Marco Francesco Andrea Pirroni (born 27 April 1959, London, England) is an English guitarist, songwriter and record producer. He has worked with Adam Ant, Sinéad O'Connor, Siouxsie and the Banshees and many others from the late 1970s to the present day.
Born in Archway, he lived with his Italian parents in Camden Town until 15 years old, when they moved to Harrow. He attended art school briefly but truanted to hang out at Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's famous boutique SEX in the King's Road.
A lynchpin of the UK punk scene, Pirroni's first appearance on stage was with Siouxsie and the Banshees. It was their début gig and at 1976's 100 Club Punk Festival, with Pirroni on guitar and Sid Vicious on drums.
Pirroni then formed The Models (who recorded the single, "Freeze", in 1977) and then Rema-Rema, whose "Wheel in the Roses" EP appeared on the 4AD record label the following year. In those days he formed part of Cowboys International but it was for a short time. He then teamed up with then cult punk outfit – Adam and the Ants – in 1980 and within a year the band was on the brink of worldwide acclaim.
An integral part of the band, Pirroni acted as lead guitarist and co-songwriter, penning two UK number one singles and a further four Top Ten hits, with Ant. The two albums he co-wrote for Adam and the Ants – Kings of the Wild Frontier and Prince Charming – both made the Top 10 in the UK Albums Chart ("Kings" #1; "Prince Charming" #2) .
When Adam and the Ants disbanded in 1982, Pirroni was retained as Adam Ant's co-writer and they produced another number one single ("Goody Two Shoes") and the album (Friend or Foe), followed by nine more Top 20 hits. Adam and Pirroni won two shared Ivor Novello Awards for "Stand and Deliver".
Adam Ant, working with Pirroni, left an indelible commercial and creative stamp across the 1980s and pop music in general. Adam Ant sold more than eighteen million records worldwide, scoring number ones in Australia, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Israel, Japan as well as in the UK. Their partnership's success was not just confined to the 1980s, with Ant's solo hits going Top 10 in the US and Top 20 in the UK in 1990, plus a further Top 40 hits in the UK and the US in 1995.
In early 1987, Marco Pirroni featured on Sinéad O'Connor's début album The Lion and the Cobra. Then in 1990 he worked with her again, on her second album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. In 1994 he worked with her to record her fourth album, Universal Mother. He co-wrote and played guitar on a number of tracks on her latest album, How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?, released in March 2012.
Roger Andrew Taylor (born 26 April 1960) is an English musician, best known as the drummer of the rock band Duran Duran from their inception until 1985, and again from 2001 onwards, the band selling in excess of 70 million records in the process.
Roger Andrew Taylor was born into a modest family and was brought up in the Shard End area of Birmingham up until the age of 11, and a then a small suburban house in Castle Bromwich (15 Hawthorne Rd). His father worked in the car industry. He began drumming at around the age of twelve, teaching himself by playing along with his favourite records. His first ambition was to be a goalkeeper for English football club Aston Villa, and as a child he was taken to every home match by his father. He would eventually "play" at Villa Park but as Duran Duran's drummer for their 1983 charity concert there. Taylor has cited drummers Paul Thompson of Roxy Music, Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones and Tony Thompson of Chic as his key musical influences growing up.
Before joining Duran Duran, he performed with several school (Park Hall School in Castle Bromwich, Warwickshire) and local club bands. After being inspired by the punk bands playing at Barbarellas club in Birmingham, he formed the new wave/punk outfit Scent Organs, who became regional finalists in the 'Melody Maker' young band of the year in 1978. After the band split in 1979, he joined Duran Duran and became one of the 'fab five' as they were called in the US. Roger became known as 'the quiet one'.
Taylor became an international star with the other members of Duran Duran as they rose to fame in the early 1980s. Taylor played drums on the band's first three studio albums (Duran Duran, Rio, and Seven and the Ragged Tiger) and the live album Arena. In 1985, the band recorded the theme to the James Bond film A View To A Kill, which became their second US No. 1 hit and the only Bond theme in history to do so. However, the intense schedule of recording and touring, coupled with the pressures of fame, left Taylor unhappy with being in the band. His final performance with the original line-up of Duran Duran was in July 1985 at the Live Aid benefit concert in Philadelphia, which reached a global audience of 2 billion people. Taylor and the band had each picked up two Grammy awards during this period.
