The Dubliners
Nearly three decades since they first came together during informal sessions at O’Donoghue’s Pub in Dublin, the Dubliners remain one of the most influential of Ireland’s traditional folk bands… Initially known as the Ronnie Drew Folk group, the Dubliners have gone through several personnel changes since they were formed in 1962…
Turin Brakes
Turin Brakes are an English duo inspired by folk and progressive rock hailing from Balham, London. Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian were friends in elementary school and decided to try out for the cathedral choir because it would give them the chance to perform in front of the Queen of England, which they eventually did. The two aspiring musicians, influenced by a unique range of artists…
Solomon Burke
While Solomon Burke never made a major impact upon the pop audience – he never, in fact, had a Top 20 hit – he was an important early soul pioneer. On his 60s singles for Atlantic, he brought a country influence into R&B, with emotional phrasing and intricately constructed, melodic ballads and midtempo songs. At the same time, he was surrounded with sophisticated “uptown” arrangements and was provided with much of his material by his producers…
Sun Kil Moon
After dissolving his previous band, Red House Painters, singer/songwriter Mark Kozelek resurfaced with Sun Kil Moon, refining and expanding the luminous acoustic balladry and harrowingly intimate lyricism that were the hallmarks of his career to date. Born in Massillon, Ohio, in 1967, Kozelek formed his first band, God Forbid, while in his teens…
Judy Dyble
Judy Dyble was the original female singer in Fairport Convention, singing with the group from around mid-1967 to mid-1968, and appearing on their first album and single… Dyble’s career, though, didn’t end there…in June 1968, she advertised in Melody Maker for a band, getting a response from Peter Giles, then playing with future King Crimson members Michael Giles and Robert Fripp in the trio Giles, Giles & Fripp…
Jim White
Southern Gothic singer/songwriter Jim White grew up in Pensacola, Florida, enamored with the sounds of the white gospel music he heard on the Gospel Jubilee television series. After spending his formative years on the outskirts of a deeply Pentecostal community, he entertained a career as a professional surfer, followed by a stint in Milan as a fashion model. A bandsaw accident that resulted in a maimed left hand seemed to end White’s hopes as a musician…
Charlie Rich
Charlie Rich was simultaneously one of the most critically acclaimed and most erratic country singers of post-World War II era. Rich had all the elements of being one of the great country stars of the 60s and 70s, but his popularity never matched his critical notices. Throughout his career, Rich willfully bended genres, fusing country, jazz, blues, gospel, rockabilly, and soul…
Supergrass
Like many other British bands of the 90s, Supergrass’ musical roots lie in the infectiously catchy punk-pop of the Buzzcocks and the Jam, as well as the post-punk pop of Madness and the traditional Brit-pop of the Kinks and Small Faces. Perhaps because of its age – two of the trio were still in their teens when they recorded their debut single…
My Life Story
My Life Story was one of many orchestral British pop groups that appeared in the wake of Pulp and Suede. Led by Jake Shillingford, the group won a hardcore following of die-hard Anglophiles. Jake Shillingford, for all intents and purposes, is My Life Story…
Guy Clark
Guy Clark didn’t just write songs, he crafted them, with the kind of hands-on care and respect that a master carpenter (a favorite image of his) would when faced with a stack of rare hardwood. Clark worked slowly and with strict attention to detail – he released only 13 studio albums in his 40-year career – but he produced an impressive collection of timeless gems, leaving very little waste behind…
Planxty
Along with groups like the Bothy Band, Planxty helped to usher in a new era for modern Celtic music. While their sound remained rooted to traditional music, the band’s virtuosic musicianship and high-energy delivery reflected modern influences, while their unique vocal harmonies and instrumental counterpoint were unprecedented in Irish music. The founding members of Planxty – Christy Moore, Dónal Lunny, Liam O’Flynn, Andy Irvine…
F.R. David
Paris-based singer/composer F.R. David is often regarded as a one-hit wonder since he failed to repeat the success of his 1982 monster hit Words that topped the charts in a dozen European countries and even peaked at number two in Great Britain. He began his career in the early 70s as a guitarist for Vangelis and later, he was the lead vocalist in the French rock band Les Variations…
