The Fox (Elton John Album)
''The Fox'' is the fifteenth studio album by English musician Elton John, released in 1981. The album was produced by John, Clive Franks, and, for the first time, Chris Thomas, who would produce many more albums with John through most of the 1980s and '90s. Five of the songs (noted below) were recorded during the sessions for his previous album '' 21 at 33''. All B-sides released around this time were also from those sessions. The whole album was considered as a hidden gem due to the limited success it received and the album was unknown to many people. Release The album reached the top ten and top 40 charts in many countries except Canada. It has a silver certification in the United Kingdom. The first single, "Nobody Wins", charted in the US at #21, but charted best in Norway, peaking at #10. The next single, "Chloe", charted even better on the Adult Contemporary chart at #16. "Just Like Belgium" didn't chart anywhere despite it being released as a single in some countries th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career as a solo artist since the 1970s, having released 31 albums since 1969. Collaborating with lyricist Bernie Taupin since 1967, John is acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his work during the 1970s, and his lasting impact on the music industry. John's music and showmanship have had a significant impact on popular music. His songwriting partnership with Taupin is one of the most successful in history. John was raised in the Pinner suburb of London and learned to play piano at an early age, forming the blues band Bluesology in 1962. After leaving Bluesology in 1967 to embark on a solo career, John met Taupin after they both answered an advert for songwriters. For two years, they wrote songs for other artists, and John worked a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jump Up Tour
The Jump Up! Tour was a worldwide concert tour by English musician and composer Elton John, in support of his 16th studio album '' Jump Up!''. The tour included five legs (Australia, Europe, North America, UK and South Africa) and a total of 135 shows. Tour On 10 March 1982, the Athletic Park in Wellington was the site of Davey Johnstone’s return to the Elton John band, reuniting the classic band on stage for the first time in eight years. Elton John, Davey Johnstone, Dee Murray and Nigel Olsson then took the Jump Up! Tour across Australia and Europe (and blasting through New York on 17 April with a powerful performance of " Empty Garden" and "Ball And Chain" on ''Saturday Night Live'') before launching their North American tour on 12 June at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. The 7 July show in Kansas City, Missouri, was broadcast live on nationwide radio, and this leg of the tour ended after three nights at Madison Square Garden on 7 August 1982. Two nights before, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hammond Organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated sound by creating an electric current from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, and then strengthening the signal with an amplifier to drive a speaker cabinet. The organ is commonly used with the Leslie speaker. Around two million Hammond organs have been manufactured. The organ was originally marketed by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, or instead of a piano. It quickly became popular with professional jazz musicians in organ trios—small groups centered on the Hammond organ. Jazz club owners found that organ trios were cheaper than hiring a big band. Jimmy Smith's use of the Hammond B-3, with its additional harmonic percussion feature, inspired a g ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fender Rhodes
The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, the hammers strike thin metal tines, which vibrate next to an electromagnetic pickup. The signal is then sent through a cable to an external keyboard amplifier and speaker. The instrument evolved from Rhodes's attempt to manufacture pianos while teaching recovering soldiers during World War II. Development continued after the war and into the following decade. In 1959, Fender began marketing the Piano Bass, a cut-down version; the full-size instrument did not appear until after Fender's sale to CBS in 1965. CBS oversaw mass production of the Rhodes piano in the 1970s, and it was used extensively through the decade, particularly in jazz, pop, and soul music. It was less used in the 1980s because of competition with polyphonic and digital ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vocoder
A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''voice'' and ''encoder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder was invented in 1938 by Homer Dudley at Bell Labs as a means of synthesizing human speech. This work was developed into the channel vocoder which was used as a voice codec for telecommunications for speech coding to conserve bandwidth in transmission. By encrypting the control signals, voice transmission can be secured against interception. Its primary use in this fashion is for secure radio communication. The advantage of this method of encryption is that none of the original signal is sent, only envelopes of the bandpass filters. The receiving unit needs to be set up in the same filter configuration to re-synthesize a version of the original signal spectrum. The vocoder has also been used extensively as an electronic musical instrument. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Russell Mulcahy
Russell Mulcahy ( ; born 23 June 1953) is an Australian film director. Mulcahy's work is recognisable by the use of fast cuts, tracking shots and use of glowing lights, neo-noir lighting, windblown drapery, and fans. He directed music videos in the 1980s, worked in television since the early 1990s and directed the films ''Razorback'' (1984), '' Highlander'' (1986) and '' Resident Evil: Extinction'' (2007). Early life and career Mulcahy was born in Melbourne. He grew up in in the Illawarra region of New South Wales and attended Corrimal High School. When he was 14 he received an 8mm camera and began making short films with his friends. After school he began working as a film editor for Australia's Seven Network. He later said he "used to creep in there at 3am and make my own movies". He also acted on stage and was unsure whether to focus on acting or directing. Two of his films won the City Film Festival Award for Best Independent Short Film and he won Best Short Film at the S ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Laserdisc
