Crazy Backwards Alphabet
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Crazy Backwards Alphabet
''Crazy Backwards Alphabet'' is an album conceived by cartoonist Matt Groening and recorded by Henry Kaiser. The core group features Kaiser on guitar along with drummer John "Drumbo" French (ex Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band), bassist Andy West (of Dixie Dregs), and Swedish avant-rock drummer Michael Maksymenko. American rock critic Robert Christgau said of the album: "Concept is Beefheart as Dixie Dregs, kind of, with intermittent lyrics, not always in English." It was released in 1987 (see 1987 in music). Further recordings were made for a follow-up album, however it wasn't released until 2007 as ''Crazy Backwards Alphabet II''. Track listing LP version Side one #"The Blood and the Ink" (Bob Adams & John French) – 5:02 #"Det Enda Raka?" (Michael Maksymenko) – 1:58 #"Get To You" ( John French) – 4:30 #"The Welfare Elite" ( John French & Henry Kaiser) – 3:52 #"Ghosts" (Albert Ayler) – 4:18 #"Lobster on the Rocks #2" ( John French, Henry Kaiser, Michael Mak ...
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Album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual Phonograph record#78 rpm disc developments, 78 rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photograph album; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl LP record, long-playing (LP) records played at  revolutions per minute, rpm. The album was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption from the mid-1960s to the early 21st century, a period known as the album era. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have mostly focused on CD and MP3 formats. The 8-track tape was the first tape format widely used alongside vinyl from 1965 until being phased out by 1983 and was gradually supplanted by the cassette tape during the 1970s and early 1980s; the populari ...
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Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West. Christgau spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for ''The Village Voice'', during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for ''Esquire'', ''Creem'', ''Newsday'', ''Playboy'', ''Rolling Stone'', ''Billboard'', NPR, ''Blender'', and ''MSN Music'', and was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world – when he talks, people listen." Christgau is best known for his terse, letter-graded capsule album reviews, composed in a concentrat ...
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1991 Albums
File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Philippines, making it the second-largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century; MTS Oceanos sinks off the coast of South Africa, but the crew notoriously abandons the vessel before the passengers are rescued; Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Soviet flag is lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the flag of the Russian Federation; The United States and soon-to-be dissolved Soviet Union sign the START I Treaty; A tropical cyclone strikes Bangladesh, killing nearly 140,000 people; Lauda Air Flight 004 crashes after one of its thrust reversers activates during the flight; A United States-led coalition initiates Operation Desert Storm to remove Iraq and Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 1991 ...
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1987 Albums
File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing everyone except a little girl; The King's Cross fire kills 31 people after a fire under an escalator flashes-over; The MV Doña Paz sinks after colliding with an oil tanker, drowning almost 4,400 passengers and crew; Typhoon Nina strikes the Philippines; LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 crashes outside of Warsaw, taking the lives of all aboard; The USS Stark is struck by Iraqi Exocet missiles in the Persian Gulf; U.S. President Ronald Reagan gives a famous speech, demanding that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tears down the Berlin Wall., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Zeebrugge disaster rect 200 0 400 200 Northwest Airlines Flight 255 rect 400 0 600 200 King's Cross fire rect 0 200 300 400 Tear down this wall! rect 300 2 ...
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MIDI
MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music. The specification originates in the paper ''Universal Synthesizer Interface'' published by Dave Smith and Chet Wood of Sequential Circuits at the 1981 Audio Engineering Society conference in New York City. A single MIDI cable can carry up to sixteen channels of MIDI data, each of which can be routed to a separate device. Each interaction with a key, button, knob or slider is converted into a MIDI event, which specifies musical instructions, such as a note's pitch, timing and loudness. One common MIDI application is to play a MIDI keyboard or other controller and use it to trigger a digital sound module (which contains synthesized musical sounds) to generate sounds, which t ...
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Bill Frisell
William Richard Frisell (born March 18, 1951) is an American jazz guitarist, composer and arranger. Frisell first came to prominence at ECM Records in the 1980s, as both a session player and a leader. He went on to work in a variety of contexts, notably as a participant in the Downtown Scene in New York City where he formed a long working relationship with composer and saxophonist John Zorn. He was also a longtime member of veteran drummer Paul Motian's groups from the early 1980s until 2011 (upon Motian’s death). Since the late 1990s, Frisell's output as a bandleader has also integrated prominent elements of folk, country, rock ‘n’ roll and Americana. He has six Grammy nominations, and one win. Biography Early life and career Frisell was born in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, but spent most of his youth in the Denver, Colorado, area. He studied clarinet with Richard Joiner of the Denver Symphony Orchestra as a youth, but by his teens was more interested in guitar. H ...
