Senin, 29 November 2010

Grammy Award

The Grammy Awards (originally called the Gramophone Awards)—or Grammys—are presented annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States for outstanding achievements in the music industry. The awards ceremony features performances by prominent artists, and some of the awards of more popular interest are presented in a widely viewed televised ceremony. It is the music equivalent to the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for stage, and the Academy Awards for film.
The awards were established in 1958. Prior to the first live Grammys telecast in 1971 on American Broadcasting Company (ABC), a series of taped annual specials in the 1960s called The Best on Record were broadcast on National Broadcasting Company (NBC). The first Grammy Award telecast took place on the night of November 29, 1959, as an episode of the NBC anthology series Sunday Showcase, which was normally devoted to plays, original TV dramas, and variety shows. Until 1971, awards ceremonies were held in both New York and Los Angeles, with winners accepting at one of the two. Pierre Cossette bought the rights to broadcast the ceremony from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and organized the first live telecast CBS Broadcasting bought the rights in 1973 after moving the ceremony to Nashville, Tennessee; the American Music Awards were created for ABC as a result.
The 53rd Grammy Awards will take place on 13 February 2011 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. It will be broadcast on CBS.

Gramophone trophy

The actual trophy is produced by Billings Artworks in Ridgway, Colorado. The trophies are made and assembled by hand. In 1990, the original Grammy design was revamped, changing the traditional soft lead for a stronger alloy less prone to damage, and making the trophy bigger and grander. The Grammy is assembled in pieces and finally finished off in gold plating. The actual trophies, with the recipient's name engraved, are not available until after the award announcements, so a series of "stunt" trophies are re-used each year for the broadcast.
As of 2007, 7,578 Grammy trophies have been awarded.

Categories

The "General Field" are four awards which are not restricted by genre.
  • Album of the Year is awarded to the performer and the production team of a full album.
  • Record of the Year is awarded to the performer and the production team of a single song.
  • Song of the Year is awarded to the writer(s)/composer(s) of a single song.
  • Best New Artist is awarded to a performer who releases, during the Eligibility Year, the first recording that establishes the public identity of that artist (which may not necessarily be their first proper release).
Other awards are given for performance and production in specific genres, as well as for other contributions such as artwork and video. Special awards are also given out for more long-lasting contributions to the music industry.

Nomination process

Record companies and individuals may submit recordings to be nominated. The entries are entered online and then a physical copy of the product must be sent to the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Once a work is entered, reviewing sessions are held by over 150 experts from the recording industry. This is done only to determine whether or not a work is eligible or entered into the proper category for official nomination.
The resulting list is circulated to all NARAS members, each of whom may vote to nominate in the general field (Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist) and in no more than nine out of 30 other fields on their ballots. The five recordings that earn the most votes in each category become the nominees. There may be more than five nominees if there is a tie in the nomination process.
Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are generally invited to screenings, or sent DVDs, of movies nominated for Oscars. In contrast, NARAS members receive no nominated recordings.
After nominees have been determined, final voting ballots are sent to Recording Academy members. They may then vote in the general fields and in no more than eight of the 30 fields. NARAS members are encouraged, but not required, to vote only in their fields of expertise. Ballots are tabulated secretly by the major independent accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Following the tabulation of votes the winners are announced at the Grammy Awards. The recording with the most votes in a category wins and it is possible to have a tie. Winners are presented with the Grammy Award and those who do not win are given a medal for their nomination.
In both voting rounds, Academy members are to vote based upon quality alone. They are not supposed to be influenced by sales, chart performance, personal friendships, regional preferences or company loyalty. The acceptance of gifts is prohibited. Members are urged to vote in a manner that preserves the integrity of the academy.
The eligibility period for the 2011 Grammy Awards is September 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010.

