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Strange Angels (Laurie Anderson Album)
''Strange Angels'' is the fifth album overall and fourth studio album by performance artist and singer Laurie Anderson, released by Warner Bros. Records in 1989. With this release, Anderson attempted to move away from her previous image as a performance artist into a more musical realm. Although music had always been part of her performance, it was never brought to the fore as much as it was on ''Strange Angels''. Anderson did more singing on this album than she did on previous albums. As a result, completion of this album was delayed for nearly a year when Anderson decided that she needed to take singing lessons; in the process she discovered that she was a soprano. The album includes contributions from vocal artist Bobby McFerrin. Its cover photo was shot by Robert Mapplethorpe, who died several months before the album's release. One of the songs on this album, "The Dream Before" (also known as "Hansel and Gretel Are Alive and Well") had been introduced several years earlier in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Michael Mapplethorpe (; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A 1989 exhibition of Mapplethorpe's work, titled ''Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment'', sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free speech in the United States. Biography Mapplethorpe was born in the Floral Park neighborhood of Queens, New York, the son of Joan Dorothy (Maxey) and Harry Irving Mapplethorpe, an electrical engineer. He was of English, Irish, and German descent, and grew up as a Catholic in Our Lady of the Snows Parish. Mapplethorpe attended Martin Van Buren High S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Spinozza
David Spinozza is an American guitarist and producer. He worked with former Beatles Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon during the 1970s, and had a long collaboration with singer-songwriter James Taylor, producing Taylor's album ''Walking Man''. Career Spinozza worked with McCartney during sessions for McCartney's ''Ram'' album during 1971. When the chance came to work with Lennon two years later, as Yoko Ono prepared her ''Feeling the Space'' album and Lennon his ''Mind Games'', Spinozza discovered that Lennon was not aware he had previously worked with McCartney, and was afraid he would be fired if Lennon found out, given their recent feuding in the media. When Lennon did learn of it, his only comment was that McCartney "knows how to pick good people." Exact same story is related about Hugh McCracken. David sessioned on Tim Weisberg's 1972 ''Hurtwood Edge'' and Cashman & West's 1974 ''Lifesong''. Spinozza contributed to Ono's album '' A Story'', recorded during 1974 (b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Spedding
Christopher John Spedding (born Peter Robinson, 17 June 1944) is an English musician, singer, guitarist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and record producer. In a career spanning more than 50 years, Spedding is best known for his studio session work. By the early 1970s, he had become one of the most sought-after session guitarists in England. Spedding has played on and produced many albums and singles. He has also been a member of eleven rock bands: the Battered Ornaments, Frank Ricotti Quartet, King Mob, Mike Batt and Friends, Necessaries, Nucleus, Ricky Norton, Sharks, Trigger, and the Wombles. In May 1976, Spedding also produced the very first Sex Pistols recordings. AllMusic has described Spedding as "one of the UK's most versatile session guitarists, ehas had a long career on two continents that saw him tackle nearly every style of rock and Spedding, a long-time friend of Chrissie Hynde, was a regular concert feature artist with the Pretenders on their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ray Phiri
Raymond Chikapa Enock Phiri (23 March 1947 – 12 July 2017) was a South African jazz, fusion and mbaqanga musician born in Mpumalanga to Thabethe Phiri, a Malawian immigrant worker, and South African guitarist nicknamed "Just Now" Phiri. He was a founding member of the Cannibals in the 1970s. When the Cannibals disbanded Ray founded Stimela, with whom he conceived gold and platinum-selling albums like ''Fire, Passion and '' (1984), ''Look, Listen and Decide'' (1986). He collaborated with Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo on Simon's Graceland (album) project in 1985. Career Ray Phiri was born near Nelspruit in the then Eastern Transvaal, now Mpumalanga Province, in South Africa. In 1985, Paul Simon asked Ray along with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and other South African musicians to join his Graceland project, which was successful and also helped the South African musicians to make names for themselves abroad. Phiri was to collaborate with Simon again on Simon's ''Rhythm of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Gordon (composer)