Prior to leaving the band, he worked with Duran Duran bandmates Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes on the album So Red The Rose for their side project Arcadia in 1985. The album featured Sting, David Gilmour, Herbie Hancock and Grace Jones. Taylor also contributed percussion to the other Duran Duran splinter group Power Station's version of Some Like It Hot from their self-titled album. He then purchased a remote farm estate in the hills of Gloucestershire to live a quiet life away from the music world. The Sun newspaper tracked him down and devoted a whole page to his departure dubbing him 'the hermit of pop'. Initially his hiatus was expected to be for a year, but in 1986 the remaining members of the band issued a statement saying that he was leaving Duran Duran.
In 1994, while visiting a friend in Paris, he temporarily joined Duran Duran to play drums on three tracks for the covers album Thank You (although only two ended up on the album), later appearing in the video for "Perfect Day" and on the band's Top of the Pops performance of the song.
In 1997, Taylor regained his appetite for the music industry. He briefly formed the electro/dance band Freebass, which produced a single, "Love Is Like Oxygen", (a cover of a song by The Sweet) on underground dance label Cleveland City Records. The record reached the top ten of the Music Week UK Dance Chart. Taylor also produced electro house tracks with Freebass member Jake Roberts under the name Funkface. Lost This Feeling and Shine were released on Taylor's own label Rt Music.
In 2001, Taylor rejoined Duran Duran, as all five of the original members reunited to record new material and perform as a quintet again. This culminated in five sold-out nights at Wembley Arena, playing Madison Square Garden again, and signing with Epic Records in New York. The band delivered a worldwide hit single '(Reach Up For The) Sunrise' and a multi-million-selling album Astronaut.
In 2003, he began a long-running DJ residency at London's Met Bar playing a mix of house and hip-hop and he has gone on to become a renowned DJ over recent years, performing sets at Cielo New York and Pacha Ibiza.
The All You Need Is Now album was released on 21 December 2010 to worldwide critical acclaim. It immediately reached the number 1 spot on the iTunes pop chart in 15 different countries. Duran Duran commenced a supporting tour running well into 2012 reaching far and wide across the world. The band also played to an audience of 70,000 people in Hyde Park to coincide with the opening of the 2012 London Olympic Games. Taylor is currently working with his bandmates on the 14th Duran Duran album with producers Mark Ronson, Ben Hudson & Nile Rodgers. Described by John Taylor as an 'epic'. Due for release in spring 2015
Giovanni Giorgio Moroder (born 26 April 1940 in Urtijëi) is an Italian record producer, songwriter, performer and DJ. Moroder is frequently credited with pioneering synth disco and electronic dance music.
When in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records. He produced huge hits for Donna Summer during the late-1970s disco era, including "Bad Girls", "Last Dance", "Love to Love You Baby", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", "Dim All the Lights", "MacArthur Park", "Hot Stuff", "On the Radio", and "I Feel Love", and is the founder of the former Musicland Studios in Munich, a recording studio used by many renowned artists including Electric Light Orchestra, Led Zeppelin, Queen and Elton John.
In addition to producing several hits with Donna Summer, Moroder produced a number of electronic disco hits for The Three Degrees, two albums for Sparks, a handful of songs on Bonnie Tyler's album Bitterblue as well as her 1985 single "Here She Comes". Moroder also created a score of songs for performers including David Bowie, Kylie Minogue, Irene Cara, Madleen Kane, Melissa Manchester, Blondie, Japan, and France Joli.
Robert James Smith (born 21 April 1959) is an English musician. He is the lead singer, guitar player and principal songwriter of the rock band The Cure, and its only constant member since its formation in 1976. NY Rock describes him as "pop culture's unkempt poster child of doom and gloom," and asserts that some of his songs are a "somber introspection over lush, brooding guitars." Smith's guitar-playing and use of flanging, chorusing and phasing effects put him among the forefront of the goth and New Wave genres. He also played guitar in the band Siouxsie and the Banshees. Smith is a multi-instrumentalist, known for his unique stage look, such as teased hair and smudged makeup, and his distinctive voice.
