"Aces High" is a song written by Steve Harris. It is Iron Maiden's eleventh single and the second from the 1984 album "Powerslave".
This song describes an air battle from the viewpoint of a flying ace. The lyrics and fast-paced style have made the song commonly associated with war, and it appeared in the 1986 film Incident at Channel Q, about a war between headbangers and conservative "straight people".
The first line is "There goes the siren that warns of the air raid." Lead singer Bruce Dickinson had earned the nickname "The Air Raid Siren" for his powerful, never-tiring vocals. He is also a licensed pilot, and since leaving the band in 1993, has flown many commercial flights.
"Aces High" is partially inspired by the 1976 war film of the same name starring Malcolm McDowell and Christopher Plummer.
The cover for the single was a close-up of Eddie (Iron Maiden's mascot) in a WWII jet. The back of the case showed the jet spiraling the ground, up in flames, smoke spewing from it. The B-side was "King of Twilight."
On the cover art, to the left below the cockpit there is a unique symbol scribbled in white. This is cover art designer Derek Rigg's "logo," which depicts his initials - a mirrored D and an R on the right hand side.
Iron Maiden had already performed two songs about a historical war from the perspective of those being attacked. One was "Invaders," which was set during a Viking sea battle. The other was "Trooper," set during the Crimean War in which the British fought the Russians (see the famous Alfred Lord Tennyson poem The Charge of the Light Brigade). After this, Maiden wrote and performed another song about flying aces in combat, "Tailgunner." "Run to the Hills" was also about a historical war/invasion, but was told from the perspective of both the invaders and the invaded.
The intro of this song is the original Winston Churchill's speech, from 4 June 1940, before the German attack took place. It is one of the most encouraging speeches of history, denoting Churchill's ability of gathering together all forces and strengths of a threatened nation. Iron Maiden also dedicated a ballad to the ancient leader Alexander the Great, a song about power, faith and glory. History was a favorite theme of the band.
HIM is a rock band from Finland formed in 1991 by vocalist Ville Valo, guitarist Mikko Lindström, and bassist Mikko Paananen. They have released six full length albums to date. As of 2007, they are the first and only Finnish rock band to sell Gold in the United States.
HIM is the perfect mix between sophisticated finish rock music, love metal as an own- invented sub genre, sexual appearance and mysticism. "One Last Time" is just the song that contains these elements, a song about love, hope, passion, illusions but, in the same time a song that may suggest frustration, disappointment and even hatred. The step between the two feelings - it is just so little and "One Last Time" insinuates almost perfectly this ever debated contrast.
Alanis Morissette was one of the most unlikely stars of the mid-'90s. A former child actress turned dance-pop diva, Morissette transformed herself into a confessional alternative singer/songwriter, in the vein of Liz Phair and Tori Amos. However, she added enough pop sensibility, slight hip-hop flourishes, and marketing savvy to that formula to become a superstar with her third album, Jagged Little Pill, in 1996.
"Ironic" is part of this album. The events described in the song (rain on your wedding day, a traffic jam when you're already late, 10000 spoons when all you need is a knife etc.), are not examples of irony. Irony is the use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. The one actual, ironic statement in this song is, "As the plane crashed down he thought 'well, isn't this nice'..." Sarcasm is an example of irony, and this thought, clearly, was a sarcastic one.
The London Times June 14, 2008 asked Morissette if she has worked out the meaning of irony yet. She replied: "Yes, I've now learnt the definition of irony - but the dictionary now says that it's a coincidence and bad luck, too - not that I don't deserve a little slap on the wrist for my malapropism. I always tell people that I'm the smartest stupid person you'll ever meet."
At the end of the song, Alanis says life has a funny funny way of helping us out - in spite of all of the bad stuff that we have to go through. The bad stuff helps us get to where we are going, and that is ironic.
Glen Ballard produced this and wrote it with Alanis. He has also worked with Dave Matthews and has a history of radio-friendly production. Morissette moved from Canada to Los Angeles to write and record with him. This was the first album Morissette released in America, but as a teenager, she released 2 dance albums in Canada. Her stage name at the time was simply "Alanis."
"Ironic"was nominated for Grammys in the categories Record Of The Year and Best Short Form Music Video. In 1996, "Ironic" won MTV Video Music Awards for Best Female Video, Best Editing, and Best New Artist In A Video.
"Ironic" is one of 5 hits on the album, which has sold over 16 million copies. The others are "You Oughta Know," "Hand In My Pocket," "Head Over Feet" and "You Learn."
Once upon a time in 1969, a young Dutch millionaire by the name of Stanley August Miesegaes gave his acquaintance, vocalist and keyboardist Rick Davies a "genuine opportunity" to form his own band; he could form the band of his dreams and Miesegaes would pay for it. After placing an ad in Melody Maker, Davies assembled Supertramp.
Supertramp released two long-winded progressive rock albums before Miesegaes withdrew his support. With no money or fan base to speak of, the band was forced to redesign their sound. Coming up with a more pop-oriented form of progressive rock, the band had a hit with their third album, Crime of the Century.
