Many viewers of the 2014 Grammy Awards were surprised and confused when two robots took the stage to receive awards. The musical group Daft Punk was a mystery to most watching. As many believed, the duo are not actually robots, but two french men. They find that their robot personas bring more attention to themselves and their music than their normal faces do. They play a wide range of electronic music, and have won several awards for it. Daft Punk has had quite the effect on pop culture with a large following, but many people have not actually heard of them.
Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, two french men, have been friends since their teenage years, and were once in a band called “Darlin’” with Laurent Brancowitz – guitarist of the French band, Phoenix – before forming Daft Punk. The band finally got a name when an English man who heard their performance said their music was a bunch of “daft punky trash.” In 1993, the band's first single called “The New Wave” was released; it was then edited again and re-released as “Alive”, which became very popular in the EDM (electronic dance music) scene. With their first album, Homework, came popularity. The two had never wanted to be in the public eye; they always wore some sort of mask in interviews, photo shoots, and concerts - they even went so far as to put black bags over their heads in an interview in Iceland (Icelandic ‘Bagged’ interview with Daft Punk).
Before the band released its Discovery album, the two decided to reinvent their image. Daft Punk then created robot personas, claiming that an accident had occurred while the two were mixing tracks. Supposedly, on September 9, 1999, the “9999 bug” corrupted their hardware. “We were doing a track and our sampler cras...
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The Rock album I have chosen is “Dookie” by Green Day. This album was released in February 1st, 1994 by Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California or Reprise Records in New York. Green Day's band members include Billie Joe Armstrong (Guitar and Vocalist), Tre Cool (Drums), Mike Dirnt (Bass), Jason White (Guitar), and Al Sobrante (Drums.) The main composers of this album was the band Green Day, Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt as the main composers. The engineers were Neill King and Casey McCrankin. The producer was Rob Cavallo. This album is 39 minutes and 40 seconds long and has 15 songs. The songs are as follows: “Burnout,” “Having A Blast,” “Chump,” “Longview,” “Welcome To Paradise,” “Pulling Teeth,” “Basket Case,” “She,” “Sassafras Roots,” “When I Come Around,” “Coming Clean,” Emenius Sleepus,” “In The End,” “F.O.D,” and finally “All By Myself.” The song “All By Myself is a 'secret' song that was added at the every end, only if you heard the whole album, past the silence. The album has sold about 15 to 20 million of sales to date. This is the album that allowed Green Day to gain super star fame.
The original drummer wasn’t able to make it to a concert because of the weather. family reasons and the other two members asked their best friend, Travis, to fill in even though he didn’t know how to play any of their songs. Even though it was only an hour before the show When they asked him to fill in, Travis didn’t want to let them down so he said he would learn. every song and perform with them. They didn’t want the audience to hear Travis learning how to.
Daft Punk have been very influential in the ways that they produce and perform., from revolutionising the Electronic music genre to changing the way artists perform and interact with their crowd.
fascination with the rock band is regarding the “sheer ingenuity, exuberance, and vary of the
In 1977, Def Leppard was created by Pete Willis, Rick Savage, and Joe Elliot in Sheffield, England. The addition of guitarist Steve Clark, in 1978, introduced Def Leppard's iconic quintet sound. Rick Allen, age fifteen, soon replaced a forgotten drummer, and the original
When the music group Radiohead first burst on to the music scene seven years ago, it became immediately evident through information means such as music articles, album covers, and an extensive website, that this particular band was not just another long-haired, head-bobbing grunge group only out to sell as many albums as they could. This band had a much greater mission than that. It was to inform as many people as they could of their political, social and economic convictions through their personal website. While dozens of other websites have cropped up about Radiohead, this website remains uniquely their own because of its direct listing name and multi-faceted page within a page of personal comentaries, many written in a barely legible free-hand style, of such issues as upcoming protest rallies, animal testing, predictions on Middle East genocides, wrongful government spending, and barely sqeezed in daily journal entries on their current music progress. With Radiohead's political accusations constantly being updated in oversized bold print, their political cartoons of talking teddy bears appearing on a vast amount of web pages, and an often rushed-looking hand-written on their musical progress, it becomes evident that this website was created more as a world news commentary than a self-indulgent display case of itself.
First of all, Def Leppard deserves this award because they have produced quality music, and they have earned several achievements. Some achievements they had was when they were on the “Bill Board 200 with their song ‘Hysteria’;.. sold 10,000 copies in the first week,… [and] spent six weeks at number one and 133 weeks on the Bill Board 200” (Caulfield 57). Another achievement was when their main drummer lost his arm in an accident but was able to continue, playing the drums with just one arm. “Def Leppard released an album called Hysteria in 1983 with their album Pyromania after the car accident” (Tamenbaum 16). The next achievement is Def Leppard and Kiss are joining up to go on show support of service men in the country (Fekadu). The next award that they received was The 2008 Kerrag award also known as the Classic Song Writer Award. (Music Week 4). Def Leppard sold millions of copies on three of their hit songs (JK 19).
