The Wall

As Pink Floyd's concepts grew more complex, their stage show became increasingly elaborate. Concerts regularly featured slide/light shows, animated films and a giant inflated jet that crashed into the stage. But the very stage show that was considered a band hallmark was fast turning into a source of frustration for the group's lyricist and conceptual director, Roger Waters. Pink Floyd concerts, Waters felt, had lost their intimacy and power to communicate. Ironically, Water's discontent fueled the band's biggest the concept album to date, The Wall. Simply put, the complex double-album set explored the relationship, or lack of one, between the star performer and his audience.

"For me,"

explains Gilmour, "Wish You Were Here was very satisfying. I'd rather listen to it than Dark Side Of The Moon. I think we achieved a better balance of music and lyrics. 'Dark Side' went a bit too far the other way -- too much importance was placed on the lyrics. And sometimes the tunes were neglected." The 1975 sessions were also memorable for other, more bizarre, reasons: "It was the weirdest coincidence," recalls Rick Wright. "I walked into the studio and Roger was working on 'Shine On,' and I saw this big, bald guy sitting on the couch behind him. I didn't think anything of it, because strangers were always turning up in the studio in those days. And then it clicked. It was Syd -- none of us has seen him in five years. He kept getting up, brushing his teeth with a toothbrush he had in his pocket and sitting down again. After that, he just disappeared again."

The next

two Floyd albums were sketched out in several marathon sessions conducted in 1974, at which three long pieces were composed. Two of these eventually appeared as "Sheep" and "Dogs" on the 1976 Animals album; the other, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," was used as the central theme for their next release, Wish You Were Here (1975). This time the subject was personal -- the album was a song cycle dedicated to their original guiding light, Syd Barrett, whose mental illness had forced him into seclusion.

"Dark

Side Of The Moon was the first time when the music, the lyrics and the visual design all came together," says Gilmour. "And to an extent, I think it's success was problematic. You have objectives, goals and desires, and suddenly they were all achieved. We were left with that feeling of 'What do you do when you've done everything?' But I think we got over that."

Meticulously

recorded and distinctively packaged, the genuinely experimental Dark Side Of The Moon crystallized Pink Floyd's new sound and set their agenda for future albums and tours. The group established themselves as the champions of progressive rock -- and the masters of music technology. Lyrics exploring alienation, madness and death were set to intricate instrumental passages, cunning sound effects and the whir of sci-fi synthesizers. It was a formula that would serve Pink Floyd well on their next three releases: Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977) and The Wall (1979).

"Meddle was

the first real Pink Floyd album," agrees Mason. "It set a tempo, a feel and style that we liked, and it introduced the idea of the theme that can be returned to. It sounds a bit ham-fisted now, but the concept thing I like."
Dark Side Of The Moon
"The concept thing," introduced so effectively on Meddle, came to brilliant fruition on the band's very next release. Described by band members as a "meditation on the strain and stress of everyday life," Dark Side Of The Moon would sell over 28 million albums worldwide, become the third largest selling album of all time, and remain on Billboard's album chart for 15 years, eclipsing all previous records.

With Gilmour

firmly in the ranks, the band continued to explore rock's more avant-garde pastures. While subsequent albums and film soundtracks like Antonioni's Zabriskie Point expanded the band's international audience, it was 1971's Meddle and the now-legendary Dark Side Of The Moon (1973) that finally transformed Pink Floyd into a major force in contemporary music. "Meddle is really the album where all four of us were finding our feet -- the way we wanted Pink Floyd to be," says Gilmour. "Although our two previous albums, Ummagumma (1969) and Atom Heart Mother (1970) had some pointers to where we would finally go, they just aren't as important."

"Originally

, the idea wasn't to kick Syd out of the band," explains drummer Nick Mason. "We wanted to arrange something similar to what the Beach Boys were doing with Brian Wilson at the time, where we'd go out and play live, and Syd would stay home and write." But that plan was short-lived, and soon Barrett was out of the band.

"Initially, they hired me to play Syd's parts and sing his songs," elaborates Gilmour. "Nobody else wanted to sing them, so I got elected. While all this was happening, we were also trying to make Saucer Full Of Secrets. When I joined I remember thinking that they were actually a bit of a shambles, and that I could knock them into shape, because I considered myself to be a superior musician. I loved the first album, but the early gigs were pretty interminable."

David Gilmour

David Gilmour, an old school friend of the troubled guitarist, was drafted to help the band complete their second album, 1968's Saucerful of Secrets. While the Pink Floyd sound was unquestionably invented by Barrett, it was Gilmour and his lyrical, blues-based guitar work which provided the new Pink Floyd with the sonic signature that would carry them into the Seventies.

