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Countdown To Ecstasy
''Countdown to Ecstasy'' is the second studio album by the American rock band Steely Dan, released in July 1973 by ABC Records. It was recorded at Caribou Ranch in Nederland, Colorado, and at The Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, California. After the departure of vocalist David Palmer, the group recorded the album with Donald Fagen singing lead on every song. Although it was a critical success, the album failed to generate a hit single, and consequently charted at only number 35 on the ''Billboard'' 200. It was eventually certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1978, having shipped 500,000 copies in the United States. Well-received upon its release, ''Countdown to Ecstasy'' received perfect scores from music critics in retrospective reviews. Musical style Like Steely Dan's 1972 debut album ''Can't Buy a Thrill'', ''Countdown to Ecstasy'' has a rock sound that exhibits a strong influence from jazz. It comprises uptempo, four-to-five-minu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steely Dan
Steely Dan is an American rock band founded in 1971 in New York by Walter Becker (guitars, bass, backing vocals) and Donald Fagen (keyboards, lead vocals). Initially the band had a stable lineup, but in 1974, Becker and Fagen retired from live performances to become a studio-only band, opting to record with a revolving cast of session musicians. ''Rolling Stone'' has called them "the perfect musical antiheroes for the seventies". Becker and Fagen played together in a variety of bands from their time together studying at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. They later moved to Los Angeles, gathered a band of musicians, and began recording albums. Their first album, ''Can't Buy a Thrill'' (1972), established a template for their career, blending elements of rock, jazz, Latin music, R&B, bluesAllMusic Steely Dan: Biography and sophisticated studio production with cryptic and ironic lyrics. The band enjoyed critical and commercial success through seven studio album ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Palmer (vocalist)
David Palmer is an American vocalist, songwriter, and photographer, best known as a former member of Steely Dan and as the lyricist of the Carole King number two hit, "Jazzman". Musical career Palmer grew up in the New Jersey communities of Warren Township and Watchung and attended Watchung Hills Regional High School. His first band was the Myddle Class, formed in 1964 under the initial name The King Bees while members were still in high school. As the Myddle Class, the band performed at such clubs as the Night Owl in Greenwich Village, and released several 45s on the Tomorrow record label before disbanding in 1969. Palmer next formed the Quinaimes Band with several Myddle Class members, which recorded an album for Elektra Records before disbanding shortly thereafter. At the insistence of ABC Records executives, Palmer joined Steely Dan in an early incarnation in 1972. He sang lead on two tracks on their debut album, ''Can't Buy A Thrill'' – " Dirty Work" and "Brooklyn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Groove (music)
In music, groove is the sense of an effect ("feel") of changing pattern in a propulsive rhythm or sense of " swing". In jazz, it can be felt as a quality of persistently repeated rhythmic units, created by the interaction of the music played by a band's rhythm section (e.g. drums, electric bass or double bass, guitar, and keyboards). Groove is a significant feature of popular music, and can be found in many genres, including salsa, rock, soul, funk, and fusion. From a broader ethnomusicological perspective, groove has been described as "an unspecifiable but ordered sense of something that is sustained in a distinctive, regular and attractive way, working to draw the listener in." Musicologists and other scholars have analyzed the concept of "groove" since around the 1990s. They have argued that a "groove" is an "understanding of rhythmic patterning" or "feel" and "an intuitive sense" of "a cycle in motion" that emerges from "carefully aligned concurrent rhythmic patterns" t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pop Music
Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. The terms ''popular music'' and ''pop music'' are often used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular and includes many disparate styles. During the 1950s and 1960s, pop music encompassed rock and roll and the youth-oriented styles it influenced. ''Rock'' and ''pop'' music remained roughly synonymous until the late 1960s, after which ''pop'' became associated with music that was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible. Although much of the music that appears on record charts is considered to be pop music, the genre is distinguished from chart music. Identifying factors usually include repeated choruses and hooks, short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse-chorus structure), and rhythms or tempos that can be easily danced to. Much pop music also borrows elements from other styles ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Hodder (musician)
