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Focus 3
''Focus 3'' or ''Focus III'' is the third studio album by Dutch rock band Focus, released as a double album in November 1972 on Imperial Records. Recorded after touring in support of their previous album, '' Moving Waves'' (1971), the album saw the band write extended pieces and is their first with bassist Bert Ruiter in the group's line-up. ''Focus 3'' received a positive reception upon its release. It went to No. 1 in the Netherlands for one week and reached No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 35 on the US ''Billboard'' 200. " Sylvia" was released as the album's sole single, which reached No. 4 in the UK and No. 89 in the US. The album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling in excess of 500,000 copies. Production Recording By 1972, Focus had stabilised with a line-up of organist and vocalist Thijs van Leer, guitarist Jan Akkerman, drummer Pierre van der Linden, and bassist Bert Ruiter. In July 1972, after touring in supporting their p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Focus (band)
Focus is a Dutch progressive rock band formed in Amsterdam in 1969 by keyboardist, vocalist, and flutist Thijs van Leer, drummer Hans Cleuver, bassist Martijn Dresden, and guitarist Jan Akkerman. The band has undergone numerous formations in its history; since December 2016, it has comprised Van Leer, drummer Pierre van der Linden, guitarist Menno Gootjes, and bassist Udo Pannekeet. They have sold one million RIAA-certified albums in the United States. After the addition of Akkerman to Van Leer's rock trio in late 1969, the band named themselves ''Focus'' and initially worked for a Dutch production of the rock musical ''Hair''. Their debut album ''Focus Plays Focus'' (1970) gained little attention but the follow-up, '' Moving Waves'' (1971), and its lead single " Hocus Pocus", earned the band international recognition. Their success continued with ''Focus 3'' (1972) and ''Hamburger Concerto'' (1974), the former containing their second hit single, " Sylvia". After recording two al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sylvia (Focus Song)
"Sylvia" is a 1972 song by Dutch progressive rock band Focus. It was released on their 1972 album ''Focus 3'' and as a UK single on 27 January 1973. The single became the band's biggest international hit, reaching number 4 in the UK Singles Chart and number 89 in the US Billboard chart. Background First released as a single in The Netherlands in April 1972, the song was subsequently included on the album ''Focus 3'' in November. On 12 December, the band recorded a session for the BBC's ''The Old Grey Whistle Test'', including "Sylvia" segueing into the yodeling of " Hocus Pocus". Aside from Thijs van Leer's short section of falsetto vocalising, the song is instrumental. In 1968, while in the four-piece backing band and vocal group ''Shaffy Chantant'' with lead singer Ramses Shaffy, Thijs composed the melody of the song with words by Linda Van Dijck for Sylvia Alberts to sing. It had the long winded title "''I Thought I Could Do Everything On My Own, I Was Always Stripping Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don't Sleep In The Subway
"Don't Sleep in the Subway" is a song written by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent and recorded by British singer Petula Clark, for whom it was an April 1967 single release. It received a 1968 Grammy award nomination for best contemporary song, losing to " Up, Up and Away" by The 5th Dimension. Background The song was constructed from three different sections of music previously composed by Hatch; it changes in musical style from pop to symphonic and then, for the chorus, to a Beach Boys-like melody. In the lyrics the narrator advises her sweetheart against storming out after an argument due to his "foolish pride". If he does, he will "sleep in the subway" or "stand in the pouring rain" merely to prove his point. Although in Scotland there has long existed the Glasgow Subway metro line, in England the term "subway" refers to a pedestrian underpass rather than to an underground transit system. Hatch employed the term in the North American sense. According to the song's co-writer Jack ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Hermann
Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers. An Academy Award-winner (for ''The Devil and Daniel Webster'', 1941; later renamed ''All That Money Can Buy''), Herrmann mainly is known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously '' Psycho'', ''North by Northwest'', '' The Man Who Knew Too Much'', and ''Vertigo''. He also composed scores for many other films, including ''Citizen Kane'', '' Anna and the King of Siam'', ''The Day the Earth Stood Still'', ''The Ghost and Mrs. Muir'', '' Cape Fear'', ''Fahrenheit 451'', and ''Taxi Driver''. He worked extensively in radio drama (composing for Orson Welles), composed the scores for several fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen, and many TV programs, including Rod Serling's ''The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ramses Shaffy
Ramses Shaffy (29 August 1933 – 1 December 2009) was a Dutch-French singer and actor who became popular during the 1960s. His most famous songs include "Zing, vecht, huil, bid, lach, werk en bewonder", "We zullen doorgaan", "Pastorale", "Sammy" and "Laat me". He frequently collaborated with Dutch singer Liesbeth List. Biography Shaffy was born on 29 August 1933 in Paris, in the suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. His father was an Egyptian diplomat Ramsès Shaffy Bey, and his mother was a Polish-Russian countess Alexandra de Wysocka. He grew up with his mother in Cannes. When she was infected with tuberculosis, Shaffy was sent to an aunt in Utrecht. Eventually, he ended up in a foster family in Leiden. He did not finish high school, but he was accepted at the Amsterdam school of theatre arts in 1952. In 1955, he made his debut with the ''Nederlandse Comedie''. He went to Rome in 1960 aspiring to be a film actor, but was unsuccessful in the endeavour. In the 1960s, Shaffy had a relat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjuga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the ''Eclogues'' (or ''Bucolics''), the ''Georgics'', and the epic ''Aeneid''. A number of minor poems, collected in the ''Appendix Vergiliana'', were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his authorship of these poems as dubious. Virgil's work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', in which Virgil appears as the author's guide through Hell and Purgatory. Virgil has been traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. His ''Aeneid'' is also considered a national epic of ancient Rome, a title held since composition. Life and works Birth and biographical tradition Virgil's biographical tradition is thought to depend on a lost biography by the Roman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Ancient Rome, Romans. It comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed. The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the ''Iliad''. Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas' wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Ancient Rome, Rome and his description as a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous ''pietas'', and fashioned th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Old Grey Whistle Test
''The Old Grey Whistle Test'' (sometimes abbreviated to ''Whistle Test'' or ''OGWT'') is a British television music show. The show was devised by BBC producer Rowan Ayers, commissioned by David Attenborough and aired on BBC2 from 1971 to 1988. It took over the BBC2 late-night slot from '' Disco 2'', which ran between September 1970 and July 1971, while continuing to feature non-chart music. The original producer, involved in an executive capacity throughout the show's entire history, was Michael Appleton. According to presenter Bob Harris, the programme derived its name from a Tin Pan Alley phrase from years before. When they got the first pressing of a record they would play it to people they called the old greys – doormen in grey suits. Any song the doormen could remember and whistle, having heard it just once or twice, had passed the old grey whistle test. On 23 February 2018, a one-off live three-hour special of ''The Old Grey Whistle Test'' was broadcast on BBC Four, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Chkiantz
George Chkiantz is a British recording engineer, based in London, who has been responsible for the engineering on a number of well-known albums, many of which are considered classics, owing in part to the quality of the recordings. Career Chkiantz was the recording engineer of the Small Faces self-titled debut album, recorded for Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate Records label. Chkiantz was a staff engineer at Olympic Studios at the same time that the Jimi Hendrix Experience was recording '' Axis: Bold As Love''. During the session with the Small Faces, Chkiantz engineered the song "Green Circles", which represented the first use of mono flanging on a pop record; he subsequently perfected the technique on their landmark 1967 single "Itchycoo Park". Upon hearing the result, Jimi Hendrix and his engineer, Eddie Kramer applied Chkiantz's concepts, creating stereo phasing on the songs "Bold As Love" and "Little Wing". Deciding to utilize his abilities more fully, Hendrix hired Chkiantz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Van Der Linden
Pierre van der Linden (born 19 February 1946) is a Dutch drummer, songwriter and member of the band, Focus. Biography Van der Linden was influenced by his childhood hero Buddy Rich. He finds inspiration in French philosophers and classical composers of the twentieth century. For drumming, he is influenced by Tony Williams and Elvin Jones. Van der Linden practises his drumming technique each day, at least one hour on his practise pad. He avoids modern tuning and prefers to use open tuning, closer to a jazz than a rock drummer, and adopts a mix of matched grip and traditional grip. Away from music, van der Linden enjoys painting and writing poetry. In the 1990s he joined the free jazz Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during ... group Advance Warning and played on four album ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Akkerman
Jan Akkerman (born 24 December 1946) is a Dutch guitarist. He first found international commercial success with the band Focus (band), Focus, which he co-founded with Thijs van Leer. After leaving Focus, he continued as a solo musician, adding jazz fusion influences. Biography The son of a scrap iron trader, Akkerman was born in Amsterdam. He started playing the accordion before turning to the guitar. Around age ten he took guitar lessons and his first single, with the Friendship Sextet, was released in 1960, when he was thirteen years old. Akkerman won a scholarship to study at the Amsterdam Music Lyceum for five years, developing his composition and arranging skills. At fourteen he was in the rock band Johnny and his Cellar Rockers with his friend Pierre van der Linden. Both then joined The Hunters. After seeing a performance by classical guitarist Julian Bream, he became interested in renaissance music and the lute. He started the band Brainbox with Van der Linden, Kaz Lux, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
