Public Image Ltd
Public Image Ltd are an English post-punk band formed by singer John Lydon, guitarist Keith Levene, bassist Jah Wobble, drummer Jim Walker. The group's personnel has changed over the years. Following his departure from the Sex Pistols in January 1978, Lydon was eager to pursue a more experimental "anti-rock" project and formed PiL; that year PIL released their debut First Issue, creating an abrasive, bass-heavy sound that drew on dub, progressive rock and disco. PIL's second album Metal Box pushed their sound further into the avant-garde, is regarded as one of the most important albums of the post-punk era. By 1984, both Levene and Wobble had departed and the group was a solo vehicle for Lydon, who moved toward a more accessible sound with the commercially successful albums This Is What You Want... This Is What You Album. After a late 1990s hiatus, Lydon reformed the group in 2009 and has released several further albums, most What the World Needs Now.... Following the Sex Pistols' break-up in 1978, photographer Dennis Morris suggested that Lydon travel to Jamaica with him and Virgin Records head Richard Branson, where Branson would be scouting for emerging reggae musicians.
Branson flew American band Devo to Jamaica, aiming to install Lydon as lead singer in the band. Devo declined the offer. Upon returning to England, Lydon approached Jah Wobble about forming a band together; the pair had been friends since the early 1970s. Lydon and Wobble had played music together during the final days of the Sex Pistols. Both had broad musical tastes, were avid fans of reggae and world music. Lydon assumed, much as he had with Sid Vicious, that Wobble would learn to play bass guitar as he went. Wobble would prove to be a natural talent. Lydon approached guitarist Keith Levene, with whom he had toured in mid-1976, while Levene was a member of the Clash. Lydon and Levene had both considered themselves outsiders within their own bands. Jim Walker, a Canadian student newly arrived in the UK, was recruited on drums, after answering an ad placed in Melody Maker. PiL began rehearsing together in May 1978. In July 1978, Lydon named the band "Public Image", after the Muriel Spark novel The Public Image.
PiL debuted in October 1978 with "Public Image", a song written while Lydon was still a member of the Sex Pistols. The single was well received and reached number 9 on the UK charts, it performed well on import in the US; the photography for the album was shot by Dennis Morris who created the PiL logo. In preparing their debut album, Public Image: First Issue, the band spent their recording budget well before the record was completed; as a result, the final album comprised eight tracks of varying sound quality, half of which were written and recorded in a rush after the money had run out. The album was released in December 1978; the single "Public Image" was seen as diatribe against Malcolm McLaren and his perceived manipulation of Lydon during his career with the Sex Pistols. The track "Low Life" has been regarded as an attack on McLaren, although Lydon has stated that the lyrics refer to Sid Vicious; the two-part song "Religion" refers contemptuously to Roman Catholicism. The closing track "Fodderstompf" influenced by dub, comprises nearly eight minutes of a circular bass riff, played over a Lydon/Wobble double act lampooning public outrage, love songs and teenage apathy.
The track culminates with the sound of a fire extinguisher being let off in the recording studio, as Lydon had lit a fire whilst in a weird trance-like state during the recording session. The first album was subsequently renamed as First Issue. "PiL was the simple thing of four different people doing different drugs at different times," Wobble observed to Select. "It was only in any way together for the first two months of its existence. We had a fuckin' good drummer called Jim Walker, but he fucked off after a few months and it just fell apart. Somehow it had sort of death throes that produced a couple of blinding albums." The departure of Jim Walker made way for a series of new drummers. Auditions were held at Rollerball Studios in Tooley Street, London Bridge. David Humphrey was their second drummer, who went on to record two tracks at Manor Studios in Oxford, "Swan Lake" and "Albatross", for Metal Box. "Death Disco" was reached No. 20 in the charts. The majority of the drumming on the album was provided by Richard Dudanski, PiL's drummer from April to September 1979.
