1.
Philip Oakey
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Philip Phil Oakey is an English singer, songwriter and producer. He is best known as the singer, songwriter. Aside from the Human League, he has had a solo music career and collaborated with numerous other artists. Oakey was one of the most visually distinctive music artists of the early 1980s. S. and UK, Oakey has been lead singer of The Human League for over 30 years, with whom he has sold more than 20 million records worldwide. He continues recording and performing internationally, Oakey was born on 2 October 1955 in Hinckley, Leicestershire. Oakey is of Indian, Irish and Malaysian descent and he settled in Sheffield when he was fourteen. He was educated at King Edward VII School in Sheffield and he left school at 18 without finishing his exams and worked in a number of casual jobs, in a university bookshop, and from 1975 as a porter at Thornbury Annex Hospital in Sheffield. He was married briefly to his girlfriend, whom he met at school, oakey’s entry into music in 1977 was entirely accidental. He had bought a saxophone but had given up trying to learn how to play it, in Sheffield in 1977, a school friend of Oakeys, Martyn Ware, along with Ian Craig Marsh and Adi Newton had formed a band called The Future. They were part of a genre of music that used analogue synthesizers instead of traditional instruments. Although they had recorded a number of tapes, they remained unsigned. Newton left the band after they were turned down by record companies, Ware decided that The Future needed a dedicated lead singer to replace Newton. His first choice, Glenn Gregory, was unavailable, so Ware suggested his old school friend Philip Oakey to Marsh. Although Oakey had absolutely no experience, he was well known in the Sheffield social scene, principally for his eclectic dress sense. The lack of experience didn’t bother Ware who thought that Oakey already looked like a pop star, Ware went to visit Oakey to ask him to join The Future, finding him away from home, he left a note on Oakeys front door asking him to join. Oakey accepted and joined the band in mid-1977, in late 1977, The Future changed its name to The Human League – after an element of a science fiction board game. The new band played their first live gig at Psalter Lane Arts College in June 1978, the early Human League had a reputation for being arty and had very little commercial success, releasing two singles, Being Boiled and Empire State Human, with lyrics written by Oakey. They would eventually release two albums, Reproduction and Travelogue, both recorded at the bands Monumental Pictures studio, Reproduction failed to chart, but after an impromptu appearance on Top of the Pops in May 1980, Travelogue entered the UK Album Chart and peaked at No.16
2.
Joanne Catherall
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Joanne Catherall is one of the two female vocalists of the English synthpop band The Human League. At short notice she and Sulley were invited to join the bands European tour that was in crisis after the group had split. The pair then joined Oakey in forming a new and commercially successful line-up of The Human League, Catherall has remained in the band ever since, working constantly over the next 30 years. Today, she is a joint business partner in the band, in Sheffield in mid 1980, Catherall was a school friend of the slightly younger Susan Ann Sulley. Both girls were 17 years old and attended Sheffields Frecheville Comprehensive School, one Wednesday night in late October, Catherall and Sulley went out together to the futurist Crazy Daisy Nightclub in Sheffield city centre to dance and socialise. Philip Oakey, the singer of the alternative, but relatively unknown electronic band The Human League, was also out in Sheffield that night. The Human League had recently split acrimoniously over creative differences, leaving two of the original four members, Oakey and Adrian Wright, to continue. Crucially, The Human League was contracted to a European tour starting within a week. Already in debt to Virgin Records, Oakey had to recruit new members in a matter of days for the tour or be sued by the tours promoters, face bankruptcy. Oakey went into Sheffield that evening to recruit a female backing singer for the tour. Later that evening, by pure chance Oakey went to the Crazy Daisy, without preamble Oakey asked both girls to join the tour as dancers and incidental vocalists. Catherall and Sulley agreed to the immediately, despite having absolutely no singing or professional dancing experience. However, with the girls being 17/18 years old, the decision about their going on the tour lay with their respective parents. The parents of both the girls were unhappy with the idea and initially refused to give their consent, Catherall and Sulleys school also agreed to the absence as it was thought visiting Europe would be educational for the girls. The first European tour of The Human League got underway with the two young recruits assigned to dancing and incidental vocal duties, the girls at this stage were just guests in the group on a salary of £30 a week. Although the tour was a success the crowds were largely hostile to Catherall and Sulley, Catherall recalls dodging several beer cans thrown at her during the tour and was often heckled. On return to Sheffield in December 1980 both girls were made members of The Human League. After the tour, Catherall and Sulley returned to school full-time while Wright, the new Human League of Sulley, Oakey, Catherall and Wright started to gain ground in early 1981 with the release of the single Boys and Girls
3.
Susan Ann Sulley
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Susan Ann Sulley, formerly known as Susanne Sulley and Susan Ann Gayle, is a British singer and one of the two female vocalists of the synthpop group The Human League. The pair were invited to join the new line-up, initially as dancers and they soon were asked to provide full vocals by Oakey as an experiment. The girls distinctive vocals became a signature of the new Human League, changing the bands style, its appeal to the mainstream public. Recruited into The Human League at age 17, she is a joint business partner in the band which is recording and performing to this day. The Human League has dominated Sulleys life, she has been a singer all her life and has never had any other full-time job. Joanne and I werent ambitious, we didnt want to be in a pop group and we were just two girls at school who wanted to go to university. Sulley was born in Sheffield, UK on 22 March 1963 and she was raised and spent all her early years in the Gleadless suburb of the city. For her final education she attended the citys Frecheville Comprehensive School from the late 1970s until mid 1981 and her best friend from the age of 13 was fellow lifelong Sheffield resident and Frecheville student Joanne Catherall. By early 1981 she was calling herself Susanne Sulley, an amalgamation of her two first names, a nickname by which she had been casually known at school. The story of how Sulley and Joanne Catherall came to join The Human League remains firmly embedded in pop legend, although verified by all involved, it was questioned at the time in some quarters as a modern Cinderella story or a deliberate publicity stunt. October 1980 saw the departure of Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware from the original line-up of the Human League at very short notice. It was decided that Philip Oakey would retain the title of The Human League, Oakey also would be responsible for honouring the bands commitments to Virgin Records. One of these included an imminent European tour, and the promoters threatened to sue Oakey if it was not completed as scheduled. With a hostile music press writing off The Human League, Oakey hastily set about finding replacement group members for the tour that was due to start in less than a week. With time rapidly running out before the tour, Oakey needed a backing vocalist to replace the high vocals originally provided by Martyn Ware. Visiting Sheffield city centre on a Wednesday night, Oakey spotted two teenaged girls dancing at the Crazy Daisy Nightclub. With what he considered unique dance moves, immaculate make-up, Catherall and Sulley accepted the offer, but then had to convince their parents. Fears were laid to rest when Oakey visited the parents to assure them that, in Oakeys words, it wasnt a heinous plan to take the girls abroad
4.
Sheffield
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Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough in South Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, its derives from the River Sheaf. With some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its industrial roots to encompass a wider economic base. The population of the City of Sheffield is 569,700, Sheffield is the third largest English district by population. The metropolitan population of Sheffield is 1,569,000, in the 19th century, Sheffield gained an international reputation for steel production. Known as the Steel City, many innovations were developed locally, including crucible and stainless steel, Sheffield received its municipal charter in 1843, becoming the City of Sheffield in 1893. International competition in iron and steel caused a decline in these industries in the 1970s and 1980s, the 21st century has seen extensive redevelopment in Sheffield along with other British cities. Sheffields gross value added has increased by 60% since 1997, standing at £9.2 billion in 2007, the economy has experienced steady growth averaging around 5% annually, greater than that of the broader region of Yorkshire and the Humber. The city is in the foothills of the Pennines, and the valleys of the River Don and its four tributaries, the Loxley, the Porter Brook, the Rivelin. 61% of Sheffields entire area is space, and a third of the city lies within the Peak District national park. The area now occupied by the City of Sheffield is believed to have inhabited since at least the late Upper Palaeolithic period. The earliest evidence of occupation in the Sheffield area was found at Creswell Crags to the east of the city. In the Iron Age the area became the southernmost territory of the Pennine tribe called the Brigantes and it is this tribe who are thought to have constructed several hill forts in and around Sheffield. Gradually, Anglian settlers pushed west from the kingdom of Deira, a Celtic presence within the Sheffield area is evidenced by two settlements called Wales and Waleswood close to Sheffield. The settlements that grew and merged to form Sheffield, however, date from the half of the first millennium. In Anglo-Saxon times, the Sheffield area straddled the border between the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria, after the Norman conquest, Sheffield Castle was built to protect the local settlements, and a small town developed that is the nucleus of the modern city. By 1296, a market had been established at what is now known as Castle Square, from 1570 to 1584, Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in Sheffield Castle and Sheffield Manor. During the 1740s, a form of the steel process was discovered that allowed the manufacture of a better quality of steel than had previously been possible
5.
Synth-pop
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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, electronic, art rock, disco, and particularly the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a 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. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestras success opened the way for bands such as P-Model, Plastics. The development of polyphonic synthesizers, the definition of MIDI. This, its adoption by the acts from the New Romantic movement, together with the rise of MTV. Synth-pop is sometimes deployed interchangeably with electropop, but electropop may also denote a variant of synth-pop that places emphasis on a harder. In the late 1980s duos such as Erasure and Pet Shop Boys adopted a style that was successful on the US dance-charts. Some artists and bands were criticised for gender bending, 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, many synth-pop musicians had limited musical skills, relying on the technology to produce or reproduce the music. The result was often minimalist, with grooves that were woven together from simple repeated riffs often with no harmonic progression to speak of. Early synth-pop has been described as eerie, sterile, and vaguely menacing, using droning electronics with little change in inflection, common lyrical themes of synth-pop songs were isolation, urban anomie, and feelings of being emotionally cold and hollow. Synthesizers were increasingly used to imitate the conventional and clichéd sound of orchestras, thin, treble-dominant, synthesized melodies and simple drum programmes gave way to thick, and compressed production, and a more conventional drum sound. Lyrics were generally optimistic, dealing with more traditional subject matter for pop music such as romance, escapism. 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 groups of musicians, these singers were often part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation. Later synth-pop saw a shift to a style influenced by other genres. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used practically in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, the portable Minimoog, which allowed much easier use, particularly in live performance was widely adopted by progressive rock musicians such as Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman of Yes
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.