Leaders

With 31 Grammy Awards, Sir Georg Solti is the male artist with the most Grammy wins. Alison Krauss is the biggest winner among female artists with 26 awards. U2, with 22, holds the record among bands, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra holds the record for any musical group with 60 wins.
Rank 1st 2nd 3rd
Artist Georg Solti Quincy Jones Alison Krauss
Total awards 31 27 26

Criticism

Because thousands of recordings appear each year and very few voting members have heard more than a relatively small number of them, it is likely that many individual votes will be cast by voters who are unfamiliar with all the recordings nominated in that category. Additionally, because of the small number of votes cast in many of the categories, a lobbying campaign for a particular recording may need only a few dozen votes for success. Large choruses have achieved Grammy awards after persuading many of their members to join NARAS.
Certain musical artists have voiced personal issues with the nature of the Grammys.
When his band Pearl Jam won a Grammy in the category Best Hard Rock Performance in 1996, singer Eddie Vedder commented on stage: "I don't know what this means. I don't think it means anything".
Maynard James Keenan, lead singer of progressive metal band Tool, did not attend the Grammy Awards ceremony to receive one of their awards. He explained his reasons:
I think the Grammys are nothing more than some gigantic promotional machine for the music industry. They cater to a low intellect and they feed the masses. They don't honor the arts or the artist for what he created. It's the music business celebrating itself. That's basically what it's all about.
Additionally, many[who?] have criticized the Grammys for distributing more awards than necessary and that a large portion of the ceremony is "filler" to result in a longer engagement.
Bono (U2) was critical of the Grammys early in his career,[citation needed] but later he began to appreciate their inclusiveness:
It was all there: anger, love, forgiveness, family, community and the deepest sense of history... Here was the full power of American music challenging my arrogance. I watched the rest of the show with new eyes. The Grammys invited jazz, country, rock, soul and classical into the same hall. No regard for demographic studies of what would deliver ratings, no radio call-out research—a mad amalgam of the profound and the absurd and the creeping realisation that one man's Mozart is another man's Vegas.

Lookout! Records

 Lookout! Records is an independent record label based in Berkeley, California

History

Larry Livermore and David Hayes formed the label in 1987. From the start, Lookout released punk rock records, but over time expanded its scope to include various types of pop rock, reggae fusion, acoustic rock, pop punk, and indie rock. Former Lookout bands that have since achieved major label success include Green Day, Rancid, and The Donnas.
Lookout became famous for releasing albums that featured a very distinctive pop punk sound including bands such as Screeching Weasel, The Mr T Experience, The Queers, Green Day, Sweet Baby, Operation Ivy, Squirtgun, The Wanna-Bes and others.
In recent years, a number of Lookout recording artists have ended their dealings with the label, rescinding their master rights from the label and re-issuing albums on other labels. These bands have cited various reasons including non-renewal of licensing agreements, distribution and breach of contract over unpaid royalties. Among the bands that have taken their masters from Lookout and reissued them on other labels are Screeching Weasel (on Asian Man), Avail (on Jade Tree), Pansy Division (on Alternative Tentacles), Blatz and Filth (on Alternative Tentacles), The Dollyrots (on Blackheart Records), The Riverdales (on Asian Man), The Queers (on Asian Man), The Lillingtons (on Red Scare Industries), Enemy You (also on Red Scare), Twenty-Nineteen (on CREC Records), and The Groovie Ghoulies (on Springman Records). On August 1, 2005, Green Day became the biggest former Lookout act to rescind their masters from the label, forcing Lookout to lay off its staff and halt new releases for the remainder of the year. Operation Ivy rescinded their masters on May 4, 2006 and their album was reissued on Hellcat Records in November 2007.
On September 13, 2009 Larry Livermore commented on the name of the label on his blog, noting that the name is often erroneously spelled with an exclamation point. While the proper spelling does not include an exclamation point, an exclamation point has become a common spelling in popular usage.
Lookout Records turned 20 years old in 2008 and continues to offer a large catalog of underground punk, pop-punk and indie rock music on CD, vinyl and via digital download from virtually all music services.
In December 2009, the company entered a major financial reconstruction period.

Lookout! Records
Lookout Records logo.PNG
Founded 1987
Founder Larry Livermore
David Hayes
Distributor(s) Lookout Records (In the US)
Genre Mostly pop punk, also acoustic rock, punk rock, hardcore punk, and pop rock
Country of origin US
Official Website http://lookoutrecords.com/

 

List of artists

Former artists


Kerplunk (album)

Kerplunk is the second studio album by the American punk rock band Green Day. It was released on January 17, 1992 through Lookout! Records. Kerplunk was their last release on an independent label and was also the first album to feature their current band lineup, with Tré Cool on drums. The album has gone on to be among the best selling independently released albums of all time. Major labels took notice of Kerplunk's phenomenal popularity and many approached the band. Green Day realized that they had outgrown their record distribution capacity with Lookout! and eventually signed with Reprise Records. With Reprise, Green Day would record and release their third album Dookie (1994).
The album officially includes only 12 tracks, but the versions released on CD and cassette also include the 4 tracks from the Sweet Children EP. One of those 4 tracks is a cover of The Who's "My Generation". Another notable track on the album is "Welcome to Paradise", which the band would re-record for their next album Dookie.
As of August, 2010, Kerplunk had sold 753,000 units in the United States and 1,000,000 units worldwide.
In August 2005, Green Day pulled the album, as well as all of their other material released through the label, from Lookout! due to unpaid royalties. It was reissued on CD by Reprise Records, who Green Day has been with since leaving Lookout!, on January 9, 2007.Note that in Europe, the album was released by Epitaph Europe, and has remained in print. It was reissued on vinyl on March 24, 2009 by Reprise Records and includes a reissue of the Sweet Children EP.
In December 2007, Blender magazine ranked Kerplunk #47 on their list, "The 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums Ever".
 
 
Kerplunk
Studio album by Green Day
Released January 17, 1992
Recorded May–September 1991 at Art of Ears Studio, San Francisco, California
Genre Punk rock
Length 33:58 (Vinyl version)
42:09 (CD version)
Label Lookout!, Reprise, Epitaph
Producer Andy Ernst, Green Day
Professional reviews
Green Day chronology
1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours
(1991)
Kerplunk
(1992)
Dookie
(1994)

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Billie Joe Armstrong, except where noted. 
No. Title Length
1. "2,000 Light Years Away"   2:24
2. "One for the Razorbacks"   2:30
3. "Welcome to Paradise"   3:30
4. "Christie Road"   3:33
5. "Private Ale"   2:26
6. "Dominated Love Slave" (written by Tré Cool) 1:42
7. "One of My Lies"   2:19
8. "80"   3:39
9. "Android"   3:00
10. "No One Knows"   3:39
11. "Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?"   2:44
12. "Words I Might Have Ate"   2:32
Total length:
33:58
Bonus tracks (CD only)
No. Title Length
13. "Sweet Children"   1:41
14. "Best Thing in Town"   2:03
15. "Strangeland"   2:08
16. "My Generation" (written by Pete Townshend; originally performed by The Who) 2:19
Total length:
42:09

Biography John Kiffmeyer

John Kiffmeyer (also known as Al Sobrante), was born on July 11, 1969. He was the first drummer of the punk rock/alternative rock band Green Day. He was given his nickname in reference to his hometown, El Sobrante.
John Kiffmeyer
Also known as Al Sobrante
Born July 11, 1969 (age 41)
California, United States
Genres Punk rock
Occupations Musician
Instruments Drums
Years active 1988-1995 (musician)
1995-present (producer)
Associated acts Green Day,
Isocracy

Biography


John Kiffmeyer was born in California on July 11, 1969. His first exposure in the punk scene was as the drummer of the band Isocracy. The group was popular in the East Bay, and mainstays at the famed club, 924 Gilman Street.
However, Kiffmeyer is most well known for his time in Green Day. After the end of Isocracy, Kiffmeyer helped form Green Day. Because of his experience and knowledge of the underground community, Kiffmeyer was able to get the young band on its feet by placing calls to friends, among them prominent figure of the East Bay Larry Livermore. The first few performances took place at Contra Costa College, where Kiffmeyer was a journalism student. On the strength of an early performance, Livermore vowed to release a Green Day record on his Lookout! Records. The group's first full-length effort, 39/Smooth, would feature a Kiffmeyer original, "I Was There", which documented the band at that place in time.
In 1990, he left the band to attend college at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Kiffmeyer later joined the band The Ne'er Do Wells, leaving abruptly in 1994. Following a stint with punk band The Ritalins, he became manager of The Shruggs until their split. Recently he produced "The Lost Troublemakers Album" by The Troublemakers, a garage band from Sacramento, California. He now lives in San Francisco, California with his wife Greta and his young son Lolo.

Drumming style

John Kiffmeyer is left-handed and plays drums open handed, playing the hi-hat cymbals with his left hand, and the ride cymbal positioned just to the left of the hi-hat.