Gene Vincent
Gene Vincent only had one really big hit, Be-Bop-A-Lula, which epitomized rockabilly at its prime in 1956 with its sharp guitar breaks, spare snare drums, fluttering echo, and Vincent’s breathless, sexy vocals. Yet his place as one of the great early rock & roll singers is secure, his records rated among the best rockabilly of all time. The leather-clad, limping, greasy-haired singer was also one of rock’s original bad boys…
Ocean Colour Scene
Falling between the energetic pop/rock of mod revival and the psychedelic experimentations of Traffic, Ocean Colour Scene came to be one of the leading bands of the traditionalist, post-Oasis British rock of the mid-90s. Although they had formed in the late 80s and had several hits during the height of Madchester in the early 90s, the band didn’t earn a large following until 1996…
Johnny Horton
Although he is better-remembered for his historical songs, Johnny Horton was one of the best and most popular honky tonk singers of the late ’50s. Horton managed to infuse honky tonk with an urgent rockabilly underpinning. His career may have been cut short by a fatal car crash in 1960, but his music reverberated throughout the next three decades…
The Vapors
Led by vocalist/guitarist Dave Fenton, the Vapors were a short-lived new wave guitar group that is best known for the spiky pop single Turning Japanese. Fenton formed the first version of the Vapors in 1978, yet he was the only member to survive that lineup; in 1979, former Ellery Bops members Ed Bazalgette (lead guitar) and Howard Smith (drums) joined the band, and bassist Steve Smith came aboard shortly afterward…
James
As one of the first groups to be dubbed “the next Smiths”, James became an institution on the British alternative music scene during the 80s and 90s with their pleasant folk-pop… In the late ’80s, James, like many of their British peers, became involved in the acid house-inspired “baggy” scene and recorded the baggy-inspired “Sit Down” which became their breakthrough hit…
Dwight Yoakam
With his stripped-down approach to traditional honky tonk and Bakersfield country, Dwight Yoakam helped return country music to its roots in the late 80s. Like his idols Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams, Yoakam never played by Nashville’s rules; consequently, he never dominated the charts like his contemporary Randy Travis. Then again, Travis never played around with the sound and style of country music like Yoakam…
Fluke
A three-piece combo who managed to make inspired music during the 1990s while blazing a path through most of the popular electronic styles of the decade, Fluke was formed by occasional vocalist Jon Fugler, Mike Tournier and Mike Bryant after the three had spent several years living in the same combination house and recording studio…
Lonnie Mack
When Lonnie Mack sang the blues, country strains were sure to infiltrate. Conversely, if he dug into a humping rockabilly groove, strong signs of a deep-down blues influence were bound to invade, par for the course for any musician who cited both Bobby Bland and George Jones as pervasive influences. Fact is, Mack’s lightning-fast, vibrato-enriched, whammy bar-hammered guitar style influenced many a picker, too, including Stevie Ray Vaughan…
X-Ray Spex
One of the great English punk bands of the late 70s, there is only one thing wrong with the careers of X-Ray Spex and lead singer Poly Styrene – they didn’t record enough music. Formed in 1976 by school friends Marion Elliot (Styrene) and Susan Whitby (saxophonist Lora Logic), X-Ray Spex exploded onto the punk scene with one of the era’s great singles, the feminist punk rallying cry Oh Bondage, Up Yours…
Clark Terry
Possessor of the happiest sound in jazz, flugelhornist Clark Terry always played music that was exuberant, swinging, and fun. A brilliant (and very distinctive) soloist, Terry gained fame for his “Mumbles” vocals … and was also an enthusiastic educator. He gained early experience playing trumpet in the viable St. Louis jazz scene of the early 40s (where he was an inspiration for Miles Davis)…
The Electric Prunes
Though they got considerable input from talented LA songwriters and producers, with their two big hits penned by outside sources, the Electric Prunes did by and large play the music on their records … especially the scintillating I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night, which mixed distorted guitars and pop hooks with inventive, oscillating reverb…
L7
Although often lumped in with the Seattle Movement of the early 90s (due to their sound, look, and attitude), the all-female punk band L7 originally hailed from Los Angeles. The seeds for L7 (whose name was taken from a slang term in the 50s that meant someone who was a “square”) were planted in 1985, when a pair of guitarist/singers, Suzi Gardner and Donita Sparks, decided to start a band…