Art pop
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Art pop is a loosely defined style of pop music influenced by pop art and postmodernisms integration of high and low culture. Art pop artists have explored ideas such as status as commercial art, notions of artifice, the self as a construction. Starting in the mid 1960s, British and American pop musicians began incorporating the ideas of the pop art movement, English art pop musicians drew from their art school studies, while in America the style intersected with the Beat Generation and folk musics subsequent singer-songwriter movement. The genre further developed with artists who rejected conventional rock instrumentation and structure in favor of dance styles, the 2010s saw new art pop trends develop, such as hip hop artists drawing on visual art and vaporwave artists exploring elements of contemporary capitalism. Sociomusicologist Simon Frith has distinguished the appropriation of art pop music as having a particular concern with style, gesture. Central to particular purveyors of the style were notions of the self as a work of construction and artifice, as well as a preoccupation with the invention of terms, imagery, process, and affect. Cultural theorist Mark Fisher wrote that the development of art pop evolved out of the triangulation of pop, art, Frith states that it was more or less directly inspired by Pop art. Writers for The Independent and the Financial Times have noted the attempts of art pop music to distance its audiences from the public at large, the Independents Nick Coleman wrote, Art-pop is partly about attitude and style, but its essentially about art. It is, if you like, a way of making pure formalism socially acceptable in a pop context, the boundaries between art and pop music became increasingly blurred throughout the second half of the 20th century. In the 1960s, pop musicians such as John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Pete Townshend, Brian Eno, and Bryan Ferry began to take inspiration from their previous art school studies. Frith states that in Britain, art school represented an escape route for the bright working class kids. In North America, art pop was influenced by Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, another chief influence on the development of art pop was the Pop art movement. The term Pop art, first coined to describe the value of mass-produced goods, was directly applicable to the contemporary phenomenon of rock. According to Frith, turned out to signal the end of Romanticism, progressive rock was the bohemians last bet. In this context the key Pop art theorist was not Hamilton or any of the other British artists who, for all their interest in the market, remained its academic admirers only. For Warhol the significant issue wasnt the relative merits of high and low art, in the words of author Matthew Bannister, Wilson and Spector were both known as eremitic studio obsessives. Habitually absented themselves from their own work, and like Warhol, Spector existed not as presence, both vastly successful commercial artists, and both simultaneously absent and present in their own creations. The Beach Boys singles California Girls, God Only Knows, as the dominant format of pop music transitioned from singles to albums, many rock bands created works that aspired to make grand artistic statements, where art rock would flourish
8.
Dance-pop
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Dance-pop is a pop and dance subgenre that originated in the early 1980s. It is generally up-tempo music intended for nightclubs with the intention of being danceable, the genre, on the whole, tends to be producer-driven, despite some notable exceptions. Dance-pop borrowed influences from other genres, which varied by producer, artist, such include contemporary R&B, house, trance, techno, new jack swing, funk, synthpop, electropop and some forms of europop. Dance-pop is a mainstream style of music and there have been numerous pop artists. As the term started to go out of fashion by the late 1970s to early 1980s, other terms were commonly used to describe disco-based music, such as post-disco, club. Dance-pop music emerged in the 1980s as a combination of dance and pop, or post-disco, Dance-pop music was usually created, composed and produced by record producers who would then hire singers to perform the songs. In the beginning of the 80s disco was an anathema to the mainstream pop, according to prominent Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Madonna had a huge role in popularizing dance music as mainstream music, utilizing her charisma, chutzpah and sex appeal. Erlewine claimed that Madonna launched dance-pop and set the standard for the genre for the two decades. The staff of Vice magazine stated that her debut album drew the blueprint for future dance-pop, in the 1980s dance-pop was closely aligned to other up-tempo electronic genres, such as Hi-NRG. Prominent producers in the 1980s included Stock, Aitken and Waterman, during the decade, dance-pop borrowed influences from funk, new jack swing, and contemporary R&B. Other prominent dance-pop artists and groups of the 1980s included the Pet Shop Boys, Mel and Kim, Samantha Fox, Debbie Gibson, by the 1990s, dance-pop had become a major genre in popular music. Several dance-pop groups and artists emerged during the 1990s, such as the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Backstreet Boys, during the early 1990s, dance-pop borrowed influences from house music, as well as contemporary R&B and new jack swing. Additionally, also in 1998, Cher released a song called Believe which made usage of a technological innovation of the time. An audio processor and a form of pitch modification software, Auto-Tune is commonly used as a way to correct pitch, since the late 1990s, the use of Auto-Tune processing has become a common feature of dance-pop music. Celine Dion also released a dance-pop song Thats the Way It Is by the end of 1999 and it has a moderately slow tempo but an up-beat song. At the beginning of the 2000s, dance-pop music was still prominent, nonetheless, as R&B and hip hop became extremely popular from the early part of the decade onwards, dance-pop often borrowed a lot of its influences from urban music. Dance-pop stars from the 1980s and 1990s such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Madonna, Janet Jackson, in Madonnas case, her album Music contained elements of Euro disco, especially the successful eponymous lead single. Britney Spears album Blackout contained influences of Euro disco, the mid-to-late 2000s saw the arrival of several new dance-pop artists, including Rihanna, Kesha, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry
9.
EMI
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EMI was a British multinational conglomerate founded in March 1931 and was based in London. At the time of its break-up in 2012, it was the fourth-largest business group and its EMI Records Ltd. group of record labels included EMI Records, Parlophone, Virgin Records and Capitol Records. EMI also had a publishing arm, EMI Music Publishing—also based in London with offices globally. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE100 Index, other members of the Sony consortium include the Estate of Michael Jackson, The Blackstone Group, and Abu Dhabi–owned investment fund Mubadala Development Company. The new vertically integrated company produced sound recordings as well as recording, the companys gramophone manufacturing led to forty years of success with larger-scale electronics and electrical engineering. He was killed in 1942 whilst conducting flight trials on an experimental H2S radar set, post-war, the company resumed its involvement in making broadcasting equipment, notably providing the BBCs second television transmitter at Sutton Coldfield. It also manufactured broadcast television cameras for British television production companies as well as for the BBC, the commercial television ITV companies also used them alongside cameras made by Pye and Marconi. Exports of this piece of equipment were low, however, the company was also for many years an internationally respected manufacturer of photomultipliers. This part of the business was transferred to Thorn as part of Thorn-EMI, in 1958 the EMIDEC1100, the UKs first commercially available all-transistor computer, was developed at Hayes under the leadership of Godfrey Hounsfield, an electrical engineer at EMI. In 1973 EMI was awarded a prestigious Queens Award for Technological Innovation for what was called the EMI scanner. After brief, but brilliant, success in the imaging field, EMIs manufacturing activities were sold off to other companies. Subsequently, development and manufacturing activities were sold off to companies and work moved to other towns such as Crawley. Emihus Electronics, based in Glenrothes, Scotland, was owned 51% by Hughes Aircraft, of California, US and it manufactured integrated circuits electrolytic capacitors and, for a short period in the mid-1970s, hand-held calculators under the Gemini name. Early in its life, the Gramophone Company established subsidiary operations in a number of countries in the British Commonwealth, including India, Australia. Over 150,000 78-rpm recordings from around the world are held in EMIs temperature-controlled archive in Hayes, in 1931, the year the company was formed, it opened the legendary recording studios at Abbey Road, London. During the 1930s and 1940s, its roster of artists included Arturo Toscanini, Sir Edward Elgar, during this time EMI appointed its first A&R managers. These included George Martin, who brought the Beatles into the EMI fold. When the Gramophone Company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1931, at this point RCA had a majority shareholding in the new company, giving RCA chair David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board
10.
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
11.
A&M Records
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A&M Records was an American record label founded as an independent label by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss in 1962. Due to the success of the discography A&M released, the label garnered interest and was acquired by PolyGram in 1989. Today, A&Ms catalog releases are managed by Verve Records, Universal Music Enterprises, A&M Records was formed in 1962 by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss. Their first choice for a name was Carnival Records, under which they released two singles before discovering another label had already taken the Carnival name, the company was subsequently renamed A&M, after Alperts and Mosss initials. From 1966 to 1999, the headquarters were on the grounds of the historic Charlie Chaplin Studios at 1416 North La Brea Avenue. Marc Benno, Liza Minnelli, Rita Coolidge, Wes Montgomery, Paul Desmond, Bobby Tench, Hummingbird, Toni Basil, folk artists Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Gene Clark also recorded for the label during the 1970s. Billy Preston joined the label in 1971, followed by Andre Popp, in the 1970s, under its manufacturing and distribution agreement with Ode Records, A&M released albums by Carole King and the comedy duo Cheech & Chong. On March 10,1977, A&M signed the Sex Pistols after the band had dropped by EMI. However, A&M dropped the band within a week, within a decade of its inception, A&M became the worlds largest independent record company. A&M releases were issued in the United Kingdom by EMIs Stateside Records label. From 1969, A&M set up their own UK base appointing John Deacon as General Manager - a post he held until 1979, A&M releases were also issued in Australia through Festival Records until 1989. A&M Records Ltd. was established in 1970, with distribution handled by other labels with a presence in Europe, A&M Records of Canada Ltd. was also formed in 1970, and A&M Records of Europe in 1977. In 1979, A&M entered an agreement with RCA Records in the USA. A&M was bought by PolyGram in 1989, Alpert and Moss continued to manage the label until 1993. In 1998, Alpert and Moss sued PolyGram for breach of the integrity clause, in 1991, A&M launched Perspective Records as a joint venture with producing team Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Jam and Lewis stepped down as CEOs of the imprint in 1997, in 1999, the label was absorbed into A&M. In the mid-1990s, A&M began distributing its PolyGram sister label Polydor Records in the USA, ceCe Peniston, Intelligent Hoodlum, Dred Scott, Ridel High and the Gin Blossoms. The company released the soundtracks Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, The Three Musketeers, Sabrina, The Living Sea, Demolition Man, and Lethal Weapon 3
12.
Caroline Records
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Caroline Records is an American record label that started as a subsidiary of Richard Bransons Virgin Records America during the early to mid-1970s. It specialized in inexpensive LPs by mainly progressive rock and jazz artists that lacked commercial appeal, the first release was Outside the Dream Syndicate by Tony Conrad and Faust in 1973. The logo was a variation of Virgins Twins logo designed by Roger Dean. Both the US and UK branches of Caroline Records are subsidiaries of Caroline Music, Caroline has or had a number of subsidiary labels including Astralwerks, Gyroscope, Caroline Blue Plate, Rocks the World, Scamp, and Passenger. On February 20,2014, it was revealed that American rapper 50 Cent had signed with the label, steven Wilson joined the labels roster in April 2017, ahead of the release of his fifth studio album. Artist Shop Caroline Records Caroline Distribution Official website Discogs Caroline Records Discogs Gyroscope EMI Group Website links
13.
Clock DVA
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Clock DVA are an industrial, post-punk and EBM group from Sheffield, England. The group was formed in 1978 by Adolphus Adi Newton and Steven Judd Turner, along with contemporaries Heaven 17, Clock DVAs name was inspired by the Russian-influenced Nadsat of Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange, Dva is the Russian word for two. Newton had previously worked with members of Cabaret Voltaire in a collective called The Studs and with Ian Craig Marsh and he formed the first lineup of Clock DVA in 1978 with Judd Turner, David J. Hammond, Roger Quail and Charlie Collins. 4 Hours, the single from Thirst, was covered by former Bauhaus bassist David J on his 1985 solo EP Blue Moods Turning Tail. The band split up in 1981, with the members of the band going on to form The Box. Turner died in September 1981 due to a drug overdose. In 1982, Newton formed a new version of the band, first releasing the single High Holy Disco Mass on the major label Polydor Records under the name DVA, the band then released the album Advantage under the name Clock DVA. After a European tour in 1983, however, the band split acrimoniously, Adi Newton went on to form The Anti-Group or T. A. G. C. They released several albums continuing in a vein to the early Clock DVA. In 1987, Newton reactivated DVA and invited Dean Dennis and Paul Browse back into the fold to aid Newtons use of computer aided sampling techniques which he had been developing in The Anti Group. They released Buried Dreams, an album which received critical acclaim as a pioneering work in the cyberpunk genre. It is also rumored to have been the CD found in Jeffrey Dahmers stereo at the time of his arrest, Browse left the group in 1989 and was replaced by Robert E. Baker. The album Man-Amplified, an exploration of cybernetics, was the next release, digital Soundtracks, an instrumental album, followed. Following Denniss departure from the group, Newton and Baker produced the album Sign, after the release of Sign and related singles, Clock DVA toured Europe and Newton relocated to Italy. However, their Italian record label at the time, Contempo, collective, an anthology album and a box set was released in 1994. In 1998, Czech record label Nextera released a reissue of Buried Dreams, sanctioned by Dean Dennis and Paul Browse, Adi Newton reactivated Clock DVA along with his creative partner Jane Radion Newton in 2008. Since 2011 Clock DVA has performed at electronic music festivals and venues throughout Europe with a new line-up consisting of Newton, Maurizio TeZ Martinucci. In November 2011, a new Clock DVA track Phase IV was featured on Wroclaw Industrial Festival compilation album, in January 2012, German record label Vinyl on Demand announced Horology, a vinyl box set compilation of early Clock DVA material
14.
Heaven 17
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Heaven 17 are an English new wave and synth-pop band that formed in Sheffield in 1980. The band were a trio for most of their career, composed of Martyn Ware, Ian Craig Marsh, although most of the bands music was recorded in the 1980s, they have occasionally reformed to record and perform, playing their first ever live concerts in 1997. Marsh left the band in 2007 and Ware and Gregory continued to perform as Heaven 17, when personal and creative tensions within the group reached a breaking point in late 1980, Marsh and Ware left the band, ceding the Human League name to Oakey. Taking their new name from a pop band mentioned in Anthony Burgesss dystopian novel, A Clockwork Orange, they became Heaven 17. B. E. F. s first recordings were an album called Music For Stowaways and an LP called Music For Listening To. Shortly after, they completed their line-up when they recruited their friend, photographer Glenn Gregory, like The Human League, Heaven 17 heavily used synthesisers and drum machines. Session musicians were used for guitar and guitar and grand piano. Whereas the bands former colleagues the Human League had gone on to chart success in 1981. Their debut single Fascist Groove Thang attracted some attention and, due to its overtly left-wing political lyrics, was banned by BBC Radio 1 DJ Mike Read. Neither this nor any other of the four singles taken from the debut album Penthouse. The album itself proved to be a success, peaking at Number 14 on the UK Albums Chart, around this time, Ware and Marsh produced two further albums as B. E. F. The first being Music of Quality & Distinction Volume One featuring Glenn Gregory, Tina Turner, Paula Yates, Billy Mackenzie, Hank Marvin, Paul Jones, Bernie Nolan, the tracks were cover versions of songs that Ware, Marsh and Gregory had grown up listening to. The album peaked at number 25, the second album was Geisha Boys and Temple Girls for the dance troupe Hot Gossip, which used songs formerly recorded by the Human League and Heaven 17, and a track each from Sting and Talking Heads. B. E. F. took over production duties when Richard James Burgess of the band Landscape was unable to complete the album, in October 1982, Heaven 17 released their new single Let Me Go, which disappointingly charted just outside the UK Top 40. However, in 1983 the bands fortunes changed and their next single, Temptation, reached number 2 on the UK Singles Chart in spring 1983 and became their biggest hit. The song was taken from their album, The Luxury Gap. The album itself charted at number 4 on the UK Albums Chart, their highest ever position, and was certified platinum by the BPI in 1984. In the United States, their self-titled Heaven 17 album was a re-working of Penthouse, towards the end of 1983, the band helped relaunch Tina Turners career, producing, and providing backing vocals on her hit Lets Stay Together, a cover of the Al Green song
15.
Giorgio Moroder
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Giovanni Giorgio Moroder is an Italian singer, songwriter, DJ and record producer. Moroder is frequently credited with pioneering Italo disco and electronic dance music, when in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records. Moroder also composed the soundtrack for the film Midnight Express, which won an Academy Award, in 1990, he composed Unestate italiana, the official theme song of the 1990 FIFA World Cup. He also created a score of songs for performers including David Bowie, Kylie Minogue, Irene Cara, Janet Jackson, Madleen Kane, Melissa Manchester, Blondie, Japan, Moroder has stated that the work of which he is most proud is Berlins Take My Breath Away. What a Feeling earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1986 and 1983, Moroder was born Giovanni Giorgio Moroder on 26 April 1940 in Urtijëi in South Tyrol, Italy. He came to prominence in 1969, when his recording Looky Looky and he then made a name for himself in studios around Germany in the early 1970s. That same year he co-wrote and produced the seminal Donna Summer hit single I Feel Love, the following year he released Chase, the theme from the film Midnight Express. Chase is often used on the American syndicated late-night radio show Coast to Coast and was used as an entrance theme for wrestlings group The Midnight Express. These songs achieved some success in the United Kingdom, the United States and across Europe. The full film score for Midnight Express won him his first Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1979, in 1979 Moroder released his album E=MC². Text on the albums cover stated that it was the first electronic live-to-digital album and he also released three albums between 1977–1979 under the name Munich Machine. In 1980, he composed and produced two soundtrack albums, the first for Foxes and the second for American Gigolo. A double album of the Foxes soundtrack was released on the disco label Casablanca Records which includes Donna Summers hit single On the Radio, the Foxes soundtrack also contains a song titled Bad Love, written and performed by the singer-actress Cher and produced by Moroder. The American Gigolo soundtrack featured the Moroder-produced Call Me by Blondie, the combined club play of the albums tracks was number two for five weeks on the disco/dance charts. In 1982 he wrote the soundtrack of the movie Cat People, in 1983, Moroder produced the soundtrack for the film Scarface. During its initial release, the album was available in a few countries. Notable Moroder-produced tracks included Scarface by Paul Engemann, Rush Rush by Debbie Harry, in 1984, Moroder compiled a new restoration and edit of the silent film Metropolis and provided it with a contemporary soundtrack. This soundtrack includes seven pop music tracks from Pat Benatar, Jon Anderson, Adam Ant, Billy Squier, Loverboy, Bonnie Tyler and Freddie Mercury
16.
