Phil Pickett
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Phil Pickett
Philip Stuart Pickett (born 19 November 1946) is an English songwriter, musician, vocal arranger, producer and artist manager. He is principally known as a songwriter and musician and for co-writing and recording " Karma Chameleon", one of the biggest hits of the 1980s era with Boy George and Culture Club during his tenure as keyboard player and backing vocalist for the group on every live performance throughout the world during the 1980s. Prior to this, Pickett co-founded hit-making pop band Sailor in 1973 which achieved considerable chart-topping success in the mid-1970s Glamrock period and with whom he still regularly performs to the present day. Pickett's songs have also been recorded by many other artists including Labi Siffre, Sheena Easton, Georgie Fame, Joe Cocker, Brian Kennedy and Malcolm McLaren, used in countless TV commercials and included in the soundtrack of Hollywood films Electric Dreams, Top Secret!, The Lost Boys and his West End Musical Theatre debut, Cas ...
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Karma Chameleon
"Karma Chameleon" is a song by English band Culture Club, featured on the group's 1983 album ''Colour by Numbers''. The single was released in the United Kingdom in September 1983 and became the second Culture Club single to reach the top of the UK Singles Chart, after " Do You Really Want to Hurt Me". The record stayed at number one for six weeks and became the UK's biggest-selling single of the year 1983, selling 955,000 copies (according to Official Charts Company sales data confirmed in March 2021 for the Channel 5 show ''Britain's Favourite 80s Songs''). To date, it is the 38th-biggest-selling single of all time in the UK, selling over 1.52 million copies. It also spent three weeks at number one on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in early 1984, becoming the group's biggest hit and only US number-one single among their many top-10 hits. The single sold over 7 million copies globally. In 2015, the song was voted by the British public as the nation's ninth favourite 1980s numbe ...
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Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become standards. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's " Caravan", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. At the end of the 1930s, Ellington began a nearly thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed multipl ...
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Sir Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields. Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneur at a young age. His first business venture, at the age of 16, was a magazine called ''Student''. In 1970, he set up a mail-order record business. He opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records—later known as Virgin Megastores—in 1972. Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s, as he started Virgin Atlantic airline and expanded the Virgin Records music label. In 1997, Branson founded the Virgin Rail Group to bid for passenger rail franchises during the privatisation of British Rail. The Virgin Trains brand operated the InterCity West Coast franchise from 1997 to 2019, the InterCity CrossCountry franchise from 1997 to 2007, and the InterCity East Coast franchise from 2015 to 2018. In ...
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It's A Miracle (Culture Club Song)
"It's a Miracle" is the fifth and final single from new wave band Culture Club's 1983 ''Colour by Numbers'' album. The song became the group's sixth hit on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 4. It reached number 13 on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100, and number 5 in Canada. The B-side of the 7-inch single is a live rendition of "Love Twist", a song from the group's first album. It was recorded in December 1983. An additional live track, "Melting Pot" (a cover of the song by the group Blue Mink), from the same show was available on the 12-inch single. Reception ''Cash Box'' called the song "a perfect example of British adopted American R&B." Music video The music video features the band playing around on a circular board with various Monopoly spaces placed around the edges. Interspersed with these are clips from previous Culture Club music videos. Track listing ;Released at least in UK, Canada, USA, Australia, France, Germany, Spain A. "It's a Miracle" B. "Love Twist (Liv ...
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Take My Time
''Take My Time'' is the debut album by UK pop singer Sheena Easton. Released in January 1981, the album reached #17 in the UK and earned her a Gold Disc. Two months later, a ten track version of the album was released in the USA and Canada as ''Sheena Easton''. Sheena Easton (album) at Allmusic/ref> The album went gold in the USA and platinum in Canada. Background & Legacy After becoming suddenly famous due to her appearance on a television documentary in 1980 and with the hits "9 To 5" (which went gold) and " Modern Girl", Easton began recording her debut album with producer Christopher Neil. Easton later said that working with Neil was a great idea, remarking "They didn't just go: 'Right, just go sing '' Over the Rainbow'' or some cover', they brought in this top producer for me to work with". She says that although she didn't write the material on the album, Neil had a good ear for hit records and would send her tapes of songs from which she would decide which ones to record, ...
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Carl Wilson
Carl Dean Wilson (December 21, 1946 – February 6, 1998) was an American musician, singer, and songwriter who co-founded the Beach Boys. He was their lead guitar Lead guitar (also known as solo guitar) is a musical part for a guitar in which the guitarist plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs and chords within a song structure. The lead is the fe ...ist, the youngest sibling of bandmates Brian Wilson, Brian and Dennis Wilson, Dennis, and the group's ''de facto'' leader in the early to mid-1970s. He was also the band's musical director on stage from 1965 until his death. Influenced by the guitar playing of Chuck Berry and the Ventures, Wilson's initial role in the group was that of lead guitarist and backing vocals, but he performed lead vocals on several of their later hits, including "God Only Knows" (1966), "Good Vibrations" (1966), "I Can Hear Music" (1969), and "Kokomo (song), Kokomo" (1988). Unlike other mem ...
