Los Angeles
Los Angeles the City of Los Angeles and known by its initials L. A. is the most populous city in California, the second most populous city in the United States, after New York City, the third most populous city in North America. With an estimated population of four million, Los Angeles is the cultural and commercial center of Southern California; the city is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity and the entertainment industry, its sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles is the largest city on the West Coast of North America. Los Angeles is in a large basin bounded by the Pacific Ocean on one side and by mountains as high as 10,000 feet on the other; the city proper, which covers about 469 square miles, is the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the country. Los Angeles is the principal city of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second largest in the United States after that of New York City, with a population of 13.1 million. It is part of the Los Angeles-Long Beach combined statistical area the nation's second most populous area with a 2015 estimated population of 18.7 million.
Los Angeles is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States, with a diverse economy in a broad range of professional and cultural fields. Los Angeles is famous as the home of Hollywood, a major center of the world entertainment industry. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index and 9th in the Global Economic Power Index; the Los Angeles metropolitan area has a gross metropolitan product of $1.044 trillion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. Los Angeles hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics and will host the event for a third time in 2028; the city hosted the Miss Universe pageant twice, in 1990 and 2006, was one of 9 American cities to host the 1994 FIFA men's soccer World Cup and one of 8 to host the 1999 FIFA women's soccer World Cup, hosting the final match for both tournaments. Home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California.
The city was founded on September 4, 1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4, 1850, five months before California achieved statehood; the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California assured the city's continued rapid growth; the Los Angeles coastal area was settled by the Chumash tribes. A Gabrieleño settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning "poison oak place". Maritime explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the area of southern California for the Spanish Empire in 1542 while on an official military exploring expedition moving north along the Pacific coast from earlier colonizing bases of New Spain in Central and South America.
Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2, 1769. In 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. On September 4, 1781, a group of forty-four settlers known as "Los Pobladores" founded the pueblo they called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles,'The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels'; the present-day city has the largest Roman Catholic Archdiocese in the United States. Two-thirds of the Mexican or settlers were mestizo or mulatto, a mixture of African and European ancestry; the settlement remained a small ranch town for decades, but by 1820, the population had increased to about 650 residents. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the historic district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street, the oldest part of Los Angeles. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, the pueblo continued as a part of Mexico.
During Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta California's regional capital. Mexican rule ended during the Mexican–American War: Americans took control from the Californios after a series of battles, culminating with the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, 1847. Railroads arrived with the completion of the transcontinental Southern Pacific line to Los Angeles in 1876 and the Santa Fe Railroad in 1885. Petroleum was discovered in the city and surrounding area in 1892, by 1923, the discoveries had helped California become the country's largest oil producer, accounting for about one-quarter of the world's petroleum output. By 1900, the population had grown to more than 102,000; the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, under the supervision of William Mulholland, assured the continued growth of the city. Due to clauses in the city's charter that prevented the City of Los Angeles from selling or providing water from the aqueduct to any area outside its borders, many adjacent city and communities became compelled to annex themselves into Los Angeles.
Los Angeles created the first municipal zoning ordinance in the United States. On September 14, 1908, the Los Angeles City Council promulgated residential and industrial land use zones; the new ordinance established three residential zones of a single type, where industrial uses were
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous borough of New York City, with an estimated 2,648,771 residents in 2017. Named after the Dutch village of Breukelen, it borders the borough of Queens at the western end of Long Island. Brooklyn has several bridge and tunnel connections to the borough of Manhattan across the East River, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge connects Staten Island. Since 1896, Brooklyn has been coterminous with Kings County, the most populous county in the U. S. state of New York and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after New York County. With a land area of 71 square miles and water area of 26 square miles, Kings County is New York state's fourth-smallest county by land area and third-smallest by total area, though it is the second-largest among the city's five boroughs. Today, if each borough were ranked as a city, Brooklyn would rank as the third-most populous in the U. S. after Los Angeles and Chicago. Brooklyn was an independent incorporated city until January 1, 1898, after a long political campaign and public relations battle during the 1890s, according to the new Municipal Charter of "Greater New York", Brooklyn was consolidated with the other cities and counties to form the modern City of New York, surrounding the Upper New York Bay with five constituent boroughs.
