Synth-pop
Synth-pop is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, art rock and the "Krautrock" of bands like Kraftwerk, it arose as a distinct genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, while the mid-1970s saw the rise of electronic art musicians. After the breakthrough of Gary Numan in the UK Singles Chart in 1979, large numbers of artists began to enjoy success with a synthesizer-based sound in the early 1980s. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestra introduced the TR-808 rhythm machine to popular music, the band would be a major influence on early British synth-pop acts; the development of inexpensive polyphonic synthesizers, the definition of MIDI and the use of dance beats, led to a more commercial and accessible sound for synth-pop.
This, its adoption by the style-conscious acts from the New Romantic movement, together with the rise of MTV, led to success for large numbers of British synth-pop acts in the US. "Synth-pop" is sometimes used interchangeably with "electropop", but "electropop" may denote a variant of synth-pop that places more emphasis on a harder, more electronic sound. In the mid to late 1980s, duos such as Erasure and Pet Shop Boys adopted a style, successful on the US dance charts, but by the end of the decade, the'new wave' synth-pop of bands such as A-ha and Alphaville was giving way to house music and techno. Interest in new wave synth-pop began to revive in the indietronica and electroclash movements in the late 1990s, in the 2000s synth-pop enjoyed a widespread revival and commercial success; the genre has received criticism for alleged lack of musicianship. Synth-pop music has established a place for the synthesizer as a major element of pop and rock music, directly influencing subsequent genres and has indirectly influenced many other genres, as well as individual recordings.
Synth-pop was defined by its primary use of synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers, sometimes using them to replace all other instruments. Borthwick and Moy have described the genre as diverse but "...characterised by a broad set of values that eschewed rock playing styles and structures", which were replaced by "synthetic textures" and "robotic rigidity" defined by the limitations of the new technology, including monophonic synthesizers. Many synth-pop musicians had limited musical skills, relying on the technology to produce or reproduce the music; the result was minimalist, with grooves that were "typically woven together from simple repeated riffs with no harmonic'progression' to speak of". Early synth-pop has been described as "eerie and vaguely menacing", using droning electronics with little change in inflection. Common lyrical themes of synth-pop songs were isolation, urban anomie, feelings of being cold and hollow. In its second phase in the 1980s, the introduction of dance beats and more conventional rock instrumentation made the music warmer and catchier and contained within the conventions of three-minute pop.
Synthesizers were used to imitate the conventional and clichéd sound of orchestras and horns. Thin, treble-dominant, synthesized melodies and simple drum programmes gave way to thick, compressed production, a more conventional drum sound. Lyrics were more optimistic, dealing with more traditional subject matter for pop music such as romance and aspiration. According to music writer Simon Reynolds, the hallmark of 1980s synth-pop was its "emotional, at times operatic singers" such as Marc Almond, Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox; because synthesizers removed the need for large groups of musicians, these singers were part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation. Although synth-pop in part arose from punk rock, it abandoned punk's emphasis on authenticity and pursued a deliberate artificiality, drawing on the critically derided forms such as disco and glam rock, it owed little to the foundations of early popular music in jazz, folk music or the blues, instead of looking to America, in its early stages, it consciously focused on European and Eastern European influences, which were reflected in band names like Spandau Ballet and songs like Ultravox's "Vienna".
Synth-pop saw a shift to a style more influenced by other genres, such as soul music. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, around the same time as rock music began to emerge as a distinct musical genre; the Mellotron, an electro-mechanical, polyphonic sample-playback keyboard was overtaken by the Moog synthesizer, created by Robert Moog in 1964, which produced electronically generated sounds. The portable Minimoog, which allowed much easier use in live performance was adopted by progressive rock musicians such as Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman of Yes. Instrumental prog rock was significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Faust to circumvent the language barrier, their synthesizer-heavy "Kraut rock", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy M
New wave music
New wave is a genre of rock music popular in the late 1970s and the 1980s with ties to mid-1970s punk rock. New wave moved away from blues and rock and roll sounds to create rock music or pop music that incorporated disco and electronic music. New wave was similar to punk rock, before becoming a distinct genre, it subsequently engendered fusions, including synth-pop. New wave differs from other movements with ties to first-wave punk as it displays characteristics common to pop music, rather than the more "artsy" post-punk. Although it incorporates much of the original punk rock sound and ethos, new wave exhibits greater complexity in both music and lyrics. Common characteristics of new wave music include the use of synthesizers and electronic productions, a distinctive visual style featured in music videos and fashion. New wave has been called one of the definitive genres of the 1980s, after it was promoted by MTV; the popularity of several new wave artists is attributed to their exposure on the channel.