Smith began sporting his trademark and cult style of smeared red lipstick, eye-liner, pale complexion, artfully dishevelled black hair, black clothes and trainers in the early 1980s, around the same time as the Goth subculture took off. However, Smith denies any credit for this trend and claims it is a coincidence that the styles are similar, stating that he wore make-up since he was young and further saying: "It's so pitiful when 'Goth' is still tagged onto the name The Cure."
His songwriting for the band's early albums centered around themes of depression, loneliness, and isolation. The sombre mood of these early albums, along with Smith's on-stage persona, cemented the band's "gothic" image.
The band's aesthetic went from gloomy to psychedelic beginning with the album The Top. In 1986, Smith altered his image by appearing on-stage and in press photos sporting short spiky hair and polo shirts (this can be seen in The Cure in Orange, a concert in the south of France released on video in 1987). This new haircut made the headlines on MTV news.
Although Smith's public persona could be deemed to portray a depressed image, he has claimed that his songs do not convey how he feels all, or even most of the time:
"At the time we wrote Disintegration ... it's just about what I was doing really, how I felt. But I'm not like that all the time. That's the difficulty of writing songs that are a bit depressing. People think you're like that all the time, but I don't think that. I just usually write when I'm depressed."
Smith's songwriting has developed a range of styles and themes throughout his career. Some songs incorporate literary paraphrase, such as Camus' novel L'Etranger in "Killing an Arab" (1978)), and "How Beautiful You Are" (1987), based on a poem by Baudelaire. Others involve punk metafiction ("So What"), surrealism ("Accuracy"), straightforward rock/pop ("Boys Don't Cry", "I'm Cold"), and poetic mood pieces ("Another Day" and "Fire in Cairo"). In subsequent decades, Smith explored more poetic moods, which accorded with New Order and other bands of that genre.
Smith's songwriting has sometimes been pop-oriented, for example "Love Cats" and "Catch". However, even Smith's seemingly upbeat tunes invariably contain dark themes; for example, "In Between Days" contrasts a bouncy pop-rock beat with lyrics about sadness and heartbreak.
Although Smith is the main songwriter with The Cure, songwriting credits are usually shared with the band's contemporary line-up.
In an interview in 2000, Smith said that "there is one particular kind of music, an atmospheric type of music, that I enjoy making with The Cure. I enjoy it a lot more than any other kind of sound". When Smith was asked about the 'sound' of his songwriting, Smith said that he did not "think there is such a thing as a typical Cure sound. I think there are various Cure sounds from different periods and different line-ups."
Peter Robert Garrett AM (born 16 April 1953) is an Australian musician, environmentalist, activist and former politician.
Garrett was lead singer of the rock band Midnight Oil from 1973 until its disbanding in 2002. He served as President of the Australian Conservation Foundation for ten years and, in 2003, was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for his contribution to the environment and music industry.
He was the Australian Labor Party member of the House of Representatives for the seat of Kingsford Smith, New South Wales, from October 2004 to September 2013. After the Labor Party won in the November 2007 election, Garrett was appointed Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. On 8 March 2010, his portfolio title was changed to Environment Protection, Heritage and the Arts. He continued in this role in Julia Gillard's first Ministry. He was re-elected at the 2010 election and was appointed Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth by Prime Minister Julia Gillard. He was sworn into this portfolio on 14 September 2010 as a member of the Second Gillard Ministry, and following a leadership spill in the Australian Labor Party, Garrett resigned his position as Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth and moved to the backbench. He later announced that he would not be contesting his seat at the next federal election.
Garrett became a Member of the Order of Australia in 2003 "For service to the community as a prominent advocate for environmental conservation and protection, and to the music industry."
In 2009, the French Government appointed Garrett an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters. In 2010, the World Wide Fund for Nature presented him with their Leaders for a Living Planet award.
