British singer and guitarist Chris Rea has enjoyed a run of popularity in Europe during the late '80s and early '90s after almost a decade of previous recording.
Rea started out performing with a local group called Magdalene, taking David Coverdale's place; the band won a national talent contest in 1975 as the Beautiful Losers, but still failed to get a record contract. Rea left the band and recorded the album Whatever Happened to Benny Santini, which alluded to a discarded stage name, which went gold on the strength of the U.S. Top 20 hit "Fool (If You Think It's Over)."
Rea was not heard from again in the U.S. for some time, concentrating his efforts on his main fan base of Europe. A compilation of tracks from Rea's '80s albums, New Light Through Old Windows, was released in 1988 and sold well in the U.K. and Europe and charted in the U.S.
Rea followed it up with the critically acclaimed The Road to Hell, which many regarded as his best album. The image above represents the album's cover.
It and its follow-up, Auberge, went to the top of the U.K. album charts, but did not prove as successful in the U.S., where he has failed to chart with his subsequent releases. He released his most ambitious project in 2005, an eleven-album, 130-track box set of all new material inspired by the blues and his own paintings called Blue Guitars. The fun The Return of the Fabulous Hofner Blue Notes appeared in 2008.
This song was titled after the James Joyce novel of the same name, which chronicled a day in its protagonist's life. It also references the Greek Mythological hero Ulysses who was the hero of Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey. Frontman Alex Kapranos told Mojo magazine May 2008: "I like the idea of the gods blowing you away for 10 years. I like the idea of being out in the Aegean - of being lost but embracing it."
Kapranos referred to this song when interviewed by Rolling Stone as, "quite an odd one," adding, "It's got the immediacy of a Pop song but it's an abstract construction too. Having the immediacy of pop without the conventions of pop is something that we still aim for."
This song was previously used as part of a sound art exhibition by the Albanian artist Anri Sala that was held in London.
Kapranos told Mojo December 2008 that Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is, "a night time record, about different elements of a full-on night out, from being charged up for decadence to being on the dancefloor, to freaking out, to rocking yourself to sleep in your bedsit at the end of it. The title is about the sense of anticipation that something big's about to happen."
The cover art for the single was photographed in Brooklyn by Guy Eppel. It is part of a series of photos of the band that are of, according to Franz Ferdinand's blog, "imaginary crime scenes."
The Moody Blues recorded this with The London Festival Orchestra (Which never actually existed. It is the name given to the musicians put together to make this album.) The original idea was for the group and orchestra to record a Rock version of Dvorak's "New World Symphony," which their record company would use to demonstrate enhanced stereo sound technology.
"Days of Future Passed" is a concept album based around different times of day. For example, "Dawn Is a Feeling" and "Tuesday Afternoon." This song was last on the album because it represented nighttime.
Justin Hayward was inspired by Moody Blues keyboard player Mike Pinder's composition "Dawn Is A Feeling." Since Pinder had done 'The Morning' for the concept album, Hayward tried to do 'The Night.'
Justin Hayward, who joined the band the previous year. He got the idea for the song after someone gave him a set of white satin sheets, and wrote it in his bed-sit at Bayswater. Haywood told the Daily Express Saturday magazine May 3, 2008: "I wrote our most famous song, 'Nights in White Satin' when I was 19. It was a series of random thoughts and was quite autobiographical. It was a very emotional time as I was at the end of one big love affair and the start of another. A lot of that came out in the song."
This was a new sound for the band. When they formed, they were more of a Blues band, and had a hit in 1965 with a cover of Bessie Banks' "Go Now." With this album, they became more of a psychedelic/orchestral band and did very well.
This was originally released in 1967, but it didn't do very well in the US because the song was over 6 minutes long and a lot of people never heard of the band. In 1972, after songs like "Hey Jude " and "Layla" paved the way for long, dramatic songs and the band became well known, this was re-released in the US and became a hit.
Even though this didn't have chart success when it was first released, the album did very well. It was commercially successful in countries across the world, staying on many charts for nearly two years.
The poem at the end was recorded separately. It is called Late Lament and was written by their drummer, Graeme Edge. The poem was read by keyboard player Mike Pinder. Edge wrote another poem that appeared early on the album called Morning Glory.
This is the first song from Led Zeppelin's debut album, Led Zeppelin I from 1968. As the title clearly states, the meaning of the song is simple, expressing the downs and ups of a person's life.
The instrumentation of this song is what makes it special: Jimmy Page passed his guitar through a Leslie Speaker to create a swirling effect. The Leslie contains a rotating paddle and was designed for organs, but some musicians used it to process guitars and vocals. Eric Clapton used it on "Badge." John Bonham used a device called a "Triplet" on his bass drum for this song to get a double bass pedal sound. He used the tip of his toe to flick the bass pedal back fast, creating an effect many drummers tried to copy. Page put microphones all over the studio to capture a live sound when they recorded this.
Led Zeppelin played this at their live shows until 1970. When the band reformed for a benefit show on December 10, 2007 with Jason Bonham playing drums in place of his father, this was the first song in the set.
Bassist John Paul Jones told Rolling Stone magazine after they opened with this song at their December 10, 2007 benefit show: "That's the hardest riff I ever wrote, the hardest to play." (Songfacts)
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