Hard rock, rock, rock and roll,rock opera, heavy metal
Occupations
Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, actor
Instruments
Vocals, guitar
Years active
1967–present
Michael Lee Aday (born Marvin Lee Aday, September 27, 1947), known by his stage name, Meat Loaf, is an American hard rock musician and actor. He is noted for the Bat Out of Hell album trilogy consisting of Bat Out of Hell, Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Helland Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose. Bat Out of Hell has sold more than 43 million copies worldwide.After 35 years, it still sells an estimated 200,000 copies annually and stayed on the charts for over nine years, making it one of the best selling albums of all time.
Although he enjoyed success with Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell and earned a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for the song “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” on the latter album, Meat Loaf experienced some initial difficulty establishing a steady career within his native US. However, he has retained iconic status and popularity in Europe, especially the UK, where he ranks 23rd for the number of weeks overall spent on the charts. He ranked 96th on VH1’s “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock.”
Meat Loaf has also appeared in over 50 movies and television shows,[sometimes as himself or as characters resembling his stage persona. His most notable roles include Eddie in the American premiere of The Rocky Horror Show and The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Robert “Bob” Paulson in Fight Club.
Abbey Road is the 11th studio album released by the English rock band The Beatles. It is their last recorded album, although Let It Be was the last album released before the band’s dissolution in 1970. Work on Abbey Roadbegan in April 1969, and the album was released on 26 September 1969 in the United Kingdom, and 1 October 1969 in the United States.
Abbey Road is widely regarded as one of The Beatles’ most tightly constructed albums, although the band was barely operating as a functioning unit at the time. Despite the tensions within the band, Abbey Road was released to near universal acclaim and is considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time. In 2012, Abbey Road was voted 14th on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. In 2009, readers of the magazine also named Abbey Road the greatest Beatles album.
After the near-disastrous sessions for the proposed Get Back album (later released as Let It Be), Paul McCartney suggested to music producer George Martin that the group get together and make an album “the way we used to”, free of the conflict that began following the death of Brian Epstein and carrying over to the sessions for the “White Album“. Martin agreed, stipulating that he must be allowed to do the album his way. This would be the last time the band would record with Martin.
Golden slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End my favourite Beatles song:
In their interviews for The Beatles Anthology, the surviving band members stated that, although none of them ever made the distinction of calling it the “last album”, they all felt at the time this would very likely be the final Beatles product and therefore agreed to set aside their differences and “go out on a high note”.
With the Let It Be album partly finished, the sessions for Abbey Road began in April, as the single “The Ballad of John and Yoko” / “Old Brown Shoe” was completed. In fact, recording sessions of John Lennon‘s “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” had already started in February 1969 in Trident studios, with Billy Preston on the organ—only three weeks after the Get Back sessions. Photos from these sessions are included in the book Get Back, which came along with the Let It Be album but not in the Let It Be film. McCartney is clean-shaven and Lennon has started to let his beard grow.
Most of the album was recorded between 2 July and 1 August 1969. After the album was finished and released, the Get Back / Let It Be project was re-examined. More work was done on the album, including the recording of additional music (see Let It Be). Thus, though the bulk of Let It Be was recorded prior to Abbey Road, the latter was released first, and Abbey Road was the last album properly started by The Beatles before they disbanded. Lennon was on hiatus from the group and working with the Plastic Ono Band during the September 1969 lead-up to Abbey Road’s release, which was effectively the first official sign of The Beatles’ impending dissolution.
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer.
Nicknamed The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s.She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and, along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocalists.
She scored a big hit with her first release, a coupling of “Gulf Coast Blues” and “Downhearted Blues“, which its composer Alberta Hunter had already turned into a hit on the Paramount label. Smith became a headliner on the black T.O.B.A. circuit and rose to become its top attraction in the 1920s.Working a heavy theater schedule during the winter months and doing tent tours the rest of the year (eventually traveling in her own railroad car), Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of her day.Columbia nicknamed her “Queen of the Blues,” but a PR-minded press soon upgraded her title to “Empress”.
Smith was gifted with a powerfully strong voice that recorded very well from her first record, made during the time when recordings were made acoustically. With the coming of electrical recording (circa 1925), the sheer power of her voice was even more evident.
Grammy Hall of Fame
Recordings of Bessie Smith were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. This special Grammy Award was established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have “qualitative or historical significance.”
In 2002 Smith’s recording of the single, “Downhearted Blues“, was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.The board selects songs on an annual basis that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
“Downhearted Blues” was included in the list of Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001. It is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 songs that shaped rock ‘n’ roll.
Inductions
Year Inducted
Category
Notes
2008
Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame
Jazz at Lincoln Center, NYC
1989
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
1989
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
“Early influences”
1981
Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame
1980
Blues Hall of Fame
St. Louis Blues (1929):
Baby Won’t You Please Come Home (1923):
Album of the day – The Essential Bessie Smith (1997):
“Walk Like A Giant” – the first video from Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s upcoming double-CD of NEW music “Psychedelic Pill” – coming October 30th. Psychedelic Pill represents the band’s second release of 2012, it follows the June 5 release of “Americana”.
“All the songs had to work completely and honestly by themselves on acoustic guitar or on piano. If they didn’t, they weren’t worth putting on the record.”
~Ryan Adams (about ‘Gold’)
“[Gold is] me not buying my own bullshit for two seconds.”
~Ryan Adams
Gold is the second studio album by Ryan Adams, released September 25, 2001 on Lost Highway Records. The album remains Adams’ best-selling album, certifying gold in the UKand going on to sell 364,000 copies in the U.S. and 812,000 worldwide.Adams noted that “with Gold, I was trying to prove something to myself. I wanted to invent a modern classic.”
Adams intended for the album to be a double album, but his record label, Lost Highway, condensed the album into a single disc.According to Adams, the label “took the last five songs, made it a bonus disc and put it on the first hundred and fifty thousand copies. Fucking my fans over and making them pay extra for a record I wanted to be a double album. They counted that as one record.”This bonus disc is known as Side Four; the disc’s title reflects the fact that the bonus material makes up the fourth side of the double LP edition of the album.
The album includes “When the Stars Go Blue“, which has been covered by artists such as The Corrs and Bono, Tyler Hilton, Bethany Joy Galeotti, and Tim McGraw. “New York, New York” became a notable MTV and VH-1 favorite following the September 11 attacks. “The Rescue Blues” was featured in the end credits of the 2001 film Behind Enemy Lines.
Adams’ friend and former roommate Adam Duritz (lead singer of Counting Crows) lends background vocals to several tracks.
Adams received three Grammy Award nominations in 2002: Best Rock Album, Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for “New York, New York”, and Best Male Country Vocal Performance for “Lovesick Blues”.
Stephen King‘s 2006 book Lisey’s Story includes part of the lyrics to “When the Stars Go Blue”. Also, the song “The Rescue Blues” was featured in an episode of Scrubs. In 2011, “Answering Bell” was featured in the film and on the soundtrack to Bridesmaids.
RollingStone.com – David Fricke:
…… Gold lacks the concise ache of Adams’ indie solo prize from last year, Heartbreaker, but it is stronger on naked truth. In “Harder Now That It’s Over,” a messy tale of jealousy, gunplay and handcuffs co-written with Chris Stills, Adams sings with the straight, clear sorrow of a fool who beat doing hard time but sentenced himself to life alone. “I’m less than nothing now/I’m the one between the bars,” he admits over whispered accordion and a slender stream of steel-guitar tears — an age-old story told be a young singer-songwriter wise enough to let his heart speak for itself. read more: rollingstone.com
Andrew Gilstrap @ popmatters.com:
……
Overall, though, Gold feels like a record hiding behind masks. Maybe Adams has spent so many years laying his heart out on the line that he’s trying to create a little distance. In some cases, especially on the uptempo numbers, that works just fine. However, the album’s surprisingly minimalist lyrics and derivative arrangements make it stronger on vibe than actual content. Adams recently complained that he’s sick of himself and sick of being deep, and Gold may very well be his respite from that, exercising his inner music geek rather than his soul. Or maybe he’s just trying to say what he needs to say without revealing as much as in the past. Whatever the case, most of Gold lacks the universality and the heart-wrenching beauty of much of Adams’s earlier work. read more over @ popmatters.som
Track Listing:
All songs written and composed by Ryan Adams unless otherwise stated.
“New York, New York” 3:46
“Firecracker” 2:51
“Answering Bell” 3:05
“La Cienega Just Smiled” 5:03
“The Rescue Blues” 3:38
“Somehow, Someday” 4:24
“When the Stars Go Blue” 3:31
“Nobody Girl” (Adams/Ethan Johns) 9:40
“Sylvia Plath” (Adams/Richard Causon) 4:10
“Enemy Fire” (Adams/Gillian Welch) 4:09
“Gonna Make You Love Me” 2:36
“Wild Flowers” 4:59
“Harder Now That It’s Over” (Adams/Chris Stills) 4:32
“Touch, Feel and Lose” (Adams/David Rawlings) 4:15
“Tina Toledo’s Street Walkin’ Blues” (Adams/Johns) 6:10
“Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd.” (Adams/Causon) 3:25
Bonus disc: “Side Four”
“Rosalie Come and Go” 3:54
“The Fools We Are As Men” 4:01
“Sweet Black Magic” (Adams/Johns) 2:35
“The Bar Is a Beautiful Place” 5:58
“Cannonball Days”
Personnel:
Ryan Adams – Vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, banjo, piano