He was replaced by Karl Burns. Following sessions took place in which Martin Atkins would show up for an'audition' and discover himself in the middle of a recording session with the tape rolling; the recording was released on Metal Box as "Bad Baby". Atkins was PiL's drummer from 1979 to 1980 and 1982 to 1985. Metal Box was released as three untitled 45-rpm 12-inch records packaged in a metal box resembling a film canister with an embossed PIL logo on the lid (it was reissued in more conventional packaging as
Lady Gaga
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer and actress. She is known for her unconventionality, provocative work, visual experimentation, she began singing at open mic nights and acting in school plays. She studied at Collaborative Arts Project 21, through New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, before dropping out to pursue a music career; when Def Jam Recordings canceled her contract, she worked as a songwriter for Sony/ATV Music Publishing, where Akon helped her sign a joint deal with Interscope Records and his own label KonLive Distribution in 2007. She rose to prominence the following year with her debut album, the electropop record The Fame, its chart-topping singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". A follow-up EP, The Fame Monster, featuring the singles "Bad Romance", "Telephone" and "Alejandro", was successful. Gaga's second full-length album, Born This Way, explored electronic techno-pop, it peaked atop the US Billboard 200 and sold more than one million copies in the country in its first week.
Its title track became the fastest selling song on the iTunes Store with over a million downloads in less than a week. Gaga experimented with EDM on her third studio album, which reached number one in the US and included the single "Applause", her collaborative jazz album with Tony Bennett, Cheek to Cheek, her soft rock-influenced fifth studio album, Joanne topped the US charts. During this period, Gaga ventured into acting, playing leading roles in the miniseries American Horror Story: Hotel, for which she received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, the critically acclaimed musical drama A Star Is Born, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, she contributed to the latter's soundtrack, which received a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music and made her the only woman to achieve five US number one albums in the 2010s. Its lead single, "Shallow", topped the US charts and earned Gaga the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Having sold 27 million albums and 146 million singles as of January 2016, Gaga is one of the best-selling music artists in history.
Her achievements include several Guinness world records, nine Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Golden Globe Awards, an award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She has been declared Billboard's Artist of the Year and included among Forbes's power and earnings rankings, she was ranked number four on VH1's Greatest Women in Music in 2012 and second on Time's 2011 readers' poll of the most influential people of the past ten years, was named Billboard's Woman of the Year in 2015. She is known for her philanthropy and social activism, including her work related to LGBT rights, for her nonprofit organization, the Born This Way Foundation, which focuses on empowering youth and preventing bullying. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986 at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, to a Catholic family, her parents both have Italian ancestry. Her parents are Cynthia Louise and Internet entrepreneur Joseph Germanotta, she has a younger sister, Natali.
Brought up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Gaga says that her parents came from lower-class families and worked hard for everything. From age 11, she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school. Gaga described her high school self as "very dedicated studious disciplined" but "a bit insecure", she considered herself a misfit and was mocked for "being either too provocative or too eccentric". Gaga began playing the piano at age four when her mother insisted she become "a cultured young woman", she practiced through her childhood. The lessons taught her to create music by ear, her parents encouraged her to pursue music, enrolled her in Creative Arts Camp. As a teenager, she played at open mic nights. Gaga played the lead roles of Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at a nearby boys' high school, she studied method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute for ten years. Gaga unsuccessfully auditioned for New York shows, though she did appear in a small role as a high school student in a 2001 episode of The Sopranos titled "The Telltale Moozadell".
She said of her inclination towards music: I don't know where my affinity for music comes from, but it is the thing that comes easiest to me. When I was like three years old, I may have been younger, my mom always tells this embarrassing story of me propping myself up and playing the keys like this because I was too young and short to get all the way up there. Just go like this on the low end of the piano... I was really good at piano, so my first instincts were to work so hard at practicing piano, I might not have been a natural dancer, but I am a natural musician; that is the thing. In 2003, at age 17, Gaga gained early admission to Collaborative Arts Project 21, a music school at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, lived in an NYU dorm, she studied music there, improved her songwriting skills by writing essays on art, social issues and politics, including a thesis on pop artists Spencer Tunick and Damien Hirst. She withdrew from school during the second semester of her sophomore year, in 2005, to focus on her music career.
