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666 (Aphrodite's Child Album)
''666'' (subtitled ''The Apocalypse of John, 13/18'') is the third and final studio album and only double album by Greek progressive rock band Aphrodite's Child, released in June 1972 by Vertigo Records. Ostensibly an adaptation of Biblical passages from the Book of Revelation, it is the group's most critically acclaimed project. Due to internal tensions during the recording process and conflict with the record company, by the time it was released the band had already disbanded and its members had begun work on solo projects. Conception and production The concept for ''666'' was created by Vangelis and film director Costas Ferris, who served as the project's lyricist. Ferris cited as influences the nonlinear narrative style of the films ''Intolerance'', ''Rashomon'', ''Citizen Kane'' and '' The Killing'', as well as the Beatles' ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' and the Who's '' Tommy''. The central concept is a countercultural interpretation of the Book of Revel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aphrodite's Child
Aphrodite's Child was a Greek rock and pop band formed in 1967, by Vangelis Papathanassiou (keyboards, flutes), Demis Roussos (bass, acoustic and electric guitar, vocals), Loukas Sideras (drums and vocals), and Silver Koulouris (guitar). They initially found success in Europe with hit singles like "Rain and Tears", "End of the World", "I Want to Live", and "It's Five O'Clock", before pivoting to progressive rock with their third and final album, ''666'' (1972). An ambitious concept album inspired by the Book of Revelation, it later gained critical acclaim and has appeared on a number of lists of the top progressive and psychedelic albums of all time. History Origins Papathanassiou and Roussos had already been successful in Greece, playing in the bands The Forminx and Idols respectively, when they got together with Sideras and Koulouris (born 26 January 1947, Piraeus, Greece) to form a new band. Their band's name was derived from the title of a track from another Mercury act, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Citizen Kane
''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American drama film produced by, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The picture was Welles' first feature film. ''Citizen Kane'' is frequently cited as the greatest film ever made. The ''Sight & Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * For 50 consecutive years, it stood at number 1 in the British Film Institute's '' Sight & Sound'' decennial poll of critics, and it topped the American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list in 1998, as well as its 2007 update. The film was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories and it won for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Mankiewicz and Welles. ''Citizen Kane'' is praised for Gregg Toland's cinematography, Robert Wise's editing, Bernard Herrmann's music, and its narrative structure, all of which have been considered innovative and precedent-setting. The quasi-biograph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gong (band)
Gong are a progressive rock band that incorporates elements of jazz and space rock into their musical style. The group was formed in Paris in 1967 by Australian musician Daevid Allen and English vocalist Gilli Smyth. Band members have included Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle, Steve Hillage, Mike Howlett, Pierre Moerlen, Bill Laswell and Theo Travis. Others who have played on stage with Gong include Don Cherry (trumpeter), Don Cherry, Chris Cutler, Bill Bruford, Brian Davison (drummer), Brian Davison, Dave Stewart (keyboardist), Dave Stewart and Tatsuya Yoshida. Gong's 1970 debut album, ''Magick Brother'', featured a psychedelic pop sound. By the following year, the second album, ''Camembert Electrique'', featured the more psychedelic rock/space rock sound with which they would be most associated. Between 1973 and 1974, Gong released their best known work, the allegorical ''Radio Gnome Invisible'' trilogy, describing the adventures of Zero the Hero, the Good Witch Yoni and the Pot Hea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magma (band)
Magma is a French progressive rock band founded in Paris in 1969 by classically trained drummer Christian Vander, who claimed as his inspiration a "vision of humanity's spiritual and ecological future" that profoundly disturbed him. In the course of their first album, the band tells the story of a group of people fleeing a doomed Earth to settle on the planet Kobaïa. Later, conflict arises when the Kobaïans—descendants of the original colonists—encounter other Earth refugees. The style of progressive rock that Vander developed with Magma is termed Zeuhl, and has been applied to other bands in France operating in the same period, and to some recent Japanese bands. Vander created a fictional language, Kobaïan, in which most lyrics are sung. In a 1977 interview with Vander and long-time Magma vocalist Klaus Blasquiz, Blasquiz said that Kobaïan is a "phonetic language made by elements of the Slavonic and Germanic languages to be able to express some things musically. The la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giorgio Gomelsky
Giorgio Sergio Alessando Gomelsky (28 February 1934 – 13 January 2016) was a filmmaker, impresario, music manager, songwriter (as Oscar Rasputin) and record producer. He was born in Georgia, grew up in Switzerland, and later lived in the United Kingdom and the United States. He owned the Crawdaddy Club in London where The Rolling Stones were the house band, and he was involved with their early management. He hired The Yardbirds as a replacement and managed them. He was also their producer from the beginning through 1966. In 1967, he started Marmalade Records (distributed by Polydor), which featured Brian Auger, Julie Driscoll and the Trinity, Blossom Toes, and early recordings by Graham Gouldman and Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, who became 10cc. The label closed in 1969. Gomelsky was also instrumental in the careers of Soft Machine, Daevid Allen and Gong, Magma and Material. Early years Gomelsky was born in Tiflis (modern day Tbilisi), Georgia. His father was a medical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychedelic Pop