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis
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James Samuel Jimmy Jam Harris III and Terry Steven Lewis are an American R&B songwriting and record production team. They have enjoyed success since the 1980s with various artists. They have written 31 top ten hits in the UK and 41 in the US, Jimmy Jam is the son of Cornbread Harris, a Minneapolis blues and jazz musician. Jimmy Jam met Lewis while in school in Minneapolis. They did not meet in class, however, but while attending a TRIO Upward Bound program on the University of Minnesota campus and they formed a band called Flyte Tyme, which evolved into The Time. In 1981, they were joined by Morris Day and toured with Prince as his opening act, as members of The Time, they played instruments on two of the groups five albums. The pair asked Andrews to manage them, and through her relationships Andrews first introduced Jam and they produced their first masters for Avant for the SOS Band. Andrews set-up Jam and Lewiss company Flyte Tyme Productions as a business entity, the producers went on to produce several other masters for Avant under Dina Andrews Management for the SOS Band, Cherrelle, Alexander ONeal and Change. The pair was fired by Prince from a tour after a blizzard left them unable to rejoin during a break to produce music for The SOS Band. However, one of the tracks they were producing, Just Be Good to Me, became a hit and sealed the duos reputation, the duo would rejoin The Time for two albums, 1990s Pandemonium and the 2011 album Condensate under the name the Original 7ven. The duo was noted for use of the Roland TR-808 drum machine. Their collaboration on her album, 1989s Rhythm Nation 1814. In 1991, they founded a label, Perspective Records. Later that year, their newly minted label experienced success with a Minneapolis-based gospel/R&B collective of artists known as Sounds of Blackness and their debut single, Optimistic served as a groundbreaking anthem stressing positivity and encouragement. The song served as a summer and fall anthem and began propelling Jam, other successes followed with Blackness as well as music from labelmates Mint Condition, Lo-Key. and Solo. A highlight for Perspective was the opportunity to release the soundtrack for the 1992 motion picture Mo Money, Executive produced by Jam and Lewis, the soundtrack featured cuts from Mint Condition, Ralph Tresvant and Caron Wheeler, as well as a duet by Janet Jackson and Luther Vandross. Blige, Mariah Carey, Prince, Spice Girls, Vanessa Williams, George Michael, Melanie B, Rod Stewart, Kelly Price, Gwen Stefani, New Edition, Eric Benet, Pia Zadora, SOLO, and The Human League. In 1999, they produced the hit Open My Heart by Yolanda Adams which helped her popularity, Terry Lewis married R&B singer Karyn White, with whom he had a daughter, Ashley Nicole Lewis
17.
Martyn Ware
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Martyn Ware is an English musician, composer, arranger, record producer, and music programmer. He is also noted for work in Surround Sound technology and, more recently, Ware was born and grew up in Sheffield, England. After leaving school, he went to work in the computer industry, with his first wages, he bought a Korg 700 monophonic keyboard and started experimenting with electronic sound. In the 1970s, Ware and synth player Ian Marsh teamed up to play as The Future, in 1977 they formed The Human League with vocalist Philip Oakey and soon added Adrian Wright as Director of Visuals to create slide shows for their performances. They recorded a demo and signed with the Indie label Fast in 1978, the band was commercially and artistically successful, issuing Being Boiled as their first single, but Ware and Marsh left in 1980 over internal tensions, forming the British Electronic Foundation. The British Electric Foundation was a production project that employed artists including Tina Turner, Sandie Shaw. The bands first album in 1980 was the instrumental cassette-only release Music for Stowaways, followed in 1982 by Music of Quality and Distinction, by this time, Ware and Marsh had already teamed with Gregory to form Heaven 17. Their first release was the single Fascist Groove Thang, which was banned by the BBC, in 1983 they released the hit song Temptation which reached #2 on the music charts. The band went on hiatus in 1988, but reformed in 1990 and released Music of Quality and Distinction, in 2005 Marsh left the band, but Ware and Gregory continued production. More recently, Ware has collaborated with Vince Clarke on two projects, the Pretentious album, and Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle. He has also contributed programmes to Internet radio stations, Ware also completes sound installations as a sonic muralist. In 2016 he released an 82-minute soundscape called Sounds of Our Shores and he curated and produced Everything You Can Imagine Is Real for the UKs National Portrait Gallery in 2017, to coincide with their Picasso Portraits exhibition. The event was inspired by Picasso’s circle in Montmartre in the first decade of the 20th century and he arranged for the gallery becomes an artists’ colony featuring a wild cross-pollination of ideas, music, poetry, performance, art, film and dance. It included acts as diverse as the Radiophonic Workshop, Scanner, Feral Five, BBC News described the centre as having been shunned by visitors, and, despite a £2 million relaunch, the Centre closed. Despite this, Ware later used the sound technology to launch an Arts Council subsidised touring project called The Future of Sound. Ware’s 3D music has also used in an unusual noise suppression experiment undertaken in Brighton in 2011 on behalf of the Noise Abatement Society. During this experiment, which was an entry for the John Connell Technology Award and this was played in the main shopping street in the city, West Street, with the intention of distracting people from the traffic noise. Suggestions have been made that the experiment could be rolled out more widely in the future
18.
Philip Adrian Wright
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Philip Adrian Wright is an English musician, also known as Adrian Wright. Wright had studied film making at Sheffield Art College and was a friend of Philip Oakey, in 1978 he was invited to join the new avant-garde electronic band The Human League which composed of Oakey, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. Then a non-musician, Wright was appointed as Director of Visuals whose job was to provide lighting, when the Human League split in October 1980, Wright sided with Oakey. Ware and Marsh left to form pop group Heaven 17, necessity forced him to become a musician and he quickly learned keyboards. He and Oakey wrote the new Human Leagues early 1981 releases and he remained a key member of the Human League during the early 1980s both as a composer and keyboard player. After The Human League he worked in film before moving into design and he participated in the BBC documentary on The Human League, part of the Young Guns Go For It series. Wright works with his partner of 20 years, Tracey Boyd on her fashion label, the couple live in Chelsea, London. 1982 BRIT Awards - - Best British Breakthrough Act
19.
Jo Callis
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Callis was educated at the Edinburgh College of Art. The band played gigs in Edinburgh and Glasgow, during which Callis wore space suits. He was a member of The Knutsford Dominators before forming The Rezillos in 1976 and he wrote the Rezillos 1978 hit Top of the Pops. In late 1978, after the release of the only album. Shake released two singles before splitting, with Callis later joining Boots for Dancing. Callis released a single, Woah Yeah. in 1981 on the pop, Aural label. Callis co-wrote many tracks and following his departure from the band in 1986 and he co-wrote the bands 1990 hit Heart Like a Wheel together with former Rezillos band mate Eugene Reynolds. The track was produced by Martin Rushent, in 1985 he teamed up with Feargal Sharkey to write Sharkeys Loving You which reached number 26 in the UK Singles Chart
20.
Dare (album)
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Dare is the third studio album by British synthpop band The Human League. The album was recorded between March and September 1981 and first released in the UK on 16 October 1981, then subsequently in the US in mid-1982. Dare became critically acclaimed and has proved to be a genre-defining album, the album and its four singles were hugely successful commercially, with the album reaching #1 in the UK and being certified Triple Platinum by the BPI. A remix album based on Dare, Love and Dancing, was released in 1982, Dare is the third studio album from the Human League but differs greatly from their previous two, Reproduction and Travelogue. This is due to a split in the line up, the subsequent reformation of the band with new personnel. In January 1981 the Human League consisted of just Oakey and Philip Adrian Wright with newly recruited teenage dancers/backing vocalists Joanne Catherall, the band were deeply in debt and only barely commercially viable. Under pressure to produce results from Virgin Records, original members Oakey and they recorded the track Boys and Girls from the 1980 tour, which Virgin then quickly released as a single. The style of Boys and Girls belonged to the original, now defunct Human League, Sulley and Catherall who were busy with school, were not used other than for publicity. The synthesiser work was basic as Oakey and Wright admitted they lacked the skill of Marsh and Ware. When Boys and Girls peaked at number 47 in the UK, Oakey realised that he would need to bring in help to take the band in the more pop. Oakeys first move was to invite guitarist and keyboard player Ian Burden from the back to join the band full-time. As a trained musician, not only were Burdens keyboard skills vastly superior to Oakey and Wrights, Virgin had suggested that Oakey needed professional production and paired him with veteran producer Martin Rushent, an expert on emerging music technologies of the time. Because of the atmosphere at Monumental Studios in Sheffield caused by the Human League sharing it with new band Heaven 17. In addition Rushents studios were better-equipped for the type of music the band was making, a downside would be that the distance would cause problems for Sulley and Catherall who were taking their final school exams and had to be bussed down from Sheffield regularly. The first result of their sessions was released in April 1981 entitled The Sound of the Crowd. The final addition to the band would be the experienced guitarist and songwriter Jo Callis formerly of rock band The Rezillos. Oakey accepts that Martin Rushents adept sequencing and programming skills brought a professional edge to the bands sound, Oakey, Burden, Wright and Callis set about writing new material, bringing in Sulley and Catherall from Sheffield as often as they were available. The aim was another album for the Human League within a year, Virgin were at this point lukewarm but keen that the band released another single as soon as possible
21.