In the mid-1980s, differences between new wave and other music 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, such as the Strokes, Franz Ferdinand and The Killers explored new wave and post-punk influences; these acts were sometimes labeled "new wave of new wave". The catch-all nature of new wave music has been a source of much controversy; the 1985 discography Who's 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 rock 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 and New York Dolls, 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 McLaren's term "new wave" to designate music by bands not punk, but related to the same musical scene. The term was 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 terms new wave and punk were somewhat interchangeable. By the end of 1977, "new wave" had replaced "punk" as the definition for new underground music in the UK. In the United States, Sire Records chairman Seymour Stein, believing that the term "punk" would mean poor sales for Sire's acts who had played the club CBGB, launched a "Don't Call It Punk" campaign designed to replace the term with "new wave"; as radio consultants in the United States had advised their clients that punk rock was a fad, they settled on the term "new wave". Like the filmmakers of the French new wave movement, its new artists were anti-corporate and experimental. At first, most U. S. writers used the term "new wave" for British punk acts.
Starting in December 1976, The New York Rocker, suspicious of the term "punk", became the first American journal to enthusiastically use the term starting with British acts appropriating it to acts associated with the CBGB scene. Part of what attracted Stein and others to new wave was the music's stripped back style and upbeat tempos, which they viewed as a much needed return to the energetic rush of rock and roll and 1960s rock that had dwindled in the 1970s with the ascendance of overblown progressive rock and stadium spectacles. Music historian Vernon Joynson claimed that new wave emerged in the UK in late 1976, when many bands began disassociating themselves from punk. Music that followed the anarchic garage band ethos of the Sex Pistols was distinguished as "punk", while music that tended toward experimentation, lyrical complexity or more polished production, came to be categorized as "new wave". 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, "I think of that as the beginning of new wave." Furthermore, many artists who would have been classified as punk were termed new wave. A 1977 Phonogram Records compilation album of the same name features US artists including the Dead Boys, Talking Heads and the Runaways. New wave is much more tied to punk, came and went more in the United Kingdom than in the United States. At the time punk began, it was a major phenomenon in the United Kingdom and a minor one in the United States, thus when new wave acts started getting noticed in America, punk meant little to the mainstream audience and it was common for rock clubs and discos to play British dance mixes and videos between live sets by American guitar acts. Post-punk music developments in the UK were considered unique cultural events. By the early 1980s, British journalists had abandoned the term "new wave" in favor of subgenre terms such as "synthpop".
By 1983, the term of choice for the US music industry had become "new music", while to the majority of US fans it was still a "new wave" reacting to album-based rock. New wave died out in the mid-1980s, knocked out by guitar-driven rock reacting against new wave. In the 21st-century United States, "new wave" was used to describe ar
Ken Scott
Ken Scott is a British record producer and engineer known for being one of the five main engineers for The Beatles, as well as engineering Elton John, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Duran Duran, the Jeff Beck Group and many more. As a producer, Scott is noted for his work with David Bowie, Devo, The Tubes, Ronnie Montrose, Level 42, among others. Scott was influential in the evolution of jazz rock, pioneering a harder rock sound through his work with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, Dixie Dregs, Jeff Beck. Ken Scott was born in South London, grew up listening to 78 rpm records of artists like Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, Eddie Cochran on a wind-up gramophone. In 1959 at the age of 12 he received a tape recorder which he used to record material from the BBC Light Programme Pick of the Pops, but it was an episode of Here Come The Girls, an Alan Freeman-hosted TV show about British female pop artists in recording studios, that first focused Scott’s career aspirations as a recording engineer when it featured Carol Deene singing in a recording session from the point of view of Studio Two at EMI Recording Studios, where Malcolm Addey was behind the recording console.
On Saturday, 18 January 1964, Scott wrote letters inquiring about recording engineer job openings and mailed them to several London recording studios. Three days he was contacted by EMI Recording Studios and subsequently interviewed and offered a position the following day. Scott began working at EMI the following Monday at the age of 16, he received the traditional EMI studio training under engineers like Norman Smith. His first job was in the tape library, within six months he was promoted to 2nd engineer, where his first session was on side two of the Beatles' A Hard Days Night album. Among the other artists he worked with as a button pusher were Manfred Mann and Gordon, the Hollies, Judy Garland, Johnny Mathis, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Peter Sellers. After a short time as an assistant engineer, Scott was promoted to "cutting", where he spent two years cutting not only acetates for EMI artists, but the masters for many of the hits that EMI distributed at the time, including the American Motown catalogue.