Psychedelic pop (or acid pop) is pop music that contains musical characteristics associated with psychedelic music. Developing in the late 1960s, elements included "trippy" features such as fuzz guitars, tape manipulation, backwards recording, sitars, and Beach Boys-style harmonies, wedded to melodic songs with tight song structures. The style lasted into the early 1970s. It has seen revivals in subsequent decades by neo-psychedelic artists. Characteristics According to AllMusic, psychedelic pop was not too "freaky", but also not very " bubblegum" either. It appropriated the effects associated with straight psychedelic music, applying their innovations to concise pop songs. The music was occasionally confined to the studio, but there existed more organic exceptions whose psychedelia was bright and melodic. AllMusic adds: "What's trangeis that some psychedelic pop is more interesting than average psychedelia, since it had weird, occasionally awkward blends of psychedelia and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silver Koulouris
Anargyros "Silver" Koulouris (born 26 January 1947) is a Greek musician best known for his membership in the band Aphrodite's Child, in which he played lead guitar. He has also performed session work on a plethora of albums by other artists, including those of his former Aphrodite's Child bandmates, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and in recent decades he has released solo recordings under his own name. Early life and musical beginnings Born in Piraeus, Greece, Koulouris acquired the nickname "Silver" due to his birth name's similarity to the Greek word for the element silver. In converting his given name from the Greek alphabet, many different spellings of his name have emerged, such as Anargyros, Argyris, Argiris, Anarchyris, Anachyros, and Agyrilos. In his late teenage years, Koulouris met Demis Roussos, who played bass guitar, and Lucas Sideras, a drummer, with whom he went on to play guitar in a band called The Idols in and around Athens, Greece. Because he was in the Gre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loukas Sideras
Lucas Sideras ( gr, Λουκάς Σιδεράς; 5 December 1944, Athens) is the former drummer of the Greek progressive rock band Aphrodite's Child. Biography Aphrodite's Child He started playing drums at the age of 13. By the time he was 15 years old, he started playing drums with several bands in Athens. Later on he met Vangelis and Demis Roussos and they formed Aphrodite's Child. In 1967 they signed with Mercury Records in France and they released three albums: '' End of the world'' (which includes the song "Rain and Tears"), ''It's Five O'Clock'' and ''666'', the latter of which sold 20 million copies worldwide. Going solo After Aphrodite's Child split up in 1972, Lucas began to compose his own music and released his first solo album, ''One Day'' with Polydor-France, selling 28,000 copies. In 1974 Lucas released another solo album, ''Pax Spray'', which sold 45,000 copies. Producer Sideras was also active as a producer. In 1975 he produced the album ''Alba'' for Riccardo Cocc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demis Roussos
Artemios "Demis" Ventouris-Roussos ( ; el, Αρτέμιος "Ντέμης" Βεντούρης-Ρούσσος, ; 15 June 1946 – 25 January 2015) was a Greek singer, songwriter and musician. As a band member he is best remembered for his work in the progressive rock music act Aphrodite's Child, but as a vocal soloist, his repertoire included hit songs like "Goodbye, My Love, Goodbye", " From Souvenirs to Souvenirs" and " Forever and Ever". Roussos sold over 60 million albums worldwide and became "an unlikely kaftan-wearing sex symbol". Early life Roussos was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, in a Greek family. His father George (Yorgos) Roussos was a classical guitarist and an engineer and his mother Olga participated with her husband in an amateur theatrical Greek group in Alexandria (there were three such groups in the Greek community); her family originally came from Greece. As a child, he studied music and joined the Greek Church Byzantine choir in Alexandria. His format ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counterculture Of The 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights movement in the United States continued to grow, and with the intensification of the Vietnam War, it would later become revolutionary to some. As the 1960s progressed, widespread social tensions also developed concerning other issues, and tended to flow along generational lines regarding human sexuality, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, rights of non-white people, end of racial segregation, experimentation with psychoactive drugs, and differing interpretations of the American Dream. Many key movements related to these issues were born or advanced within the counterculture of the 1960s. As the era unfolded, what emerged were new cultural forms and a dynamic subculture that celebrated experimentation, modern incarnations of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tommy (The Who Album)
''Tommy'' is the fourth studio album by the English rock band The Who, a double album first released on 17 May 1969. The album was mostly composed by guitarist Pete Townshend, and is a rock opera that tells the story of Tommy Walker. Tommy is traumatized from witnessing his father murder his mother's lover. Tommy's parents compound his trauma by denying the experience. In reaction, Tommy becomes dissociative ("deaf, dumb and blind"). Tommy then experiences the trauma of being sexually abused. As a way of coping with his trauma, Tommy dissociates further through playing pinball. He gains a following because of his skill at playing pinball. After numerous misguided attempts to heal Tommy, a doctor prescribes him a mirror so he can confront himself and his experience. Instead, Tommy becomes self-absorbed and comes to think of himself as a messianic figure. When the mirror is eventually broken, Tommy comes out of his dissociative state. Tommy then tries to lead his followers to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