Gunnar Christian Älvestam (Born April 14, 1976 in Sweden) is a vocalist, lyricist, guitarist, bassist and drummer for several bands from Sweden. He is, however, best known as the former vocalist for the Swedish metal band Scar Symmetry. He currently performs with several bands, including Solution .45 and Miseration, and has made several guest appearances for other music bands. He is most known in the metal community for possessing both an extreme clean singing range and an ability to growl.
In late 2007 Jani Stefanovic formed Solution .45, with Christian Älvestam (who at this time was still with Scar Symmetry) joining as one of its last members. Jani stresses that despite Christian's presence in the band, it will not be a Scar Symmetry clone and that songs had been ready for some time before his arrival.
Miseration is a Swedish death metal band formed in 2006, and signed to the label Lifeforce. The band is one out of a collection of collaborations with both Jani Stefanovic and Christian Älvestam, who provides vocals.
In addition to his current bands, Christian has also released an EP called Self 2.0, written and produced completely by him. Unlike his traditional work, the album consists entirely of clean vocals. In more detail, Christian explains
"It's not exactly a secret that I have a weak spot for more pop-oriented stuff - especially in the vein of the sound of the '80s," he says. "In fact, I have always been listening to softer music, alongside the heavier stuff, which is probably why my own music so often, unintentionally, tend to end up being a mixture of the two. I simply can't help myself when it comes to merging the aforesaid styles together, it seems. I'd like to call it unavoidable influence, as a direct result of having been indoctrinated with both, from childhood upwards. With that said, fighting against it is not an easy thing, whether you want to or not. At the same time, some would call it a mixed blessing, I guess. Anyhow, I have wanted to do something a bit different from what I usually do for a long time now and that is to make an all-stripped-down and laid-back album, where I use my clean vocals only. You who have followed me since the early days know I've made brief digressions, musically, of that sort before, like the 'Final State' trilogy (UNMOORED) and 'Lethean Tears' (SOLUTION .45), to name a few, so it's not like 'Self 2.0' is me heading out into completely unexplored territory. I've been there before, grubbing in its periphery. Then again, I guess you could see 'Self 2.0' as me going all the way for the first time, if you like!
John Farmer Bell (born April 14, 1962) is the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the American rock band Widespread Panic, where he is known for his raspy southern drawl that hits a variety of octaves. He is frequently called JB by fans. For more than 25 years, the voice has fueled 150 concerts a year all over the country and created a road warrior mentality for the band and its fans.
Bell grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated from University School in 1980. He attended the University of Georgia and was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity where he, Michael Houser, and Dave Schools met while Houser was playing at an open mic night. "Panic," as Houser was nicknamed, began playing with JB and Schools at local Athens, GA clubs, playing mostly cover songs.
John Bell is an active philanthropist, most notably as an advocate for SMA (spinal muscular atrophy). Bell has helped raise over $2 million for SMA research, mostly through his involvement with "Hannah's Buddies". The foundation is named for Bell's goddaughter and niece, who lives with SMA. Bell is involved in an annual fundraiser featuring a golf tournament and evening concert by "JB and Friends," featuring John Bell solo, as well as performing with guests. Guest performers at the benefit have included Col. Bruce Hampton, Vic Chesnutt, John Keane, and Bloodkin, as well as Grammy Award winner Robert Randolph and the Family Band and the North Mississippi Allstars, and Nickel and the Polar Bears. He has also performed at various Habitat for Humanity benefit concerts put on by Warren Haynes.
Reckoning is the second studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released in 1984 by I.R.S. Records. Produced by Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, the album was recorded at Reflection Sound Studio in Charlotte, North Carolina over 16 days in December 1983 and January 1984. Dixon and Easter intended to capture the sound of R.E.M.'s live performances, and used binaural recording on several tracks. Singer Michael Stipe dealt with darker subject matter in his lyrics, and water imagery is a recurring theme on the record. Released to critical acclaim, Reckoning reached number 27 in the United States—where it was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1991—and peaked at number 91 in the United Kingdom.