That year she played an unsuspecting diner customer for MTV's Boiling Points, a prank reality television show. In
Thirty Seconds to Mars
Thirty Seconds to Mars is an American rock band from Los Angeles, formed in 1998. The band consists of brothers Jared Shannon Leto. During the course of its existence, it has undergone various line-up changes; the band's debut album, 30 Seconds to Mars, was produced by Bob Ezrin and released to positive reviews but only to limited commercial success. The band achieved worldwide fame with the release of its second album A Beautiful Lie, which received multiple certifications all over the world, its next release, This Is War, showed a dramatic evolution in the band's musical style, as it incorporated experimental music as well as eclectic influences. The recording process of the album was marked by a legal dispute with record label EMI that became the subject of the documentary film Artifact. Thirty Seconds to Mars moved to Universal Music and released the fourth album, Lust and Dreams, to critical and commercial success, it was followed by America. As of September 2014, the band had sold over 15 million albums worldwide.
Thirty Seconds to Mars has enjoyed sold out tours and numerous headlining festival slots. The band is noted for its energetic live performances and for fusing elements from a wide variety of genres, through its use of philosophical and spiritual lyrics, concept albums, experimental music. Thirty Seconds to Mars has received several awards and accolades throughout its career, including a Guinness World Record, has been included in the Kerrang! List of best artists of the 2000s. Thirty Seconds to Mars started in 1998 in Los Angeles, California, as a collaboration between brothers Jared Leto and Shannon Leto, playing music together since their childhood; the duo expanded to a four-piece when they added guitarist Solon Bixler and bassist Matt Wachter to the line-up. Additional guitarist Kevin Drake, who first auditioned for the position of bassist joined the band as a touring musician; the band played its first concerts under different names, before settling on the name "Thirty Seconds to Mars", taken from a rare manuscript titled Argus Apocraphex.
Jared Leto described the name as "a rough translation from the book. I think the idea is interesting, it's a metaphor for the future," he explained. "Thirty seconds to Mars—the fact that we're so close to something that's not a tangible idea. Mars being the God of War makes it interesting, as well. You could substitute that in there, but what's important for my brother and I, is that it be imaginative and represent the sound of our music in as unique a way as possible." He described it as a name that "works on several different levels, a phrase, lyrical, suggestive and filled with immediacy." When Thirty Seconds to Mars first started, Jared Leto did not allow his vocation as a Hollywood actor to be used in promotion of the band. By 1998, the group performed gigs at clubs, their eponymous debut album had been in the works for a couple of years, with Leto writing the majority of the songs. During this period, the band recorded demo tracks such as "Valhalla" and "Revolution", or "Jupiter" and "Hero", which appeared on the band's debut album as "Fallen" and "Year Zero" but "Buddha for Mary".
Their work led to a number of record labels being interested in signing Thirty Seconds to Mars, which signed to Immortal Records. In 1999, Virgin Records entered into the contract. Thirty Seconds to Mars retreated to the isolation of Wyoming's countryside in 2001 to record their debut album, working with Bob Ezrin and Brian Virtue, they contacted Ezrin because they grew up listening to his work with Pink Floyd and Alice Cooper and they felt he was the only one who could help them capture the size and scope of what they wanted to accomplish on their debut recording. The band chose an empty warehouse lot on 15,000 acres, striving for the precise location that would enhance their sound. Before the album was released, Puddle of Mudd invited Thirty Seconds to Mars to open a six-week tour for them in the spring of 2002; the band embarked on a North American tour to support Incubus and began a club tour in August. The band released their first studio album, 30 Seconds to Mars, on August 27, 2002 in the United States through Immortal and Virgin.