Don't You Want Me
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Dont You Want Me is a single by British synthpop group The Human League, released on 27 November 1981 as the fourth single from their third studio album Dare. It later topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the US on 3 July 1982 where it stayed for three weeks, in 2015 the song was voted by the British public as the nations 7th favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV. The lyrics were inspired after lead singer Philip Oakey read a photo-story in a teen-girls magazine. Susan Ann Sulley was then asked to take on the role, up until then, she and the other female vocalist Joanne Catherall had only been assigned backing vocals, Sulley says she was chosen only through luck of the draw. Musicians Jo Callis and Philip Adrian Wright created a score to accompany the lyrics which was much harsher than the version that was actually released. Initial versions of the song were recorded but Virgin Records-appointed producer Martin Rushent was unhappy with them and he and Callis remixed the track, giving it a softer, and in Oakeys opinion, poppy sound. Oakey hated the new version and thought it the weakest track on Dare, Oakey disliked it so much that it was relegated to the last track on side two of the vinyl album. Before the release of Dare, three of its tracks—The Sound of the Crowd, Love Action, and Open Your Heart—had already been released as successful singles. With a hit album and three hit singles in a row, Virgins chief executive Simon Draper decided to release one single from the album before the end of 1981. The Human League often added cryptic references to their productions and the sleeve of Dont You Want Me featured the suffix of 100. This was a reference to The 100 Club, a restaurant/bar in Sheffield, today, the song is widely considered a classic of its era. Oakey still describes it as over-rated, but acknowledges his initial dismissal was misguided, Oakey is also at pains to point out another misconception, that it is not a love song, but a nasty song about sexual power politics. Dont You Want Me was released in the UK on 27 November 1981, the B side was Seconds another track lifted straight from the Dare album. This mix is also features on the Love and Dancing album released under the name of The League Unlimited Orchestra in 1982. To the amazement of the band, it entered the UK Singles Chart at No.9 and shot to number one the following week and it ultimately became the biggest selling single to be released in 1981, and the fifth biggest selling single of the entire decade. Its success was repeated six months later in the US, with Dont You Want Me hitting No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, Billboard magazine ranked it as the sixth-biggest hit of 1982. The single was certified Gold by the RIAA the same year for sales of a million copies. It is notable as the first song featuring the revolutionary Linn LM-1 drum machine to hit No.1 on the UK charts and also the first LM-1 track to top the Billboard Hot 100
22.
Brit Awards
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The Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industrys annual pop music awards. The name was originally a form of British, Britain or Britannia. In addition, an equivalent awards ceremony for music, called the Classic Brit Awards, is held each May. Robbie Williams holds the record for the most Brit Awards,13 as a solo artist, the awards originated as an annual event in 1982 under the auspices of the British record industrys trade association, the BPI. In 1989 they were renamed the Brit Awards, masterCard has been the long-term sponsor of the event. The Brit Awards were broadcast live until 1989, when Samantha Fox, in subsequent years, the event was recorded and broadcast the following night. From 2007, the Brit Awards reverted to a live broadcast on British television, on 14 February on ITV. In that year, comedian Russell Brand was presenter and three awards were dropped from the ceremony, Best British Rock Act, Best British Urban Act, on 18 February 2009, the venue for the BRITs was once again the Earls Court, London. The Brit Awards were held at The O2 in London for the first time in 2011, the Brit Award statuette given to the winners features Britannia, the female personification of Britain. The first awards ceremony was in 1977, as The BRITish Record Industry BRITannia Awards, there have been 36 editions to date. The 2016 Brit Awards was held on 24 February 2016, the 1988 BPI Awards was the first of the ceremonies to be broadcast on live television. The BBC had previously broadcast the ceremony from 1985, with the shows from 1982 to 1984 not broadcast on television, the BBC continued to broadcast the renamed BRIT Awards, live in 1989 and pre-recorded from 1990 to 1992. ITV have broadcast the awards since 1993, pre-recorded until 2006, BBC Radio 1 has provided backstage radio coverage since 2008. In 1987 the BPI Awards ceremony was held in the Great Room at the Grosvenor House Hotel, at the time there was a BBC electricians strike in effect, and the organisers decided to use a non-TV events production company, called Upfront, to manage the show. Despite the show being picketed, the event was transmitted as intended, for a while the outdoor broadcast scanner was rocked on its wheels by the protesters and they managed to shut off the power to one of the big GE video screen projectors. In 1989, the ceremony was broadcast live and presented by Fleetwood Macs Mick Fleetwood, the inexperience of the hosts, an ineffective autocue and little preparation combined to create an unprofessional show that was poorly received. The 1990 awards ceremony saw the last public appearance of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, Queen appeared at the ceremony to receive the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. Mercury did not make a speech, as Brian May did the talking on behalf of the other members, in 1992, dance/art band The KLF were awarded Best British Group and were booked to open the show
23.
Mirror Man (The Human League song)
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Mirror Man is a 1982 song by the British synthpop group The Human League. It was released as a single in the UK on 8 November 1982 and it was written jointly by lead singer Philip Oakey with keyboard players Jo Callis and Ian Burden, and produced by Martin Rushent. Mirror Man was the first track written and recorded by the Human League after they returned from their World Tour, Mirror Man was conceived and written as a celebration of Oakey and Wrights love of Motown records. It has been described as electronic soul, with Oakeys main verses delivered in deliberate sentences with emphasis on the last word of each sentence. Vocalists Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall feature prominently throughout the song but have no lyrics, recording and production was overseen by Martin Rushent, who had produced the bands album Dare. Speculation about who was the titular Mirror Man was ended in 1988 when, during interviews to promote the bands Greatest Hits album, Oakey had become concerned that Ant was starting to believe his own publicity, and was in danger of losing touch with reality. Oakey had avoided revealing this at the time for fear of offending the songs subject, the song could be viewed as a reference to the 1971 Japanese TV series Mirrorman. The song was released as a single in the UK in November 1982 and it was the first new single the band had released since the phenomenal success of Dont You Want Me almost a year earlier. The single was tipped by the media as their second Christmas number-one single in the UK, the single did however reach number one in Ireland earlier that month and also reached the Top 10 in Canada the following February. Its release in the U. S. was delayed until May 1983 where it was incorporated into the stop gap EP Fascination. A&M Records, the record company in the US, had refused to release it as a single unless there was to be an album hot on its heels. The track peaked at number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1983, the promotional video for Mirror Man was conceived and directed by Duffy and was filmed on location at a deserted theatre in London. The basic premise is that Oakey is a ghost of a performer who has died, the main scenes are of Oakey in a dressing room singing to a mirror, spliced in with footage of the crash and death of John Cobb. Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
24.
(Keep Feeling) Fascination
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Fascination is a 1983 song by the British synthpop group The Human League. It was composed by Jo Callis and Philip Oakey, and produced by Martin Rushent, the single was designated Red on the Human League’s short-lived, self-imposed labeling system of Blue for pop songs and Red for dance tracks. The single was released in the UK on 11 April 1983 as a non-album single and it was incorporated into the bands EP Fascination. Released in the US a month after the UK release, the reached number 1 on the US Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. Contained two versions of Fascination, the mix and an improvisation, both different from the single version. These were also the featured on the 12 issue in the UK. The 7 issue featured a new track on the B-side Total Panic, the video begins with a close-up of an orange you are here dot on a street map, which becomes an actual giant orange dot on the ground as the camera zooms in. The dot highlights a single house on the apex of a street, the entire room is painted grey, as are their instruments and microphones. During the bridge, two boys kick a ball around in the street outside, both the ball and one boys clothes turn orange when they enter the dot, when he kicks the ball back, it returns to its original colour. As the song ends, the camera retreats from the room and zooms out into the sky, both the house and surrounding area encompassed by the orange dot were completely painted orange, including a nearby car. The video was conceived and directed by Steve Barron, who directed most of the Human Leagues early 1980s music videos. The bands scenes were all filmed in a studio, Susan Ann Sulley says that the house was occupied by a family during the painting and filming of the external scenes. The house remained orange until being demolished in mid-1983, a cover version of the song recorded by Rob Crow, features in the 2010 commercial for Kingsford Charcoal. A cover version of the song recorded by the OV7 group features in the album Siete Latidos, in the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto, Vice City, the song is featured in the fictional radio station Wave 103. It was used as the song of Brad Jones character 80s Dan when he was first introduced in Caligula. Http, //www. the-black-hit-of-space. dk/keep_feeling_fascination. htm Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics Available to watch on YouTube at https, //www. youtube. com/watch. v=QqqBs6kkzHE
25.
The Lebanon (song)
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The Lebanon is a song by the British synthpop group The Human League, released as a single in April 1984. The song was conceived, written and recorded at a time when the band was under pressure to follow up the enormous international success of their previous album. The band had taken up residence in the £1000 a day AIR Studios, with its heavy use of bass and rock guitars, The Lebanon was a radical departure from the established synthpop sound of the Human League. Though the song does employ some keyboards, the use of guitars by the band was not lost on music critics who brought up the no guitars rule that the band had adopted in 1981. The lyrics were an attempt to make a statement on the Lebanese civil war which had been exacerbated by Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon of 1982. In a television interview, Human League member Philip Adrian Wright commented that Oakeys politically-charged lyrics were specifically about the Sabra. Oakey took the criticism in good humour, the Lebanon was released as a UK single in April 1984. The track has frequently played by the band live and is nearly always on their set list. The music video for the song was filmed in the The Theatre Royal, the video at first sight appears to be filmed at a Human League concert with the band playing live on stage. The concert was in fact staged and was filmed in takes as the band mimed to playback, the audience were invited extras and bit part dancers were placed in the front of the stage. This is very noticeable when the camera pans onto the audience where certain extras desperately try to play up for their shot at fame, even though it was a faux concert, the bands appearance on stage is notable for its layout and behaviour. This arrangement and performance style is often used when the band plays live
26.
Human (The Human League song)
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Human is a song recorded by British synthpop band The Human League, and released as the first single from their 1986 album Crash. The track, which deals with the subject of infidelity, was written and produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. In 1985, the sessions for the Human Leagues fifth album were not going well, and the band did not like the results. Jam and Lewis had recently emerged as in-demand talent due to their success with Janet Jackson, of the ten songs on Crash, Jam and Lewis wrote three, Human being one of them. It is a ballad which lyrically is an exchange between a man and a woman in a relationship who have reunited after a separation. The songs title is derived from the chorus, in both parties in the relationship explain that they are only human and born to make mistakes. The song is a composition in common time with a tempo of 102 beats per minute and it is set in a key of A♭ major, with a chord progression from D♭-E♭-f. Human became the second million-selling and final single for The Human League on the US Billboard Hot 100. Jam and Lewis R&B-based production was popular on American urban radio. The song hit #1 in the US, however, in the UK and it was a welcome success for the Human League, who were starting to suffer from creative stagnation and a slight decline in fortunes after a hugely successful start to the 1980s. On its release, Human was met with mixed reviews, Billboard wrote, Trio that helped define British techno-pop has lost its do-it-yourself edge but gained Jam and Lewis, resulting dance ballad is lush, plush, even soulful. However, Spin criticised the record, saying, The Human League tackle the schmaltzy pop soul ballad and he added, Human, a whiny claim to sensitivity, undercuts the bands essential irony, the joke about Human League was that they werent human but digital chips. Human has had some positive reviews, with AllMusic journalist Dave Thompson describing it as a lovely romantic ballad. The lyrics make much of human mistakes and the need for forgiveness in a thoroughly romantic context. The song was revived and remixed by U. S. producers Joel Dickinson & John Michael in 2010 and this new club remix incorporated elements from Coldplays hit, Viva la Vida. It was a favorite among NYC djs including Junior Vasquez, Human was reworked and re-released in 2003 as a remix in the form of The Chinese Whispers Mix, principally in Asia. It was the creation of Hong Kong based British producer Ian Widgery who had recently had major success in the Asian music market with the album Shanghai Lounge Divas, oakeys lead vocals are faded to give the music greater impact. The remix was so popular that it crossed over to the UK, although it was not released as a single in either country it appears on some versions of the bands The Very Best of the Human League album of 2003
27.
Tell Me When
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Tell Me When is a song by the British synthpop group the Human League. Written jointly by lead singer Philip Oakey and Paul C, beckett, it was recorded at Human League Studios, Sheffield in 1994. The single and the Octopus album were produced by Ian Stanley, Tell Me When was the first Human League single to be released from Octopus and was issued in advance of the album. It was released on 26 December 1994 and it became the Human Leagues most commercially successful single in nine years and reintroduced the band to many of the British general public. It peaked at six on the UK Singles Chart in early 1995, their highest UK chart position since 1983. It also peaked at number 31 on the Billboard Hot 100, the song was originally written for the act, Fast Arithmetic, A side project in development within the HL environment. A demo version was recorded in 1991 and presented to Max and it then became the first release by the band under their new label EastWest, who had signed the Human League after their dismissal by Virgin in 1992. As it was the first commercial release in the UK by the band for four years it is incorrectly described as a comeback as many people erroneously believed the band had disbanded in 1990. The official music video for the song was entirely on location in Prague in the Czech Republic. Dave Thompson of Allmusic agreed that Tell Me When echoes earlier material, likening it to Fascination and he went further, saying, the real difference is found in the vignette-esque lyrics and the more complex vocals. And these slight changes make all the difference, turning synth dreams into techno club success, lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
28.
Avant-garde
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The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox, with respect to art, culture, and society. It may be characterized by nontraditional, aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability, the avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, the avant-garde also promotes radical social reforms. Several writers have attempted, with limited success, to map the parameters of avant-garde activity, the Italian essayist Renato Poggioli provides one of the best-known analyses of vanguardism as a cultural phenomenon in his 1962 book Teoria dellarte davanguardia. Other authors have attempted both to clarify and to extend Poggiolis study, bürgers essay also greatly influenced the work of contemporary American art-historians such as the German Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. Buchloh, in the collection of essays Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry critically argues for an approach to these positions. Subsequent criticism theorized the limitations of these approaches, noting their circumscribed areas of analysis, including Eurocentric, chauvinist, and genre-specific definitions. The concept of avant-garde refers primarily to artists, writers, composers and thinkers whose work is opposed to cultural values. For Greenberg, these forms were therefore kitsch, phony, faked or mechanical culture, for instance, during the 1930s the advertising industry was quick to take visual mannerisms from surrealism, but this does not mean that 1930s advertising photographs are truly surreal. In this way the autonomous artistic merit so dear to the vanguardist was abandoned and sales became the measure. It has become common to describe successful rock musicians and celebrated film-makers as avant-garde, nevertheless, an incisive critique of vanguardism as against the views of mainstream society was offered by the New York critic Harold Rosenberg in the late 1960s. Since then it has been flanked by what he called avant-garde ghosts to the one side, and this has seen culture become, in his words, a profession one of whose aspects is the pretense of overthrowing it. Avant-garde in music can refer to any form of working within traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner. The term is used loosely to describe the work of any musicians who radically depart from tradition altogether, although most avant-garde composers have been men, this is not exclusively the case. Women avant-gardists include Pauline Oliveros, Diamanda Galás, Meredith Monk, there are movements in theatre history that are characterized by their contributions to the avant-garde traditions in both the United States and Europe. Among these are Fluxus, Happenings, and Neo-Dada, Avant-garde – Wikipedia book Barron, Stephanie, and Maurice Tuchman. The Avant-garde in Russia, 1910–1930, New Perspectives, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art ISBN 0-87587-095-3, Cambridge, MA, ISBN 0-671-20422-X Berg, Hubert van den, and Walter Fähnders
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Synthesizer
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A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates electric signals that are converted to sound through instrument amplifiers and loudspeakers or headphones. Synthesizers may either imitate instruments like piano, Hammond organ, flute, vocals, natural sounds like ocean waves, etc. or generate new electronic timbres. Synthesizers without built-in controllers are called sound modules, and are controlled via USB, MIDI or CV/gate using a controller device. Synthesizers use various methods to generate electronic signals, synthesizers were first used in pop music in the 1960s. In the 1970s, synths were used in disco, especially in the late 1970s, in the 1980s, the invention of the relatively inexpensive, mass market Yamaha DX7 synth made synthesizers widely available. 1980s pop and dance music often made use of synthesizers. In the 2010s, synthesizers are used in genres of pop, rock. Contemporary classical music composers from the 20th and 21st century write compositions for synthesizer, the beginnings of the synthesizer are difficult to trace, as it is difficult to draw a distinction between synthesizers and some early electric or electronic musical instruments. One of the earliest electric musical instruments, the telegraph, was invented in 1876 by American electrical engineer Elisha Gray. He accidentally discovered the sound generation from a self-vibrating electromechanical circuit and this musical telegraph used steel reeds with oscillations created by electromagnets transmitted over a telegraph line. Gray also built a simple loudspeaker device into later models, consisting of a diaphragm in a magnetic field. This instrument was a remote electromechanical musical instrument that used telegraphy, though it lacked an arbitrary sound-synthesis function, some have erroneously called it the first synthesizer. In 1897, Thaddeus Cahill invented the Teleharmonium, which used dynamos, and was capable of additive synthesis like the Hammond organ, however, Cahills business was unsuccessful for various reasons, and similar but more compact instruments were subsequently developed, such as electronic and tonewheel organs. In 1906, American engineer, Lee De Forest ushered in the electronics age and he invented the first amplifying vacuum tube, called the Audion tube. This led to new entertainment technologies, including radio and sound films, ondes Martenot and Trautonium were continuously developed for several decades, finally developing qualities similar to later synthesizers. In the 1920s, Arseny Avraamov developed various systems of graphic sonic art, in 1938, USSR engineer Yevgeny Murzin designed a compositional tool called ANS, one of the earliest real-time additive synthesizers using optoelectronics. The earliest polyphonic synthesizers were developed in Germany and the United States, during the three years that Hammond manufactured this model,1,069 units were shipped, but production was discontinued at the start of World War II. Both instruments were the forerunners of the electronic organs and polyphonic synthesizers
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New Pop