In September 1967, Scott was promoted to engineer, where his first session was with The Beatles on their song "Your Mother Should Know". His first orchestral recording session came a few days when he recorded the strings and choir for the band's song "I Am the Walrus". During his time with The Beatles, Scott worked on the singles "Lady Madonna", "Hello, Goodbye" and "Hey Jude", as well as The Beatles and Magical Mystery Tour albums. Among the notable songs from those albums that he worked on are "The Fool on the Hill", "Glass Onion", "Helter Skelter", "Birthday", "Back in the U. S. S. R.", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Not Guilty", the last of, recorded for the White Album, but not included on it. As an engineer at EMI, Scott worked with numerous other EMI artists including The Jeff Beck Group, Pink Floyd, The Pretty Things and Mary Hopkin. In late 1969, shortly after completion of the Procol Harum album A Salty Dog, he left EMI for the independent Trident Studios, at the suggestion of Elton John producer Gus Dudgeon.
Scott soon found himself working with The Beatles again on their various solo projects, including John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" and "Cold Turkey", Ringo Starr's "It Don't Come Easy" and George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. After a short time he took over the mixing of Elton John's Madman Across the Water, after fellow Trident engineer Robin Cable suffered severe injuries in a traffic accident; that led him to work on John's Honky Château and Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player. During this period he reconnected with David Bowie on a project with Bowie protege Freddie Burretti. By this time Scott wanted to move into production, Bowie said he was about to start a new album and didn't feel comfortable about producing himself, so it was agreed that they would co-produce what became Hunky Dory. After the album was completed, but before it was released, work began on his next album – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars – again with Scott as co-producer. Scott went on to co-produce Bowie's Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups albums, as well as the little-seen Midnight Special television program episode "The 1980 Floor Show".
During his time at Trident Studios, Scott teamed up with Supertramp for Crime of the Century in what amounted to a breakthrough album nearly everywhere in the world except the United States. While most albums were recorded in two weeks at the time, Crime of the Century was an exception, taking a painstaking six months, as Scott and the group sought a precision to the recording and mixing not found in much of the music recorded at the time. Crime of the Century is mentioned as one of the top albums of all time, was used as a stereo demonstration record in music stores; the album featured two songs that still get substantial radio play today: "Dreamer" and "Bloody Well Right."The follow-up, Crisis? What Crisis?, attempted to reach those same sonic heights, but it was subject to the limitations of a timetable, because Supertramp had gained a measure of stardom, a release date and tour had been planned. The album was recorded at other studios besides Trident, including Studio D at A&M Records in Hollywood, the Who's Ramport Studios, the now defunct Scorpio Stud
Patrick O'Hearn
Patrick O'Hearn is an American multi-instrumentalist and recording artist. Known as a bass guitarist and keyboardist, O'Hearn came to prominence with Frank Zappa and co-founded the early 1980s new-wave band Missing Persons with several other veterans from Zappa's bands. While O'Hearn's musical repertoire spans a diverse range of music, he is an acclaimed new-age artist in his solo career. In addition to solo albums, he has composed soundtracks for movies and television. Born in Los Angeles and raised in the Pacific Northwest, O'Hearn began his professional music career at age 15 when he joined the Musicians Union and began playing night clubs in Portland, Oregon. Upon graduating from Sunset High School in 1972, he moved to Washington. There, he attended Cornish College of the Arts and, as well, studied with bassist Gary Peacock. In 1973, he moved to San Francisco and soon became involved in the vibrant Bay Area jazz scene of that time, playing bass for well-established artists Charles Lloyd, Joe Henderson, Dexter Gordon, Joe Pass, Woody Shaw, Eddie Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, as well as with other like-aged young musicians, including Terry Bozzio, Mark Isham and Peter Maunu.
While on tour in Los Angeles in 1976, O'Hearn met musician Frank Zappa, who offered him a job as bass player in his band—a position he held for over two years. During this period, O’Hearn shifted from the acoustic bass to the electric bass guitar, became interested in electronic music. Zappa encouraged O’Hearn to explore his premium collection of synthesizers, introduced him to the technical aspects of intricate physical tape editing as a way of producing compositions, audio engineering, home studio audio recording equipment. In 1979, O'Hearn teamed with trumpet player Mark Isham and guitarist Peter Maunu to form Group 87, an ensemble influenced by the early recordings of Weather Report and ambient minimalism of Brian Eno. Although they only produced two LPs—Group 87 in 1980, A Career in Dada Processing in 1984—Group 87 would help establish the musical direction of O'Hearn's solo career. Both Isham and Maunu would continue as important collaborators on several of O'Hearn's subsequent solo releases.