Throughout the decade, Supertramp had a number of best-selling albums, culminating in their 1979 masterpiece, Breakfast in America. Breakfast in America marked their first album that tipped the scale completely in the favor of pop songs; on the strength of the hit singles "Goodbye Stranger," "Logical Song," and "Take the Long Way Home" it sold over 18 million copies worldwide. After that album, Supertramp continued to develop a more R&B-flavored style; the change in direction was successful on 1982's Famous Last Words, but they soon ran out of hits. The band continued to sporadically record and tour into the '90s.
f
This is "Breakfast in America", maybe their best known single. The song was a minor hit on the singles charts in the US but is a staple of classic rock radio. The song's lyrics tell about a person who has never been to America.
"October" is the seventh and title track from U2's 1981 album, October. It is a departure from U2's classic sound, as it is a quiet, almost instrumental piece. It was included as a hidden track on The Best of 1980-1990 compilation. It is the only track from October included in the compilation.
The lyrics reflect the Christian beliefs Bono, The Edge, and Larry Mullen as they were struggling as members of a devoutly religious group. They considered breaking up the band as they felt it may conflict with their faith.
"October" made its live debut on 16 August 1981 and this performance featured extended, rambling lyrics from Bono that were never used again live. It was a setlist staple for much of the October Tour and followed "I Fall Down", another song from the October album that The Edge played on piano. However, it was omitted from the setlist at all 1982 dates where U2 supported the J. Geils Band.
Two alternate versions of "October" were released on the 1982 soundtrack to They Call it an Accident. The first is a remix, clocking in at 2:31, which is quite similar to the album version, save for an instrumental outro tacked on at the end. The second mix is an instrumental one clocking in at 1:25; This is really just a shortened version of the album mix.
"Faded glory, loss of innocence and decadence," says Don Henley, describing the feeling he sought for the cover of Hotel California. "I was trying to use California as the microcosm for the rest of the nation."
Henley, Glenn Frey and manager Irving Azoff brought the concept to John Kosh, who had previously designed LPs for Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart and James Taylor. Kosh had heard only a rough mix of the album when he and David Alexander went to shoot the sun sinking behind the elegant Beverly Hills Hotel. To clear the trees surrounding the hotel, they had to clamber aboard a sixty-foot cherry picker and dangle precariously over the rush-hour traffic on Sunset Boulevard.
"I don't remember ever being so scared in my life," says Kosh. "The thing sort of swayed alarmingly every time we moved." In the space of a few minutes, they alternated shooting roll after roll of film -- as Alexander ducked to reload his camera, Kosh used his back as a tripod and kept shooting. "We just weren't quite sure precisely what time the sun and the lights coming on in the hotel would balance and make that magic we were after," says Kosh.
The inner gatefold -- a quirky gathering of the Eagles' friends, employees and other business associates in the run-down lobby of the old Lido Hotel, in Hollywood -- vividly captures Henley's image of California as the greatest melting pot in the country. "I wanted a collection of people from all walks of life," he says. "It's people on the edge, on the fringes of society."
A swirl of rumors greeted the album cover, which cost $60,000, once it hit the stores -- including stories that there were supernatural or satanic references buried in the lyrics and in the artwork. Kosh scoffs at those reports but eagerly confirms that there is a mysterious figure on the balcony, visible only on the LP version.
"I assume he's a friendly spirit, because we got the picture and it worked!" says Kosh, laughing. "If he is of the spirit world -- which I doubt -- he's benign, so it's fine by me."
Hotel California was the Eagles' fifth album of original material and became a critical success and a major commercial hit; since its release in late 1976, it has sold over 16 million copies in the U.S. alone. The album was at #1 for eight weeks in early 1977 (non-consecutively), and included two tracks which became #1 hits as singles on the Billboard Hot 100: "New Kid in Town", on February 26, 1977, and "Hotel California" on May 7, 1977.
Hotel California is one of the top 15 best-selling albums of all time in any category.
In 2001 the TV network VH1 named Hotel California #38 on 100 Greatest Albums of all time. Hotel California was ranked 13th in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 37 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Part of the album "A Night at the Opera" from 1975, this Queen rhapsody is surely one of their representative songs and, as expected from Freddie Mercury's complex personality (the song was written by him) has numerous profound meanings.
Many of the words appear in the Qu'ran. "Bismillah" is one of these and it literally means "In the name of Allah." The word "Scaramouch" means "A stock character that appears as a boastful coward." "Beelzebub" is one of the many names given to The Devil.
Mercury's parents were deeply involved in Zoroastrianism, and these Arabic words do have a meaning in that religion. His family grew up in Zanzibar, but was forced out by government upheaval in 1964 and they moved to England. Some of the lyrics could be about leaving his homeland behind. Mercury claimed the lyrics were nothing more than "Random rhyming nonsense" when asked about it by his friend Kenny Everett, who was a London DJ.
Mercury may have written "Galileo" into the lyrics for the benefit of Brian May. Galileo is a famous astronomer known for being the first to use a refracting telescope.
