Certain trends emerge as you explore how rock’s 100 biggest bands got their names. They are often forced into taking the moniker that stuck, for instance, simply because somebody else had already claimed their earlier attempt at a fame-clinching title.
Read More @ Ultimate Classic Rock: How 100 of Rock's Biggest Bands Got Their Names
Following his early-Eighties breakthrough with Wham!, George Michael swiftly transitioned from teenage pretty boy to outspoken pop force. "I think it says something for the power of the music," he told Rolling Stone after the release of his smash 1987 solo debut, Faith, "that I've managed to change the perception of what I do to the degree that I have in this short a time.
Here are 20 of the Michael's best, from Wham!'s breakthrough up through his final U.S. hit.
Read more @ Rolling Stone
Andrew Ridgeley and Sir Elton John have led tributes to pop superstar George Michael, who has died at his home in Oxfordshire aged 53.
Michael’s former Wham! bandmate wrote on Twitter that he was “heartbroken by the loss of my friend” who would be “4ever loved”. John, another friend and collaborator, wrote on Instagram of his “deep shock” at the loss of “the kindest, most generous soul and a brilliant artist”.
Read more @ The Guardian
A Charlie Brown Christmas is a 1965 studio album by American composer/conductor Vince Guaraldi (later credited to the jazz group the Vince Guaraldi Trio). The album was released in December 1965 in the United States by Fantasy Records. It is the soundtrack to the CBS Christmas television special of the same name. Guaraldi was contacted by television producer Lee Mendelson several years prior to compose music for a documentary on the comic strip Peanuts and its creator, Charles M. Schulz. Although the special went unaired, these selections were released in 1964 as Jazz Impressions of "A Boy Named Charlie Brown". Coca-Cola commissioned a Christmas special based on Peanuts in 1965 and Guaraldi returned to score the special.
A Charlie Brown Christmas features several originals ("Christmas Time Is Here", "Linus and Lucy") as well as covers of well-known Christmas songs ("The Christmas Song", "O Tannenbaum"). The score for the special was largely cut at recording sessions at Glendale, California's Whitney Studio. Much of this material was re-recorded by Guaraldi at three sessions later in the year at Fantasy Recording Studios in San Francisco, alongside a choir of children culled from St. Paul's Episcopal Church in nearby San Rafael. The sessions ran late into the night, with the children rewarded with ice cream afterwards. Bassist Fred Marshall and drummer Jerry Granelli have been credited as performing on the album, although a host of musicians claim to have recorded the album.
Released a week prior to the broadcast premiere of the special, A Charlie Brown Christmas sold well, and became increasingly famous in the ensuing decades. It is among the most popular Christmas albums in the United States, where it has been certified Quadruple Platinum, having shipped at least four million copies. As of November 2014, A Charlie Brown Christmas is the tenth best-selling Christmas/holiday album in the United States during the SoundScan era of music sales tracking (March 1991 – present), having sold 3,410,000 copies according to SoundScan.
The Vince Guaraldi Trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas has been voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry list of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" sound recordings.
Certain trends emerge as you explore how rock’s 100 biggest bands got their names. They are often forced into taking the moniker that stuck, for instance, simply because somebody else had already claimed their earlier attempt at a fame-clinching title.
Andrew Ridgeley and Sir Elton John have led tributes to pop superstar George Michael, who has died at his home in Oxfordshire aged 53.
