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The Fibonaccis
The Fibonaccis were an American art rock band formed in 1981 in Los Angeles. The band consisted of songwriters John Dentino ( keyboards) and Ron Stringer (guitar), Magie Song (vocals), Joe Berardi (drums) and later Tom Corey (bass). Formation The Fibonaccis were formed out of the Los Angeles art punk scene which included bands such as Wall of Voodoo and Oingo Boingo. Deriving their name from 13th-century mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci and citing musical influence from Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone, the band's music was typically characterized by intricate piano and guitar lines, over-the-top and sometimes incomprehensible vocals and frequent use of unconventional instruments such as mandolins, clarinets and Mellotrons. The Fibonaccis' music was nearly impossible to categorize, fusing such disparate elements as post-punk, progressive rock, jazz, world music, cabaret, ambient, spoken word and funk, a combination one newspaper critic described as "elevator music from hell".Spurr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oingo Boingo
Oingo Boingo () was an American new wave band formed by songwriter Danny Elfman in 1979. The band emerged from a surrealist musical theatre troupe, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, that Elfman had led and written material for in the years previous. Their highest charting song, " Weird Science", reached No. 45 on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100. Oingo Boingo were known for their high energy live concerts and experimental music, which can be described as mixing rock, ska, pop, and world music. The band's body of work spanned 17 years, with various genre and line-up changes. Their best-known songs include "Only a Lad", " Little Girls", " Dead Man's Party" and " Weird Science". As a rock band, Oingo Boingo started as a ska and punk-influenced new wave octet, achieving significant popularity in Southern California. During the mid-1980s, the band changed line-ups, and adopted a more pop-oriented style, until a significant genre change to alternative rock in 1994. At that po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spoken Word
Spoken word refers to an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a late 20th century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play, such as the performer's live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry, and hip hop music, and can include comedy routines and prose monologues. Unlike written poetry, the poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends more on phonaesthetics, or the aesthetics of sound. History Spoken word has existed for many years; long before writing, through a cycle of practicing, listening and memorizing, each language drew on its resources of sound structure for aural patterns that made spoken poetry very different from ordinary discourse and easier to commit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ambient Music
Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It may lack net composition, beat, or structured melody.The Ambient Century by Mark Prendergast, Bloomsbury, London, 2003. It uses textural layers of sound that can reward both passive and active listening and encourage a sense of calm or contemplation. The genre is said to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual",Prendergast, M. ''The Ambient Century''. 2001. Bloomsbury, USA or "unobtrusive" quality. Nature soundscapes may be included, and the sounds of acoustic instruments such as the piano, strings and flute may be emulated through a synthesizer. The genre originated in the 1960s and 1970s, when new musical instruments were being introduced to a wider market, such as the synthesizer. It was presaged by Erik Satie's furniture music and styles such as musique concrète, minimal music, and German electronic music, but was prominently named and popularized by British mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or drinking, does not typically dance but usually sits at tables. Performances are usually introduced by a master of ceremonies or MC. The entertainment, as done by an ensemble of actors and according to its European origins, is often (but not always) oriented towards adult audiences and of a clearly underground nature. In the United States, striptease, burlesque, drag shows, or a solo vocalist with a pianist, as well as the venues which offer this entertainment, are often advertised as cabarets. Etymology The term originally came from Picard language or Walloon language words ''camberete'' or ''cambret'' for a small room (12th century). The first printed use of the word ''kaberet'' is found in a document from 1275 in Tournai. The term was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Progressive Rock
Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Initially termed "progressive pop", the style was an outgrowth of psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop traditions in favour of instrumentation and compositional techniques more frequently associated with jazz, folk, or classical music. Additional elements contributed to its " progressive" label: lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music approached the condition of "art", and the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which often involved creating music for listening rather than dancing. Progressive rock is based on fusions of styles, approaches and genres, involving a continuous move between formalism and eclecticism. Due to its historical reception, the scope of progressiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mellotron
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. As the key is released, the tape is retracted by a spring to its initial position. Different portions of the tape can be played to access different sounds. The Mellotron evolved from the similar Chamberlin, but could be mass-produced more efficiently. The first models were designed for the home and contained a variety of sounds, including automatic accompaniments. Bandleader Eric Robinson and television personality David Nixon helped promote the first instruments, and celebrities such as Princess Margaret were early adopters. It was adopted by rock and pop groups in the mid to late 1960s. One of the first pop songs featuring the Mellotron was Manfred Mann's " Semi-Detached, Suburban Mr. James" (1966). The Beatles used it on tracks includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches. The clarinet family is the largest such woodwind family, with more than a dozen types, ranging from the BB♭ contrabass to the E♭ soprano. The most common clarinet is the B soprano clarinet. German instrument maker Johann Christoph Denner is generally credited with inventing the clarinet sometime after 1698 by adding a register key to the chalumeau, an earlier single-reed instrument. Over time, additional keywork and the development of airtight pads were added to improve the tone and playability. Today the clarinet is used in classical music, military bands, klezmer, jazz, and other styles. It is a standard fixture of the orchestra and concert band. Etymology The word ''clarinet'' may have entered the English language via the Fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mandolin
A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 strings, although five (10 strings) and six (12 strings) course versions also exist. There are of course different types of strings that can be used, metal strings are the main ones since they are the cheapest and easiest to make. The courses are typically tuned in an interval of perfect fifths, with the same tuning as a violin (G3, D4, A4, E5). Also, like the violin, it is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass. There are many styles of mandolin, but the three most common types are the ''Neapolitan'' or ''round-backed'' mandolin, the ''archtop'' mandolin and the ''flat-backed'' mandolin. The round-backed version has a deep bottom, constructed of strips of wood, glued togethe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan, he founded ''All Music Guide' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