In 1981, drummer and former Zappa bandmate Terry Bozzio invited O’Hearn to join his emerging new wave band, Missing Persons along with guitarist and fellow Zappa alumnus Warren Cuccurullo and Dale Bozzio, who had performed vocals in several Zappa productions and married Terry. The nature of the music called for O'Hearn to make a further shift—this time, from electric bass to synthesizers. Missing Persons recorded three albums for Capitol Records: Spring Session M, Rhyme & Reason, Color In Your Life; the band dissolved in early 1986. Although both Terry Bozzio and Warren Cuccurullo contributed to several of O'Hearn's solo albums, O'Hearn declined to take part in the 2001 Missing Persons reunion. O'Hearn's solo career was spurred in large part by former Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann, conceiving of a new music label that would showcase progressive instrumental music—a niche earlier explored by Group 87. Baumann formed the Private Music label in late 1984, signed O'Hearn as a charter artist, produced O'Hearn's debut solo album, Ancient Dreams.
Signature elements manifest in Ancient Dreams: found percussion instruments, hypnotic bass guitar patterns, synthesized pads, minimalist harmonies. Biased by his preferred instrument, O'Hearn adds jazz elements in his frequent use of the bass guitar as the lead voice. O'Hearn followed Ancient Dreams with two more albums—Between Two Worlds, which earned the artist his first Grammy nomination, Rivers Gonna Rise. Notably, the albums became brighter in tone as O'Hearn began to receive greater airplay on jazz and new-age radio stations. O'Hearn co-produced several tracks for guitarist Colin Chin's Intruding on a Silence, featuring Mark Isham on trumpet - as such, the output echoes Group 87's earlier work; the fourth album, ventured decidedly into the world music genre, infusing O'Hearn's signature sound with rhythms and timbres drawn from disparate sources such as South America and the Middle East. As such, O'Hearn's arrangements accommodated a wider array of instrumentation, such as human singing and the solo violin Commercially, Eldorado performed well among new-age audiences.
In 1990, Private Music, O'Hearn's record label at the time, released an album of techno remixes aptly named Mix-Up, featuring contributions from popular music producers, including David Frank, Joe "The Butcher" Nicolo, Carmen Rizzo Jr. However, Mix-Up was panned by critics and fans, remains long out of print; the album was the brainchild of the A&R department of Private Music and was released without Patrick knowing about it. He had only agreed to allow some remixes of his material to be experimented with in European dance clubs, the first he knew of the album's release was when it was in the stores; the versions of the tracks are vastly different from what O'Hearn had produced. Yet another major turning point in O'Hearn's music career was marked with the release of Indigo
Music journalism
Music journalism is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on what is now regarded as classical music. In the 1960s, music journalism began more prominently covering popular music like rock and pop after the breakthrough of The Beatles. With the rise of the internet in the 2000s, music criticism developed an large online presence with music bloggers, aspiring music critics, established critics supplementing print media online. Music journalism today includes reviews of songs and live concerts, profiles of recording artists, reporting of artist news and music events. Music journalism has its roots in classical music criticism, which has traditionally comprised the study, discussion and interpretation of music, composed and notated in a score and the evaluation of the performance of classical songs and pieces, such as symphonies and concertos.
Before about the 1840s, reporting on music was either done by musical journals, such as the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, in London journals such as The Musical Times. An influential English 19th-century music critic, for example, was James William Davison of The Times; the composer Hector Berlioz wrote reviews and criticisms for the Paris press of the 1830s and 1840s. Modern art music journalism is informed by music theory consideration of the many diverse elements of a musical piece or performance, including its form and style, for performance, standards of technique and expression; these standards were expressed, for example, in journals such as Neue Zeitschrift für Musik founded by Robert Schumann, are continued today in the columns of serious newspapers and journals such as The Musical Times. Several factors—including growth of education, the influence of the Romantic movement and in music, among others—led to an increasing interest in music among non-specialist journals, an increase in the number of critics by profession of varying degrees of competence and integrity.
