Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime

 #Talking Heads #David Byrne #new wave #alternative rock #post-punk #art rock #avant-funk #experimental #funk rock #worldbeat #1980s #music video

As the 80s began, the future of Talking Heads was uncertain; that they would soon record their defining song, 1981’s Once In A Lifetime, would have seemed impossible to a group then on the verge of burning out. In Remain In Love, Chris Frantz’s 2020 memoir, the drummer remembers talking to a journalist on 19 December 1979, following the final gig of their tour in support of their third album, that year’s remarkable Fear Of Music. “He opened with the question, ‘What are you going to do now that David [Byrne, singer] is leaving the band?’ David had already spoken to him privately and told him this. Tina [Weymouth, bassist] and Jerry [Harrison, guitars and keyboards] and I explained to the journalist that we knew nothing about it and left it at that. Everyone was exhausted.” The group took some time to take stock and explore individual solo projects and interests. David Byrne used his downtime to work with Brian Eno (who’d produced the previous two Talking Heads records) on the groundbreaking album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, eventually released in February 1981. Meanwhile, Weymouth and Frantz took a long holiday in the Caribbean, where they pondered the group’s future and soaked up musical influences that would set them in good stead. Feeling Byrne had become too controlling, they looked to redress the balance; rather than rely on their frontman bringing material to the group, Weymouth and Franz suggested they emulate the music that was exciting them – early hip-hop, Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat grooves, West African highlife pop – and embark upon jam sessions, with the intention of “sampling” themselves and working the results up into new material. Frantz and Weymouth invited Harrison to their New York loft for informal jams, recorded on Frantz’s boombox. When it became apparent they had the beginnings of some promising tracks, they reached out to Byrne and Eno, both of whom had previously told Frantz they were not interested in making another Talking Heads record. Once the reluctant pair had been separately coaxed over and joined in, things began to get interesting. “By nighttime we took a break to listen back. You could hear all kinds of interesting parts germinating, mutating and evolving,” Frantz recalled. “There was no denying that Talking Heads still had a great chemistry going on and the beats were good. You could dance to it!” Excited by the loft jams, recording sessions were booked at Compass Point, the studio where Talking Heads recorded their second album, 1978’s More Songs About Buildings And Food, in Nassau, The Bahamas. One of those jams, a hypnotic and relentless instrumental called Right Start, might very well have been abandoned. Instead, it was worked up to become one of the best Talking Heads songs of all, the transcendent Once In A Lifetime. Talking to NPR for a 2000 edition of All Things Considered, Brian Eno revealed that he “immediately misheard it and I still mishear it to this day, I always think the one of the bar is in a different place from them. This might seem like a rather irrelevant technical point but actually it means that the song has a funny balance within it, it has two centers of gravity – their one and my one.” This unusual quality, along with the insistent bass line – played by Weymouth after she thought she heard Frantz shouting the riff at her during a session – made Byrne think it had potential for lyrics. The song was saved from the discard pile. And what lyrics they were. Byrne had become increasingly interested in the end-of-days rhetoric of evangelists and looked to channel that energy, as he told NPR: “So much of it was taken from the style of radio evangelists. So I would improvise lines as if I was giving a sermon in that kind of metre. In that kind of hyperventilating style. And then go back and distill that.” While many have interpreted the lyric as an extended jab at the materialistic 80s, Byrne himself has suggested the song implores the listener to take stock of their lives. “We’re largely unconscious. You know, we operate half-awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else. We haven’t really stopped to ask ourselves, ‘How did I get here?’”  From: https://www.thisisdig.com/feature/once-in-a-lifetime-talking-heads-song-story/

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - I Don't Live Today

 #The Jimi Hendrix Experience #hard rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #R&B #heavy metal #British psychedelia #acid rock #1960s #power trio #Mitch Mitchell #Noel Redding

Jimi Hendrix’s debut album, Are You Experienced, was pieced together in London in between dazzling live gigs that left the competition reeling. But the end results are still a revelation. Revered music writer Dave Marsh spoke for many when he called Are You Experienced, “The greatest, most influential debut album ever released” but, truth to tell, it was never really conceived as an album at all. Released on May 12, 1967, Are You Experienced ushered in a new and exciting era where albums, not 45s, dominated rock music. Just three weeks after its release, The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band confirmed the album’s position. It had now become the definitive statement of a rock artist’s worth. However, when Jimi Hendrix went into London’s De Lane Lea studios with producer Chas Chandler in October 1966, hit singles were still very much the goal, and the album, which would change it all, would eventually come together via a sequence of higgledy-piggledy recording sessions, strung out between live commitments. The influences that Hendrix melded together to create the revelatory guitar and songwriting style on the album are many and include his early exposure to the blues, his years on the road as a guitar slinger for hire with Little Richard, the Isley Brothers et al and his fascination with Bob Dylan. One song, however, would bring all those strands together, spark the world’s love affair with Hendrix and establish the template for his earth-shattering debut album. In the summer of 1966, when Hendrix was between jobs and low on cash, he could be found contemplating his options over a coffee at the Cock’n’Bull café on MacDougal Street in New York’s Greenwich Village. He would stroll over to the café’s jukebox again and again and select Hey Joe by folkie Tim Rose. Copyrighted in 1962 by songwriter Billy Roberts, it was already one of the most recorded songs of the mid 1960s, but whereas most bands treated it as an uptempo rock cut, Rose had slowed it down and introduced a distinctive walking bass line. About a month later, Chas Chandler, bassist of The Animals, caught Hendrix’s set at Café Wha? in the Village, and heard him perform his version of Hey Joe. By happy coincidence, The Animals’ career was winding down and Chandler was looking to move into management and record production. He saw his golden opportunity in Hendrix, signed him up and flew him to London to launch a new career. But no one could predict the tumult that would follow Hendrix’s arrival in the UK on September 24, 1966. After touchdown at Heathrow, he got straight to it, jamming at the Scotch Of St James club. Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, The Who’s managers were in the audience and, so impressed, stumped up a £1,000 advance to tie Hendrix to their fledgling record company, Track Records. Soon he was also jamming with London based band The VIPS and Eric Burdon and The New Animals. “He just grabbed hold of Vic Briggs’ guitar and said, ‘Do you mind if I have a jam?’,” remembers Eric Burdon, The Animals’ singer. “Barry Jenkins and Danny McCulloch from my band just leapt in and chased him on this incredible jam, and the sounds just rocketed around the room, like, ricocheted around the room. I was totally stunned.” Before the month was out, he was performing with keyboard virtuoso Brian Auger at Blaises’ club, when guitarist Andy Summers, later of The Police, then in Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band walked in. “He had a white Strat and as I walked in he had it in his mouth,” recalls Summers. “It was intense and it was really great. It kind of turned all the guitarists in London upside down at the time.” Then on October 1, Chandler arranged for Jimi to jam with Cream at the Polytechnic of Central London. “He did Killing Floor, a Howlin’ Wolf number I’ve always wanted to play, but which I’ve never really had the complete technique to do,” admitted guitarist Eric Clapton. “Ginger didn’t like it and Jack didn’t like it. They’d never heard the song before. It was just, well, he just stole the show.” By this time, Noel Redding, attracted by a small ad in Melody Maker, had also jammed with Hendrix on a handful of instrumentals and found himself hired as bassist for the newly named Jimi Hendrix Experience. The arrival of drummer Mitch Mitchell came next. On October 1, he was fired by R&B hitmaker Georgie Fame and five days later he auditioned for Hendrix. They meshed well but at the end, Hendrix simply said, “Okay. I’ll see you around.” Before Mitchell could leave, though, Chas Chandler mentioned a potential gig in the middle of the month, supporting French pop idol Johnny Hallyday in Paris. Mitchell recalled: “I said ‘Okay’ and spent three days rehearsing. Then off we went and that was how it started.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/rocks-big-bang-theory-jimi-hendrix-and-the-most-influential-debut-album-ever

Led Zeppelin - Hey Hey What Can I Do

 #Led Zeppelin #Jimmy Page #Robert Plant #hard rock #blues rock #folk rock #heavy metal #folk metal #heavy blues rock #1970s

Led Zeppelin were purposefully not a singles band. For the majority of their career, the hard rock icons didn’t release a single in their native UK. Since their American audiences were exponentially larger, singles were necessary evils, but Led Zeppelin considered themselves an album-focused group throughout their career. There was never a time when you couldn’t find a song featured on a single that wasn’t already on a studio album. With one notable exception, that is. Throughout their entire career, only one single released by Zeppelin featured a B-side that never found its way onto a studio album. That was in 1970 when the group released ‘Immigrant Song’ as a single. The track wound up being the first track on what would become Led Zeppelin III, and its B-side was representative of the more acoustic direction that Zeppelin would be taking on the rest of Zeppelin III. Strangely enough, the song itself wouldn’t be included. ‘Hey, Hey, What Can I Do’ is an almost fully non-electric outing for Led Zeppelin. Featuring Jimmy Page on acoustic guitars and John Paul Jones on mandolin, the only plugged-in instrument in the mix is Jones’ bass guitar. John Bonham bashes out his signature rhythms while Robert Plant gamely belts out his blues-influenced lyrics about his partner who stays drunk all the time and can’t stay true. Mixing the classic come-ons of Zeppelin’s past with the folkier direction of their future, ‘Hey, Hey, What Can I Do’ would have made the perfect addition to Led Zeppelin III. But for whatever reason, the track was left off the final album, making it's appearance on the ‘Immigrant Song’ single its only appearance in Zeppelin’s catalogue for a number of years.  From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/rare-led-zeppelin-song-without-studio-album/

Renaissance - Can You Hear Me

 #Renaissance #Annie Haslam #progressive rock #British progressive rock #symphonic prog #classical #orchestral #1970s

 

Novella gets so deep into an era of a few centuries ago that I feel like I'm getting some kind of plague every time I play it. Not as accessible as most of their stuff, the orchestral arrangements are the dominant force for most of these songs, resulting in an album that is certainly progressive and with folk leanings, but the 'rock' factor is at a low ebb concerning their output.
I was never a fan of this... until now. It finally clicked for me, and I love it for being such an unabashed foray into olden day jive at a time when the new and modern was going wild in the music scene. Very classical at times, and not exactly a thrill-ride either. Rather somber and even dour at times, like living under the age of kings and churches. Novella is quite an evocative beast, complex in arrangements and led by Annie's graceful, heavenly yet traditional folkish voice. "Can You Hear Me?" is actually amazing, but at first I thought it was too steeped in orchestration, like a movie score with singing. Now I'm sincerely impressed with the chord changes and the sudden, quick operatic bursts. Pompous in all the right ways. The closer "Touching Once (Is So Hard to Keep)" is the other mega-track, and while it's not as vocally engaging as the opener, it's got some potent segues into numerous grooves that possess real bounce. And believe me, those groovy moments are needed when you have depressing old tales like the lyrics of "The Sisters" to contend with. There's a weight to this album, gloomy tales to dispirit kids. But Novella does it so damn well that I can only marvel at it’s successful embodiment of the album cover. And it's not all morose, as the music itself never settles for a singular mood.  From: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/renaissance/novella/

Renaissance were an English progressive rock band who developed a unique sound, combining a female lead vocal with a fusion of classical, folk, rock, and jazz influences. Characteristic elements of the Renaissance sound are Annie Haslam's wide vocal range, prominent piano accompaniment, orchestral arrangements, vocal harmonies, acoustic guitar, synthesiser, and versatile drum work.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_(band)

Luciferian Light Orchestra - Taste the Blood of the Altar Wine

 #Luciferian Light Orchestra #doom metal #psychedelic rock #heavy metal #occult rock #psychedelic metal #gothic rock #heavy psych #retro 1970s #Swedish #music video

Luciferian Light Orchestra is a band formed in 2014 by Therion’s Christofer Johnsson. The band performs songs that Johnsson has written over the years but thought that they were too retro sounding for Therion. Christofer always had a big passion for ’70’s music. Luciferian Light Orchestra sounds like a ’70’s version of Therion, mainly inspired by the ’70’s occult vibes and themes. The self-titled album was recorded and mixed by Christofer at Adulruna Studio and and mixed by Lennart Östlund (Led Zeppelin, ABBA) at Polar Studios, Stockholm. In the process of making the record, there was a large group of people involved: 2 drummers, 1 bass player, 5 guitarists, 2 keyboard players, 3 hammond organists, 4 lead singers, 5 backing singers It's not official who contributed on the album and who the members are, but Christofer has revealed that it’s ”a mix of old symphonic rock and progressive musicians, some current Therion members, one ex-Therion member and some artists from other bands. Plus some known and unknown people from Dragon Rouge giving a hand with backing vocals.”  From: https://svartrecords.com/en/product/luciferian-light-orchestra-black-ep/4110

Butthole Surfers - Tongue

 #Butthole Surfers #experimental rock #alternative rock #punk rock #psychedelic rock #noise rock #psychedelic punk #1980s #1990s

Butthole Surfers is a Noise Rock band formed in San Antonio, Texas in 1981, well known for it's bizarre and often disturbing lyrics, heavy synthesizing, and macabre live shows. They also use a lot of Black Comedy in their lyrics. The Surfers began in 1980, when lead singer Gibby Haynes met guitarist Paul Leary while going to college in Texas, where they became friends due to their shared overall weirdness and interest in strange music. They published a magazine, Strange V.D., with a lot of pictures of strange diseases and illnesses, long before they actually started playing in 1981. Throughout The '80s, they built up a cult following in the college rock world through their melding of Punk Rock and Psychedelic Rock, plus a multi-media stage show (including a naked female dancer and grotesque film clips projected on a giant screen) that was an assault on the senses, all capped off with a twisted sense of humor. Their mainstream commercial breakthrough finally came in The 1990s, when big labels were scrambling to sign Alternative Rock acts in the wake of Nirvana's success. After a decade of releasing their music on small indie labels such as Alternative Tentacles and Touch and Go, the Buttholes signed with Capitol Records; their second Capitol album, 1996’s Electriclarryland, contained their first big hit "Pepper.” Afterwards, they became featured on many movie soundtracks, such as William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.  From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/ButtholeSurfers

Buffalo Springfield - Special Care

 #Buffalo Springfield #Stephen Stills #Neil Young #Richie Furay #Jim Messina #folk rock #psychedelic rock #country rock #West coast sound #1960s #pre-CSNY #pre-Poco #pre-Loggins & Messina

After just over two turbulent, creative, and brilliant years, the members of Buffalo Springfield decided to call it quits. Neil Young would release a solo album four months after the group’s demise. Stephen Stills would move on to the successful and enduring Crosby, Stills & Nash. Richie Furay and Jim Messina, who had replaced original bass player Bruce Palmer, would form the country-rock band Poco. Drummer Dewey Martin would form Medicine Ball, retire to become a mechanic, and then form Buffalo Springfield Revisited with bass player Bruce Palmer. Last Time Around was the third and last studio album by the group and was released after they had disbanded. It is unique, creative, diverse, and excellent which is probably an accurate description of their career. It seems as if Neil Young could hardly wait to leave the band. He only contributed two full songs but his talent was such that both are superb. “On The Way Home” contains vocal harmonies with Richie Furay and guitar work by Stephen Stills which are top notch. There is an excellent version of this song on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s live album Four Way Street. “I Am A Child” did not include any other member of the band but is a classic Neil Young composition. He would recycle it for his Live Rust album. Stephen Stills would contribute five tracks which can be considered the album’s foundation. “Four Days Gone” remains one of his strongest compositions. It has a country-rock feel and is another political statement by him. A bluesy rendition appears on Stephen Stills Live. “Pretty Girl Why” contains some nice guitar interplay with Young but it is the co-lead vocal with Furay that pushes it over the top. “Questions” is another country-rock composition with strong lyrics and stellar guitar riffs. “Uno Mundo” features some almost psychedelic guitar playing by Stills. “Special Care” is another track which would appear live throughout his career in various forms but here in it’s original incarnation it is precise and very laid back” Richie Furay’s “Kind Woman” can really be considered the first Poco song. Rusty Young was brought in to play the pedal steel guitar part and meshed so well with Young and Messina that they decided to start their own band. This is a gentle, romantic song that remains among his best. “Merry-Go-Round” would travel in a different direction as a light pop tune. “It’s So Hard To Wait” was co-authored by Neil Young who then abandoned the song and does not appear on it. Furay finished it as a slow ode of lost love. Jim Messina managed to contribute one song before everything fell apart. “Carefree Country Day” is light and competent, and further solidified his relationship with Richie Furay. Last Time Around remains one of the better albums of the late sixties despite the group members being pulled in different directions during the recording process. It has stood the test of time well as a lasting testament to one of the masterful groups in American rock history.  From: https://blogcritics.org/music-review-buffalo-springfield-last-time/

Strawbs - New World

 #Strawbs #Dave Cousins #progressive rock #folk rock #progressive folk #British folk rock #1970s

Dave Cousins efforts to move the band from folk rock into more progressive areas took another step forward here. The luxurious packaging of the original LP suggested even before hearing it, that this was going to be a confident album. Blue Weaver, Rick Wakeman's replacement on keyboards, stamps his own mark throughout the album. He provides structured layers of sound for the band to build on, rather than the more independent sound of his predecessor. The opening track, "Benedictus" has the hymnal feel of "A Glimpse of heaven" from the previous album, but the mood soon changes with "Queen of Dreams" which comes close to acid rock. The title track "New World" was probably the Strawbs most powerful track they ever made. As Dave Cousins sang "May you rot in your grave, new world" his teeth must have ached from being so tightly clenched!  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=2897

One of the more unsung British progressive bands of the early 1970s, the Strawbs differed from their more successful compatriots - the Moody Blues, King Crimson, Pink Floyd - principally in that their sound originated in English folk music rather than rock. Their transformation from acoustic bluegrass outfit to progressive folk-rock innovators was an impressive feat, and they hit their stride with gems like 1972's Grave New World and its follow-up Bursting at the Seams. As the '70s wore on, the Strawbs' career began to falter with ongoing lineup and label changes marring their progress. They survived a breakup at the end of the decade and went on to enjoy a robust revival period in the mid-1980s that, while not quite up to the level of their peak years, helped carry them and their fans into the 21st century. The Strawbs of the 2000s were particularly prolific, delivering an array of studio albums including highlights like 2005's Painted Sky and 2009's The Broken Hearted Bride. Over the years, the group have managed to remain stylistically adventurous even on late-period outings like 2021's Settlement, released over 50 years after their debut.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-strawbs-mn0000940076/biography

Shocking Blue - Venus

 #Shocking Blue #Mariska Veres #psychedelic rock #garage rock #nederbeat #pop rock #garage rock #proto-prog #Dutch #1960s #music video

Musically, Shocking Blue was hard to peg. While their solid rhythm section comprised of guitar, bass and drums, was regularly augmented by an array of instruments including sax, sitar, banjo and mandolin, their repertoire freely leapt from proto-glam to kickass country rock. Robbie Van Leeuwen’s obsession with American music was apparent with one listen to The Big 3’s 1963 update of Stephen Foster’s 1847 song, “Oh, Susanna,” which they renamed “The Banjo Song.” Tim Rose, Jim Hendricks, and the future “Mama” Cass Elliot gave Foster’s famous tune a rock ‘n’ roll edge with a driving guitar riff straight out of Henry Mancini’s theme song to the popular TV show Peter Gunn. Whether a flagrant case of plagiarism or merely “inspired by” The Big 3, Robbie kept the music fully intact, note for note, chord for chord, while re-writing the lyrics, transforming the obscure novelty folk number into the pop smash “Venus,” and topped the Billboard charts in December 1969. Other obvious influences can be heard in the song’s intro, which kicks off with chiming suspended guitar chords by way of Pete Townshend’s “Pinball Wizard” from The Who’s Tommy (released only a few months before “Venus” in March 1969). In 1988, Cor van der Beek, confessed that “Venus” “was stolen from The Beatles.” While one might comb the Fabs’ albums looking for the source of the song’s irresistible guitar hook, it was actually Billy Preston’s electric piano groove from “Get Back” (imitated by Cees Schrama of Golden Earring) that van der Beek was referring to. It also didn’t hurt that Robbie van Leeuwen’s lead guitar break on “Venus” strongly resembled John Lennon’s slinky licks on The Beatles’ 1969 single. Robbie van Leeuwen was obviously hip to American roots music and had no qualms about re-working it into great pop. For their 1972 single “Rock in the Sea,” van Leeuwen employed the electric mandolin and lifted a verse directly from the Holy Modal Rounders’ “Mole in the Ground” (who’d copped it from banjo picker Bascom Lamar Lunsford). Shocking Blue’s “Navajo Tears,” which featured Robbie on mandolin and saxophone, employed the melody of “The Trees They Do Grow High,” a traditional folk song sung by Joan Baez, Pentangle and many others. No matter what their source of inspiration, or which direction their sonic compass pointed, Mariska Veres inevitably became the group’s focal point. Her striking looks - long dark hair, cut into bangs (said to be a wig) framed her alluring kohl-ringed eyes. Dressed in wild print blouses, short skirts and high boots, she drew comparisons to every sultry brunette who ever fronted a rock band, from Grace Slick, to Cher and Linda Ronstadt. But Mariska had something extra. She was Romany - an exotic cocktail of Hungarian, Russian and French. One of three daughters, Mariska began her career singing and playing piano with her father, Lajos Veres, a violinist with a gypsy orchestra. By 1963, she was singing with a twangy guitar group called Les Mysteres, who recorded a righteous reverb-soaked cover of “Summertime.” Nearly every article written about Shocking Blue compared the band to Jefferson Airplane. But the similarities between Mariska and Grace Slick were superficial at best. To begin with, Veres would prove a more versatile vocalist, and while Grace was a legendary wild woman and provocateur, Mariska was said to be a gentle soul who loved cats, didn’t smoke, shunned drink and drugs, and warned her bandmates upon joining their ranks that relationships were strictly out. Years later, Mariska told the Belgian magazine Flair: “I was just a painted doll, nobody could ever reach me. Nowadays, I am more open to people.”  From: https://pleasekillme.com/mariska-veres/

BoDeans - Good Things

 #BoDeans #alternative rock #roots rock #folk rock #heartland rock #indie rock #1980s #1990s

BoDeans all began when Kurt Neumann and Sam Llanas met at Waukesha South High School in 1977. How did the duo’s band get its name? Sam often explains that he got the name from The Beverly Hillbillies character Jethro Bodine. For Kurt, BoDeans conjured up the image of rock n’ roll icons Bo Diddley and James Dean for a familial name, similar to The Smiths and The Connells. Early on, Neumann and Llanas were often credited as Beau and Sammy BoDean. In 1983 “Da BoDeans” began playing around Milwaukee’s East Side music scene along with a hired drummer and bass player. The band practiced in the garage of Mark McCraw, a mutual friend who soon became their manager and provided financial support during the early years. In 1985 labels began to make offers, and the band chose to sign a contract with Slash/Warner Records. After signing, the label suggested that they shorten their name to simply “BoDeans.” Under the guidance of producer T-Bone Burnett, they entered Hollywood’s Sunset Sound Factory in October to record their first album. Burnett focused on capturing the band’s natural sound without many additional overdubs. The band later expressed their regret for not being able to spend more time on the production, but high studio costs kept the sessions concise. The critically acclaimed debut Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams was released in 1986. BoDeans mix midwestern roots rock with elements of adult contemporary pop, fashioning a sound that earned critical acclaim during the ’80s and commercial recognition during the following decade.  From: https://k-zap.org/music_profiles/bodeans/

The Dead Weather - Die By The Drop

  #The Dead Weather #Jack White #Alison Mosshart #blues rock #garage rock #psychedelic rock #alternative rock #supergroup #ex-The Kills #ex-The Raconteurs

Crafting a darkly potent mix of garage, blues, punk, and rock & roll informed by the members' other projects, the Dead Weather features Jack White, the Kills' Alison Mosshart, Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Dean Fertita, and the Raconteurs' "Little Jack" Lawrence. The group began in 2008 after the Raconteurs' U.S. tour with the Kills: Toward the end of the tour, bronchitis made it difficult for White to sing as much as usual, so Mosshart was drafted to sing several of his songs. Her on-stage chemistry with the band led White, Mosshart, Lawrence, and White's house guest Fertita to record a cover of Gary Numan's "Are Friends Electric?" The newly formed band began working on a full album at White's Third Man Studios in Nashville Tennessee, with White on drums for the first time since his days with Goober & the Peas. The Dead Weather finished recording their album in a matter of weeks and made its live debut in March 2009, performing a short set for 150 friends at Third Man's offices to celebrate the release of the single Hang You from the Heavens/Are Friends Electric? Horehound, the Dead Weather's debut album, arrived that summer. The band continued to tour and record through 2009, and Mosshart announced that their second album was halfway done that October. In March 2010, the single Die by the Drop arrived. Sea of Cowards, which boasted a heavier and more integrated sound than the band's debut, appeared that May. That year, the Dead Weather contributed the song "Rolling in on a Burning Tire" to the Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack. In 2013, White announced that the band was working on new material, and the 7" Open Up (That's Enough)/Rough Detective arrived late that year as a part of a package from Third Man Records subscription service The Vault. Further singles heralded the release of the Dead Weather's third album Dodge and Burn - which featured remastered versions of the previously issued songs along with new material - in September 2015.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-dead-weather-mn0002006721/biography

Ian Matthews - Seven Bridges Road

 #Ian Matthews #country rock #folk rock #British folk rock #Americana #singer-songwriter #1970s

A vital figure in the history of British folk, Ian Matthews was a founding member of the pioneering U.K. folk-rock band Fairport Convention before he went on to found his own group, Matthews' Southern Comfort, and later moved on to a solo career. Matthews possesses a warm and expressive tenor voice and a talent for songwriting. While he drew from British folk traditions in his work, his greatest inspiration came from American country, folk, and roots music, and he blended their timeless themes with a hippie-fied pastoral feel that was warm and sweet or sorrowful, depending on the song. Though he would dabble in soft rock, power pop, and synth pop in the late '70s and early '80s, he always returned to the sun-dappled sound of the country-folk hybrid that was his trademark.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ian-matthews-mn0000768231/biography

"Seven Bridges Road" is a song written by American musician Steve Young, recorded in 1969 for his Rock Salt & Nails album. It has since been covered by many artists, the best-known version being a five-part harmony arrangement by English musician Ian Matthews in 1973, later recorded by the American rock band the Eagles in 1980. "Seven Bridges Road" is an ode to Woodley Road (County Road 39, Montgomery County, Alabama), a rural two-lane road which runs south off East Fairview Avenue - the southern boundary of the Cloverdale neighborhood of Montgomery, Alabama - at Cloverdale Road, and which features seven bridges: three pairs of bridges, and the seventh approximately 1 mile south by itself. The song's composer Steve Young, stated that and his friends "used to go out to Woodley Road carousing around.” “I wound up writing this song that I never dreamed anybody would even relate to, or understand, or get. And I still don't understand why it was so successful, actually.” "I don't know exactly what the song means. Consciously, I just wrote a song about a girl and a road in south Alabama. But I think on another level the song has something kind of cosmic that registers in the subconscious: the number seven has all of these religious and mystical connotations”.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_Road

Babe Ruth - Gimme Some Leg

#Babe Ruth #Janita Haan #hard rock #progressive rock #blues rock #funk rock #British R&B #album rock #1970s

British band Babe Ruth debuted in 1972, sporting an incendiary hard rock sound ignited by the forceful voice of Janita "Jennie" Haan and jamming guitar/organ work of multi-instrumentalist Alan Shacklock. Though primarily a hard rock group, their tireless experimentation with wildly diverse styles was assuredly in step with the progressive rock of the era. Their incredible debut, First Base, encompassed more styles than may be able to be absorbed at first listen. Here they display a penchant for radically deconstructed cover versions, which may make them comparable to a hipper, heavier Manfred Mann's Earth Band; using as sources Zappa and Morricone as opposed to Springsteen and Holst. Their second and third albums (Amar Caballero and Babe Ruth) come off as recklessly irregular yet occasionally dazzling. After the self-titled album, Shacklock left, replaced by live second guitarist Bernie Marsden (whose best-known gig was with Whitesnake). The magic was gone for the subsequent album, Stealin' Home, except for the two Haan-penned and Shacklock-arranged songs: "2000 Sunsets" and "Tomorrow (Joining of the Day)." Haan left after that, yet the band, which now included no original members, made one further album, Kid's Stuff, which many believe should never have been made.  From: http://www.expose.org/index.php/articles/display/babe-ruth-greatest-hits-17.html

The Cranberries - Zombie

 #The Cranberries #Dolores O'Riordan #alternative rock #Irish folk rock #pop rock #post-punk #dream pop #jangle pop #Celtic rock #1990s #music video

Presaged by shimmering spin-off hits “Dreams” and “Linger,” The Cranberries’ landmark debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, suggested its creators had taken up the baton handed down by jangly indie-pop classicists The Smiths and The Sundays. However, that preconception was swiftly turned on its head by “Zombie,” the furious anti-terrorism lament with which the rising Irish stars trailed their second album, 1994’s No Need To Argue. “Zombie”‘s genesis is traceable to March 20, 1993, when two bombs, planted by the Irish Republican Army, exploded in the northern English town of Warrington. The blast from the second bomb injured dozens of people, but most cruelly claimed the lives of three-year-old Jonathan Ball and 12-year-old Tim Parry: a twin tragedy that shocked and appalled both the UK and Irish public.
“I remember at the time there were a lot of bombs going off in England and The Troubles were pretty bad,” singer Dolores O’ Riordan said in a 2017 interview. “I remember being on tour and in the UK at the time, and just being really sad about it.” Deeply affected by the tragedy, O’Riordan began working on a song that reflected upon the event. However, unlike many Cranberries tracks that sprang from group collaboration, the formative ‘Zombie’ was composed alone by O’ Riordan during downtime from her band’s punishing tour schedule.
“I wrote it initially on an acoustic guitar, late at night,” she said. “I remember being in my flat, coming up with the chorus, which was catchy and anthemic. I took it into rehearsals and picked up the electric guitar and kicked in distortion on the chorus. Even though it was written on an acoustic, it became a bit of a rocker. ‘Zombie’ was quite different to what we’d done before. It was the most aggressive song we’d written.” Recorded in Dublin, “Zombie” featured pounding drums and churning guitars, representing a radical departure from The Cranberries’ signature sound. However, as Dolores O’ Riordan later revealed, the song’s beefed-up alt-rock sound wasn’t an attempt to jump on the grunge bandwagon.
“It came organically, because we were using our live instruments – we were plugging in a lot and we started to mess around with feedback and distortion,” she said. In a 2012 interview, guitarist Noel Hogan explained that “the heavier sound was the right thing for the song. If it was soft, it wouldn’t have had that impact. It would stand out in the live set because of that.”
Released as No Need To Argue’s lead single in 1994, “Zombie” was promoted with a powerful video that also made a significant impact. Directed by Samuel Bayer, the video was filmed in Belfast during The Troubles, using real-life footage. Dolores O’Riordan memorably appeared covered in gold make-up in front of a cross, alongside a group of boys covered in silver make-up. Though banned by the BBC at the time, the clip has since become one of rock’s most-watched music videos on YouTube, clocking up one billion views in April 2020, making The Cranberries the first Irish band to have a song reach that landmark. At the time, O’Riordan received criticism for “Zombie”‘s hard-hitting lyrics, with some detractors suggesting she was taking sides in the Northern Irish conflict. However, as the singer pointedly observed in a 1994 interview, the song was written entirely from a humanitarian point of view. “I don’t care whether it’s Protestant or Catholic, I care about the fact that innocent people are being harmed,” she said. “That’s what provoked me to write the song. It doesn’t name terrorist groups or organizations. It doesn’t take sides. It’s a very human song.”  From: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/the-cranberries-zombie-song/

Lone Justice - Sweet, Sweet Baby

 #Lone Justice #Maria McKee #cowpunk #country rock #roots rock #Americana #rockabilly #alt-country #1980s

If there ever was a band that broke up way way way too soon, it would be Lone Justice. The band’s blend of rock meets country, that was often referred to as cowpunk, defined one of the most original sounds of the 1980s. At the heart of the band lay a golden voiced singer that performed with the spirit of Bruce Springsteen meets Janis Joplin meets Dolly Parton. But beyond her thrilling vocals bled the heart of a substantial songwriter who would eventually leave the band for a very successful and critically renowned solo career. It was sad that the band broke up, yet in retrospect, the band actually broke up twice. After the band’s initial record release entitled Lone Justice in 1985, all members of the band left the group with the exception of Maria McKee. Their sophomore debut in 1986 entitled Shelter consisted of an entirely new band and was produced by Steven Van Zandt. Yet the spirit of Lone Justice could still be heard throughout the recording.  The reason is simple; Maria Mckee. After the release of the Shelter album, the band was disbanded once again. The legend of Lone Justice came to a quick end. Geffen records would release a Live at the BBC Radio Concert in 1993, and a greatest hits package with unreleased bonus tracks in 1998. In 2014, Lone Justice fans were presented with a CD of demos entitled This Is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes 1983. There are bands in rock history that make their mark based on just one song or album. Lone Justice was one of those great bands that turned heads the second they hit the concert stage. And like we said before, that power resonated from the heart, soul, and spirit of their phenomenal lead singer Maria Mckee.  From: https://www.classicrockhistory.com/11-best-lone-justice-songs/

Fairport Convention - The Deserter

 #Fairport Convention #Sandy Denny #Ashley Hutchings #Richard Thompson #folk rock #British folk rock #electric folk #British folk #1960s 

Fairport Convention may not have been the first to combine British and Celtic roots music with rock, but Liege and Lief was certainly the most effective and successful thrust in that direction, opening the ears of the music world to a new kind of sound. Surprisingly recorded while some of the members were still recuperating from injuries sustained in a horrible auto accident that killed their drummer and Richard Thompson’s girlfriend, Liege and Lief sounds as fresh and alive today as it must have sounded when released in late 1969.
“The Deserter” tells the tale of one of the unluckiest people who has ever lived. A victim of impressment into the British Navy, he tries to escape but is turned in by a comrade, for which he receives three hundred and three lashes (not of the erotic variety). A persevering little cuss, he tries to desert again and his girlfriend rats on him. This time the punishment is death, from which he is rescued in this song by Victoria’s Prince Albert in an ex deus machina role. Sandy Denny pointed out that the song’s origins went further back than the Victorian era and that it was common for broadside printers to “bring songs up to date.” The most poignant aspect of the song is the deserter’s commitment to forgiveness; after the whipping and the death sentence, the line, “May the Lord have mercy on them for their sad cruelty,” reminding us of an aspect of Christianity that has entirely disappeared from the current American version of that religion. Dave Swarbrick’s string work is marvelous on this piece, as are the paired guitars that add a certain sweetness to the tale, reflecting the essential sweetness of the deserter’s soul.  From: https://altrockchick.com/2016/09/19/classic-music-review-liege-and-lief-by-airport-convention/

Cellar Darling - Avalanche

 #Cellar Darling #progressive metal #folk metal #folk rock #doom metal #Swiss

We are storytellers. We want to carry you away into our world of music. ​We want to unleash feelings and experiences by telling stories and drawing symbols, in the way mankind has done since its existence: through legends, folk tales, theatre, drama, spirituality - and through songs. We reinvent folk tales for our age as the very essence of what they once were: stories of everyday life. We may sing about the future, we may sing about the past - for essentially, they are the same. If you come to experience our show, you will not know what to expect. If days are bright, our performance shall be bright. If they are dark, it will be dark. In any case, we will tell you stories: those you’ve missed in a world where no bed time stories are told anymore, or those which have never been told before.
Cellar Darling was formed by Anna Murphy (vocals, hurdy-gurdy), Merlin Sutter (drums) and Ivo Henzi (guitars & bass) in the summer of 2016. The trio has previously been part of the core of Switzerland's most successful metal band to date, Eluveitie, touring the world in 45+ countries on 6 continents for over a decade, and forming a bond that could overcome any adversity.
Anna, Ivo & Merlin have turned the departure from their old band into a new beginning, and have moved on to make their own music, while continuing the spirit of musical innovation they have become known for. Cellar Darling’s music is an epic, theatric combination of Ivo’s grand, heavy riffs, Merlin’s energetic drumming, and Anna’s unique, both powerful and fragile voice. Their sound is shaped by the hurdy-gurdy, with its signature folky, earthy tones, and their lyrics tell stories and tales both old and new, true to the band's stated mission: the reinvention of folk tales for our modern age as the very essence of what they once were.
With their very first release, the single ‘Challenge’, along with the bonus track ‘Fire, Wind & Earth’, released in September 2016 after an intense creative retreat, Cellar Darling is already breaking the boundaries between musical genres, blending rock, metal, and folky melodies into a powerful mix. ‘Challenge’ is about an inner struggle, a battle you are fighting against yourself and the world. It is you, screaming at yourself in the mirror and getting high on new found strength. It is failing, overcoming and achieving. The bipolar dance that is life. The song is inspired by a visual image that crept into Anna’s head during what felt like a period tainted with recurring downfall and getting back up again. The music accompanying this image is a symbiosis of dance and combat, sweet and angry. ‘Fire, Wind & Earth’ was written and recorded in the same sweaty summer sessions. The idea for the intro riff was stuck in Ivo’s head for a long time. As soon as all of Cellar Darling started working together on it, the whole song just evolved naturally. The result is a very straightforward and furious song, both musically and lyrically!"
From: https://www.heavymetal.ch/artists/3676/cellar-darling

The Albion Country Band - Hanged I Shall Be

 #The Albion Country Band #Ashley Hutchings #Martin Carthy #John Kirkpatrick #British folk #folk rock #British folk rock #1970s #ex-Fairport Convention

After working with the legendary English folk-rock bands Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, Ashley Hutchings put together the Albion Band (sometimes known as Albion Country Band and Albion Dance Band) in a similar style. They were first gathered as the back-up band for British folksinger Shirley Collins’ 1971 album, No Roses. The band recorded it’s own debut album in 1973, but it wasn’t released until 1976. Over the years, the ever-changing personnel in the Albion Band has included a dizzying number of English folk-rock luminaries, including Richard and Linda Thompson, Martin Carthy, Shirley and Dolly Collins, Maddy Prior, and Martin Simpson, to name just a few.  From: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/albion-country-band/3221110 

E.J. Moeran collected the grim murder ballad ‘Hanged I Shall Be’ in October 1921 from ‘Shepherd’ Taylor of Hickling, Norfolk. This is perhaps the most important of all murder ballads carried across England by the street singers. At least, a vast number of pieces of ballad journalism have taken it for a pattern during the last two and a half centuries. The original comes from a broadside from the end of the 17th Century called The Wittam Miller (Wittam is a village near Oxford). Most of the 19th Century stall-ballad publishers printed a version of this form favourite, which was probably the parent ballad to the American murder ballads The Knoxville Girl and Florella.
Hamish Henderson noted: This murder ballad, with its uneasy psychological undertones, is sometimes known as The Murder of Sweet Mary Anne. It appears to derive from a 17th century broadside in which the murdering lover is a miller. In the United States, the ballad is best known as The Lexington Murder or The Knoxville Girl, and has undoubtedly been the inspiration for several other murder ballads. In the form sung here, it is still very popular in Scotland.
American listeners, who are accustomed to the brisk measures of Pretty Polly or the start directness of The Knoxville Girl, may be surprised to encounter a slow and highly ornamented Scots variant of this familiar ballad. It is the favourite British remake of The Cruel Ship's Captain theme and might be called the classic British murder ballad, in the same sense that Omie Wise or Pretty Polly are the central ballads of the Southern American tradition. In most English variants, the murder weapon is a stick cut from a hedgerow, as in Harry Cox's version about Ekefield Town.
Steve Roud noted: Quite widely collected in Britain by Cecil Sharp and his contemporaries, and in the repertoire of several well known post-war singers such as Cecilia Costello, Jeannie Robertson, and Phoebe Smith, this song was even more well-known in North America, where dozens of versions (under such titles as The Wexford Girl or The Lexington Miller) have been noted and published. As pointed out by Laws (American Balladry from British Broadsides, 1957), in a chapter on “ballad recomposition”, the original text appeared in the mid-18th century as The Berkshire Tragedy or The Wittam Miller, and has since undergone not simply the vagaries of oral tradition, but deliberate re-composition, apparently on more than one occasion. Comparing Harry's with the Original, his is severely truncated and avoids the wordiness of 18th century texts, but it includes many of the most telling details, such as the stake from the hedge, and the dragging by the hair. Nevertheless, the omission of the original motif of pregnancy leaves the murder motiveless in Harry's version, which heightens either the song's stark horror, or the sordidness, according to the listener's own viewpoint.
Norman Buchan noted: Though Francis James Child characterised the broadside ballads as ‘veritable dungheaps’ he conceded the occasional ‘moderate jewel’. This one, ennobled by a splendid tune, is a good deal more than that. It contains little of the conventional trappings of the professional product — no last dying speech, no explanation for the murder, usually pregnancy, no ‘take warning by me’. Indeed it shows much of the bare economy of story line of our classical ballads and is obviously moulded by a community in which the great tradition was still very much alive. It will come as no surprise, therefore, that Enoch learned it from perhaps the greatest living expression of that tradition, Jeannie Robertson.

Albion Country Band's ‘Hanged I Shall Be’

Now as I was bound apprentice, I was 'prentice to the mill,
And I served my master truly for more than seven year.
Until I took up to courting with a lass with that rolling eye
And I promised that I'd marry her in the month of sweet July.
And as we went out a-walking through the fields and the meadows gay,
Oh it's there we told our tales of love and we fixed our wedding day.

And as we were walking and talking of the things that grew around
Oh I took a stick all out of the hedge and I knocked that pretty maid down
Down on her bended knees she fell and loud for mercy cry,
“Oh spare the life of an innocent girl for I'm not prepared to die.”
But I took her by her curly locks and I dragged her on the ground
And I throwed her into the riverhead that flows to Ekefield town,
That flows so far to the distance, that flows so deep and wide,
Oh it's there I threw this pretty fair maid that should have been my bride.

Now I went home to my parents' house, it being late at night.
Mother she got out of bed all for to light the light.
Oh she asked me and she questioned me, “What stains your hands and clothes?”
And the answer I gave back to her, “I've been bleeding at my nose.”
No rest, no rest all that long night, no rest there could I find
For there's sparks of fire and brimstone around my head did shine.

And it was about three days after that this pretty fair maid was found,
Floating by the riverhead that flows to Ekefield town.
That flows so far to the distance, that flows so deep and wide.
Oh it's there they found this pretty fair maid that should have been my bride.
Oh the judges and the jurymen all on me they did agree
For a-murdering of this pretty fair maid oh hanged I shall be.

From: https://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/themillersapprentice.html

Nina Simone - Pirate Jenny (The Black Freighter)

#Nina Simone #folk #gospel #blues #jazz #R&B #soul #1950s #1960s #The High Priestess of Soul #The Threepenny Opera #Kurt Weil #Bertolt Brecht

Lotte Lenya’s terrific performance of “Pirate Jenny” in G.W. Pabst’s 1931 film version of The Threepenny Opera might be the most enduring version of the song. One wonders what Brecht might have made of Nina Simone’s rendition of “Pirate Jenny,” which he co-wrote with Kurt Weill in the late 1920s. Simone makes the song her own, not just in the idiosyncrasies of her performance, but in her substantive alterations to the song’s setting, to it's title character and to it's politics. Simone’s version is found on her 1964 LP Nina Simone in Concert.
In Pabst’s film, Jenny sings soon after learning that her erstwhile lover and pimp Mackie Messer has married Polly Peachum - and immediately after accepting a bribe from Polly’s mother, Mrs. Peachum, to betray Mackie to the London cops. Jenny takes the money, tips off the cops and sings. It seems like a desperate, nihilistic moment: an abject woman, amid turbid emotional and ethical crises, articulates a violent fantasy of absolute power. Whose side is Jenny on? Her own, of course, but operating at such an alienated distance from the social is never a good thing in Brecht. 
Simone’s performance feeds off Jenny’s anger and abjection, but the social politics of Simone’s revision are more emphatic, even didactic. The import of Simone’s relocation of the song - from The Threepenny Opera’s Victorian London, to “this crummy southern town, in this crummy old hotel” - wouldn’t have been obscure to anyone in the Carnegie Hall audiences in front of whom she recorded Nina Simone in Concert, in March and April of 1964. The American south was then embroiled in civil rights struggle and mounting violence: Medgar Evers had been executed in his Mississippi driveway in June of 1963, and just a few months later, Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley were murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, AL. Collins, Robertson and Wesley were 14 years old; McNair was 11. 
Simone addressed that violence in another, more famous song on Nina Simone in Concert, “Mississippi Goddam”: “Alabama’s got me so upset / Tennessee made me lose my rest / And everybody knows about Mississippi, goddam!” It’s rightly noted to be a watershed song, signaling Simone’s forceful transformation into protest singer, activist and cultural radical. Her version of “Pirate Jenny” may lack the referential specificity of that other, more storied song (and “Mississippi Goddam” gets pretty direct; at one point in the song, she intones, “Oh, but this whole country is full of lies / You’re all gonna die, and die like flies / I don’t trust you anymore” - in Carnegie Hall). But “Pirate Jenny” is a lively complement to the indignation of “Mississippi Goddam,” and tonally it’s even more bitter, even more violent. 
You can hear that implicit violence in the horrific cackle Simone produces at the 3:27 mark, immediately after the infantilizing image of the ribbon in Jenny’s hair. It’s a stirring contrast: the feminine innocent become vengeful fury. You can hear the bitterness in the final “Ha!” that bursts from her throat as she imagines herself disappearing over the horizon line with the ship. You can feel it in one of Simone’s other revisions to the song. In The Threepenny Opera, the song climaxes with Jenny’s shocking order that all the men in London (“Alle!”) should be killed for her pleasure. In Simone’s version, there’s never any doubt that all of her prisoners should be killed, it’s only a matter of how quickly. She hisses, rapaciously, “Right now / Right now!” 
In another notable change, Simone’s Jenny isn’t a prostitute, but a maid, cleaning up after “you people” in the aforementioned “crummy hotel.” Jenny is still marginalized, but there’s nothing subterranean or metaphorical about the economic environment she moves through. It’s all culturally sanctioned. Her oppression is a transparent element of her southern lifeworld, and she is thus sharply conscious of the manifest power of those transactions: “Maybe once you tip me, and it makes you feel swell.” It’s an important change to Brecht’s original lyrics, focusing on a set of economic relations that indicate Jenny’s racially charged plight. She’s a maid in a southern hotel, a laboring black woman, who’s made recognizable as such precisely because of the larger Jim Crow-period matrix of law and social practice that determined who did what work for whom. 
That economic register makes some of the song’s subsequent images even more resonant. The people on the receiving end of Jenny’s rage are “chained up” on the “dock.” The spectacle of terrified, chained bodies by the seaside evokes the slave auction block, even as the image wants to invert the slave economy’s racialized logic, of white oppressing black. And Simone repeatedly calls the ship in the harbor a “black freighter.” Black freight. It’s another marker for the slave trade, and perhaps Jenny is trying to run the film in reverse. Perhaps she wants to board the vessel, to sail all the slave ships back across the Atlantic, to neutralize the horror of the Middle Passage. That sounds like a utopian desire, a triumphal image that the song’s tone cannot sustain, or even create in the first place. Too much misery and violence has already happened. American history has already insisted that blackness and capital are inextricably bound. Utopian longing is beside the point. What’s needed is critique, sharpened by righteous rage. 
The historical period that we call “the Sixties” ground on for another ten years after Simone’s 1964 Carnegie Hall gigs. She became increasingly militant in her public rhetoric and performative style. She claimed once to have looked Martin Luther King in the face and said, “I am not non-violent.” Her voice throughout “Pirate Jenny” is a sort of corroborating evidence for that assertion.  From: https://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/post/183632765267/why-brecht-now-vol-ii-nina-simone-sings-pirate 

Sophie B. Hawkins - Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover

#Sophie B. Hawkins #alternative rock #pop rock #world music #R&B #jazz rock #afrobeat #singer-songwriter #multi-instrumentalist #1990s

A proudly idiosyncratic singer and songwriter who embraces an eclectic range of musical influences and isn't afraid to be nakedly confessional in her music, Sophie B. Hawkins enjoyed unexpected commercial success with her debut album, but since then has opted to follow her muse rather than a major label's marketing department. Born in New York City in 1967, Hawkins grew up in a family that valued art and creativity but was troubled by alcoholism, and as a child she aspired to be an English teacher. At the age of 14, Hawkins became fascinated with African music and began studying percussion, becoming a student of celebrated African musician Babatunde Olatunji. As Hawkins became more accomplished, she branched out into jazz and became proficient on marimba and vibraphone as well as drums. After finishing high school, Hawkins enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music, and in addition to world music and jazz, she began dipping her toes into rock and pop music, playing trap drums with a band called the Pink Men and a handful of other groups. Hawkins took up singing and writing songs, and recorded a demo tape that made its way to Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry, who hired her to play percussion and sing backup in his road band for two months. Hawkins took odd jobs and sang on commercial jingles to support herself until her demo came to the attention of an A&R man at Columbia Records, who signed Hawkins to a record deal. Hawkins' first album, 1992's Tongues and Tails, suggested the breadth of her influences, with jazz, R&B, pop, rock, and African music informing the 11 tunes. One of the songs, "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover," became a major hit single, and Tongues and Tails became a commercial and critical success.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sophie-b-hawkins-mn0000754055/biography