Steve Took
Steve Peregrin Took (born Stephen Ross Porter; 28 July 1949 – 27 October 1980) was an English musician and songwriter, best known for his membership of the duo Tyrannosaurus Rex with Marc Bolan. After breaking with Bolan, he concentrated on his own singer-songwriting activities, either as a solo artist or as a frontman for several bands. Career Early life (1949–1967) and Tyrannosaurus Rex (1967–1969) Took was born Stephen Ross Porter in Eltham, London, on 28 July 1949, and attended Shooters Hill School. He took his name from the character Peregrin Took, a hobbit, in J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings''. At the age of 17, having played drums for some months with a mod band named the Waterproof Sparrows (bass player John Rains), he answered an advert in ''Melody Maker'' for Tyrannosaurus Rex, the electric band that Marc Bolan was forming following his departure from John's Children. After one disastrous concert at the Electric Garden in London, Bolan and Took redu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eltham
Eltham ( ) is a district of southeast London, England, within the Royal Borough of Greenwich. It is east-southeast of Charing Cross, and is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. The three wards of Eltham North, South and West have a total population of 35,459. 88,000 people live in Eltham. History Origins Eltham developed along part of the road from London to Maidstone, and lies almost due south of Woolwich. Mottingham, to the south, became part of the parish on the abolition of all extra-parochial areas, which were rare anomalies in the parish system. Eltham College and other parts of Mottingham were therefore not considered within Eltham's boundaries even before the 1860s. From the sixth century Eltham was in the ancient Lathe of Sutton at Hone. In the Domesday Book of 1086 its hundred was named ''Gren[u/v]iz'' (Greenwich), which by 1166 was renamed ''Blachehedfeld'' Blackheath, Kent (hundred), (Blackheath) because it had become t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bongo Drum
Bongos ( es, bongó) are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. They are struck with both hands, most commonly in an eight-stroke pattern called ''martillo'' (hammer). The larger drum is called a hembra (Spanish for female) and the smaller drum is called the macho (Spanish for male). They are mainly employed in the rhythm section of son cubano and salsa ensembles, often alongside other drums such as the larger congas and the stick-struck timbales. This brought bongos into our cultural vocabulary, from Beatniks to Mambo to the current revival of Cuban folkloric music. Bongo drummers (''bongoseros'') emerged as the only drummers of son cubano ensembles in eastern Cuba toward the end of the 19th century. It is believed that Bongos evolved from the Abakua Drum trio 'Bonko' and its lead drum 'Bonko Enmiwewos'. These drums are still a fundamental part of the Abakua Religion in Cuba. If joined with a wooden peck in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mick Farren
Michael Anthony Farren (3 September 1943 – 27 July 2013) was an English rock musician, singer, journalist, and author associated with counterculture and the UK underground. Early life Farren was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and after moving to Worthing, Sussex, attended Worthing High School for Boys, which was a state grammar school. In 1963, he moved to London, where he studied at Saint Martin's School of Art.Mick Farren Obituary ''The Independent'' Retrieved 31 July 2013 Music Farren was the singer with the proto-punk band[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Syd Barrett
Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006) was an English singer, songwriter, and musician who co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd in 1965. Barrett was their original frontman and primary songwriter, becoming known for his whimsical style of psychedelia, English-accented singing, and stream-of-consciousness writing style. As a guitarist, he was influential for his free-form playing and for employing effects such as dissonance, distortion, echo and feedback. Originally trained as a painter, Barrett was musically active for less than ten years. With Pink Floyd, he recorded four singles, their debut album ''The Piper at the Gates of Dawn'' (1967), portions of their second album '' A Saucerful of Secrets'' (1968), and several unreleased songs. In April 1968, Barrett was ousted from the band amid speculation of mental illness and his excessive use of psychedelic drugs. He began a brief solo career in 1969 with the single "Octopus" and followed with the album ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Pretty Things
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a v ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Deviants (band)
The Deviants (formerly The Social Deviants) were an English rock band originally active from late 1966 to 1969, but later used as a vehicle for the musical work of writer Mick Farren until his death in 2013. Farren has stated that The Deviants were originally a community band which "did things every now and then—it was a total assault thing with a great deal of inter-relation and interdependence". Musically, Mick Farren described that they were influenced by The Who, Charles Mingus, Velvet Underground, and Frank Zappa. History 1960s The Social Deviants were founded by singer/writer Mick Farren in late 1966 out of the Ladbroke Grove UK Underground community, featuring Pete Munro on bass, Clive Muldoon on guitar, Mike Robinson on guitar, and Benny (surname unknown) on drums. This group played at UFO in Tottenham Court Road and opened the Alexandra Palace Love-In festival. Shortly thereafter Benny (surname unknown) was replaced by Phil Mari on drums for a few gigs. In the early ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Unicorn (Tyrannosaurus Rex Album)