The borough continues, however. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves. Brooklyn's official motto, displayed on the Borough seal and flag, is Eendraght Maeckt Maght, which translates from early modern Dutch as "Unity makes strength". In the first decades of the 21st century, Brooklyn has experienced a renaissance as an avant garde destination for hipsters, with concomitant gentrification, dramatic house price increases, a decrease in housing affordability. Since the 2010s, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship and high technology startup firms, of postmodern art and design; the name Brooklyn is derived from the original Dutch colonial name Breuckelen, meaning marshland. Established in 1646, the name first appeared in print in 1663; the Dutch colonists named it after the scenic town of Netherlands. Over the past two millennia, the name of the ancient town in Holland has been Bracola, Brocckede, Brocklandia, Broikelen and Breukelen; the New Amsterdam settlement of Breuckelen went through many spelling variations, including Breucklyn, Brucklyn, Brookland, Brockland and Brookline/Brook-line.
There have been so many variations of the name. The final name of Brooklyn, however, is the most accurate to its meaning; the history of European settlement in Brooklyn spans more than 350 years. The settlement began in the 17th century as the small Dutch-founded town of "Breuckelen" on the East River shore of Long Island, grew to be a sizeable city in the 19th century, was consolidated in 1898 with New York City, the remaining rural areas of Kings County, the rural areas of Queens and Staten Island, to form the modern City of New York; the etymology of Breuckelen may be directly from the dialect word Breuckelen meaning buckle or from the Plattdeutsch Brücken meaning bridge. The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle Long Island's western edge, largely inhabited by the Lenape, an Algonquian-speaking American Indian tribe who are referred to in colonial documents by a variation of the place name "Canarsie". Bands were associated with place names, but the colonists thought their names represented different tribes.
The Breuckelen settlement was named after Breukelen in the Netherlands. The Dutch West India Company lost little time in chartering the six original parishes: Gravesend: in 1645, settled under Dutch patent by English followers of Anabaptist Lady Deborah Moody, named for's-Gravenzande, Netherlands, or Gravesend, England Brooklyn Heights: as Breuckelen in 1646, after the town now spelled Breukelen, Netherlands. Breuckelen was located along Fulton Street between Smith Street. Brooklyn Heights, or Clover Hill, is where the village Brooklyn was founded in 1816. Flatlands: as Nieuw Amersfoort in 1647 Flatbush: as Midwout in 1652 Nieuw Utrecht: in 1657, after the city of Utrecht, Netherlands Bushwick: as Boswijck in 1661 The colony's capital of New Amsterdam, across the East River, obtained its charter in 1653 than the village of Brooklyn; the neighborhood of Marine Park was home to North America's first tide mill. It was built by the Dutch, the foundation can be seen today, but the area was not formally settled as a town.
Many incidents and documents relating to this period are in Gabriel Furman's 1824 compilation. What is Brooklyn today left Dutch hands after the final English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, a prelude to the Second Anglo–Dutch War. New Netherland was taken in a naval action, the conquerors renamed their prize in honor of the overall English naval commander, Duke of York, brother of the monarch King Charles II of England and future king himself as King James II of England and James VII of Scotland; the English reorganized the six old Dutch towns on southwestern Long Island as Kings County on November 1, 1683, one of the "original twelve counties" established in New York Pro
Urb (magazine)
URB is a monthly American magazine devoted to electronic music, hip hop and urban lifestyle and culture. Based in Los Angeles, the magazine was founded in 1990 by Raymond Roker. Publication of the print edition was suspended following the Summer 2009 issue. Plans were announced for the October 2009 launch of issue #159 as an online publication, with further issues to follow, with the hope that the print edition would be resumed sometime in 2010. Roker cited a significant "shift in consumption and media habits worldwide in the magazine market" in the preceding 18 months as a factor in the decision to put the print edition on hiatus. Prior to 2007, one issue a year was devoted to features of "The Next 100" up-and-coming musicians. In April 2007, the feature was moved to the magazine's website and expanded tenfold to become "The Next 1000". Instead of featuring 100 emerging artists and groups in a single issue of the magazine, 20 artists and groups are featured each week on the website, over the course of a year.
The artists to be featured are selected by URB's editorial staff and are rated by the site's visitors. URB's online presence, URB.com, was minimal until a redesigned site was launched April 2, 2007. The new 2007 version of URB.com featured a daily music and culture news blog, weekly CD and singles reviews, features from the magazine, an extensive video collection made possible by a partnership with the online video service Video In My Backyard. In 2009, a newly redesigned "beta" version of URB.com, designed by The Uprising Creative, was launched with a focus on timely content in a blogroll format rather than the sectioned-off version from 2007. This new version of URB.com boasts over 10,000 posts, capturing the entire online archives of URB.com throughout the years, along with many of the newest web 2.0 features like share tools, RSS feeds, Flickr integration, YouTube & Vimeo Video embeds, audio podcasts, content in 3 main categories - music and culture. URB.com distributes a weekly e-zine to over 150,000 subscribers.
The site publishes a monthly podcast which features artist interviews and exclusive music tracks. URB.com - URB Magazine's Official Website URB's daily music and culture blog
Grammy Award for Best Rock Song
The Grammy Award for Best Rock Song is an honor presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony, established in 1958 and called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for quality songs in the rock music genre. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position"; the award, reserved for songwriters, was first presented to English musician Sting in 1992. According to the category description guide for the 52nd Grammy Awards, the award honors new songs or songs "first achieving prominence" during the period of eligibility. Songs containing prominent samples or interpolations are not eligible. Bruce Springsteen holds the records for the most wins and nominations, having won four awards from nine nominations. Other winners of multiple awards include Alanis Morissette as well as the bands Red Hot Chili Peppers and U2, with two.
Award-winning songs have been performed by American artists more than any other nationality, though they have been performed by musicians or groups originating from Canada and the United Kingdom. There have been four instances in which one artist or group was nominated for two works in the same year: the group Aerosmith was nominated for both "Cryin'" and "Livin' on the Edge" in 1994, Melissa Etheridge received nominations for "Come to My Window" and "I'm the Only One" in 1995, Jakob Dylan of The Wallflowers won for "One Headlight" and was nominated for "The Difference" in 1998, U2 was nominated for the songs "Elevation" and "Walk On" in 2002. Coldplay holds the record for the most nominations without a win, with four. ^ The performing artist does not receive the award. ^ in parentheses the performer's name. List of Grammy Award categories Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Rock Songs Official site of the Grammy Awards
Sun Ra
Le Sony'r Ra, better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader and synthesizer player, poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific output, theatrical performances. For much of his career, Ra led "The Arkestra", an ensemble with an ever-changing name and flexible line-up. Born and raised in Alabama, Blount became involved in the Chicago jazz scene during the late 1940s, he soon abandoned. He developed a complex persona and an idiosyncratic, myth-based credo that would make him a pioneer of Afrofuturism, he claimed to be an alien from Saturn on a mission to preach peace, throughout his life he publicly denied ties to his prior identity. His eclectic and avant-garde music echoed the entire history of jazz, from ragtime and early New Orleans hot jazz, to swing music, free jazz and fusion, his compositions ranged from keyboard solos to works for big bands of over 30 musicians, along with electronic excursions, chants, percussion pieces, anthems. From the mid-1950s until his death, Ra led the musical collective The Arkestra.