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New Pop was a British music movement rooted in the post-punk movement of the late 1970s. New Music was a pop music and cultural phenomenon in the US associated with the Second British Invasion, many New Pop artists created technologically oriented music that sweetened less commercial and experimental aspects with a pop coating. Entryism became a concept for groups at the time. New Music acts were danceable, had a look, emphasized the synthesizer and drum machines, wrote about the darker side of romance. They rediscovered rockabilly, Motown, ska, reggae and merged it with African rhythms to produce what was described as a fertile, stephen Holden of the New York Times wrote at the time that New Music was more about its practitioners than their sound. Teenage girls and males that had grown tired of traditional phallic guitar driven rock embraced New Music, New Music was a singles oriented phenomenon, reverting the 1970s rock music album orientation. During the late 1970s, New Musick was one of the labels that was applied to certain post-punk groups, the term post-punk was also deployed interchangeably with new wave. In the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock, new wave is described as a meaningless term. By the early 1980s, British journalists had largely abandoned new wave in favor of other such as synthpop, and in 1983. In the wake of the rock explosion of the late 1970s. Around this time, the term rockist would gain popularity to disparagingly describe music that privileged traditionalist rock styles, according to Pitchforks Jess Harvel, If new pop had an architect, it was Paul Morley. As the 1980s began, a number of musicians desired to broaden these movements to reach a mainstream audience. In 1980, the New Music Seminar made its debut and it was designed to help young new wave artists gain entrance into the American music industry. The event grew rapidly in popularity and encouraged the shift away from the use of new wave to New Music in the United States, a similar shift occurred in Great Britain where new wave was replaced with New Romantic and New Pop. Unlike in Great Britain, attempts prior to 1982 to bring new wave, during 1982, New Music acts began to appear on the charts in the United States, and clubs there that played them were packed. In reaction to New Music, album-oriented rock radio stations doubled the amount of new acts they played, annie Lennox and Boy George were the two figures most associated with New Music. Criticism of New Pop emerged from both supporters of traditional rock and newer experimental rock and these critics looked at New Pop as pro corporate at expense of rock musics anti-authoritarian tradition. Critics believed New Pops embrace of synths and videos were ways of covering in many cases lack of talent, the heavy metal magazine Hit Parader regularly used the homophobic slur faggot to describe New Music musicians
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Extended play
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An extended play is a musical recording that contains more tracks than a single, but is usually unqualified as an album or LP. EPs generally do not contain as many tracks as albums, and are considered less expensive, an EP originally referred to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play and LP, but it is now applied to mid-length CDs and downloads as well. Ricardo Baca of The Denver Post said, EPs—originally extended-play single releases that are shorter than traditional albums—have long been popular with punk, in the United Kingdom, the Official Chart Company defines a boundary between EP and album classification at 25 minutes of length or four tracks. EPs were released in various sizes in different eras, the earliest multi-track records, issued around 1919 by Grey Gull Records, were vertically cut 78 rpm discs known as 2-in-1 records. These had finer than usual grooves, like Edison Disc Records, by 1949, when the 45 rpm single and 33 1⁄3 rpm LP were competing formats, seven-inch 45 rpm singles had a maximum playing time of only about four minutes per side. Partly as an attempt to compete with the LP introduced in 1948 by rival Columbia, RCA Victor introduced Extended Play 45s during 1952. Their narrower grooves, achieved by lowering the levels and sound compression optionally. These were usually 10-inch LPs split onto two seven-inch EPs or 12-inch LPs split onto three seven-inch EPs, either separately or together in gatefold covers. This practice became less common with the advent of triple-speed-available phonographs. Some classical music albums released at the beginning of the LP era were distributed as EP albums—notably the seven operas that Arturo Toscanini conducted on radio between 1944 and 1954. These opera EPs, originally broadcast on the NBC Radio network and manufactured by RCA, in the 1990s, they began appearing on compact discs. During the 1950s, RCA published several EP albums of Walt Disney movies and these usually featured the original casts of actors and actresses. Each album contained two seven-inch records, plus an illustrated booklet containing the text of the recording, so that children could follow along by reading. Some of the titles included Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, and what was then a recent release, because of the popularity of 7 and other formats, SP records became less popular and the production of SPs in Japan was suspended in 1963. In the 1950s and 1960s, EPs were usually compilations of singles or album samplers and were played at 45 rpm on seven-inch discs. Record Retailer printed the first EP chart in 1960, the New Musical Express, Melody Maker, Disc and Music Echo and the Record Mirror continued to list EPs on their respective singles charts. The Beatles Twist and Shout outsold most singles for some weeks in 1963, when the BBC and Record Retailer commissioned the British Market Research Bureau to compile a chart it was restricted to singles and EPs disappeared from the listings. In the Philippines, seven-inch EPs marketed as mini-LPs were introduced in 1970, with tracks selected from an album and this mini-LP format also became popular in America in the early 1970s for promotional releases, and also for use in jukeboxes
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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
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Glam rock
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Glam artists drew on diverse sources ranging from bubblegum pop and 50s rock and roll to cabaret theatrics, science fiction, and complex art rock. The flamboyant clothing and visual styles of performers were often camp or androgynous, the UK charts were inundated with glam rock acts from 1971 to 1975, with glam also manifesting in all areas of British popular culture during this period. British glam rock artists include Marc Bolan and T. Rex, David Bowie, Sweet, Slade, Mud, Roxy Music, in the US the scene was much less prevalent, with Alice Cooper and Lou Reed the only American artists to score a hit. Other US glam artists include New York Dolls, Iggy Pop and it declined after the mid-1970s, but influenced other musical genres including punk rock, glam metal, New Romanticism, and gothic rock and has sporadically revived since the 1990s. Glam rock can be seen as a fashion as well as musical subgenre, Glam artists rejected the revolutionary principles of the late 1960s rock scene, instead glorifying decadence, superficiality, and the simple structures of earlier pop music. Musically it was diverse, varying between the simple rock and roll revivalism of figures like Alvin Stardust to the complex art rock of Roxy Music. Glam is most noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and representations of androgyny and it was prefigured by the showmanship and gender identity manipulation of American acts such as the Cockettes and Alice Cooper, the latter of which combined glam with shock rock. Glam rock emerged from the English psychedelic and art scenes of the late 1960s. Its origins are associated with Marc Bolan, who had renamed his folk duo T, Rex and taken up electric instruments by the end of the 1960s. Often cited as the moment of inception is his appearance on the UK TV programme Top of the Pops in March 1971 wearing glitter and satins, to perform what would be his second UK Top 10 hit, Hot Love. In 1973, a few months after the release of the album Tanx, from late 1971, already a minor star, David Bowie developed his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional makeup, mime and performance into his act. These performers were soon followed in the style by acts including Roxy Music, Sweet, Slade, Mott the Hoople, Mud, Glam was not only a highly successful trend in UK popular music, it became dominant in all other aspects of British popular culture during the 1970s. In the UK, the glitter rock was most often used to refer to the extreme version of glam pursued by Gary Glitter. The Glitter Band and Gary Glitter had between them eighteen top ten singles in the UK between 1972 and 1976, a second wave of glam rock acts, including Suzi Quatro, Roy Woods Wizzard and Sparks, dominated the British single charts from about 1974 to 1976. Quatro directly inspired the pioneering Los Angeles based all-girl group the Runaways. Existing acts, some not usually considered central to the genre, also adopted glam styles, including Rod Stewart, Elton John, Queen and, for a time, in Japan in the 1980s, visual kei was strongly influenced by glam rock aesthetics. Glam has since enjoyed continued influence and sporadic modest revivals in R&B crossover act Prince, and bands such as Marilyn Manson, Suede, Placebo, Chainsaw Kittens, Spacehog, movies that reflect glam rock aesthetics include, T. D. An Eyewitness Account Omnibus Press,2005 ISBN 1-84609-149-7 A Biased History of UK Glam Rock
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Motown
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Motown is an American record company. The record company was founded by Berry Gordy, Jr. as Tamla Records on January 12,1958, the name, a portmanteau of motor and town, has also become a nickname for Detroit. Motown played an important role in the integration of popular music as an African American-owned record label that achieved significant crossover success. In the 1960s, Motown and its subsidiary labels were the most successful proponents of what came to be known as the Motown Sound, a style of soul music with a distinct pop influence. During the 1960s, Motown achieved spectacular success for a record company,79 records in the Top Ten of the Billboard Hot 100 record chart between 1960 and 1969. The company was sold to MCA Inc. Motown was later sold to PolyGram in 1994, before being sold again to MCA Records successor, Universal Music Group, Motown spent much of the 2000s as a part of the Universal Music subsidiaries Universal Motown and Universal Motown Republic Group, and headquartered in New York City. From 2011 to 2014, Motown was a part of The Island Def Jam Music Group division of Universal Music. On April 1,2014, Universal Music Group announced the dissolution of Island Def Jam and it now operates out of the landmark Capitol Tower. For many decades, Motown was the highest-earning African American business in the United States, Berry Gordy got his start as a songwriter for local Detroit acts such as Jackie Wilson and the Matadors. Wilsons single Lonely Teardrops, written by Gordy, became a huge success and he realized that the more lucrative end of the business was in producing records and owning the publishing. In 1959, Billy Davis and Berry Gordys sisters Gwen and Anna started Anna Records, Davis and Gwen Gordy wanted Berry to be the company president, but Berry wanted to strike out on his own. On January 12,1959, he started Tamla Records, with a loan from his family. Gordy originally wanted to name the label Tammy Records, after the hit song popularized by Debbie Reynolds from the 1957 film Tammy, when he found the name was already in use, Berry decided on Tamla instead. Tamlas first release, in the Detroit area, was Marv Johnsons Come to Me in 1959 and its first hit was Barrett Strongs Money, which made it to number 2 on the Billboard R&B charts. Gordys first signed act was the Matadors, who changed their name to the Miracles. Their first release, Got a Job, was a record to the Silhouettes Get a Job. The Miracles first, minor hit was their single, 1959s Bad Girl, released in Detroit as the debut record on the Motown imprint
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Electronic music
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In general, a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, purely electronic sound production can be achieved using devices such as the theremin, sound synthesizer, and computer. During the 1920s and 1930s, electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions for instruments were composed. Musique concrète, created in Paris in 1948, was based on editing together recorded fragments of natural and industrial sounds, Music produced solely from electronic generators was first produced in Germany in 1953. Electronic music was created in Japan and the United States beginning in the 1950s. An important new development was the advent of computers for the purpose of composing music, algorithmic composition was first demonstrated in Australia in 1951. In America and Europe, live electronics were pioneered in the early 1960s, during the 1970s to early 1980s, the monophonic Minimoog became once the most widely used synthesizer at that time in both popular and electronic art music. In the 1980s, electronic music became dominant in popular music, with a greater reliance on synthesizers, and the adoption of programmable drum machines. Electronically produced music became prevalent in the domain by the 1990s. Contemporary electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music. Today, pop music is most recognizable in its 4/4 form. At the turn of the 20th century, experimentation with emerging electronics led to the first electronic musical instruments and these initial inventions were not sold, but were instead used in demonstrations and public performances. The audiences were presented with reproductions of existing music instead of new compositions for the instruments, while some were considered novelties and produced simple tones, the Telharmonium accurately synthesized the sound of orchestral instruments. It achieved viable public interest and made progress into streaming music through telephone networks. Critics of musical conventions at the time saw promise in these developments, ferruccio Busoni encouraged the composition of microtonal music allowed for by electronic instruments. He predicted the use of machines in future music, writing the influential Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, futurists such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo began composing music with acoustic noise to evoke the sound of machinery. They predicted expansions in timbre allowed for by electronics in the influential manifesto The Art of Noises, developments of the vacuum tube led to electronic instruments that were smaller, amplified, and more practical for performance. In particular, the theremin, ondes Martenot and trautonium were commercially produced by the early 1930s, from the late 1920s, the increased practicality of electronic instruments influenced composers such as Joseph Schillinger to adopt them
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Korg
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Korg Inc. is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic musical instruments, audio processors and guitar pedals, recording equipment, and electronic tuners. Under the Vox brand name, they also manufacture guitar amplifiers, Korg was founded in 1962 in Japan by Tsutomu Katoh and Tadashi Osanai as Keio Gijutsu Kenkyujo Ltd. It later became Keio Electronic Laboratories because its fledgling offices were located near the Keio train line in Tokyo and Keio can be formed by combining the first letters of Katoh, before founding the company, Katoh ran a nightclub. Osanai, a Tokyo University graduate and noted accordionist, regularly performed at Katohs club accompanied by a Wurlitzer Sideman rhythm machine, unsatisfied with the rhythm machine, Osanai convinced Katoh to finance his efforts to build a better one. The companys first product, released in 1963, was an electro-mechanical rhythm device called the Disc Rotary Electric Auto Rhythm machine Donca matic DA-20, the name Donca was an onomatopoeic reference to the sound the rhythm machine made. Buoyed by the success of the DA-20, Keio released a version of the Rhythm machine. In 1967, Katoh was approached by Fumio Mieda, an engineer who wanted to build keyboards, impressed with Miedas enthusiasm, Katoh asked him to build a prototype and 18 months later Mieda returned with a programmable organ. Keio sold the organ under the name KORG, created by using the first letter of each founders name plus RG from their planned emphasis on products targeted for the organ market, keios first synthesizer, the miniKORG, was thus released in 1973. During the 1970s, Korgs synthesizer line was divided into instruments for the hobbyist, in the early 80s, Korg branched out into the digital piano category. Korg is credited with a number of innovations and landmark products, the key transpose function was Katohs idea after a singer at his club needed her accompaniment played in a lower key, which the accompanist wasnt accomplished enough to do. Korg was the first company to feature effects on a synthesizer, the M1 workstation, released in 1988, sold over 250,000 units, making it the bestselling synthesizer ever at that time. In 1989, Korg recruited the team from Sequential Circuits just as they were relieved of their duties by then-Sequential owner Yamaha. Yamaha Corporation has always been a partner of Korg, supplying them with circuitry. In 1987, shortly before the release of the M1 Music Workstation, the takeover of the company was amicable, with Katoh drawing up the terms, and the two companies continued to independently develop their product lines and compete in the marketplace. After 5 very successful years, Katoh had enough money to rebuy most of the Yamaha share back in 1993, Korg has since diversified into digital effects, tuners, recording equipment, electronic hand percussion, and software instruments. In 1992, Korg acquired Vox, then primarily a manufacturer of guitar amplifiers, Korg was also the exclusive distributor of Marshall Amplification product in the United States for decades, with this distribution arrangement ending in 2010. Tsutomo Katoh died of cancer on March 15,2011, category, Korg synthesizers Electronic tuner Korg Museum. Audio interview with Mitch Colby - EVP / CMO of Korg USA Korg - Review NAMM Oral History Interview Tsutomu Katoh discusses his favorite of his many musical products, the tuner
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Doctor Who
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Doctor Who is a British science-fiction television programme produced by the BBC since 1963. The programme depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called The Doctor and he explores the universe in a time-travelling space ship called the TARDIS. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Accompanied by a number of companions, the Doctor combats a variety of foes, while working to save civilisations, the show is a significant part of British popular culture, and elsewhere it has gained a cult following. It has influenced generations of British television professionals, many of whom grew up watching the series, the programme originally ran from 1963 to 1989. There was an attempt to revive regular production in 1996 with a backdoor pilot. The programme was relaunched in 2005, and since then has been produced in-house by BBC Wales in Cardiff, twelve actors have headlined the series as the Doctor. The conceit is that this is a Time Lord trait through which the character of the Doctor takes on a new body, each actors portrayal differs, but all represent stages in the life of the same character and form a single narrative. The time-travelling feature of the means that different incarnations of the Doctor occasionally meet. The current lead, Peter Capaldi, took on the role after Matt Smiths exit in the 2013 Christmas special The Time of the Doctor, in 2017, Capaldi confirmed he would be leaving at the end of the tenth series. Doctor Who follows the adventures of the character, a rogue Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He fled from Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS – Time and Relative Dimension in Space – a machine which allows him to travel across time, the TARDIS has a chameleon circuit which normally allows the machine to take on the appearance of local objects as a disguise. However, the Doctors TARDIS remains fixed as a blue British police box due to a malfunction in the chameleon circuit, the Doctor rarely travels alone and often brings one or more companions to share these adventures. His companions are usually humans, as he has found a fascination with planet Earth, as a Time Lord, the Doctor has the ability to regenerate when his body is mortally damaged, taking on a new appearance and personality. The Doctor has gained numerous reoccurring enemies during his travels, including the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Master, another renegade Time Lord. Doctor Who first appeared on BBC TV at 17,16,20 GMT, eighty seconds after the programme time,5,15 pm. It was to be a weekly programme, each episode 25 minutes of transmission length. Discussions and plans for the programme had been in progress for a year, writer Anthony Coburn, story editor David Whitaker and initial producer Verity Lambert also heavily contributed to the development of the series
38.
Roland System 100
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The Roland System 100 was an analog semi-modular synthesizer manufactured by Japans Roland Corporation, released in 1975 and manufactured until 1979. It consisted of the products, Synthesizer 101 A monophonic synthesizer with built-in keyboard, oscillator, filter. Expander 102 The same synthesizer again, without the keyboard, to be stood up behind the 101, in addition, a ring modulator and sample and hold are included. Mixer 103 A four-channel stereo mixer with built-in spring reverb, stereo panning, sequencer 104 A two-channel, 12-step sequencer to automate playing looped bars of notes. Monitor speaker 109 A pair of 16cm speakers, pCS-10 20cm, 40cm, 60cm, 80cm and 1m patch cables. Each unit was powered, so complex patches wouldnt cause either oscillator to droop in pitch. Uniquely for the time, the System 100 didnt lock in the oscillators to fixed footages or pitches and it uses the 1V/oct standard, so can be used with a MIDI-to-CV converter. Generally, however, it is a robust and reliable system, the SH-5 and SH-7 are similar in styling, but both have fixed signal paths, as opposed to the semi-modular System 100. The system was used by Mute Records label head Daniel Miller, who helped produce Depeche Modes A Broken Frame. Specifically, the albums Reproduction and Travelogue used a large System 100 multitracked to provide all the arrangements, including drums. Vince Clarke is also a user, it can be heard on many of Erasures albums including the all analog works post-1991, the K2 Plan used it extensively in a similar vein, multitracked and with the sequencer providing odd syncopations and effects. Joy Electrics The White Songbook album was created by using a System 100 exclusively
39.
The Golden Hour of the Future
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The Golden Hour of the Future is a compilation album of recordings made by the electronic band The Future and early recordings by the original line-up of The Human League. Material by The Future features Martyn Ware, Ian Craig Marsh and Adi Newton, the band compiled a demo tape from those recordings, which they played to record companies on an ill-fated trip to London. The album was compiled by Richard X and released on his Black Melody label in 2002, with assistance from Human League members past and present and Sean Turner, creator of the Blind Youth website. The album was preceded by the limited edition EP Dance Like a Star. The album was re-issued in September 2005 as a re-mastered edition, the track listing remained the same although digital releases featured a Shorter version of the final track Last Man on Earth. The CD carried a new catalogue number MELCD5
40.
Glenn Gregory
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Glenn Peter Gregory is an English singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Gregorys music career more than 30 years. Glenn Peter Gregory was born on 16 May 1958, in Sheffield and his father was a steel worker. As a teenager, he wanted to be an actor, Gregory had known the founding members of The Human League for many years. He had been singing and playing guitar in bands with Ian Craig Marsh since 1973. In early 1981, he was contacted by Martyn Ware after the membership of the Human League split, and was asked to join Heaven 17. The band Heaven 17 included the trio of Martyn Ware, Ian Craig Marsh, the band released eight studio albums, and had many hits in the UK. However, by the late 1980s their popularity had declined, the band broke up in 1988, but reunited in 1996, and played their first ever live concert in 1997. Marsh left the band in 2007, but Ware and Gregory continued to perform as Heaven 17, in 1984, Gregory contributed to the Band Aid single, Do They Know Its Christmas. Singing the line No rain nor rivers flow and he has also established a career in soundtrack music, writing for radio, TV and film. He creates scores in a studio built at the bottom of his garden. In 1983, Gregory married singer Sarah Osborne of the Belgian pop group Allez Allez, Gregory then married his second wife Lindsay who works for a design company. The couple have a son named Louis Earl, called Louie, and a whippet dog
