Happy Birthday SHIRLEY MANSON (video/audio)

#shirleymanson #rockfile

Shirley Ann Manson (born 26 August 1966) is a Scottish singer, songwriter, musician and actress, best known internationally as the lead singer of the alternative rock band Garbage. For much of her international career Manson commuted between her home city of Edinburgh and the United States to record with Garbage; she now lives and works in Los Angeles. Manson gained media attention for her forthright style, rebellious attitude and distinctive voice.

Manson's musical career began in her teens when she was approached to perform backing vocals and keyboards for Scottish band Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie. Quickly she developed into a prominent member of the group and developed a formidable stage presence. Manson was approached by her band's record label with the idea of launching her as a solo artist, and recorded an album with her band under the Angelfish name. After seeing Manson in an Angelfish video broadcast only once on MTV's 120 Minutes, Garbage invited Manson to audition and record vocals on a couple of unfinished songs; she eventually co-wrote and co-produced an entire album with the band. The resulting self-titled debut, Garbage, was a critically acclaimed, worldwide hit, and was followed by four studio albums, including the multiple Grammy Award-nominated Version 2.0, and a greatest hits album. Garbage toured worldwide and sold 12 million records over ten years.

In 2006, Manson began to write and record solo material after Garbage was put on "hiatus" and in 2008 was cast in her first professional acting role on the second and final season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as series regular Catherine Weaver, a liquid metal T-1001 Terminator. Manson returned to the recording studio in 2010 to write and produce material for the group's fifth studio album Not Your Kind of People, who have since followed up with a sixth album Strange Little Birds.

My interview with Shirley Manson:

source: wikipedia

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Happy Birthday STEVE MARTIN (video)

#stevemartin #rockfile

Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American comedian, actor, musician, writer, and producer.

Martin came to public notice as a writer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and later became a frequent guest on The Tonight Show. In the 1970s, Martin performed his offbeat, absurdist comedy routines before packed houses on national tours. Since the 1980s, having branched away from stand-up comedy, Martin has become a successful actor, as well as an author, playwright, pianist and banjo player, eventually earning him an Emmy, Grammy and American Comedy awards, among other honors.

In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Martin at sixth place in a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics. He was awarded an honorary Oscar at the Academy’s 5th Annual Governors Awards in 2013.

While he has played banjo since an early age, and included music in his comedy routines from the beginning of his professional career, he has increasingly dedicated his career to music in the past decade and a half; acting less and spending much of his professional life playing banjo, recording and touring with various bluegrass acts, including Earl Scruggs, with whom he won a Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance in 2002. He released his first solo music album, The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo, in 2009, for which he won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album.

source: wikipedia

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Happy Birthday PAT METHENY (video)

#patmetheny #rockfile

Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny (born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer.

He is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, post-bop, Latin jazz and jazz fusion. Metheny has three gold albums and 20 Grammy Awards. He is the brother of jazz flugelhornist and journalist Mike Metheny.

Continuing the tradition of jazz guitarists borrowing tones and techniques from their rock counterparts, Metheny has made his own additions to the jazz guitar tone palette.

Six-string electric

Metheny's tone, which has evolved over the years, involves using the natural full-frequency response of his hollow-body guitar, combined with high-midrange settings on his amplifier to create a smooth, sustaining lead sound that is virtually devoid of piercing treble yet is able to cut through a dense mix. By using digital signal processing that involves digital delay/chorus and reverb, he has created a big, rich, and resonant instrumental voice.

Twelve-string electric

Metheny was an early proponent of the twelve-string guitar in jazz. During his 1975 tour with the Gary Burton "Quartet" (five people, including Metheny), he primarily played electric 12-string guitar against the 6-string work of resident guitarist Mick Goodrick.

Prior to Metheny, Pat Martino had used the electric twelve-string guitar on a studio album, Desperado, and John McLaughlin had used a double-neck electric guitar with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Ralph Towner was perhaps the first to use acoustic 12-string guitar extensively in Jazz ("The Moors", from Weather Report's I Sing the Body Electric, Columbia, 1972), and Larry Coryell and Philip Catherine made extensive use of acoustic twelve string in alternate tunings at the 1975 Montreux Jazz Festival, later releasing some of the material on their 1976 Twin House album. Metheny used 12-string guitar on his debut album, Bright Size Life (1977), including alternate tuning on "Sirabhorn", and on later albums ("San Lorenzo, from Pat Metheny Group and Travels).

Guitar synthesizer

Metheny was also one of the first jazz guitarists to make heavy use of the Roland GR-300 Guitar Synthesizer. While John Abercrombie and Bill Frisell also used Roland guitar synthesizers heavily in the 1980s, Metheny is the only one of the three who still uses the instrument regularly. Unlike many guitar synthesizer users, Metheny limits himself to a very small number of sounds. In interviews, he has argued that each of the timbres achievable through guitar synthesis should be treated as a separate instrument, and that he has tried to master each of these "instruments" instead of using the synthesizer for incidental color. One of the "patches" that he has often used is on Roland's JV-80 "Vintage Synth" expansion card, entitled titled "Pat's GR-300". Metheny was also heavily into the Synclavier Digital Audio Workstation made by New England Digital and brought it out on tour starting in the early 1980s.

42-string Pikasso guitar

Metheny plays a custom-made Pikasso I created by Canadian luthier Linda Manzer on "Into the Dream" and on the albums Quartet, Imaginary Day, Jim Hall & Pat Metheny, Trio→Live, and the Speaking of Now Live and Imaginary Day DVDs. Metheny has also used the guitar in his guest appearances on other artists' albums.

Manzer has also made many acoustic guitars for Metheny, including a mini guitar, an acoustic sitar guitar, and the baritone guitar, which Metheny used for the recording of One Quiet Night. He also used the Pikasso on Metheny Mehldau Quartet, his second collaboration with pianist Mehldau and his trio sidemen Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard; the Pikasso is featured on Metheny's composition "The Sound of Water".

source: Wikipedia

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