The backing track came together quickly, but Queen spent days overdubbing the vocals in the studio using a 24 track tape machine. By the time they were done, about 120 vocal tracks were layered together. According to Rolling Stone magazine in their list of the top 500 songs, Brian May said that everyone in the band was bewildered when Mercury brought them a draft of this four-part suite - even before he told them, "That's where the operatic bits come in!". The analog recording technology was taxed by the song's multitracked scaramouches and fandangos.
Queen made a video for this to air on Top Of The Pops, a popular British music show, because the song was too complex to perform live. It started a trend in the UK of making videos for songs to air in place of live performances. When MTV launched in 1981, most of their videos came from British artists for this reason. In the December 12, 2004 issue of The Observer newspaper, Roger Taylor explained: "We did everything we possibly could to avoid appearing in Top Of The Pops. It was one, the most boring day known to man, and two, it's all about not actually playing - pretending to sing, pretending to play. We came up with the video concept to avoid playing on Top Of The Pops."
This was Queen's first Top 10 hit in the US. In the UK, where Queen was already established, it was #1 for 9 weeks, a record at the time. In 1991, this was re-released in the UK shortly after Freddie Mercury's death. It again went to #1, with proceeds going to the Terrence Higgins Trust, which Mercury supported.
Brian May recalled recording "Bohemian Rhapsody" in Q Magazine March 2008: "That was a great moment, but the biggest thrill for us was actually creating the music in the first place. I remember Freddie coming in with loads of bits of paper from his dad's work, like Post-it notes, and pounding on the piano. He played the piano like most people play the drums. And this song he had was full of gaps where he explained that something operatic would happen here and so on. He'd worked out the harmonies in his head."
Thanks to this track, A Night At The Opera was the most expensive album ever made at the time. They used 6 different studios to record it. Queen did not use any synthesizers on the album, which is something they were very proud of.
In an interview with Brian May and Roger Taylor on the Queen Videos Greatest Hits DVD, Brian said: "What is Bohemian Rhapsody about, well I don't think we'll ever know and if I knew I probably wouldn't want to tell you anyway, because I certainly don't tell people what my songs are about. I find that it destroys them in a way because the great thing about about a great song is that you relate it to your own personal experiences in your own life. I think that Freddie was certainly battling with problems in his personal life, which he might have decided to put into the song himself. He was certainly looking at re-creating himself. But I don't think at that point in time it was the best thing to do so he actually decided to do it later. I think it's best to leave it with a question mark in the air."
The name "Bohemian" in the song title seems to refer not to the region in the Czech republic, but to a group of artists and musicians living roughly 100 years ago, known for defying convention and living with disregard for standards. A "Rhapsody" is a piece of Classical music with distinct sections that is played as one movement. Rhapsody's often have themes.
The story told in this song is remarkably similar to that in Albert Camus' book The Stranger. Both tell of a young man who kills, and not only can he not explain why he did it, he can't even articulate any feelings about it.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, one of the most popular forms of rock and roll was heartland rock. It was characterized by a straightforward musical style, a concern with the average, blue collar American life, and a conviction that rock music has a social or communal purpose beyond just entertainment.
The origins of "Heartland Rock", like that of so many genres, are as nebulous and difficult to describe as the genre's definition itself. The genre began as a confluence of white soul, garage rock, rhythm and blues and rock and roll.
While the genre emerged recognizably into the mainstream in the late 1970s with the commercial success of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and Tom Petty, the genre's antecedents appeared throughout pop chart history, via popular artists like Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and Van Morrison, and lesser-known examples (The Flaming Ember, whose 1971 hit "Westbound Number Nine" was an example of the mixing of garage rock, rhythm and blues and rock influences that would later exemplify the genre) and earlier ones like Eddie Cochran and Del Shannon.
The genre reached its commercial, artistic and influential peak in the mid-1980s, with John Mellencamp joining Springsteen, Seger, and Petty as its most prominent artists.
In concert, heartland rock often took the form of crowd-rousing anthems, leading to comparisons with Midwestern arena rock groups such as REO Speedwagon and Head East, whose style however owed more to seventies pop rock.
Most heartland rock shared some common characteristics:
- Traditional instrumentation - Guitars (electric, acoustic, and bass), drums, and non-synthesizer keyboards (pianos and the Hammond B3 and Farfisa organs) predominate. The harmonica and mandolin also appear frequently
- Influences - Heartland rock owed much to pre-1964 rock and rhythm and blues, and to a lesser extent country and western, rockabilly, the British Invasion, and the "White Soul" of the 1960s and 1970s. Artists like Van Morrison and Bob Dylan had wide influence, as did the rhythm and blues of the Stax/Volt record label.
- Subject matter - Heartland rock was no less diverse than any other genre - but, as discussed by writers Dave Marsh and Robert Christgau among others – at its core its most constant theme was isolation in many forms: Social Isolation, Physical Isolation , Economic Isolation, Personal Isolation
This is an 1969 well known hit of Creedence - "Proud Mary"
Who's who and where