Its performances included dancers and musicians dressed in elaborate, futuristic costumes inspired by ancient Egyptian attire and the Space Age. Though his mainstream success was limited, Sun Ra was a prolific recording artist and frequent live performer, remained both influential and controversial throughout his life for his music and persona, he is now considered an innovator. Over the course of his career, he recorded dozens of singles and over one hundred full-length albums, comprising well over 1000 songs, making him one of the most prolific recording artists of the 20th century, he was born Herman Blount on May 22, 1914, in Birmingham, Alabama, as discovered by his biographer, John F. Szwed, published in his 1998 book, he was named after the popular vaudeville stage magician Black Herman, who had impressed his mother. He was nicknamed "Sonny" from his childhood, had an older sister and half-brother, was doted upon by his mother and grandmother. For decades little was known about Sun Ra's early life, he contributed to its obscurity.
As a self-invented person, he gave evasive, contradictory or nonsensical answers to personal questions, denied his birth name. He speculated, only half in jest, that he was distantly related to Elijah Poole famous as Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, his birthday for years remained unknown, as he claimed it for years ranging from 1910 to 1918. Only a few years before his death, the date of Sun Ra's birth was still a mystery. Jim Macnie's notes for Blue Delight said, but Szwed was able to uncover a wealth of information about his early life and confirmed a birth date of May 22, 1914. As a child, Blount was a skilled pianist. By the age of 11 or 12, he was sight reading music. Birmingham was an important stop for touring musicians, he saw famous musicians such as Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, along with others who were quite talented but never made the big time. Sun Ra once said, "The world let down a lot of good musicians". In his teenage years, Blount demonstrated prodigious musical talent: many times, according to acquaintances, he went to big band performances and produced full transcriptions of the bands' songs from memory.
By his mid-teens, Blount was performing semi-professionally as a solo pianist, or as a member of various ad hoc jazz and R&B groups. He attended Birmingham's segregated Industrial High School, where he studied under music teacher John T. "Fess" Whatley, a demanding disciplinarian, respected and whose classes produced many professional musicians. Though religious, his family was not formally associated with any Christian church or sect. Blount had few or no close friends in high school but was remembered as kind-natured and quiet, an honor roll student, a voracious reader, he took advantage of the Black Masonic Lodge as one of the few places in Birmingham where African Americans had unlimited access to books. Its collection on Freemasonry and other esoteric concepts made a strong impression on him. By his teens, Blount suffered from cryptorchidism, it left him with a nearly constant discomfort. Szwed suggests that Blount felt shame about it and the condition contributed to his isolation. In 1934 Blount was offered his first full-time musical job by Ethel Harper, his biology teacher from the high school, who had organized a band to pursue a career as a singer.
Blount joined a musicians' trade union and toured with Harper's group through the US Southeast and Midwest. When Harper left the group mid-tour to move to New York, Blount took over leadership of the group, renaming it the Sonny Blount Orchestra, they continued touring for several months before dissolving as unprofitable. Though the first edition of the Sonny Blount Orchestra was not financially successful, they earned positive notice from fans and other musicians. Blount afterward found steady employment as a musicia
Blonde Redhead
Blonde Redhead is an alternative rock band composed of Kazu Makino and twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace that formed in New York City in 1993. The band's earliest albums were noted for their noise rock influences, though their sound evolved by the early 2000s with the releases of Misery is a Butterfly and 23, which both incorporated elements of dream pop and other genres, they have toured internationally. Amedeo and Simone Pace were born in Milan, grew up in Montreal, but moved to Boston to study jazz. After earning Bachelor's degrees, they entered the New York City underground music scene. Blonde Redhead formed in New York in 1993 after Amedeo and Simone met Kazu Makino, an art student at the time, by chance at a local Italian restaurant. Blonde Redhead's self-titled debut album was released in 1995. Shortly afterwards, fourth member Maki Takahashi left the band and was replaced by her friend Toko Yasuda as bassist. Yasuda played on the band's second album La Mia Vita Violenta released in 1995.