Tindersticks
Tindersticks were one of the most original and distinctive British acts of the 90s, standing apart from both the British indie scene and the rash of Brit-pop guitar combos that dominated the UK charts… crafting dense, difficult songs layered with literary lyrics…
McCarthy
The British band McCarthy is probably remembered more for their left-wing politics than their jangly sound. Formed in Barking, Essex, England, in 1985, McCarthy consisted of Malcolm Eden (vocals, guitar), Tim Gane (guitar), John Williamson (bass), and Gary Baker (drums). Gane was originally a drummer, but Eden taught him how to play a number of chords on a guitar…
Tin Huey
Hard to believe, but as the decade turned from the 70s to the 80s, scenemakers and post-punk trendwatchers were looking for the next burgeoning proto-alternative scene to be emerging from…well, Akron, OH… Tin Huey were a group of post-punk Zappa/Beefheart fans who played artful (and at times arty) punk-pop with touches of free-form jazz…
The Selecter
One of the key bands of the UK ska revival of the late 70s and early 80s, the Selecter were also one of the few racially and sexually integrated acts on the scene, and vocalist Pauline Black often tackled sexism along with racism and the other social ills focused upon by groups that were part of the 2-Tone movement…
The Crimea
London group the Crimea has its roots in the Crocketts, who were signed to V2 in the UK in 1998, only to be dropped in 2001. Undaunted, vocalist/guitarist Davey MacManus (a published author of stories and poems who has also performed under the name Kernel Krok) and drummer Owen Hopkin (a journalist for such publications as Kerrang and the NME) formed the Crimea in 2002…
Ace
Ace were a British rock band, who enjoyed moderate success in the 1970s. Their membership included Paul Carrack, who later became famous as the lead vocalist of Mike + The Mechanics and as a solo artist. Ace are best known for their hit single How Long…
Bill Evans
With the passage of time, Bill Evans has become an entire school unto himself for pianists and a singular mood unto himself for listeners. There is no more influential jazz-oriented pianist … Borrowing heavily from the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel, Evans brought a new, introverted, relaxed, lyrical, European classical sensibility into jazz…
Blur
Initially, Blur were one of the multitude of British bands that appeared in the wake of the Stone Roses, mining the same swirling, pseudo-psychedelic guitar pop, only with louder guitars. Following an image makeover in the mid-’90s, the group emerged as the most popular band in the UK, establishing itself as heir to the English guitar pop tradition of the Kinks, the Small Faces, the Who…
Lonnie Donegan
To look at Lonnie Donegan today, in pictures taken 50 years ago when he was topping the British charts and hitting the Top Ten in America, dressed in a suit, his hair cut short and strumming an acoustic guitar, he looks like a musical non-entity. But in 1954, before anyone (especially anybody in England) knew what rock & roll was, Donegan was cool, and his music was hot…
Prolapse
The group Prolapse formed in Leicester. Members are: vocalists “Scottish Mick” Derrick and Linda Steelyard, keyboardist Donald Ross, guitarists Pat Marsden and David Jeffreys, drummer Tim Pattison, and bassist Mick Harrison. The band’s intense musical style is loud, raw, and furious … Prolapse first signed with the Cherry Red Records label, where they recorded two EPs and a debut album…
BOB
BOB were an Indie pop band from North London formed in 1985. The initial line-up was Richard Blackborow (vocals, keyboards, guitar), Simon Armstrong (guitar, vocals). Jem Morris (bass guitar), joined the duo in 1986, and, augmented with a drum machine, they recorded the band’s first release, a flexi disc… they gave a copy to John Peel in a fortuitous encounter in the Rough Trade record shop, and he played it many times…
Liz Simcock
Liz Simcock writes songs and performs them in folk and acoustic clubs in and around the UK. She has trodden an independent path, gaining a growing reputation as a performer and songwriter. Liz counts Richard Thompson, Clive Gregson, Boo Hewerdine and Joni Mitchell amongst her main songwriting role models…
Arab Strap
The Scottish post-folk duo Arab Strap were formed in mid-1995 by vocalist Aidan Moffat and multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Middleton, longtime friends who after years of exchanging cassettes of their respective bands decided to finally begin collaborating together, signing to the hip Chemikal Underground label…