The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as DiscoVision, MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diameter typically spans . Unlike most optical disc standards, LaserDisc is not fully Digital data, digital, and instead requires the use of analog video signals. Although the format was capable of offering higher-quality video and audio than its consumer rivals—VHS and Betamax videotape—LaserDisc never managed to gain widespread use in North America, largely due to high costs for the players and the inability to record TV programmes. It eventually did gain some traction in that region and became somewhat popular in the 1990s. It was not a popular format in Europe and Australia. By contrast, the format was much more popular in Japan and in the more affluent regions of Southeast Asia, such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, and was the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Capacitance Electronic Disc
The Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) is an analog video, analog video disc playback system developed by RCA, in which video and audio could be played back on a TV set using a special stylus and high-density groove system similar to phonograph records. First conceived in 1964, the CED system was widely seen as a technological success which was able to increase the density of a long-playing record by two Order of magnitude#Uses, orders of magnitude. Despite this achievement, the CED system fell victim to poor planning, various conflicts with RCA management, and several technical difficulties that slowed development and stalled production of the system for 17 years—until 1981, by which time it had already been made obsolete by laser videodisc (DiscoVision, later called LaserVision and LaserDisc) as well as Betamax and VHS Videotape, video cassette formats. Sales for the system were nowhere near projected estimates. In the spring of 1984, RCA announced it was discontinuing player ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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To Be Continued
A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode or a film of serialized fiction. A cliffhanger is hoped to incentivize the audience to return to see how the characters resolve the dilemma. Some serials end with the caveat, "To Be Continued" or "The End?". In serial films and television series the following episode sometimes begins with a recap sequence. Cliffhangers were used as literary devices in several works of the Middle Ages with '' One Thousand and One Nights'' ending on a cliffhanger each night. Cliffhangers appeared as an element of the Victorian era serial novel that emerged in the 1840s, with many associating the form with Charles Dickens, a pioneer of the serial publication of narrative fiction.Grossman, Jonathan H. (2012). ''Charles Dickens's Networks: Public Transport and the Novel''. p. 54. Oxford: Oxford Universi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tom Robinson
Thomas Giles Robinson (born 1 June 1950) is a British singer, bassist, radio presenter and long-time LGBT rights activist, best known for the hits "Glad to Be Gay", "2-4-6-8 Motorway", and "Don't Take No for an Answer", with his Tom Robinson Band. He later peaked at No. 6 in the UK Singles Chart with his solo single " War Baby". Early life Tom Robinson was born into a middle-class family in Cambridge on 1 June 1950.Rapp, Linda (2004)"Robinson, Tom (b. 1950)". ''GLBTQ: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture''. He attended Friends' School, Saffron Walden, a co-ed privately funded Quaker school, between 1961 and 1967. He played guitar in a trio at school called The Inquisition. Robinson has two brothers, Matthew (a former BBC executive producer) and George, and a sister, Sophy. At the age of 13, Robinson realised that he was gay when he fell in love with another boy at school.Simmonds, Sylvie"A Brief History Of Tom". TomRobinson.com. Unt ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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James Newton Howard
James Newton Howard (born June 9, 1951) is an American film composer, music producer and keyboardist. He has scored over 100 films and is the recipient of a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, and nine nominations for Academy Awards. His film scores include '' Pretty Woman'' (1990), '' The Fugitive'' (1993), ''Space Jam'' (1996), ''Peter Pan'' (2003), ''King Kong'' (2005), ''The Dark Knight'' (2008) which he composed with Hans Zimmer, and ''Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them'' (2016). He has collaborated extensively with directors M. Night Shyamalan and Francis Lawrence, having scored eight of Shyamalan's films since ''The Sixth Sense'' (1999) and all of Lawrence's films since '' I Am Legend'' (2007). Early life and career Howard was born in Los Angeles. He is from a musical family; his grandmother was a violinist. His father was Jewish but he did not want his children to know he was, so he changed his last name from Horowitz to Howard. Howard began studying music as a child, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bernie Taupin
Bernard John Taupin (born 22 May 1950) is an English songwriter, singer and visual artist. He is best known for his long-term collaboration with musician Elton John, a songwriting partnership that is one of the most successful in history. Taupin has written the lyrics for most of John's songs. In 1967, Taupin answered an advertisement in the music paper ''New Musical Express'' placed by Liberty Records, a company that was seeking new songwriters. John responded to the same advertisement and they were brought together, collaborating on many albums since. Taupin and John were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992. Birth and childhood Taupin was born at Flatters House, a farmhouse located between the village of Anwick and the town of Sleaford, in the southern part of Lincolnshire, England, the son of Robert Taupin and Daphne, daughter of John Leonard Palchett "Poppy" Cort, a University of Cambridge-educated classics teacher and former rector at Sale, Greater Manc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |