits Prophet-5
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The Prophet-5 is an analog synthesizer that was designed and manufactured by Sequential Circuits between 1978 and 1984. With five voices of polyphony, the Prophet-5 is one of the first polyphonic analog synthesizers with patch memory, about 6,000 units were produced in three revisions by Dave Smith and John Bowen. This was later accompanied by the Prophet-10, a version with ten voices of polyphony through a circuit board and keyboard. The Prophet-5 is known for its use by rock bands. Due to its success, the Prophet-5 has been emulated in software synthesizers, through his company Dave Smith Instruments, and later under the Sequential Circuits brand, Smith has developed updated versions of the Prophet-5. The Prophet-5 was developed by Dave Smith and John Bowen for Sequential Circuits, with the goal of creating a polyphonic analog synthesizer with the ability to store. Initially, they developed the Prophet-10, a synthesizer with ten voices of polyphony, however, as a result, Smith and Bowen pared back the number of voices to five, which led to the Prophet-5. There were three revisions of the Prophet-5 between 1978 and 1984, the first, Revision 1, is the least common, with 182 units having been produced. Revision 1 Prophet-5s were primarily hand-assembled by Smith and Bowen, Revision 2, which was mass-produced in quantities over 1,000, saw the addition of cassette patch storage and a walnut casing. By Revision 3.3, the memory storage had expanded to 120 patches, however, Revision 3 also introduced new circuitry that increased the stability but decreased the warmth of the Prophet-5. Revision 3 is the most common version, inclusive of all revisions, approximately 6,000 units were produced. Following the success of the Prophet-5, Smith and Bowen reintroduced the Prophet-10 and this was achieved by simply stacking two Revision 3 Prophet-5 sound boards, which were played with two separate keyboards. Early Prophet-10s were still prone to overheating and unstable tuning, as well as memory issues, the Prophet-10 was not as successful as the Prophet-5. Early Prophet-5s used voltage-controlled oscillator, filter and amplifier chips designed by E-mu Systems, Revision 3 Prophet-5s used Curtis CEM chips. Some owners maintain that SSM oscillators produced a richer timbre, however, the SSM oscillators rendered the instruments unstable and prone to detuning over time. CEM chips have remained more stable, the Prophet-5 uses five voices of polyphony. Each voice is assigned two VCOs, both oscillators can generate sawtooth waves and square waves, and the second oscillator can also generate a triangle. The oscillators can be played in sync, or in Poly-Mod, with oscillator B and the filter ADSR envelope modulating the frequency, pulse width, a dedicated low-frequency oscillator is also present to modulate the pulse width and/or pitch of oscillators A and B and filter cutoff frequency
33.
String section
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The string section is the largest body of a single instrument category in the standard Classical orchestra. It normally consists of the first violins, the violins, the violas, the cellos. The first and second play the same types of instruments. The first violins are generally given the melody or higher-pitch musical lines, the second violins may play a harmony part, a countermelody or an accompaniment passage. In discussions of the instrumentation of a work, the phrase the strings or. An orchestra consisting solely of a section is called a string orchestra. Smaller string sections are used in jazz, pop and rock music arrangements, the most common seating arrangement in the 2000s is with first violins, second violins, violas and cello sections arrayed clockwise around the conductor, with basses behind the cellos on the right. The principal string players sit at the front of their section, closest to the conductor and on the row of performers which is closest to the audience. If space or numbers are limited, cellos and basses can be put in the middle, violins and violas on the left and winds to the right, this is the usual arrangement in orchestra pits. The seating may also be specified by the composer, as in Béla Bartóks Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, in some cases, due to space constraints or other issues, a different layout may be used. The inside player typically turns the pages of the part, while the player continues playing. In cases where a turn occurs during an essential musical part. There are more variations of set-up with the bass section, depending on the size of the section. There are not usually as many basses as cellos, so they are either in one row, or for a larger section, in some orchestras, some or all of the string sections may be placed on wooden risers, which are platforms that elevate the performers. The size of a section may be expressed with a formula of the type 10-10-8-10-6, designating the number of first violins, second violins, violas, cellos. The numbers can vary widely, Wagner in Die Walküre specifies 16-16-12-12-8, in general, music from the Baroque music era and the Classical music period used smaller string sections. During the contemporary era, some composers requested smaller string sections. In some regional orchestras, amateur orchestras and youth orchestras, the sections may be relatively small
34.