Peter Gordon (born June 20, 1951, New York City) is an American saxophonist, clarinetist, pianist and experimental composer, whose influences include jazz, disco, funk, rock, opera, classical and world music. He has released several albums and composed scores for film and theater, and he has also toured and re-interpreted the music of Arthur Russell, on whose compositions he played, as well as that of Robert Ashley. Early life and education Gordon was born in New York City, and grew up in Virginia, Munich, and Los Angeles. He began piano lessons at age 7 and learned the clarinet in early childhood. He started to play the saxophone, which would become his main instrument, at age 14. HIs earliest musical influences were jazz artists from New Orleans, as well as The Shadows, The Ventures, Albert Ayler, Igor Stravinsky, Sun Ra, The Animals and The Yardbirds. When he was a senior in high school, Gordon made friends with Captain Beefheart and spent time at Beefheart’s home ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theses On The Philosophy Of History
"Theses on the Philosophy of History" or "On the Concept of History" (german: Über den Begriff der Geschichte) is an essay written in early 1940 by German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin. It is one of Benjamin's best-known, and most controversial works. Composed of twenty numbered paragraphs, the brief essay was written by Benjamin shortly before he attempted to escape from Vichy France, where French collaborationist government officials were handing over Jewish refugees like Benjamin to the Nazi Gestapo. ''Theses'' is the last major work Benjamin completed before fleeing to Spain where, fearing Nazi capture, he died by suicide on 26 September 1940. Summary In the essay, Benjamin uses poetic and scientific analogies to present a critique of historicism. One interpretation of Benjamin in Thesis I is that Benjamin is suggesting that despite claims to scientific objectivity, the historical materialism of vulgar Marxists is actually a quasi-religious fraud. Benjamin uses T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Angelus Novus
''Angelus Novus'' (New Angel) is a 1920 monoprint by the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee, using the oil transfer method he invented. It is now in the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. History The artist's friend Walter Benjamin, a noted German critic and philosopher, purchased the print in 1921. In September 1940 Benjamin committed suicide during an attempt to flee the Nazi regime. After World War II, Benjamin's friend Gershom Scholem, a distinguished scholar of Jewish mysticism, inherited the drawing. According to Scholem, Benjamin felt a mystical identification with the ''Angelus Novus'' and incorporated it in his theory of the “angel of history,” a melancholy view of historical process as an unceasing cycle of despair. In the ninth thesis of his 1940 essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, Benjamin describes ''Angelus Novus'' as an image of the angel of history: A Klee painting named ''Angelus Novus'' shows an angel looking as though he is about to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Klee
Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color theory, writing about it extensively; his lectures ''Writings on Form and Design Theory'' (''Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre''), published in English as the ''Paul Klee Notebooks'', are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's ''A Treatise on Painting'' was for the Renaissance. He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture in Germany. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. Early life and training Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, as the second child of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Kle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School, and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was also related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders. Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Baudelaire, Goethe, Kafka, Kraus, Leskov, Proust, Walser, and translation theory. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marina Lima
Marina Correia Lima (, born September 17, 1955) is a Brazilian singer and songwriter. She is a prominent female pioneer of Brazilian rock music. Career Marina Lima began composing songs at age 17, and first achieved major success with the 1984 album '' Fullgás'', which included the hit singles "Fullgás", "Me Chama" (written by Lobão), "Veneno" and "Mesmo que Seja Eu" (an Erasmo Carlos cover). In 1986 she released the first home video concert by a Brazilian artist, "Todas Ao Vivo", which chronicled the tour in support of her 1985 album "Todas" and included several of her previous hits as well as backstage interviews. In the 90s she continued recording highly praised albums such as “O Chamado” and Abrigo”. After a long break from the stage, Lima finally returned to prominence with the release of concert and live album “Sissi na Sua”. In 2003 she recorded her Acústico MTV (the Brazilian equivalent of the MTV Unplugged series), which spawned two top 10 hit singles ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammy Award For Best Alternative Music Album
The Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album is an award presented to recording artists for quality albums in the alternative genre at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position". In 2023, it was joined by a companion category, Best Alternative Music Performance. Criteria While the definition of "alternative" has been debated, the award was first presented in 1991 to recognize non-mainstream rock albums "heavily played on college radio stations". After several updates of the category description, the Grammy organisation issued the following statement for the 2019 Grammy season: ''Alternative is defined as a genre of music th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