Red House Painters
Red House Painters was primarily the vehicle of singer/songwriter Mark Kozelek, an evocative, compelling performer of rare emotional intensity. Like Mark Eitzel of American Music Club, to whose work the Painters were invariably compared and to whom their early success owed a tremendous debt, Kozelek laid his soul bare on record, conjuring harrowingly acute tales of pain, despair, and loss…
The Cure
Out of all the bands that emerged in the immediate aftermath of punk rock in the late 70s, few were as enduring and popular as the Cure. Led through numerous incarnations by guitarist/vocalist Robert Smith, the band became well-known for its slow, gloomy dirges and Smith’s ghoulish appearance…
The Family Cat
Formed in Yeovil, England in 1988, the Family Cat comprised vocalist Paul Frederick, guitarists Stephen Jelbert and Tim McVay, bassist John Graves and drummer Kevin Downing. After making their London debut the group was promptly signed to the fledgling Bad Girl label, soon issuing their debut single “Tom Verlaine” to widespread acclaim. With ex-Jam member Rick Buckler handling production chores…
Electric Light Orchestra
The Electric Light Orchestra’s ambitious yet irresistible fusion of Beatlesque pop, classical arrangements, and futuristic iconography rocketed the group to massive commercial success throughout the 1970s. ELO was formed in Birmingham in the autumn of 1970 from the ashes of the eccentric art-pop combo the Move, reuniting frontman Roy Wood with guitarist/composer Jeff Lynne…
Kevin Ayers
Kevin Ayers was one of rock’s oddest and more likable enigmas, even if he often seemed not to operate at his highest potential. Perhaps that’s because he never seemed to have taken his music too seriously — one of his essential charms and most aggravating limitations…
Randy Travis
Like the Beatles in rock, Randy Travis marks a generational shift in country music. When his Storms of Life came out in 1986, country music was still wallowing in the post-urban cowboy recession, chasing elusive crossover dreams. Travis brought the music back to its basics, sounding like nothing so much as a perfect blend of George Jones and Merle Haggard…
Rubber City Rebels
Rubber City Rebels are an American protopunk band from Akron, Ohio that formed in 1976. The original lineup of the band consisted of Rod Firestone (vocals), Buzz Clic (guitar), Donny Damage (bass), Stix Pelton (drums) and Pete Sake (keyboards)…
Uncle Tupelo
With the release of their 1990 debut LP, “No Depression”, trio Uncle Tupelo launched more than simply their own career – by fusing the simplicity and honesty of country music with the bracing fury of punk, they kick-started a revolution which reverberated throughout the American underground…
Babybird
Babybird were an indie band from Sheffield in the UK formed in 1995 and fronted by Stephen Jones, who has also released records as a solo artist, using his own name, and as Black Reindeer. Jones started writing and recording songs at home and his first collection of these demos was released using the name Baby Bird. He formed a band in order to tour and promote his work…
The Replacements
The Replacements initially formed in 1979, when Paul Westerberg joined a garage punk band formed by brothers Bob (guitar) and Tommy Stinson (bass) and drummer Chris Mars. Originally called the Impediments, the Minnesota residents changed their name to the Replacements after being banned from a local club for disorderly behavior…
Kylie Minogue
In the pop music arena, worldbeaters such as Kylie Minogue are few and far between. Singers and performers of her stature and popularity rarely maintain their power for as long as she has. Her streaks of number one singles in both Australia and the UK are nearly insurmountable. Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1968, Kylie began acting in television dramas at the age of 12…
John Grant
John Grant began his career as frontman of the Czars, a Colorado-based band whose music split the difference between shoegaze, dream pop, and alternative country. Fueled by Grant’s songwriting and rich baritone vocals, the band released a pair of independent albums in the 90s before signing with British label, Bella Union…
Paul Kelly
Songwriter singer Paul Kelly captures Australia in his songs the way Bruce Springsteen or Ray Davies have encapsulated their homelands, and he does it with the musical energy and diversity of Elvis Costello. The sixth of nine children, Kelly was born in Adelaide in 1955. After school he wandered around Australian for a few years, working odd jobs, writing poetry, and thinking about a career as a short story writer…
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