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Darol Anger
Darol Anger is an American violinist and founding member of The David Grisman Quintet. Career Darol Anger entered popular music at the age of 21 as a founding member of The David Grisman Quintet. Anger played fiddle to David Grisman's mandolin in The David Grisman Quintet's (DGQ) 1977 debut. He co-founded and named the Turtle Island String Quartet with David Balakrishnan in 1985 and performed, composed, and arranged for the chamber jazz group. He frequently collaborates with fellow DGQ alumnus Mike Marshall. Anger met pianist Barbara Higbie in Paris and formed a musical partnership with her. Together they released an early record on Windham Hill, ''Tideline'' (1982). Two years later, they formed a group called The Darol Anger/Barbara Higbie Quintet with Mike Marshall, Todd Phillips, and Andy Narell. This group performed at the 1984 Montreux Jazz Festival. The quintet later took the name Montreux. After two studio releases, the band broke up in 1990, and Anger continued wit ...
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Everett Shock
Everett L. Shock is an American geochemist and former experimental rock singer and songwriter. He is currently a professor with joint appointments in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and School of Molecular Sciences at Arizona State University. Shock and his research group work within a framework of chemical thermodynamics applied to field, experimental, and theoretical geochemical investigations to understand how geochemical processes provide energy to support microbial life on Earth and potentially on other ocean worlds. Early life and music Shock grew up in Garden Grove, California and studied earth sciences at UC Santa Cruz, graduating in 1978. In the San Francisco Bay Area, he and high school friends Erling Wold, Lynn Murdock, and Brian Woodbury formed a music theater group called Splendrix, performing in a San Francisco theater they rented. After hearing the group promoting their show on UC Berkeley campus radio, musician and composer Henry Kaiser contacted them, p ...
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Frank Beard (musician)
Frank Lee Beard (born June 11, 1949) is an American drummer best known as a member of the rock band ZZ Top. Early life Beard was born in Frankston, Texas, and attended Irving High School in Irving, Texas. Career Before joining ZZ Top, Beard was a member of a fake version of the British band the Zombies, which toured in the US without authorization from the original band members, and also was part of the Outlaws with later ZZ Top member Dusty Hill. Other bands Beard and Hill played with early in their careers included the Cellar Dwellers, the Hustlers, the Warlocks, and American Blues. In May 1969, Beard joined The Moving Sidewalks, a band that would become ZZ Top in July 1969. Beard also introduced Gibbons to Hill. After honing their trademark "Texas boogie-blues-rock" style, they released ''ZZ Top's First Album'' on London Records in January 1971. Beard is credited under the nickname "Rube Beard" on the ''ZZ Top's First Album'' and on ''Tres Hombres'', the band's th ...
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Dusty Hill
Joe Michael "Dusty" Hill (May 19, 1949 – July 28, 2021) was an American musician who was the bassist of the rock band ZZ Top for more than 50 years. He also sang lead and backing vocals and played keyboards. Hill was born in Dallas, Texas, and as a child, he began performing music with his brother, Rocky Hill (musician), Rocky Hill. In 1968, he and drummer Frank Beard (musician), Frank Beard joined guitarist Billy Gibbons in ZZ Top, and went on to release albums, including the bestselling ''Eliminator (album), Eliminator'' (1983). Hill favored simple compositions and a "big", Distortion (music), distorted sound. Critics described his basslines as a critical part of ZZ Top's sound, complementing Gibbons' guitar showmanship. Hill was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of ZZ Top in 2004. He died in 2021 after a period of declining health. He was replaced by the band's longtime guitar tech Elwood Francis, in line with his wishes. Early life Hill was born in ...
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Billy Gibbons
William Frederick Gibbons (born December 16, 1949) is an American musician who is the guitarist and lead singer of the rock band ZZ Top. He began his career in the band the Moving Sidewalks, which recorded a full-length album entitled, ''Flash'' in 1968 and opened four dates for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Gibbons formed ZZ Top in late 1969 and released ''ZZ Top's First Album'' in early 1971. He has also maintained a solo career in recent years, starting with his first album ''Perfectamundo'' (2015). Gibbons possesses a gravelly bass-baritone singing voice and is known for his bluesy, groove based guitar style. Gibbons is also recognized for the chest-length beard he has worn since 1979, a look he shared with ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill until Hill's death in 2021. Gibbons has made appearances with other artists and acted on television shows, most notably in ''Bones''. In 2001, ''Rolling Stone'' named him the 32nd greatest guitarist of all time. Early life Gibbons was born t ...
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La Grange (song)
"La Grange" is a song by the American rock group ZZ Top, from their 1973 album '' Tres Hombres''. One of ZZ Top's most successful songs, it was released as a single in 1973 and received extensive radio play, rising to No. 41 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in June 1974. The song refers to a brothel on the outskirts of La Grange, Texas (later called the " Chicken Ranch"). The brothel is also the subject of the Broadway play and film ''The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas''. The first time ZZ Top played the song in La Grange, Texas was during the Fayette County Fair on September 5, 2015. In March 2020 the song re-entered the ''Billboard'' charts following the release of the documentary ''ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas''. Composition The initial groove of the song is based on a traditional boogie blues rhythm used by John Lee Hooker in "Boogie Chillen'". Background A failed lawsuit by the copyright holder of "Boogie Chillen'" resulted in the court ruling that the rhythm w ...
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