On one hand, Adorno’s theory of popular music failed to explain many phenomena including the appearances of new musical forms that will be eliminated if all popular music only follow the earlier standardized pattern. For instance, Rock music as a popular music form kept developing and renewing since it firstly appeared in the history — Hard rock, a music style in which Run belongs to, appeared in the mid-1960s two decades after Adorno’s article. Additionally, his analysis of popular music cannot explain the later social movements in which different popular music forms actively engaged, such as the American Punk Rock that contributed significantly to the Punk culture in the 1970s. These social effects vary considerably from short-term to long-term, local to international, economic to social, and are relatively hard to predict and manipulate than the limited model provided by Adorno and the Frankfurt School. On the other hand, personal ideologies illustrated in the popular music as a unique contemporary art form cannot achieve broad influences without the necessary commercial and industrial success enabled by elements
About.com - Rock Music. N.p., n.d. Web. The Web. The Web. 16 Apr. 2014.
The term Punk was coined by music reviewer Dave Marsh in 1971 to define a new and emerging style in music and culture. Anti-establishment in nature, Punk took its influence from the culture clashes of the 1960’s, creating a new style and sound that had a tremendous effect on fashion, art and youth culture in America and around the world. The effects of Punk are still felt on the cultural world today and the lifestyle is now being carried on by a new generation of young people.
Lenig, Stuart. The Twisted Tale of Glam Rock. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010. Print. (Lenig)
For my book report I read Generation Ecstasy. There was so much information in the book about the rave scene and "ecstasy", I didn't know where to begin. It's been ten years since the English seized on Detroit techno, Chicago house, and New York garage as the seeds of what's generally agreed-over there, at least-to be the most significant music since punk, and they're celebrating with a slew of historical studies. Simon Reynolds attempts to bridge the gap with "Generation Ecstasy," an exhaustive compendium of almost every rave-associated sound and idea, both half-baked and momentous, that traces the digital Diaspora back and forth across Europe and America. Using the multiple perspectives of music critic, enthusiastic participant, and sociological outsider to trace the development of dance music's "rhythmic phsycadelic," Reynolds, finds two predominant, contrasting strains: the search for gnosis, or spiritual revelation, and the desire to get completely out of it at the weekend. Setting these timeless traits in the context of the up-to-the-minute technology that made rave emblematic of its era-the fragmentary, fast-forward aesthetic, the flexible production and distribution network, the avoidance of personality and narrative in favor of sensation-he comes up with a portrait of hi-tech millennium that resonates well beyond its subculture confines.
The American rock band Nirvana impacted American culture and society by paving the way for the punk rock subculture into mainstream corporate America. Punk rock music stems from the rock genre but has its own agenda. The crux of punk rock is that it is a movement of the counterculture against the norms of society. Punk rock in itself is made up of a subculture of people who rejected the tameness of rock and roll music during the 1970s. (Masar, 2006, p. 8). The music stresses anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian ideas in its lyrics as well as scorns political idealism in American society. Before Nirvana unintentionally made punk rock a multi-million dollar commercialized genre of music, underground rock paved the way for the punk rock genre by creating core values that punk rockers drew upon.
Thanks to their innovative work, recording techniques and the use of sampling, many popular artists have been affected. Like Kraftwerk, they’re also still active. Their album Violator, seventh in the order, has not only brought them probably the most fame out of every other album they‘ve made but was also named by fans as one of the top three that the band has ever created. Synth pop had been a major force in British popular music for several years, other English bands that started to release records around 1981 were Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Tears For Fears and Thompson Twins. Synth pop of these bands was different in the way that they also used other instruments in addition to the synthesiser. From Canada came Rational Youth and from Sweden came Adolphson & Falk. Other popular synth pop bands include A-ha, Men Without Hats and New Order. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestra's success opened the way for synth pop bands such as P-Model, Plastics, and Hikashu.
Crystal Castles are a goth-rave and electro-thrash duo from Toronto, Ontario made up of Ethan Kath (on synth) and Alice Glass (on vocals). The duo brings a destructive and devouring abyss of pain, regret, nihilism and noise to synth pop music. In this paper, through a focused analysis of its lyrics, its musical elements, as well as its accompanying video, I will argue that Crystal Castles’ 2010 song “Baptism” creates a nuanced musical space in which dark emotions such as revenge are juxtaposed with a bright, digital and danceable beat. Although, Alice Glass’ voice is heavily distorted and almost inaudible, I propose that the band’s decision to distort Alice’s voice aids in evoking a drowning feeling which matches the lyrics’ theme. The drowning out of Alice’s voice through electronic distortion, recalls moments of metaphorical drowning and emotional chaos that so often accompany betrayal, horror, violence and desolation.