Biography
The expression of muzical freedom
Posten on: 2006-05-19 14:54:45
One of the most inventive and prolific musicians in rock, Frank Zappa was born in 1940. As a teen, he purchased of a album of by modern composer Edgard Varèse because he looked like a "mad scientist." Varèse instilled an interest in the avant garde in Zappa. He was an R&B drummer, but Zappa also took up guitar and in 1964 joined an R&B group called the Soul Giants. He became their creative leader, in addition to occasional vocalist, and changed their name to the Mothers. They signed to Verve Records and the name was further changed to The Mothers of Invention. Their 1966 debut album Freak Out! was rock's first double album and featured a political protest song, rock and doo wop songs with satirical lyrics and the first rock album with entirely experimental tracks. The Mothers continued their mix of rock and satire, adding jazz, classical and musique concrete elements to great critical acclaim, on 1967's Absolutely Free, 1968's We're Only In It For The Money, and 1969's Uncle Meat. We're Only In It For The Money was especially hailed for its scathing satire of the hippie counterculture and parody of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper album cover. In 1968 they also released Cruising With Ruben & The Jets, a doo wop album that affectionately parodied some lyrical clichés of the genre.Uncle Meat was the first album to appear on Zappa's own Warner Bros. distributed Bizarre/Straight label. The label also released albums by Tim Buckley, Captain Beefheart and Alice Cooper's first two albums. Beginning in 1967 Zappa also released solo albums. The first was the mostly instrumental Lumpy Gravy, which included comical spoken interludes. Zappa's 1969 jazz rock album, Hot Rats, actually made it to the UK Top 10. Two subsequent Mothers jazz/classical rock album, Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasels Ripped My Flesh also made it into the UK Top 20 and 30 respectively.Zappa's 1970 solo album, Chunga's Revenge featured a new band with former Turtles vocalists Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (aka Flo & Eddie). The new line up would go by the Mothers of Invention name in 200 Motels, a movie and album. They also appeared on the live albums, Live At The Fillmore East, June 1971 and Just Another Band From LA. In 1971 the band's equipment was destroyed while playing in Switzerland (documented in Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water"). Almost a week later, Zappa was pushed off-stage by a crazed fan. The fall crushed his larynx (altering his voice) and caused injury to his spine which kept him in a wheelchair for almost a year. He spent 1972 working with a new jazz big band/rock version of the Mothers. They appeared on Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo. Over-Nite Sensation marked the debut of a slightly more electric but still big version of the Mothers which continued on Apostrophe (') and One Size Fits All. Apostrophe (') featured Zappa's first ever charting single, "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" (US #86) and was his highest charting album to date in the US, reaching #10. One Size Fits All would be the last to feature the Mothers of Invention name.His next album was a 1975 live collaboration with childhood friend Captain Beefheart, Bongo Fury. Zappa split with Warner Bros. in 1979. The label split up his current project into three instrumental albums, Studio Tan, Sleep Dirt and Orchestral Favourites. Zappa formed a new label, Barking Pumpkin. 1979's Sheik Yerbouti contained another minor hit, "Dancin' Fool." This disco spoof hit US #49. In 1981 he released three albums of live guitar solos in the Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar series. Zappa had his biggest hit ever in 1982 with "Valley Girl." The song featured his daughter Moon Unit satirizing the affects and slang of southern California teenagers. It reached #32 on the US pop charts was a #12 rock hit.Zappa continued to release numerous satirical rock albums in addition to other projects. In 1983 he released an album of orchestral music recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. The following year, French composer/condutor Pierre Boulez conducted Zappa's work on The Perfect Stranger album. The 1984 box set Thing-Fish was in the form of a Broadway musical, but with political and social content. Thing Fish marked the debut of the synclavier, a music computer that Zappa would continue to work with on his subsequent albums. 1984's Francesco Zappa was an album of synclavier music styled after 18th century classical music. 1985's Jazz From Hell featured the synclavier performing music at its most rhythmically complex. The album won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Rock album.Zappa's 1988 tour featuring many new songs and was documented on three albums, Broadway The Hard Way, The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life, and Make A Jazz Noise Here. Vintage concert recordings were released in the 1988-92 series You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore. Zappa also officially released the most popular bootlegs of his work on the must publicized "Beat The Boots" series. In the early 90s it was announced that Zappa was suffering from prostate cancer. He completed work on The Yellow Shark, a chamber music album with Ensemble Modern. Zappa died of the disease in December 1993. Before his death he also completed a sequel to Lumpy Gravy, Civilization Phaze III. The double CD featured the synclavier, Ensemble Modern, and a continuation of Lumpy Gravy's spoken portions. It was released in 1995. Also in 1995, Zappa's entire catalogue of over 50 albums were reissued by Rykodisc Records on remastered CDs. In 1996, the trio of 1979 Warner Bros. instrumental albums were issued in their intended form as the album Läther.
Posted in: Biography | Frank Zappa | 0 Comments
Guitar legend that kept his integrity and low profile
Posten on: 2006-05-16 01:27:12
Born 24 June 1944 in Surrey, England, Jeff Beck was inspired to take up guitar by the recordings of Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy. Also prominent among Beck's early influences were two relatively unheralded guitar heroes: James Burton, whose solos ignited Ricky Nelson's 1950s hits; and Cliff Gallup, original lead guitarist of Gene Vincent & the Blue Caps. As a student at art school, Beck tapped into the passion that underlies his chops. "If I hadn't had a guitar," he later observed, "I'd have been locked up long ago." It was another art student, Jimmy Page, who provided Beck with his earliest professional encouragement. But Beck resisted the temptation to follow Page into the studio as a session guitarist. His uncompromising musical integrity was in place from the beginning: Jeff Beck plays only the music he's inspired to play. In 1963, that meant playing R&B in the Deltones and the Tridents-local groups which allowed Beck to cultivate an individual style rather than merely emulate the US stars of the day. By 1964, the UK blues revival was in full flower. The Rolling Stones and the Animals had begun to make names for themselves. So had a group called the Yardbirds, whose lead guitarist was Eric Clapton. In 1965, when the group decided to mount an attack on the pop charts with "For Your Love," blues purist Clapton bailed out. Page, the first guitarist the Yardbirds approached, was earning a decent living in the studio and demurred. He recommended that Beck be taken on in his place. During the twenty months that followed, Jeff's high-octane guitar playing, glittering with bent notes and fuzz-box distortion, made rock classics of the Yardbirds hits "Heart Full Of Soul," "Over Under Sideways Down," and "Shapes Of Things"-all of which reached the US Top 20. (These songs, like all the Yardbirds recordings, were issued in the US on Epic Records: Jeff Beck had begun his three-decade-plus association with Epic.) Years later, Yardbirds rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja offered a well-deserved testimonial: "We all feel the period Jeff spent with the band was the most creative. His scope of inventiveness was probably the widest of the three guitarists we played with-and none of them were exactly slouches." By 1966, Beck had left the Yardbirds in search of new musical directions. Beginning in March 1967, he recorded a trio of solo singles under the auspices of producer Mickey Most. "Hi-Ho Silver Lining"-the first of these to be released-became a #14 UK hit in summer 1967 (and, remarkably, reached #17 on the UK chart when reissued in 1972). But Beck wanted to put together a band with which he could pursue his musical ideals, and it began to take shape as the result of an accidental barroom meeting with singer Rod Stewart. Beck had seen Stewart perform with a London-based R&B group called Steampacket. If the singer shared his desire to form a band, Beck suggested, "Just call." Stewart did, and the first Jeff Beck Group was born. Featuring Ron Wood on bass and Mickey Waller on drums, the Jeff Beck Group recorded Truth (1968) and Beck-Ola (1969)-landmark albums that settled comfortably in the US Top 20. The intensity with which the group was working couldn't last, though. On the eve of its scheduled appearance at Woodstock in August 1969, the first Jeff Beck Group blew apart. By 1971, Beck had welded drummer Cozy Powell, keyboard player Max Middleton, and vocalist Bob Tench into a second Jeff Beck Group. Two albums-Rough and Ready (1971) and the gold-certified Jeff Beck Group-were US successes, but soon Beck was once again ready to move on. He returned to a project sidelined by his serious car crash a year earlier: the formation of a power trio featuring Vanilla Fudge rhythm section Tim Bogert (bass) and Carmine Appice (drums). The eponymous Beck Bogert & Appice (1972) reached #12 on the Billboard album chart in 1973, and became Beck's second gold LP. But, ever in search of new horizons, Beck dissolved this group, leaving a second studio album unfinished and a live album unissued outside of Japan. The 1974 album Blow By Blow found Jeff Beck rising to the new challenges he had set for himself. Reaching #3 on the Billboard chart and selling more than 2 million copies, Blow By Blow was a breakthrough for instrumental rock. Famed Beatles producer George Martin mid-wived for a second time in 1976 on Beck's platinum-plus Wired, which consolidated the guitarist's position in the forefront of the fusion movement. It was during this period that Beck began his long friendship with keyboards player and composer Jan Hammer. In 1977, the live jazz-rock classic Jeff Beck With The Jan Hammer Group became the eighth Jeff Beck album to reach the US Top 50. In 1980, Beck released There And Back. Five years later, inspired by a series of guest appearances on albums by Rod Stewart, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, the Honeydrippers, and Mick Jagger, Beck released Flash. The album, featuring vocals by old pal Jimmy Hall and Beck himself, contained the track "Escape," which garnered the guitarist his first Grammy Award (for Rock Instrumental Performance). Flash was also notable for reuniting Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart on the Curtis Mayfield classic "People Get Ready." Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop With Terry Bozzio and Tony Hymas, released in 1989, was universally hailed for its stirring melodies and superlative musicianship. With Bozzio drumming and Hymas at the keyboards, the album earned Beck a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental. The trio, co-headlining with Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, kicked off "The Fire & The Fury" tour on 25 October 1989 in Minneapolis. Reviewing the concluding performance-a 19,000-seat sell-out at New York's Madison Square Garden-The New York Times noted: "Jeff Beck still knows how to make notes sound hard-won-sustained and ethereal, then nasty or tearing-and when he stays with the melody...it sounds as heartfelt as any vocal could make it." November 1991 brought the release of Beckology, a 55-track, three-CD box set surveying the length and breadth of a remarkable career. Two Jeff Beck albums were welcomed Stateside in 1993. Frankie's House was a soundtrack for a cable-tv miniseries set during the Vietnam War. It was also a triumph of musical multiculturalism in which Beck managed to blended traditional Asian koto music seamlessly and beautifully with his own patented licks. Crazy Legs found the guitarist paying breathtakingly accurate homage to his early hero Cliff Gallup. With the backing of UK revivalists the Big Town Playboys, Beck re-created seventeen songs from the repertoire of Gene Vincent & the Blue Caps. For a precious moment, the primal American rock and roll of the 1950s lived again. But all over the world, rock fans worried that Jeff's well-publicized devotion to restoring vintage cars was prolonging his absences from studio and stage. Happily, Beck was not yet ready to exchange his guitars for a set of metric wrenches. On 31 July 1995, Jeff Beck, Terry Bozzio, and Tony Hymas along with bassist Pino Palladino kicked off a major US tour co-headlining with Santana. In its review of the 9 August show, The New York Daily News wrote: "At one moment glistening and sweet, at another ruthless and fleet, Beck's soloing communicated the fullness of a human voice." Proud of his new album and eager to perform it, in 1999 Jeff Beck feels "there's never been a wider door for me than there is now. Before, it seems I've always been clashing with something [in contemporary musical trends], or not quite happy with what's going on. I think there's more focus on this project than ever before, 'cos it's serious now. We can't afford to mess around."