After its debut album Murmur (1983) received critical acclaim, R.E.M. quickly began work on its second album. The group wrote new material prodigiously; guitarist Peter Buck recalled, "We were going through this streak where we were writing two good songs a week [...] We just wanted to do it; whenever we had a new batch of songs, it was time to record". Due to the number of new songs the group had, Buck unsuccessfully tried to convince everyone to make the next album a double record. In November 1983, the band recorded 22 songs during a session with Neil Young producer Elliot Mazer in San Francisco. While Mazer was briefly considered as a candidate to produce the band's next album, R.E.M. ultimately decided to team up again with Murmur producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon.
R.E.M. started recording Reckoning at Reflection Sound in Charlotte, North Carolina, on December 8, 1983. The group recorded over two eight-day stretches around Christmas 1983, separated by two weeks of canceled studio time that allowed the band to play a show in Greensboro, North Carolina, go out to see a movie, and shoot a video in the studio. While the studio diary listed 16 days for recording, the album sleeve later claimed the album was recorded in 14 days, while in interviews Buck at times commented that the album was recorded in 11 days. The producers both disputed that the sessions were that short; Dixon insisted that they were at the studio for at least 25 days (during which he worked eighteen-hour days), while Easter said, "When I read 'eleven days' I thought, what the fuck! It was twenty days, which was still short, but it's not eleven."
During recording there was pressure from I.R.S. Records to try to make the album more commercial. The label sent messages to Dixon and Easter, which the producers told the band that they would ignore. While the producers respected I.R.S. president Jay Boberg, they expressed dismay at the comments he made when he visited during the last day of sessions. Dixon called Boberg "record company clueless", while Easter said, "I got along with Jay Boberg OK [...] but now and again he would express an opinion that would make me think, 'holy shit', because it would strike me as really teenage." Buck said he was grateful that Dixon and Easter acted as a buffer between the band and its label. He said that "it got to the point where as much as I respected the guys at I.R.S., we basically tried to record the records so they wouldn't know we were recording them!", and explained that part of the reason why R.E.M. recorded the album so quickly was that the group wanted to finish before representatives from I.R.S. showed up to listen to it.
The recording sessions were difficult for singer Michael Stipe, who, among the band, was particularly worn out by the group's 1983 tour schedule. Getting usable vocal tracks from Stipe was difficult; Dixon recalled that he and Stipe would show up around noon each day before the rest of the band, but that "he was kind of shut down, and it was difficult to get him to open up". While recording the song "7 Chinese Brothers", Stipe sang so quietly that Dixon could not hear him on the tape. Frustrated, the producer climbed a ladder to a spot above the recording booth Stipe was in and found a gospel record titled The Joy of Knowing Jesus by the Revelaires, which he then handed to the singer in an attempt to inspire him. Stipe began reciting the liner notes from the album audibly, which enabled Dixon to move on to recording the vocal track to "7 Chinese Brothers" properly (the initial recitation take was later released in 1987 as "Voice of Harold" on the compilation Dead Letter Office).
With Reckoning, Dixon, Easter and the band wanted to capture the energy of R.E.M.'s live sound. Dixon had not seen the band perform live before working on Murmur; after he had done so, he had a greater sense of the band's strengths and weaknesses. Dixon wanted the guitars to sound more like they did in concert, but at first met resistance from both the band and the label. However, by the time R.E.M. started to record, Dixon said the group "wanted to rock out a bit more".
Dixon was enamored of the technique of binaural recording, and used it extensively on the album. Easter recalled that Dixon "made this sort of fake binaural head out of a cardboard box and stuck two microphones in it" to record the group. In Easter's opinion, the method made drummer Bill Berry's parts "fresher sounding". Binaural recording also allowed bassist Mike Mills' backing vocals to be loud without covering up Stipe's lead vocals. Dixon explained, "Mike Mills was often singing 12 to 15 feet away from the microphones that were recording his part, but because it was in a studio binaural field, we would tend to hear him as behind [Stipe]."