''Unicorn'' is the third studio album by English psychedelic folk (later glam rock) band Tyrannosaurus Rex (later known as T. Rex). It was released on 16 May 1969 by record labels Regal Zonophone and Blue Thumb, and was the last Tyrannosaurus Rex album to feature Steve Peregrin Took. Content and music ''Unicorn'' featured Marc Bolan on vocals, guitar, organ and phonofiddle and Took on percussion, bass and piano. The back cover depicted Bolan and Took surrounded by books that were relevant to the subject matter of the songs. These books included the work of William Blake as well as photographs of the Cottingley Fairies, a famous case of two children's photographs of alleged fairies taken near their Yorkshire home. In between the final two songs on the album, "The Misty Coast of Albany" and "Romany Soup", John Peel (an early supporter of the band) recited a short story written by Bolan. Bolan experimented with an electric guitar for the first time on a Tyrannosaurus Rex reco ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tony Visconti
Anthony Edward Visconti (born April 24, 1944) is an American record producer, musician and singer. Since the late 1960s, he has worked with an array of performers. His first hit single was T. Rex's " Ride a White Swan" in 1970, the first of many hits in collaboration with Marc Bolan. Visconti's lengthiest involvement was with David Bowie: intermittently from the production and arrangement of Bowie's 1968 single "In the Heat of the Morning" / "London Bye Ta-Ta" to his final album ''Blackstar'' in 2016, Visconti produced and occasionally performed on many of Bowie's albums. Visconti's work on ''Blackstar'' was cited in its Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical and his production of Angelique Kidjo's '' Djin Djin'' was cited in its Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album. Early life Visconti was born in Brooklyn, New York, to parents of Italian descent. He started to play the ukulele when he was five years old, and then learned guitar. He attended N ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hippie
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around the world. The word '' hippie'' came from '' hipster'' and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village, in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago's Old Town community. The term ''hippie'' was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularize use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier. The origins of the terms ''hip'' and ''hep'' are uncertain. By the 1940s, both had become part of African American jive slang and meant "sophisticated; currently fashionable; fully up-to-date". The Beats adopted the term ''hip'', and early hippies inherited the language and countercultural values of the Beat Generation. Hippies created their own communit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gong
A gongFrom Indonesian and ms, gong; jv, ꦒꦺꦴꦁ ; zh, c=鑼, p=luó; ja, , dora; km, គង ; th, ฆ้อง ; vi, cồng chiêng; as, কাঁহ is a percussion instrument originating in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Gongs are a flat, circular metal disc that is typically struck with a mallet. They can be small or large in size, and tuned or can require tuning. The earliest mention of gongs can be found in sixth century Chinese records, which mentioned the instrument to have come from a country between Tibet and Burma. The term ''gong'' ( jv, ꦒꦺꦴꦁ) originated in the Indonesian island of Java. Scientific and archaeological research has established that Burma, China, Java and Annam were the four main gong manufacturing centres of the ancient world. The gong found its way into the Western World in the 18th century, when it was also used in the percussion section of a Western-style symphony orchestra. A form of bronze cauldron gong known as a resting ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pixiphone
The Pixiphone was a range of toy glockenspiels (although they were inaccurately labelled as xylophones on their packaging). The larger Pixiphones had a 'raiser-bar' which could be used to end a note abruptly, rather than letting the sound fade naturally. Although marketed as a children's toy, the Pixiphone could be tuned pitch-perfect and was very robust, resulting in many children using them at British schools for music instruction, and occasional use on professional recordings by established musicians (see "recordings" below). File:Pixiphone diatonic.jpg, Diatonic Pixiphone File:Pixiphone chromatic.jpg, Chromatic Pixiphone Manufacturer The Pixiphone was manufactured by Chas E. Methven Ltd, Chatham, Kent, England, and distributed by Playcraft Toys Ltd England from the 1950s to the 1970s (or possibly later). Recordings The Pixiphone was played by Steve Took on three Tyrannosaurus Rex albums, where it is incorrectly (or jokingly) credited as a ''Pixiephone''. The instrumen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kazoo
The kazoo is an American musical instrument that adds a "buzzing" timbral quality to a player's voice when the player vocalizes into it. It is a type of '' mirliton'' (which itself is a membranophone), one of a class of instruments which modifies its player's voice by way of a vibrating membrane of goldbeater's skin or material with similar characteristics. Similar hide-covered vibrating and voice-changing instruments have been used in Africa for hundreds of years. Playing A kazoo player hums, rather than blows, into the bigger and flattened side of the instrument.How to Play Kazoo Kazoos.com, 2013, accessed July 12, 2013 The oscillating air pressure of the hum makes the kazoo's membrane vibrate. The resulting sound varies in pitch and loudness with the player's humming. Players can produce different sounds by singing specifi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |