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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Happy Birthday PAT MACDONALD (video)

#patmacdonald #timbuk3 #rockfile

Pat MacDonald (born August 6, 1952, Green Bay, Wisconsin) is an American musician and songwriter. He is most famous as singer, guitarist, and main songwriter for Timbuk3, nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1987. He formed the duo with his wife, Barbara K. MacDonald, in Madison, Wisconsin in 1984 before moving to Austin, Texas that same year. Their breakup in 1995 spurred a solo career that has steadily produced releases in both Europe and the US. "MacDonald is long known for his playful, edgy songs," says Guitar Player Magazine (May 2007, p. 38).

Songwriting credits include collaborations with Cher, Keith Urban, Imogen Heap, Stewart Copeland of The Police, Peter Frampton, and famed Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. Songs he's written or co-written have been recorded by Aerosmith, Oysterhead, Cher, Jools Holland, Billy Ray Cyrus, Night Ranger, Zucchero and others, and have appeared in movies from the controversial horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) with Dennis Hopper, to Tommy Boy (1995) starring Chris Farley.

MacDonald and his friend and collaborator, Eric McFadden, record and perform as the gothic-country duo The Legendary Sons of Crack Daniels. He is currently performing and touring as Purgatory Hill with Milwaukee singer/songwriter melaniejane.

In 2005, he co-founded Steel Bridge Songfest, an annual not-for-profit benefit concert and songwriting festival held in his current hometown of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

source: wikipedia

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Happy Birthday DANIEL ASH (video)

#danielash #rockfile

Daniel Gaston Ash (born 31 July 1957, in Northampton, England) is an English musician, songwriter and singer. He came to prominence in the late 1970s as the guitarist for the iconic goth rock band Bauhaus, which spawned two related bands led by Ash: Tones on Tail and Love and Rockets. He has also recorded several solo albums.

source: wikipedia

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Happy Birthday BILL BERRY (video)

#billberry #rockfile

William Thomas "Bill" Berry (born July 31, 1958) is a retired American musician and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the drummer for the alternative rock band R.E.M. In addition to his drumming duties, Berry played many other instruments including guitar, bass guitar, and piano, both for songwriting and on R.E.M. records. After 17 years with the band, Berry left the music industry to become a farmer, and has since maintained a low profile, making sporadic reunions with R.E.M. and appearing on other artists' records.

R.E.M. was formed in 1980. In addition to his duties as a drummer, Berry contributed occasional guitar, bass, mandolin, vocals, keyboards and piano on studio tracks. In concert, he sometimes performed on bass, and supplied regular backing vocals. Berry also made notable songwriting contributions, particularly for "Everybody Hurts" and "Man on the Moon", both from Automatic for the People. Other Berry songs included "Perfect Circle", "Driver 8", "Cant Get There from Here" and "I Took Your Name". The song "Leave" was also written by Berry for R.E.M.'s 1996 album New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which was his last album with the band.

Berry was also responsible for toning down the lyrics of the song "Welcome to the Occupation." Stipe's original lyric was "Hang your freedom fighters" which, given the Reagan administration's active support for the contra "freedom fighters" in Nicaragua, sounded very violent and militant, although Stipe himself countered that the line could be taken multiple ways ("hang" as in either "lynch" or "frame on a wall"). Berry's objection ultimately led the line to be changed to "hang your freedom higher."

During 1984 Berry also was drummer for the impromptu Hindu Love Gods, which featured his R.E.M. bandmates Mike Mills, Peter Buck, and rocker Warren Zevon, and also Bryan Cook.

In 1995, at the Patinoire Auditorium in Lausanne, Switzerland, Berry collapsed on stage during an R.E.M. show from a ruptured brain aneurysm. He recovered and rejoined the band, but left in October 1997, saying that he no longer had the drive or enjoyment level to be in the band, and that he wanted a career change, he explained on VH-1's Behind The Music:

I didn't wake up one day and decide, 'I just can't stand these guys anymore' or anything. I feel like I'm ready for a life change. I'm still young enough that I can do something else. I've been pounding the tubs since I was nine years old ... I'm ready to do something else.

Acquiescing to Berry's wishes, R.E.M. announced that it would continue as a three-piece outfit. They continued to tour with several accompanying musicians, including long-time sidemen Ken Stringfellow and Scott McCaughey and employed Joey Waronker and Bill Rieflin as live drummers.

Berry left the music business and became a farmer, working on his hay farm in Farmington, Georgia, near Athens.

His musical activities after leaving R.E.M. have been sporadic, but did include recording for the Tourette Syndrome Charity Album Welcome Companions in 2000. He is also an avid golfer.

Prior to the group's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Berry granted his first interview in several years, discussing life after retirement. "It's a great chance to get back together and perform with R.E.M., which I always loved doing," he said. "This opportunity also does not require me to climb onto [a] bus or plane to do it again and again for several consecutive months."

source: wikipedia

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Happy Birthday KATE BUSH (video)

#katebush #rockfile

Catherine "Kate" Bush, CBE (born 30 July 1958) is an English singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer known for her eclectic musical style and her idiosyncratic soprano vocal performances.

In 1978, at the age of 19, Bush topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks with her debut single, "Wuthering Heights", becoming the first woman to have a UK number one with a self-written song. She has since released ten albums, three of which topped the UK Albums Chart. She has had 25 UK Top 40 hit singles, including the Top 10 hits "Wuthering Heights", "The Man with the Child in His Eyes", "Babooshka", "Running Up That Hill" (as well as its 2012 remix), "Don't Give Up" (a duet with Peter Gabriel) and "King of the Mountain".

Bush has been nominated 13 times for British Phonographic Industry accolades, and in 1987 she won a Brit Award for Best British Female Artist. During the course of her career, she has also been nominated for three Grammy Awards. In 2002, she was recognised with an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. She is the first British solo female artist to top the UK album charts and the first female artist ever to enter the album chart at Number 1. She is also the first (and to date only) female artist to have Top 5 albums in the UK charts in five successive decades. In August 2014, she became the first female performer to have eight albums in the Official UK Top 40 Albums Chart simultaneously, putting her at number three for simultaneous UK Top 40 albums (behind Elvis Presley with 12 albums in 1977, and The Beatles in 2009 with 11 albums); altogether she had 11 albums in the top 50.

Bush was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to music. She received the award from Queen Elizabeth II on 10 April 2013 at Windsor Castle.

source: wikipedia

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