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The sound of salsa, rock, blues, and jazz fusion
Posten on: 2006-05-15 08:49:06
The phrase jazz-rock-fusion has never inspired much confidence in even the hardiest of music fans, conjuring up images of frazzled, '60s relics playing interminable 30 minute guitar solos to an underground audience of six. In many ways, Carlos Santana is exactly that type of perennial hippie. The guitarist emerged from the San Francisco / Haight Ashbury hippy-trippy '60s era that spawned bands like The Grateful Dead. He became the major figure in attempting to fuse Latin music and rock, using Afro-Cuban rhythms and white blues guitar on massive hits such as Oye Como Va, Black Magic Woman and Evil Ways. Along the way he played with Miles Davis, noodled with jazz rockers like John McLaughlin and more recently, has enjoyed a massive surge in popularity beginning with his 1999 album, Supernatural. He's still likely to tell you to believe in peace, light, love and rainbows though... Carlos and his five brothers and sisters grew up in a dirt poor, tiny village in Northern Mexico, Autlan de Navarro. Carlos was enthralled by his mariachi violin playing father. "When he played he'd suck you into his world, like a shaman. I wanted to be able to do that," he remembers today. When he was 16, Carlos took off for San Francisco where he worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant. He became obsessed with blues guitar and soon got caught up in the Haight Ashbury, summer of love hippie 'trip'. He practically camped out at San Francisco's premier rock venue, the Fillmore West, watching the acts and taking notes devotedly.In 1967 he formed the Santana Blues Band, they were outsiders on the predominantly white, middle-class West Coast scene, often baffling fans with jazz rock covers of obscure songs like the Mary Poppins tune, Chim Chim Cheree. But the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia was a fan and within two years, Carlos had renamed the band simply, Santana, bagged a slot at the Fillmore West and with the intervention of premier rock promoter Bill Graham, a slot on the bill at the 1969 Woodstock festival. Their performance, nearly destroyed by some LSD that Jerry Garcia gave to Carlos just before their slot, made Santana into household names overnight. Carlos was tripping badly during his performance. "All I could remember was how the neck of my guitar looked just like a snake," he recalls. But their performance led to a contract with Columbia and their eponymous debut album, released in 1970, which included the hit Evil Ways, reached the top of the US album chart. For the next two years, the band was one of America's most successful acts, selling as many albums as The Beatles. Follow up album Abraxas included a hit version of Fleetwood Mac's Black Magic Woman and Tito Puente's Oye Como Va while Santana III added Afro-Cuban percussion and spawned the hit single, 1971's Everybody's Anything. But despite their massive success, Carlos embarked on potential career suicide in 1972 with the jazz-rock fusion of the album Caravanserai. The music would characterise most of the band's 70's output. Carlos also became a devotee of of Indian guru Sri Chimnoy, recording the Love, Devotion, Surrender album in 1973 with another jazz-rock devotee, John McLaughlin. It was a contemplative piece of spiritual jazz (ni-iice!) that was followed by 1973's Illuminations album, recorded with Alice Coltrane. "I wanted to follow John Coltrane," Carlos says now of the band's change in musical direction. "I wanted to understand how you could play one note and it could sound like the Pacific Ocean or another galaxy. How you could play a few notes and hear children, birds, bombs dropping in Vietnam." Er, yeah, cheers Carlos. The guitarist also cleared his life of the clutter that surrounds a successful rock musician - groupies, cars and drugs - and married his wife Deborah, the daughter of a jazz musician who helped him reshape his life. Several more jazz-rock outings on albums such as 1974's Borboleta, continued to split audiences although the band returned briefly to the charts with the 1977 album, Moonflower which spawned a hit single with a cover of The Zombies' She's Not There. The '80s saw Santana return to their successful latin-rock formula. 1981 album Zebop spawned hit single Winning, while hit single, Hold On was taken from 1982 set, Shango. Willie Nelson guested on Carlos' solo album Havana Moon in 1983 and in 1987 the guitarist picked up a Grammy for his album, Blues For Salvador as well as providing the music for the film La Bamba. Another group album, Spirits Dancing In The Flesh was released to poor public reception in 1990 before the release of Milagro on Santana's own label, Guts and Grace, in 1992. The album was inspired by Santana's own charity, The Milagro Foundation, established with his wife Deborah. 25 cents from every Santana album goes towards the charity and to date, Milago has helped the families of firemen killed in 9/11, victims of the Asian tsunami and those suffering from the South African Aids epidemic. (Carlos donated all the £2.5m royalties from his 1999 World Tour to Bishop Desmond Tutu to help fight the Aids epidemic).No one could have forseen the the massive resurgence in Santana's popularity in 1999 with the release of the album, Supernatural. Carlos handpicked a team of guest singers and musicians including Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Eric Clapton and Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas who sang on the multi-million single, Smooth. The album went on to sell 25m copies worldwide. Its two sequels, 2002's Shaman (which featured collaborations with Seal, Macy Gray and Dido) and his latest album, All That I Am, (stand up Steven Tyler, Joss Stone and Sean Paul), are Santana albums in name only say critics. They were conceived by American music mogul Clive Davis and feature Carlos soloing away on guitar alongside a younger, sexier partner on a series of slick, R&B tinged outings. But Carlos is immune to any cries of 'cynical marketing ploy'. "I'm still playing the blues. I'm just putting it into context," he says, adding in his cherished hippie-speak: "Santana? It's to do with the music that brings a cohesive oneness within the family."
Posted in: Biography | Santana Carlos | 0 Comments
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