Both records appeared on the New York label Smells Like. The band continued as a trio, their third album, Fake Can Be Just as Good, was released through Touch & Go in 1997. The band enlisted the help of Vern Rumsey of Unwound. Subsequent albums featured Skúli Sverrisson. On their fourth album, In an Expression of the Inexpressible, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi was hired as producer. Picciotto contributed in the construction to the song "Futurism vs. Passéism Part 2" as well as lending it his vocals to the 1998 release. In 2000 Picciotto co-produced Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons with Ryan Hadlock, an album about the relationship between Makino and Amedeo Pace; the four-year delay between Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and Misery Is a Butterfly is attributed to Makino's recovery time after being trampled by a horse. Much of the visual and lyrical imagery of Misery Is a Butterfly is reflective of the accident in the music video for "Equus." It was the last time. In 2006 Makino recorded vocals for the film Sisters.
Alan Moulder mixed the trio's album 23, released on 4AD, in April 2007. In mid-2008, they recorded the score of the documentary feature film The Dungeon Masters; the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released on February 12, 2010. In 2009, Blonde Redhead contributed to the AIDS benefit album Dark Was the Night produced by the Red Hot Organization. In March 2010 the band included a demo version of the song "Not Getting There" on a 4AD sampler entitled Fragments From Work In Progress, their eighth album, Penny Sparkle, was released in September 2010 through 4AD. The album was again mixed by Alan Moulder, reached 79 in the Billboard 200 chart. For the subsequent tour the band added a key-board player; the band released a six-track remix EP in July 2011. A year the band started the project for their next album but without the support of 4AD. Self-financed, the band embarked on a haphazard recording schedule with producer Drew Brown. Simone Pace noted about Brown's involvement that "he has so much experience and dictated the direction of the record.
He forced the band to use analogue instruments. The band released Barragán, on September 2, 2014 through Kobalt, it was preceded by the single "No More Honey". It was followed by "Dripping," which included a video; the band provided the soundtrack to the Danish film The Commentator. In June 2016 it was announced that the band would release the box set Masculin Féminin on September 30 through The Numero Group, it contains 37 tracks, which cover the first two albums, associated singles, radio sessions and unreleased demos from the period. The band named themselves after a song on the 1981 EP A Taste of DNA by the no wave group DNA. 2000: Mélodie Citronique – 12"/CD EP, Touch & Go Records 2005: The Secret Society of Butterflies – CD EP, 4AD/Beggars Banquet 2017: 3 O'Clock – CD EP, Kobalt Music Group, Ponderosa Music & Art / Asa Wa Kuru Records 1993: Amescream / Big Song – 7" Single, Oxo Records 1994: Vague / Jet Star – 7" Single, Smells Like Records 1995: 10 Feet High / Valentine – 7" Single, Smells Like Records 1995: Flying Douglas / Harmony – 7" Single, Rough Trade 1997: Symphony of Treble / Kasuality – 7" Single, Touch & Go Records 1998: Limited conversation / Slogan – 7" Single, Touch & Go Records 2004: Elephant Woman – 7" Single, 4AD/Beggars Banquet 2004: Equus – 7" Single, 4AD/Beggars Banquet 2007: 23 – 7" Single, 4AD 2007: Silently – 7" Single, 4AD The Dungeon Masters Masculin Féminin Freedom of Expression on Barragán – Remixes Of Original Material By Blonde Redhead LP, Asa Wa Kuru Records Blonde Redhead official website Blonde Redhead on 4AD Records Blonde Redhead at AllMusic Interview with Submerge Magazine "The Changelings" November, 2010 Indie Pop Fever review of "Penny Sparkle"
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, except with a longer neck and scale length, four to six strings or courses. The four-string bass is tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar, it is played with the fingers or thumb, or striking with a pick. The electric bass guitar has pickups and must be connected to an amplifier and speaker to be loud enough to compete with other instruments. Since the 1960s, the bass guitar has replaced the double bass in popular music as the bass instrument in the rhythm section. While types of basslines vary from one style of music to another, the bassist plays a similar role: anchoring the harmonic framework and establishing the beat. Many styles of music include the bass guitar, it is a soloing instrument. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, an "Electric bass guitar a Guitar with four heavy strings tuned E1'-A1'-D2-G2."
It defines bass as "Bass. A contraction of Double bass or Electric bass guitar." According to some authors the proper term is "electric bass". Common names for the instrument are "bass guitar", "electric bass guitar", "electric bass" and some authors claim that they are accurate; the bass guitar is a transposing instrument, as it is notated in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds. In the 1930s, musician and inventor Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, developed the first electric bass guitar in its modern form, a fretted instrument designed to be played horizontally; the 1935 sales catalog for Tutmarc's electronic musical instrument company, featured his "Model 736 Bass Fiddle", a four-stringed, solid-bodied, fretted electric bass guitar with a 30 1⁄2-inch scale length, a single pick up. The adoption of a guitar's body shape made the instrument easier to hold and transport than any of the existing stringed bass instruments; the addition of frets enabled bassists to play in tune more than on fretless acoustic or electric upright basses.
Around 100 of these instruments were made during this period. Audiovox sold their “Model 236” bass amplifier. Around 1947, Tutmarc's son, began marketing a similar bass under the Serenader brand name, prominently advertised in the nationally distributed L. D. Heater Music Company wholesale jobber catalogue of 1948. However, the Tutmarc family inventions did not achieve market success. In the 1950s, Leo Fender and George Fullerton developed the first mass-produced electric bass guitar; the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company began producing the Precision Bass in October 1951. The "P-bass" evolved from a simple, un-contoured "slab" body design and a single coil pickup similar to that of a Telecaster, to something more like a Fender Stratocaster, with a contoured body design, edges beveled for comfort, a split single coil pickup; the "Fender Bass" was a revolutionary new instrument for gigging musicians. In comparison with the large, heavy upright bass, the main bass instrument in popular music from the early 1900s to the 1940s, the bass guitar could be transported to shows.
When amplified, the bass guitar was less prone than acoustic basses to unwanted audio feedback. In 1953 Monk Montgomery became the first bassist to tour with the Fender bass guitar, in Lionel Hampton's postwar big band. Montgomery was possibly the first to record with the bass guitar, on July 2, 1953 with The Art Farmer Septet. Roy Johnson, Shifty Henry, were other early Fender bass pioneers. Bill Black, playing with Elvis Presley, switched from upright bass to the Fender Precision Bass around 1957; the bass guitar was intended to appeal to guitarists as well as upright bass players, many early pioneers of the instrument, such as Carol Kaye, Joe Osborn, Paul McCartney were guitarists. In 1953, following Fender's lead, Gibson released the first short-scale violin-shaped electric bass, with an extendable end pin so a bassist could play it upright or horizontally. Gibson renamed the bass the EB-1 in 1958. In 1958, Gibson released the maple arched-top EB-2 described in the Gibson catalogue as a "hollow-body electric bass that features a Bass/Baritone pushbutton for two different tonal characteristics".
In 1959 these were followed by the more conventional-looking EB-0 Bass. The EB-0 was similar to a Gibson SG in appearance. Whereas Fender basses had pickups mounted in positions in between the base of the neck and the top of the bridge, many of Gibson's early basses featured one humbucking pickup mounted directly against the neck pocket; the EB-3, introduced in 1961 had a "mini-humbucker" at the bridge position. Gibson basses tended to be smaller, sleeker instruments with a shorter scale length than the Precision. A number of other companies began manufacturing bass guitars during the 1950s: Kay in 1952, Hofner and Danelectro in 1956, Rickenbacker in 1957 and Burns/Supersound in 1958. 1956 saw the appearance at the German trade fair "Musikmesse Frankfurt" of the distinctive Höfner 500/1 violin-shaped bass made using violin construction techniques by Walter Höfner, a second-generation violin luthier. The design was known popularly as the "Beat