The 1840s could be considered a turning point, in that music critics after the 1840s were not practicing musicians. However, counterexamples include Alfred Brendel, Charles Rosen, Paul Hindemith, Ernst Krenek. In the early 1980s, a decline in the quantity of classical criticism began occurring "when classical-music criticism visibly started to disappear" from the media. At that time, magazines such as Time and Vanity Fair employed classical music critics, but by the early 1990s, classical critics were dropped in many magazines, in part due to "a decline of interest in classical music among younger people". Of concern in classical music journalism was how American reviewers can write about ethnic and folk music from cultures other than their own, such as Indian ragas and traditional Japanese works. In 1990, the World Music Institute interviewed four New York Times music critics who came up with the following criteria on how to approach ethnic music: A review should relate the music to other kinds of music that readers know, to help them understand better what the program was about.
"The performers be treated as human beings and their music be treated as human activity rather than a mystical or mysterious phenomenon." The review should show an understanding of the music's cultural intentions. A key finding in a 2005 study of arts journalism in America was that the profile of the "average classical music critic is a white, 52-year old male, with a graduate degree". Demographics indicated that the group was 74% male, 92% white, 64% had earned a graduate degree. One critic of the study pointed out that because all newspapers were included, including low-circulation regional papers, the female representation of 26% misrepresented the actual scarcity, in that the "large US papers, which are the ones that influence public opinion, have no women classical music critics", with the notable exceptions of Anne Midgette in the New York Times and Wynne Delacoma in the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2007, The New York Times wrote that classical music criticism, which it characterized as "a high-minded endeavor, around at least as long as newspapers", had undergone "a series of hits in recent months" with the elimination, downgrading, or redefinition of critics' jobs at newspapers in Atlanta and elsewhere, citing New York magazine's Peter G. Davis, "one of the most respected voices of the craft, said he had been forced out after 26 years".
Viewing "robust analysis and reportage as vital to the health of the art form", The New York Times stated in 2007 that it continued to maintain "a staff of three full-time classical music critics and three freelancers", noting that classical music criticism had become available on blogs, that a number of other major newspapers "still have full-time classical music critics", including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Boston Globe. Music writers only started "treating pop and rock music seriously" in 1964 "after the breakthrough of the Beatles". In their
Capitol Records
Capitol Records, Inc. is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label in the United States in 1942 by Johnny Mercer, Buddy DeSylva, Glenn E. Wallichs. Capitol was acquired by British music conglomerate EMI as its North American subsidiary in 1955. EMI was acquired by Universal Music Group in 2012 and was merged with the company a year making Capitol and the Capitol Music Group both a part of UMG; the label's circular headquarter building in Hollywood is a recognized landmark of California. Capitol's roster includes Katy Perry, Sir Paul McCartney, Mary J. Blige, the Beach Boys, the Beastie Boys, Neil Diamond, Brian Wilson, Avenged Sevenfold, 5 Seconds of Summer, Don Henley, Sam Smith, Migos, NF, Emeli Sandé, Troye Sivan, Calum Scott, Tori Kelly, Jon Bellion, Niall Horan. Songwriter Johnny Mercer founded Capitol Records in 1942 with financial help from songwriter and film producer Buddy DeSylva and the business acumen of Glenn Wallichs, owner of Wallichs Music City.
Mercer raised the idea of starting a record company while golfing with Harold Arlen and Bobby Sherwood and with Wallichs at Wallichs's record store. On February 2, 1942, Mercer and Wallichs met DeSylva at a restaurant in Hollywood to talk about investment by Paramount Pictures. On March 27, 1942, the three men incorporated as Liberty Records. In May 1942, the application was amended to change the company's name to Capitol Records. On April 6, 1942, Mercer supervised Capitol's first recording session where Martha Tilton recorded the song "Moon Dreams". On May 5, Bobby Sherwood and his orchestra recorded two tracks in the studio. On May 21, Freddie Slack and his orchestra recorded three tracks in the studio. On June 4, 1942, Capitol opened its first office in a second-floor room south of Sunset Boulevard. On that same day, Wallichs presented the company's first free record to Los Angeles disc jockey Peter Potter. On June 5, 1942, Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra recorded four songs at the studio. On June 12, the orchestra recorded five more songs in the studio, including "Trav'lin' Light" with Billie Holiday, On June 11, Tex Ritter recorded " Jingle Jangle Jingle" and "Goodbye My Little Cherokee" for his first Capitol recording session, the songs formed Capitol's 110th produced record.
The earliest recording artists included co-owner Mercer, Johnnie Johnston, Morse, Jo Stafford, the Pied Pipers, Tex Ritter, Paul Weston and Margaret Whiting Capitol's first gold single was Morse's "Cow Cow Boogie" in 1942. Capitol's first album was Capitol Presents Songs by Johnny Mercer, a three disc set with recordings by Mercer and the Pied Pipers, all with Weston's Orchestra; the label's other 1940s musicians included Les Baxter, Les Brown, Jimmy Bryant, Billy Butterfield, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr. Dinning Sisters, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Mary Ford, Benny Goodman, Skitch Henderson, Betty Hutton, Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee, Billy May, Les Paul, Alvino Rey, Andy Russell, Smilin' Jack Smith, Kay Starr, Speedy West, Cootie Williams. Musicians on the Capitol Americana label included Lead Belly, Cliffie Stone, Hank Thompson, Merle Travis, Wesley Tuttle, Jimmy Wakely, Tex Williams. Capitol was the first major west coast label to compete with labels on the east coast such as Columbia, RCA Victor.
In addition to its Los Angeles recording studio, Capitol owned a second studio in New York City and sent mobile recording equipment to New Orleans and other cities. In 1946, writer-producer Alan W. Livingston created Bozo the Clown for the company's children's record library. Examples of notable Capitol albums for children during that era are Sparky's Magic Piano and Rusty in Orchestraville. Capitol developed a noted jazz catalog that included the Capitol Jazz Men and issued the Miles Davis's album Birth of the Cool Capitol released a few classical albums in the 1940s, some of which contained a embossed, leather-like cover; these recordings appeared on 78 rpm format released on the 33 format in 1949. Among the recordings: Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos' Choros No. 10, with contributions from a Los Angeles choral group and the Janssen Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Werner Janssen. In 1949, Capitol opened a branch office in Canada and purchased KHJ Studios on Melrose Avenue adjacent to Paramount in Hollywood.
By the mid-1950s, Capitol had become a huge company. The label's roster included the Andrews Sisters, Ray Anthony, Shirley Bassey, June Christy, Tommy Duncan, Tennessee Ernie Ford, the Four Freshmen, the Four Knights, the Four Preps, Jane Froman, Judy Garland, Jackie Gleason, Andy Griffith, Dick Haymes, Harry James, the Kingston Trio, the Louvin Brothers, Dean Martin, Al Martino, Skeets McDonald, Louis Prima, Nelson Riddle, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Keely Smith. Capitol began recording roll acts such as the Jodimars and Gene Vincent. There were comedy records by Stan Freberg, Johnny Standley, Mickey Katz. Children listened to Capitol's Bozo the Clown albums. Although various people played Bozo the Clown on television, Capitol used the voice of Pinto Colvig, the voice of Goofy in Walt Disney cartoons. Don Wilson released children's records. In June 1952, Billboard magazine contained a chronicle of the label's first ten years in business. In 1955, the British record company EMI ended its 55-year mutual distribution
Rhyme & Reason
Rhyme & Reason is the second album by American new wave band Missing Persons, released in 1984. After the successful debut album by the band, this LP fell flat in sales; the pleasant-sounding "Surrender Your Heart" was its signature single. A video was created for it featuring animations from famous artist Peter Max and received heavy rotation on MTV, but the track was ignored by AOR radio. "Give" and "Right Now" were released as singles, videos made for both received airplay on MTV. Missing Persons embarked on a successful tour, but the album fell off the sales charts. "The Closer That You Get" – 4:54 "Give" – 4:54 "Now Is the Time" – 3:40 "Surrender Your Heart" – 4:22 "Clandestine People" – 3:00 "Right Now" – 3:29 "All Fall Down" – 3:23 "Racing Against Time" – 3:24 "Waiting for a Million Years" – 5:23 "If Only for the Moment" – 3:47 "Fight for Life" – 5:21 "Action Reaction" – 2:53 "Windows" – 4:59 "I Like Boys" – 2:53 "Here and Now" – 3:14 "Walking in L. A." – 4:05* bonus tracks on CD # unreleased Dale Bozzio – vocals Terry Bozzio – synthesizer, drums, vocals Warren Cuccurullo – guitar, electric guitar, vocals Patrick O'Hearn – synthesizer, electric bass Chuck Wild – synthesizer, keyboard Producers: Terry Bozzio, Bruce Swedien Mastering: Kit Watkins Art direction: Larry Vigon Design: Larry Vigon Photography: Bob Leafe, Helmut Newton Liner notes: Ken Sharp Album – Billboard Singles – Billboard
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