Jim Hodder (December 17, 1947 – June 5, 1990) was an American drummer, best known as an early member of Steely Dan. After leading the Boston-based group The Bead Game, Hodder moved to Los Angeles to join the first lineup of Steely Dan. He appeared on their first three albums before leaving the group in 1974. He worked as a session musician before his 1990 death. Biography Early years, Bead Game Hodder was born in the small Long Island hamlet of Bethpage, New York in 1947. He graduated from Plainedge High School in the Plainedge Union Free School District in 1965 and relocated thereafter to the Boston area, where he became active in the local music scene. As drummer and lead vocalist, he joined the Boston-based psychedelic rock group The Bead Game, named after Hermann Hesse's novel ''The Glass Bead Game''. The group built a local following before attracting the attention of Avco Records and producer Gary Kannon, later known as Gary Katz. Their first album, ''Baptism'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Break (music)
In popular music, a break is an instrumental or percussion section during a song derived from or related to stop-time – being a "break" from the main parts of the song or piece. A break is usually interpolated between sections of a song, to provide a sense of anticipation, signal the start of a new section, or create variety in the arrangement. Jazz A solo break in jazz occurs when the rhythm section (piano, bass, drums) stops playing behind a soloist for a brief period, usually two or four bars leading into the soloist's first improvised solo chorus (at which point the rhythm section resumes playing). A notable recorded example is sax player Charlie Parker's solo break at the beginning of his solo on "A Night in Tunisia". While the solo break is a break for the rhythm section, for the soloist, it is a solo cadenza, where they are expected to improvise an interesting and engaging melodic line. DJing and dance music In DJ parlance, in disco, hip hop and electronic dance m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texture (music)
In music, texture is how the tempo, melodic, and harmonic materials are combined in a musical composition, determining the overall quality of the sound in a piece. The texture is often described in regard to the density, or thickness, and range, or width, between lowest and highest pitches, in relative terms as well as more specifically distinguished according to the number of voices, or parts, and the relationship between these voices (see Common types below). For example, a thick texture contains many 'layers' of instruments. One of these layers could be a string section or another brass. The thickness also is changed by the amount and the richness of the instruments playing the piece. The thickness varies from light to thick. A piece's texture may be changed by the number and character of parts playing at once, the timbre of the instruments or voices playing these parts and the harmony, tempo, and rhythms used. The types categorized by number and relationship of parts are an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vamp (music)
In music, an ostinato (; derived from Italian word for ''stubborn'', compare English ''obstinate'') is a motif or phrase that persistently repeats in the same musical voice, frequently in the same pitch. Well-known ostinato-based pieces include classical compositions such as Ravel's ''Boléro'' and the '' Carol of the Bells'', and popular songs such as Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's " I Feel Love" (1977), Henry Mancini's theme from ''Peter Gunn'' (1959), The Who's " Baba O'Riley" (1971), and The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony" (1997). Both ''ostinatos'' and ''ostinati'' are accepted English plural forms, the latter reflecting the word's Italian etymology. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in itself. Kamien, Roger (1258). ''Music: An Appreciation'', p. 611. . Strictly speaking, ostinati should have exact repetition, but in common usage, the term covers repetition with variation and development, such as the alteration of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Recording Industry Association Of America
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legally sold recorded music in the United States". RIAA is headquartered in Washington, D.C. RIAA was formed in 1952. Its original mission was to administer recording copyright fees and problems, work with trade unions, and do research relating to the record industry and government regulations. Early RIAA standards included the RIAA equalization curve, the format of the stereophonic record groove and the dimensions of 33 1/3, 45, and 78 rpm records. RIAA says its current mission includes: #to protect intellectual property rights and the First Amendment rights of artists #to perform research about the music industry #to monitor and review relevant laws, regulations, and policies Between 2001 and 202 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RIAA Certification
In the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) awards certification based on the number of albums and singles sold through retail and other ancillary markets.RIAA certification criteria Retrieved on September 11, 2006 Other countries have similar awards (see music recording certification). Certification is not automatic; for an award to be made, the must first request certification. The audit is conducted against net shipments after returns (most often an artist's royalty s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