Jared Leto described the record as a concept album that focuses on human struggle and self-determination, in which otherworldly elements and conceptual ideas are used to illustrate a truthful personal situation. The album reached number 107 on the US Billboard 200 and number one on the US Top Heatseekers, selling 121,000 copies in the United States, it was preceded by the single "Capricorn", which peaked at number 31 on the US Mainstream Rock chart. Upon its release, 30 Seconds to Mars was met with positive reviews; the album was a slow-burning success, sold two million copies worldwide as of March 2011. In October 2002, the band toured with I Mother Billy Talent on MTV Campus Invasion; the following month, Thirty Seconds to Mars made their first appearance on television on Last Call with Carson Daly and opened concerts for Our Lady Peace and Sevendust. Released in 2003, "Edge of the Earth" became the second single from the album. In early 2003, Bixler left the band due to issues related to touring.
He was replaced by Tomo Miličević, who auditioned for the part of guitarist. The band went on tour
Weekend Festival
Weekend Festival is a music festival taking place in Helsinki and Pärnu also in Stockholm. The festival was organised for the first time in Luukki, Finland on the 17 and 18 of August 2012. In 2013 the festival location was changed to its old location at Kyläsaari/Kalasatama in Helsinki. In 2018 the festival moved to Hietaniemi in Helsinki. Weekend Festival artist line up has consisted of EDM artists but there have been artists from other music genres present; the festival has been attended by more than 40,000 people on both years. Every year the festival has a different theme which reflects in the visual side of the festival. In 2013 the festival theme was Space and Future while for 2014 the organisers decided to go with Electro Disco theme; the festival lineup has featured various internationally acclaimed artists including Skrillex, David Guetta, Calvin Harris, Martin Garrix etc. and Finland's own popular artists. Weekend Festival has sold out in advance on both years. In 2013 Weekend Festival was voted as the best summer festival by the listeners of Finnish radio station YleX.
In 2015, Weekend Festival expanded in 2016 to Sweden. The first Weekend Festival took place in Luukki, Espoo in 2012. Luukki Recreational Area is located 23 km from the centre of Finland; the heart of Luukki, one of the most popular outdoor recreation areas in the Helsinki region, is an old manor. The area includes 20 hectares of forest inhabited by flying squirrels; the festival area featured three stages: Weekend Stage and Party Stage. There was a camping area. Following the traffic difficulties in 2012, the festival was moved from the green Luukki forests to a more urban Kyläsaari/Kalasatama Festival area in 2013; the festival area in Kyläsaari/Kalasatama is four metro stops away from the Helsinki Railway Station and easily reachable on bus, bike or foot. Kalasatama Festival area has hosted in past various bigger concerts and festivals including Sonisphere 2011, Foo Fighters and Green Day. Weekend Festival 2013 had four stages: Weekend Stage, Future Stage and Galaxy Stage. Future Stage was located at the Kyläsaari harbour.
The festival area in Kyläsaari does not feature a camping ground. In 2018 the festival expanded to a 3 day festival. In 2015, Weekend Festival Baltic took place on Pärnu beach, with three stages. Weekend Festival was nominated for Best Festival award in Music & Media Industry Awards in 2013. Finnish radio station YleX listeners voted Weekend Festival as the best festival of the summer in Finland in 2013. Weekend Festival gathered 25% of the total votes. Weekend Festival was nominated as the Best Medium-sized Festival in 2013 at European Festival Awards. List of electronic music festivals
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1983. The group's musical style consists of rock with an emphasis on funk, as well as elements from other genres such as punk rock and psychedelic rock; when played live, their music incorporates elements of jam band due to the improvised nature of many of their performances. The band consists of founding members vocalist Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea, longtime drummer Chad Smith, former touring guitarist Josh Klinghoffer. Red Hot Chili Peppers are one of the best-selling bands of all time with over 80 million records sold worldwide, they have been nominated for 16 Grammy Awards, of which they have won six, are the most successful band in alternative rock radio history holding the records for most number-one singles, most cumulative weeks at number one and most top-ten songs on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart. In 2012, they were inducted into the Roll Hall of Fame; the band's original lineup named Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, featured guitarist Hillel Slovak and drummer Jack Irons, alongside Kiedis and Flea.
Because of commitments to other bands and Irons did not play on the band's self-titled debut album. Slovak performed on the second and third albums, Freaky Styley and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, but he died from a heroin overdose in 1988; as a result of his friend's death, Irons chose to leave the group. After short-lived replacements on guitar and drums, John Frusciante and Chad Smith joined in 1988; the lineup of Flea, Kiedis and Smith was the longest-lasting and recorded five studio albums beginning with Mother's Milk. In 1990, the group signed with Warner Bros. Records and recorded the album Blood Sugar Sex Magik under producer Rick Rubin; this album became the band's first major commercial success, but Frusciante grew uncomfortable with the band's popularity and left abruptly in 1992 in the middle of the Blood Sugar Sex Magik Tour. After two temporary guitarists, Dave Navarro joined the group in 1993 and played on their subsequent album, One Hot Minute. Although commercially successful, the album failed to match the critical or popular acclaim of Blood Sugar Sex Magik, selling less than half as much as its predecessor.
Navarro was fired from the band in 1998. Frusciante, fresh out of drug rehabilitation, rejoined the band that same year at Flea's request; the reunited quartet returned to the studio to record Californication, which became the band's biggest commercial success with 16 million copies sold worldwide. That album was followed three years by By the Way, four years by the double album Stadium Arcadium, their first number-one album in America. After a world tour, the group went on an extended hiatus. Frusciante announced. Klinghoffer, who had worked both as a sideman for the band on their Stadium Arcadium tour and on Frusciante's solo projects, replaced him; the band's tenth studio album, I'm with You, was released in 2011 and topped the charts in 18 different countries. The band released their eleventh studio album, The Getaway, in 2016; the album was produced by Danger Mouse, marking the first time since Mother's Milk that the Red Hot Chili Peppers had not worked with Rubin, topped the charts in ten different countries.
As of November 2018, the band is in the process of working on their twelfth studio album which they expect to release in 2019. Red Hot Chili Peppers were formed in Los Angeles by singer Anthony Kiedis, guitarist Hillel Slovak, bassist Flea, drummer Jack Irons, all of whom were classmates from Fairfax High School. Going under the band name of Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, their first performance was at the Rhythm Lounge club to a crowd of 30 people, opening for Gary and Neighbor's Voices. Inspired by punk funk acts like The Contortions and Defunkt, they "wrote" for the occasion, which involved the band improvising music while Kiedis rapped a poem he had written called "Out in L. A.". At the time and Irons were committed to another group, What Is This? however, the performance was so lively, that the band was asked to return the following week. Due to this unexpected success, the band changed its name to Red Hot Chili Peppers, playing several more shows at various LA clubs and musical venues.
Six songs from these initial shows were on the band's first demo tape. In November 1983, manager Lindy Goetz struck a seven-album deal with EMI Enigma Records. Two weeks earlier however, What Is This? had obtained a record deal with MCA. Slovak and Irons still considered the Red Hot Chili Peppers as only a side project and so in December 1983 they quit to focus on What Is This?. Instead of dissolving the band and Flea recruited new members. Cliff Martinez, a friend of Flea's and member from the punk band, The Weirdos, was the new replacement for Irons; the band held auditions for a new guitarist but decided after a few practices that Weirdos guitarist Dix Denney did not fit. Kiedis described the two final candidates, Mark Nine and Jack Sherman as a "hip avant-garde art school refugee" and a nerd looking guy with a combed-back Jewfro with an unknown background. Musically Sherman was hired as Slovak's replacement; the band released their eponymous debut album, The Red Hot Chili Peppers in August 1984.
Though the album did not set sales records, airplay on college radio and MTV helped to build a fan base, the album sold 300,000 copies. Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill, who produced the album "didn't embrace
Singing Revolution
The Singing Revolution is a used name for events between 1987 and 1991 that led to the restoration of the independence of Estonia and Lithuania. The term was coined by an Estonian activist and artist, Heinz Valk, in an article published a week after the 10–11 June 1988, spontaneous mass evening singing demonstrations at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds. After World War II, the Baltic states had been incorporated into the USSR after military occupation and annexation first in 1940 and again in 1944. Mikhail Gorbachev introduced "glasnost" and "perestroika" in 1985, hoping to stimulate the failing Soviet economy and encourage productivity in the areas of consumer goods, the liberalisation of cooperative businesses and the service economy. Glasnost rescinded limitations on political freedoms in the Soviet Union which led to problems within the non-Russian nations occupied in the build-up to war in the 1940s. Hitherto unrecognised issues kept secret by the Moscow government were admitted to in public, causing dissatisfaction within the Baltic states.