Biographer David Buckley wrote, "While the music moved away from Murmur's slightly airless feel, the subject matter was a little darker." Buck noted in a 1988 interview that water imagery was abundant in the album. Buckley interpreted that imagery as representing the change presented by the band's increasing success, as well as the changing music scene of group's Athens, Georgia hometown. The song "Camera" addressed the death of a friend from Athens who died in a car crash. Easter said, "[Stipe's] vocal was so exposed on that track, and because of that, it could really show any technical imperfections with regard to pitch." The producer tried to get Stipe to sing a better take, but the singer was more intent on getting the feeling of the song across, and at one point refused to record further. While many of the album's songs were new compositions, some had been in R.E.M.'s show setlists for years. In particular, "Pretty Persuasion" and "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" had been played live as far back as October 1980. The band was reluctant to record "Pretty Persuasion" as the members considered it too old, but Dixon and Easter convinced the group to do so. R.E.M. originally intended to release "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" as a non-album single between Reckoning and its next release. When the band recorded it for the album, the group rearranged the song from its live incarnation and gave it country music feel in tribute to its lawyer Bertis Downs, IV, who was a country fan.
Georg "Goggi" Hólm (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈcɛːɔrk ˈhoulm]; born 6 April 1976) is the bassist of the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. He is the most prominent member of Sigur Rós in the English press, as he does significantly more press than the other members due to his being the most fluent English-speaker in the band; part of Georg's fluency in English comes from briefly living in Brighton, England.
He and Jónsi are the remaining founding members of Sigur Rós. He sometimes plays using a cello bow. As do other members of Sigur Rós, he plays multiple instruments during a typical live show. This often includes, in addition to electric and acoustic bass guitars, keyboards, glockenspiel, and drums.
Stanard "Stan" Ridgway (born April 5, 1954) is an American multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter and film and television composer known for his distinctive voice, dramatic lyrical narratives, and eclectic solo albums. He was the original lead singer of the band Wall of Voodoo.
The band was named Wall of Voodoo by Ridgway before their first gig, in reference to a comment made by a friend of Ridgway's while recording and overdubbing a Kalamazoo Rhythm Ace drum machine. While listening to some of the music that created in the studio, Ridgway jokingly compared the multiple-drum-machine- and Farfisa-organ-laden recordings to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, whereupon the friend commented it sounded more like a "wall of voodoo" and the name stuck.
Ridgway's WoV music could fairly be described as a cross between early synthesizer pop and Ennio Morricone's soundtracks for Italian director Sergio Leone's epic western films of the 1960s. Adding to the music's distinctiveness was percussive and textural experimentation, i.e. mixing drum machines with unconventional instruments such as pots, pans and various kitchen utensils, raw electronics with interlocking melodic figures as well as twangy spaghetti-western guitar. On top of the mix was Ridgway's unusual vocal style and highly stylized, cinematic narratives heavily influenced by science fiction and film noir, sung from the perspective of ordinary folks and characters wrestling with ironies inside the American Dream.
Ridgway embarked on a solo career in 1983, shortly after Wall of Voodoo's appearance and break up at the US Festival that same year. After collaborating on the song, "Don't Box Me In" with Stewart Copeland from The Police for the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish starring Mickey Rourke, Matt Dillon and Dennis Hopper, he released his first proper solo album, The Big Heat (1986), which included the top 5 European (and UK) hit "Camouflage". This was followed by numerous other solo recordings: Mosquitos (1989), Partyball (1991), Black Diamond (1995), and Anatomy (1999), The Way I Feel Today (1998), a collection of big band standards, and Holiday in Dirt (2002), a compilation of outtakes and previously unreleased songs. Ridgway's album Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads and Fugitive Songs (2005), features the narrative song, "Talkin' Wall Of Voodoo Blues Pt. 1", a history of his former band in song.
Since the early days of Wall of Voodoo, Ridgway has been interested in making music for the cinema. Ridgway's album Holiday in Dirt was a quasi-cinematic project, with the release of the album accompanied by a showing of 14 short films by various independent filmmakers, each film a visual interpretation of one of the songs on the album. A compilation DVD of the films was released in February 2005.
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