 References

Pre-history

Garage rock and mod

In the early and mid-1960s, garage rock bands that came to be recognized as punk rock's progenitors began springing up in many different locations around North America. The Kingsmen, a garage band from Portland, Oregon, had a breakout hit with their 1963 cover of "Louie, Louie", cited as "punk rock's defining ur-text". The minimalist sound of many garage rock bands was influenced by the harder-edged wing of the British Invasion. The Kinks' hit singles of 1964, "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night", have been described as "predecessors of the whole three-chord genre—the Ramones' 1978 'I Don't Want You,' for instance, was pure Kinks-by-proxy". In 1965, The Who quickly progressed from their debut single, "I Can't Explain", a virtual Kinks clone, to "My Generation". Though it had little impact on the American charts, The Who's mod anthem presaged a more cerebral mix of musical ferocity and rebellious posture that characterized much early British punk rock: John Reed describes The Clash's emergence as a "tight ball of energy with both an image and rhetoric reminiscent of a young Pete Townshend—speed obsession, pop-art clothing, art school ambition". The Who and fellow mods The Small Faces were among the few rock elders acknowledged by the Sex Pistols. By 1966, mod was already in decline. U.S. garage rock began to lose steam within a couple of years, but the aggressive musical approach and outsider attitude of "garage psych" bands like The Seeds were picked up and emphasized by groups that were later seen as the crucial figures of protopunk.

Protopunk

In 1969, debut albums by two Michigan-based bands appeared that are commonly regarded as the central protopunk records. In January, Detroit's MC5 released Kick Out the Jams. "Musically the group is intentionally crude and aggressively raw", wrote critic Lester Bangs in Rolling Stone:
Most of the songs are barely distinguishable from each other in their primitive two-chord structures. You've heard all this before from such notables as the Seeds, Blue Cheer, Question Mark and the Mysterians, and the Kingsmen. The difference here ... is in the hype, the thick overlay of teenage-revolution and total-energy-thing which conceals these scrapyard vistas of clichés and ugly noise. ... "I Want You Right Now" sounds exactly (down to the lyrics) like a song called "I Want You" by the Troggs, a British group who came on with a similar sex-and-raw-sound image a couple of years ago (remember "Wild Thing"?)
Iggy Pop, the "godfather of punk"
That August, The Stooges, from Ann Arbor, premiered with a self-titled album. According to critic Greil Marcus, the band, led by singer Iggy Pop, created "the sound of Chuck Berry's Airmobile—after thieves stripped it for parts". The album was produced by John Cale, a former member of New York's experimental rock group The Velvet Underground. Having earned a "reputation as the first underground rock band", The Velvet Underground inspired, directly or indirectly, many of those involved in the creation of punk rock.
In the early 1970s, the New York Dolls updated the original wildness of 1950s rock 'n' roll in a fashion that later became known as glam punk. The New York duo Suicide played spare, experimental music with a confrontational stage act inspired by that of The Stooges. At the Coventry club in the New York City borough of Queens, The Dictators used rock as a vehicle for wise-ass attitude and humor. In Boston, The Modern Lovers, led by Velvet Underground devotee Jonathan Richman, gained attention with a minimalistic style. In 1974, an updated garage rock scene began to coalesce around the newly opened Rathskeller club in Kenmore Square. Among the leading acts were the Real Kids, founded by former Modern Lover John Felice; Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band, whose frontman had been a member of the Velvet Underground for a few months in 1971; and Mickey Clean and the Mezz.In 1974, as well, the Detroit band Death—made up of three African-American brothers—recorded "scorching blasts of feral ur-punk", but couldn't arrange a release deal. In Ohio, a small but influential underground rock scene emerged, led by Devo in Akron and Kent and by Cleveland's The Electric Eels, Mirrors and Rocket from the Tombs. In 1975, Rocket from the Tombs split into Pere Ubu and Frankenstein. The Electric Eels and Mirrors both broke up, and The Styrenes emerged from the fallout.
Britain's Deviants, in the late 1960s, played in a range of psychedelic styles with a satiric, anarchic edge and a penchant for situationist-style spectacle presaging the Sex Pistols by almost a decade. In 1970, the act evolved into the Pink Fairies, which carried on in a similar vein. With his Ziggy Stardust persona, David Bowie made artifice and exaggeration central—elements, again, that were picked up by the Pistols and certain other punk acts. The Doctors of Madness built on Bowie's presentation concepts, while moving musically in the direction that would become identified with punk. Bands in London's pub rock scene stripped the music back to its basics, playing hard, R&B-influenced rock 'n' roll. By 1974, the scene's top act, Dr. Feelgood, was paving the way for others such as The Stranglers and Cock Sparrer that would play a role in the punk explosion. Among the pub rock bands that formed that year was The 101'ers, whose lead singer would soon adopt the name Joe Strummer.
Bands anticipating the forthcoming movement were appearing as far afield as Düsseldorf, West Germany, where "punk before punk" band NEU! formed in 1971, building on the Krautrock tradition of groups such as Can. In Japan, the anti-establishment Zunō Keisatsu (Brain Police) mixed garage psych and folk. The combo regularly faced censorship challenges, their live act at least once including onstage masturbation. A new generation of Australian garage rock bands, inspired mainly by The Stooges and MC5, was coming even closer to the sound that would soon be called "punk": In Brisbane, The Saints also recalled the raw live sound of the British Pretty Things, who had made a notorious tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1965. Radio Birdman, cofounded by Detroit expatriate Deniz Tek in 1974, was playing gigs to a small but fanatical following in Sydney.

Etymology

From the late sixteenth through the eighteenth century, punk was a common, coarse synonym for prostitute; William Shakespeare used it with that meaning in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602) and Measure for Measure (1623). The term eventually came to describe "a young male hustler, a gangster, a hoodlum, or a ruffian". As Legs McNeil explains, "On TV, if you watched cop shows, Kojak, Baretta, when the cops finally catch the mass murderer, they'd say, 'you dirty Punk.' It was what your teachers would call you. It meant that you were the lowest." The first known use of the phrase punk rock appeared in the Chicago Tribune on March 22, 1970, attributed to Ed Sanders, cofounder of New York's anarcho-prankster band The Fugs. Sanders was quoted describing a solo album of his as "punk rock—redneck sentimentality". In the December 1970 issue of Creem, Lester Bangs, mocking more mainstream rock musicians, ironically referred to Iggy Pop as "that Stooge punk". Suicide's Alan Vega credits this usage with inspiring his duo to bill its gigs as a "punk mass" for the next couple of years.
Patti Smith, performing in 1976
Dave Marsh was the first music critic to employ the term punk rock: In the May 1971 issue of Creem, he described ? and the Mysterians, one of the most popular 1960s garage rock acts, as giving a "landmark exposition of punk rock". Later in 1971, in his fanzine Who Put the Bomp, Greg Shaw wrote about "what I have chosen to call 'punk rock' bands—white teenage hard rock of '64-66 (Standells, Kingsmen, Shadows of Knight, etc.)". Lenny Kaye used the term "classic garage-punk," in reference to a song recorded in 1966 by The Shadows of Knight, in the liner notes of the anthology album Nuggets, released in 1972. In June 1972, the fanzine Flash included a "Punk Top Ten" of 1960s albums. In February 1973, Terry Atkinson of the Los Angeles Times, reviewing the debut album by a hard rock band, Aerosmith, declared that it "achieves all that punk-rock bands strive for but most miss." Three months later, Billy Altman launched the short-lived punk magazine.
In May 1974, Los Angeles Times critic Robert Hilburn reviewed the second New York Dolls album, Too Much Too Soon. "I told ya the New York Dolls were the real thing", he wrote, describing the album as "perhaps the best example of raw, thumb-your-nose-at-the-world, punk rock since the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street.'" Bassist Jeff Jensen of Boston's Real Kids reports of a show that year, "A reviewer for one of the free entertainment magazines of the time caught the act and gave us a great review, calling us a 'punk band.' ... [W]e all sort of looked at each other and said, 'What's punk?'"
By 1975, punk was being used to describe acts as diverse as the Patti Smith Group, the Bay City Rollers, and Bruce Springsteen. As the scene at New York's CBGB club attracted notice, a name was sought for the developing sound. Club owner Hilly Kristal called the movement "street rock"; John Holmstrom credits Aquarian magazine with using punk "to describe what was going on at CBGBs".Holmstrom, McNeil, and Ged Dunn's magazine Punk, which debuted at the end of 1975, was crucial in codifying the term. "It was pretty obvious that the word was getting very popular", Holmstrom later remarked. "We figured we'd take the name before anyone else claimed it. We wanted to get rid of the bullshit, strip it down to rock 'n' roll. We wanted the fun and liveliness back

 
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