Combined with the war in Afghanistan and the nuclear fallout in Chernobyl, grievances were aired in a publicly explosive and politically decisive manner. Estonians were concerned about the demographic threat to their national identity posed by the influx of individuals from foreign ethnic groups to work on such large Soviet development projects as phosphate mining. Access to Western émigré communities abroad and in Estonia, informal relations with Finland and access to Finnish TV showing the Western lifestyle contributed to widespread dissatisfaction with the Soviet system and provoked mass demonstrations as repression on dissidents, religious communities and ordinary consumers eased towards the end of the 1980s. Massive demonstrations against the Soviet regime began after widespread liberalisation of the regime failed to take into account national sensitivities, it was hoped by Moscow that the non-Russian nations would remain within the USSR despite the removal of restrictions on freedom of speech and national icons.
However, the situation deteriorated to such an extent that by 1989 there were campaigns aimed at freeing the nations from the Soviet Union altogether. The Soviet government's plan to excavate phosphorite in the Lääne-Viru County with catastrophic consequences for the environment and society was revealed in February 1987; that started the Phosphorite War public environmental campaign. The MRP-AEG group held the Hirvepark meeting in the Old Town of Tallinn at the anniversary of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1987, demanding to disclose and condemn its secret protocol; the "Five Patriotic Songs" series by Alo Mattiisen premiered at the Tartu Pop Festival in May 1988. In June the Old Town Festival was held in Tallinn, after the official part of the festival, the participants moved to the Song Festival Grounds and started to sing patriotic songs together spontaneously; the Baltic Way, a human chain of two million people, spanned from Tallinn to Vilnius on 23 August 1989. Mattiisen's "Five Patriotic Songs" were performed again at the Rock Summer festival in Tallinn held on 26–28 August 1988.
The Song of Estonia festival was held at the Song Festival Grounds on 11 September. Trivimi Velliste, Chairman of the Estonian Heritage Society, first voiced the public ambition to regain independence; the Supreme Soviet of Estonia issued the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration on 16 November. The Singing Revolution lasted with various protests and acts of defiance. In 1991, as Soviet tanks attempted to stop the progress towards independence, the Supreme Soviet of Estonia together with the Congress of Estonia proclaimed the restoration of the independent state of Estonia and repudiated Soviet legislation. People acted as human shields to protect TV stations from the Soviet tanks. Through these actions Estonia regained its independence without any bloodshed. Independence was declared on the late evening of 20 August 1991, after an agreement between different political parties was reached; the next morning Soviet troops, according to Estonian TV, attempted to storm Tallinn TV Tower but were unsuccessful.
The Communist hardliners' coup attempt failed amidst mass pro-democracy demonstrations in Moscow led by Boris Yeltsin. On 22 August 1991, Iceland became the first nation to recognise the newly restored independence of Estonia. Today, a plaque commemorating this event is situated on the outside wall of the Foreign Ministry, which itself is situated on Islandi väljak 1, or "Iceland Square 1"; the plaque reads. Some other nations did not recognise the annexation of Estonia by the Soviet Union. During the second half of the 1980s as Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost and perestroika in the USSR, which rolled back restrictions to freedom in the Soviet Union, aversion to the Soviet regime had grown into the third Latvian National Awakening, which reached its peak in mid-1988. In 1986, it became known to the public that the USSR was planning to build another hydroelectric power plant on Latvia's largest river Daugava, that a decision had been made to build a metro in Riga. Both of these projects planned by Moscow could have led to the destruction of Latvia's landscape and cultural and historical heritage.
In the press journalists urged the public to protest against these decisions. The public reacted and in response the Environmental Protection Club was founded on 28 February 1987. During the second half of the 1980s the Environmental Protection Club became one
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