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Playboy
''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. Known for its centerfolds of nude and semi-nude Model (people), models (Playboy Playmate, Playmates), ''Playboy'' played an important role in the sexual revolution and remains one of the world's best-known brands, having grown into Playboy Enterprises, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. (PEI), with a presence in nearly every medium. In addition to the flagship magazine in the United States, special #International editions, nation-specific versions of ''Playboy'' are published worldwide, including those by licensees, such as Dirk Steenekamp's DHS Media Group. The magazine has a long history of publishing short stories by novelists such as Arthur C. Clarke, Ian Fleming, Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Chuck Palahniuk, P. G. Wodehouse ...
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James William Guercio
James William Guercio (born July 18, 1945) is an American music producer, musician, songwriter, and director. He is well known for his work as the producer of Chicago's early albums as well as early recordings of The Buckinghams and Blood, Sweat & Tears. He has worked briefly in the motion picture industry as a producer and director. In the mid-1970s, Guercio managed the Beach Boys and was a member of their backing band. Early life and music industry accomplishments Guercio was born on July 18, 1945, in Chicago, IL to James Guercio, Sr (1922-1998) and Grace Guercio (née Williams, October 11, 1923 – August 23, 2010). He is of Italian, German, Irish, Scottish and English ancestry. He has 4 brothers and 2 sisters. As a child, he was friends with future Styx keyboardist and vocalist Dennis DeYoung. Guercio moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s and began working as a session musician and songwriter. He played on several recordings, wrote Chad & Jeremy's 1966 Top 30 pop hit " Di ...
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Top Of The Pops
''Top of the Pops'' (''TOTP'') is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. The programme was the world's longest-running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each show consisted of performances of some of the week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Top 30 was used from 1969, and the Top 40 from 1984. Dusty Springfield's " I Only Want to Be with You" was the first song featured on ''TOTP'', while the Rolling Stones were the first band to perform, with " I Wanna Be Your Man". Snow Patrol were the last act to play live on the weekly show when they performed their single " Chasing Cars". Special editions were broadcast on Christmas Day (and us ...
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Bohemian Rhapsody
"Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen, released as the lead single from their fourth album, '' A Night at the Opera'' (1975). Written by lead singer Freddie Mercury, the song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. It is one of the few progressive rock songs of the 1970s to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience. Mercury referred to "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a "mock opera" that resulted from the combination of three songs he had written. It was recorded by Queen and co-producer Roy Thomas Baker at five studios between August and September 1975. Due to recording logistics of the era, the band had to bounce the tracks across eight generations of 24-track tape, meaning that they required nearly 200 tracks for overdubs. The song parodies elements of opera with bombastic chor ...
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Rupert Holmes
David Goldstein (born February 24, 1947), better known as Rupert Holmes, is a British-American composer, singer-songwriter, dramatist and author. He is widely known for the hit singles "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" (1979) and " Him" (1980). He is also known for his musicals ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'', which earned him two Tony Awards, and ''Curtains'', and for his television series ''Remember WENN''. Life and career Holmes was born David Goldstein in Northwich, Cheshire, England. His father, Leonard Eliot Goldstein, was a United States Army warrant officer and bandleader. His mother, Gwendolen Mary (''née'' Pynn), was English, and both were musical. Holmes has dual British and American citizenship. The family moved when Holmes was six years old to the northern New York City suburb of Nanuet, New York, where Holmes grew up and attended nearby Nyack High School and then the Manhattan School of Music (majoring in clarinet). Holmes's brother, Richard, is the principal lyr ...
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Jeffrey Lesser
Jeffrey Lesser is a U.S.-based historian of Latin America who is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor at Emory University. Prior to that he was the Winship Distinguished Professor of the Humanities. After two terms as the chair of the History Department at Emory University he was named the first faculty director of the Halle Institute for Global Researc He is the author of numerous books on ethnicity, immigration and national identity in Brazil. In 2022 Lesser won Emory University‘s Eleanor Main Graduate Mentor Awarand in 2023 he received the Marion V. Creekmore Award for Internationalizatio Lesser studied at Brown University (BA 1982; MA 1984) and then earned a Ph.D. in Latin American history at New York University (1989) where he studied with the late Warren Dean. He was the Fulbright Chair of the Humanities at Tel Aviv University and also has held visiting professorships at the University of São Paulo and the State University of Campinas. In 2007-08, he served as presiden ...
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