The Soft Bulletin
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The Soft Bulletin
''The Soft Bulletin'' is the ninth studio album by American rock band the Flaming Lips, released by Warner Bros. Records on May 17, 1999, in the United Kingdom, and on June 22, 1999, in the United States. The album was released to widespread acclaim, and was hailed by critics as a departure from their previous guitar-heavy alternative rock sound into a more layered, intricately arranged work. Music and lyrics The album was considered to mark a change in the course for the band, with more traditional catchy melodies, accessible-sounding music (their previous album ''Zaireeka'' was a quadruple album of experimental sounds meant to be played on four separate stereo systems simultaneously), and more serious and thoughtful lyrics. The album was also noted for its fusion of ordinary rock instruments, electronic beats, and synthesizers. Its large, layered, symphonic sound has also earned it a reputation as the ''Pet Sounds'' of the 1990s from a few critics. This sound was achieved in par ...
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The Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips are an American psychedelic rock band formed in 1983 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The band currently consists of Wayne Coyne (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Steven Drozd (guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, vocals), Derek Brown (keyboards, guitars, percussion), Matt Duckworth Kirksey (drums, percussion, keyboards) and Nicholas Ley (percussion, drums). Following the departure of long-time bassist Michael Ivins in 2021, Coyne has remained the band's solo consistent member. The group recorded several albums and EPs on an indie label, Restless, in the 1980s and early 1990s. After signing to Warner Brothers, they released their first record with Warner, ''Hit to Death in the Future Head'' (1992). Their 1993 album ''Transmissions from the Satellite Heart'' included the hit single "She Don't Use Jelly" which broke the band into the mainstream. They later released ''The Soft Bulletin'' (1999), which was ''NME'' magazine's Album of the Year, followed by the critically accla ...
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Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century in the United States; nylon strings came in the 1940s. The guitar's ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four- course Renaissance guitar, and the ...
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Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular culture. The magazine debuted on February 16, 1990, in New York City. Different from celebrity-focused publications such as ''Us Weekly'', ''People'' (a sister magazine to ''EW''), and ''In Touch Weekly'', ''EW'' primarily concentrates on entertainment media news and critical reviews; unlike ''Variety'' and ''The Hollywood Reporter'', which were primarily established as trade magazines aimed at industry insiders, ''EW'' targets a more general audience. History Formed as a sister magazine to ''People'', the first issue of ''Entertainment Weekly'' was published on February 16, 1990. Created by Jeff Jarvis and founded by Michael Klingensmith, who served as publisher until October 1996, the magazine's original television advertising soliciting ...
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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' ...
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Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc Doyle, and Julie Doyle Roberts in 1999. The site provides an excerpt from each review and hyperlinks to its source. A color of green, yellow or red summarizes the critics' recommendations. It is regarded as the foremost online review aggregation site for the video game industry. Metacritic's scoring converts each review into a percentage, either mathematically from the mark given, or what the site decides subjectively from a qualitative review. Before being averaged, the scores are weighted according to a critic's popularity, stature, and volume of reviews. The website won two Webby Awards for excellence as an aggregation website. Criticism of the site has focused on the assessment system, the ass ...
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Time Inc
Time Inc. was an American worldwide mass media corporation founded on November 28, 1922, by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden and based in New York City. It owned and published over 100 magazine brands, including its namesake ''Time'', ''Sports Illustrated'', '' Travel + Leisure'', '' Food & Wine'', ''Fortune'', ''People'', ''InStyle'', ''Life'', ''Golf Magazine'', ''Southern Living'', ''Essence'', ''Real Simple'', and ''Entertainment Weekly''. It also had subsidiaries which it co-operated with the UK magazine house Time Inc. UK (which was later sold and since has been rebranded to TI Media), whose major titles include ''What's on TV'', ''NME'', '' Country Life'', and ''Wallpaper''. Time Inc. also co-operated over 60 websites and digital-only titles including ''MyRecipes'', ''Extra Crispy'', ''TheSnug'', HelloGiggles, and ''MIMI''. In 1990, Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications to form the media conglomerate Time Warner. In 2018, media company Meredith Corporation acquired T ...
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Life (magazine)
''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest magazine known for the quality of its photography, and was one of the most popular magazines in the nation, regularly reaching one-quarter of the population. ''Life'' was independently published for its first 53 years until 1936 as a general-interest and light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes, and social commentary. It featured some of the most notable writers, editors, illustrators and cartoonists of its time: Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell and Jacob Hartman Jr. Gibson became the editor and owner of the magazine after John Ames Mitchell died in 1918. During its later years, the magazine offered brief capsule reviews (similar to those in ''The New Yorker'') of plays and movies currently running in New York City, bu ...
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Merry Pranksters
The Merry Pranksters were comrades and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called '' Furthur'', organizing parties, and giving out LSD. During this time they met many of the guiding lights of the 1960s cultural movement and presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white, and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they ironically dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in his 1968 book ''The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'', and documents a notorious 1966 trip on ''Furthur'' from Mexico through Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend, novelist Larry McMurtry. Kesey was in flight from a drug charge at the time. Not ...
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Acid Tests
The Acid Tests were a series of parties held by author Ken Kesey primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid-1960s, centered on the use of and advocacy for the psychedelic drug LSD, commonly known as "acid". LSD was not made illegal in California until October 6, 1966. History The name "Acid Test" was coined by Kesey, after the term " acid test" used by gold miners in the 1850s. He began throwing parties at his farm at La Honda, California. The Merry Pranksters were central to organizing the Acid Tests, including Pranksters such as Lee Quarnstrom and Neal Cassady. Other people, such as LSD chemists Owsley Stanley and Tim Scully, were involved as well. Kesey took the parties to public places, and advertised with posters that read, "Can you pass the acid test?", and the name was later popularized in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book ''The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test''. Musical performances by the Grateful Dead were commonplace, along with black lights, strobe lights, and flu ...
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Neal Cassady
Neal Leon Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s. He was prominently featured as himself in the "scroll" (first draft) version of Jack Kerouac's novel ''On the Road'', and served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in the 1957 version of that book. In many of Kerouac's later books, Cassady is represented by the character Cody Pomeray. Cassady also appeared in Allen Ginsberg's poems, and in several other works of literature by other writers. Biography Early years Cassady was born to Maude Jean (Scheuer) and Neal Marshall Cassady in Salt Lake City, Utah. His mother died when he was 10, and he was raised by his alcoholic father in Denver, Colorado. Cassady spent much of his youth either living on the streets of skid row, with his father, or in reform school. As a youth, Cassady was repeatedly involved in petty crime. He was arrested for c ...
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Lawrence Schiller
Lawrence Julian Schiller (born December 28, 1936) is an American photojournalist, film producer, director and screenwriter. Career Schiller was born in 1936 in Brooklyn to Jewish parents and grew up outside of San Diego, California. After attending Pepperdine College in Los Angeles, he worked for ''Life'' magazine, ''Paris Match'', ''The Sunday Times'', ''Time'', ''Newsweek'', ''Stern'', and ''The Saturday Evening Post'' as a freelance photojournalist. He published his first book, ''LSD'', in 1966. Since then Schiller has published 17 books, including W. Eugene Smith's book ''Minamata'' and Norman Mailer's '' Marilyn''. Having produced and directed the 1967 Capitol Records audio documentary album ''Why Did Lenny Bruce Die?'', he collaborated with Albert Goldman on the bestseller in 1974 ''Ladies and Gentleman--Lenny Bruce!!'', and also with Norman Mailer on the 1980 ''New York Times'' bestseller and the made-for-television motion picture of ''The Executioner's Song'' as well as ...
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MIDI Keyboard
A MIDI keyboard or controller keyboard is typically a piano-style electronic musical keyboard, often with other buttons, wheels and sliders, used for sending MIDI signals or commands over a USB or MIDI 5-pin cable to other musical devices or computers. MIDI keyboards lacking an onboard sound module cannot produce sounds themselves, however some models of MIDI keyboards contain both a MIDI controller and sound module, allowing them to operate independently. When used as a MIDI controller, MIDI information on keys or buttons the performer has pressed is sent to a receiving device capable of creating sound through modeling synthesis, sample playback, or an analog hardware instrument. The receiving device could be: *a computer running a digital audio workstation (DAW) or a standalone VST/AU instrument (alternatively, the computer could be used to re-route the MIDI signal to other devices) *a sound module *a digital (digital piano/stage piano) or analogue (synthesizer) hardw ...
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