Brass
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Brass is a metal alloy made of copper and zinc, the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties. It is an alloy, atoms of the two constituents may replace each other within the same crystal structure. By comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin, however, bronze and brass may also include small proportions of a range of other elements including arsenic, phosphorus, aluminium, manganese, and silicon. The term is applied to a variety of brasses. Modern practice in museums and archaeology increasingly avoids both terms for objects in favour of the all-embracing copper alloy. It is also used in zippers, Brass is often used in situations in which it is important that sparks not be struck, such as in fittings and tools used near flammable or explosive materials. Brass has higher malleability than bronze or zinc, the relatively low melting point of brass and its flow characteristics make it a relatively easy material to cast. By varying the proportions of copper and zinc, the properties of the brass can be changed, allowing hard, the density of brass is 8.4 to 8.73 grams per cubic centimetre. Today, almost 90% of all alloys are recycled. Because brass is not ferromagnetic, it can be separated from ferrous scrap by passing the scrap near a powerful magnet, Brass scrap is collected and transported to the foundry where it is melted and recast into billets. Billets are heated and extruded into the form and size. The general softness of brass means that it can often be machined without the use of cutting fluid, aluminium makes brass stronger and more corrosion-resistant. Aluminium also causes a highly beneficial hard layer of oxide to be formed on the surface that is thin, transparent. Tin has an effect and finds its use especially in seawater applications. Combinations of iron, aluminium, silicon and manganese make brass wear and tear resistant, to enhance the machinability of brass, lead is often added in concentrations of around 2%. Since lead has a melting point than the other constituents of the brass. The pattern the globules form on the surface of the brass increases the available surface area which in turn affects the degree of leaching. In addition, cutting operations can smear the lead globules over the surface and these effects can lead to significant lead leaching from brasses of comparatively low lead content
35.
Fairlight CMI
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It was one of the earliest music workstations with an embedded digital sampling synthesizer. It rose to prominence in the early 1980s and competed in the market with the Synclavier from New England Digital, after his classmate, Peter Vogel, graduated from high school in 1975, Ryrie showed him Wendy Carlos album Switched-on Bach, which was produced with a Moog synthesizer. Ryrie had always wanted to make a better than the Moog. In December of that year, he and Vogel formed a company intended to manufacture digital synthesizers. It was called Fairlight, which the name came from the hydrofoil ferry passing before Ryries grandmothers home in Sydney harbour and they had initially thought of making an analogue synth that was digitally controlled, given that the Moog was much more difficult to control. After the six months that followed involving the two in the companys basement failing to come up with ideas, they met Motorola consultant Tony Furse, despite this, the machine was unable to create harmonic partials, therefore the sounds that came from the synth were sterile and unimaginative. As a last-minute attempt of producing a digital synthesizer that could make complex patches, Vogel recalled in a 2005 interview about how he came up with this concept, I had this random idea late one night, probably in 1978. I thought that if we took a sample of an instrument and had a look at the harmonics we could get an idea of how to synthesise it. We were already making interesting sounds but we were still a way from getting it to sound like a real instrument. So I hooked an analogue-to-digital converter up to the radio and sampled maybe a second of some piano piece, then I wondered how it would sound if I played it back without doing anything. So I played it back at different pitches and it sounded remarkably like a piano and this had never been done before. By todays standards it was a pretty awful piano sound, so I rapidly realised that we didnt have to bother with all the synthesis stuff. Just take the sounds, whack them in the memory and away you go, however, Vogel has said that the low quality of the sounds was what gave them their own character. Its Music Composition Language feature was frequently criticized, with reviewers calling it too difficult for empirical users. Other primitive aspects included its limited amount of RAM and its green, still, Vogel was unsure if there would be enough interest in the product. In the summer of 1979, Peter Vogel went to the home of English singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel, until that time everything that captured sound had been tape-based. The Fairlight CMI was like a more reliable and versatile digital Mellotron. Peter was completely thrilled, and instantly put the machine to use during the week that Peter Vogel stayed at his house
36.
Yamaha DX7
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The Yamaha DX7 is an FM synthesis-based digital synthesizer manufactured by the Yamaha Corporation from 1983 to 1989. It was the first commercially successful digital synthesizer, over 200,000 of the original DX7 were made, and it remains one of the best-selling synthesizers of all time. Its distinctive sound can be heard on recordings, especially pop music from the 1980s. These stock sounds ultimately proliferated to the point that they were regarded as clichéd by the end of the 1980s, tone generation in the DX7 is based on frequency modulation synthesis, which was developed based upon research by/licensed from John Chowning at Stanford University. This uses multiple sine wave oscillators, which can modulate each other in various configurations offered as 32 algorithms, Yamahas implementation used DDS oscillators based on linear phase modulation, allowing improved precision and stability. The DX7 was known for the precision and flexibility of its bright, digital sounds, the DX7 is well known for its electric piano, bells, and other struck and plucked sounds which emphasize complex attack transients, which most analog synthesizers of the time could not produce. Phase modulation as used in this and later synthesisers is capable of generating a range of both imitative and purely synthetic sounds. The DX7s voices can be programmed by the user, and stored into a 32-voice RAM internal memory, or corresponding 32-voice DX7 RAM cartridge inserted into a port on the front of the unit. Pre-programmed ROM cartridges could also be inserted, and the original DX7 shipped with two of these cartridges with two banks of 32 voices each, for a total of 128 voices available. Because of the complexity of FM synthesis, and the almost limitless possibilities of sounds, a particular challenge was that Yamahas DX envelopes were very different than the Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release methods used to create sounds in older synths, familiar to most synth players. Another difficulty was that programming required the manual entry of numbers for parameter values, as a result, many musicians did not get far with programming and instead tended use Yamahas preset voices. The Yamaha DX7 came with a connection for an optional breath controller which sensed the air pressure inside the players mouth. With one of these, the player could use breath pressure to modulate vibrato, tremolo, dynamics, the breath controller allowed the DX7 to be used to produce sounds similar to a wind instrument but with a piano keyboard for note selection. Many of the preset Yamaha voices allowed for breath-controlled modulation, however, pop musicians performing on stage did not usually want to put a breath controller in their mouth, for visual reasons. Yamaha also produced the WX series of dedicated wind controllers which emulated familiar wind instruments, the DX7 includes MIDI ports, but it was released shortly before the specification was completed, and indeed, MIDI was added very late in its development. Additionally, the maximum MIDI velocity value that the DX7 will transmit is limited to approximately 100, the DX7 will, however, respond to the full range of velocity values when sent from an outside MIDI source. This means that using the DX7 as a MIDI controller to play external sound modules. Moreover, third-party upgrades for the DX7 flourished in the 1980s and these included SuperMax and the most famous, Grey Matter Responses E. expansion board, which added increased patch memory and a vastly improved MIDI implementation to the original DX7
37.
E-mu Emulator
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The Emulator is the name given to a series of digital sampling keyboards using floppy disk storage, manufactured by E-mu Systems from 1981 until the 1990s. It was also innovative in its integration of technology with electronic keyboards. The samplers were discontinued in 2002, E-mu Systems was founded in 1971 and began business as a manufacturer of microchips, digital scanning keyboards, and components for electronic instruments. Originally, E-mu considered selling the design for the Emulator to Sequential Circuits, however, soon afterward, Sequential Circuits stopped paying E-mu royalties on their keyboard design, which forced E-mu to release the Emulator themselves. The 5 1⁄4 floppy disk drive enabled the owner to build a library of samples and share them with others, the Emulator had a very basic 8-bit sampler –, it only had a simple filter, and only allowed for a single loop. The initial model did not even include a VCA envelope generator and it came in three forms, A two-voice model, a four-voice model, and an eight-voice model. When the original Emulator was turned on the keyboard was split and it was designed to be played in split mode, so playing the same sound on the full keyboard required loading up the same sound floppy disk in each drive. Stevie Wonder, who gave the sampler a glowing review at the 1981 NAMM convention, originally 001 was promised to Daryl Dragon of Captain & Tennille, because Daryl had been a loyal E-mu modular system owner for a long time before that. However, Stevie at the time had a slightly larger name-recognition value, in 1982, the Emulator was updated to include a VCA envelope generator and a simple sequencer, and the price was lowered. Approximately 500 units were sold before the unit was discontinued in early 1984, other prominent users of the original E-mu Emulator were New Order and Genesis, and it was among the many groundbreaking instruments used in the production of Michael Jacksons Thriller album. Composer and Writer David Frank of The System used the original Emulator on his productions from Sweat to Dont Disturb this Groove, released commercially in 1984 to huge acclaim, the Emulator II was E-mus second sampler. Like the original Emulator, it was an 8-bit sampler, however it had superior fidelity to the Emulator due to the use of digital companding and it also allowed more flexibility in editing and shaping sounds, as resonant analog filters were added. The EII also had vastly better real time control and it was priced similarly to the original Emulator, at US$7,995 for a regular model, and $9,995 for a plus model featuring extra sample memory. Several upgrades, including a floppy drive, a 20 MB hard drive. Despite its price tag it was considered very good value compared to the Fairlight CMI Series II, which. Equivalent output stages in modern samplers perform similar functions purely in the digital domain, several highly respected OEM and 3rd party sample libraries were developed for the Emulator II, including a multitude of high quality orchestral sounds. Many of the EIIs original library sounds were sampled from the more expensive Fairlight and this can cause confusion when trying to determine which sampler hardware was actually used on a certain song. A demo of the sounds can be found on YouTube
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