But not all

was well within the Pink Floyd camp. It soon became apparent to anyone close to the band that Syd Barrett, the band's innovative, brilliant young songwriter/singer/guitarist, was slowly losing his grip on reality. Some blamed his increasingly erratic behavior on drugs -- Barrett's LSD intake at that time was excessive by any standard. Others pointed to the general pressures of success. Whatever the cause of their leader's disintegration, by the end of 1967, the future of Pink Floyd looked bleak.

pink floyd

"We started out playing rhythm and blues, but after Syd joined the band our direction changed," recalls keyboardist Rick Wright. "The music became more improvised, which suited me because I didn't like R&B much. I was a jazz fan."

By the end of the following year, the four satin-shirted darlings of England's counter-culture became budding pop stars, scoring two British top 20 singles, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play," and a top 10 album, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.

The Early Years pink floyd

It all started in 1966, amid the psychedelic explosion then sweeping swinging London. In small, smoky clubs like the UFO and the Roundhouse, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Rick Wright galvanized the vibrant British rock scene with their extended free-form instrumentals and surreal pop songs -- all performed to the accompaniment of bobbing blobs of multi-colored liquid lights. Perhaps even more than Cream and Jimi Hendrix, the quartet known as The Pink Floyd were psychedelia personified.

While the previously

unreleased nature of these select tracks will appeal to collectors and die-hard fans, those just exploring these styles might be turned off by the rough quality of these performances. The discs span more than eight decades of music, acting as a good overview of these genres for new listeners, while Americana enthusiasts will view it as another great collection of the most influential American roots artists in music history. [Also available from Palm is a 19-song CD sampler entitled American Roots Music: Highlights and a video collection containing the entire television series on DVD and VHS.] — Zac Johnson

Much like

a broadened version of the amazing Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Boom, 1950-1970 CD set, American Roots Music has pulled together an impressive list of performers, including the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe, B.B. King, Hank Williams, Robert Johnson, Son House, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, the Staple Singers, Clifton Chenier, Flaco Jimenez, and Bob Dylan. The depth of the track selection is impressive, as is the breadth of the performers chosen. The producers have chosen to include some studio recordings, and some audio tracks taken from the film archives, making for a somewhat uneven sound quality.

The successes

of the breakthrough soundtrack from the film O Brother Where Art Thou? and the in-depth PBS television series Ken Burns' Jazz seem to have combined in the 2001 production of Palm Pictures' four-part TV series American Roots Music. The series touches on the development of the distinctly American styles of traditional folk, country, blues, gospel, Western swing, bluegrass, cajun, zydeco, Tejano, and Native American music. Corresponding with the television event, Palm has released a four-CD box set soundtrack with a 48-page booklet covering the styles covered during the show.

The Everly Brothers

The Everly Brothers have had a total of 26 Billboard Top 40 singles. In 1986 they were among the first 10 artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and they were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001. The Everly Brothers have a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7000 Hollywood Blvd. They still perform regularly as a duo around the world.

...

In addition, their approach to harmony singing influenced nearly every rock and roll group of the 1960s.
The duo broke up in 1973, but reformed in 1983 with a new album produced by Paul McCartney and Dave Edmunds. "On The Wings Of A Nightingale" became a hit single in both the US and UK.

...

With soft, mainly acoustic guitar backing, sweet close-harmony vocals, non-threatening lyrics, and clean-cut white faces, the Everly Brothers were, in their heyday, never perceived as a threat to society, as were performers such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard; they are one of rock and roll music's most important acts because their music, while arguably containing just as much subversion and sexual tension as that of many another group, helped bridge the gap between rock and country music in a way that appealed to fans of both genres.

...

at the time somewhat under-appreciated (and currently unavailable on CD) but now considered one of their best efforts. In 1967 they had a hit single, "Bowling Green," and in 1968 they recorded another album now regarded as a classic, Roots, which featured their own compositions alongside songs by Randy Newman and others. In short, their mid- and late-'60s material is considered by many critics and listeners to compare favorably to that done by the Beatles and the Byrds.

Records, they continued to have hits, such as 1960's "Cathy's Clown" and "The Ferris Wheel" (from 1964), but the years after 1962 saw the Everly Brothers become less commercially viable than before even as they became artistically more accomplished. Following the British Invasion, Everly Brothers recordings like "I'll See Your Light" and "It Only Costs a Dime" (both 1965) began to reflect many of the changes in popular music they had, with their earlier work, put into motion; they recorded, with members of the Hollies contributing songs such as "So Lonely" and "Don't Run and Hide," a classic album entitled Two Yanks in England (1966).

cont...

They had a hit with the single "Claudette," written by Roy Orbison (Claudette was the name of Roy's wife. Later she died in a motorcycle accident.) Working with the Bryants, the harmonic duo had a number of hits in the USA and the UK, the biggest of which were "Wake Up Little Susie," "(All I Have to Do Is) Dream," and "Bird Dog." In 1960, when they signed with Warner Bros.

...

However their next single, "Bye Bye Love," (which had been rejected by 30 other acts, including Elvis Presley) became an across-the-board smash, reaching #2 on the pop charts, and #1 on both the Country, and the R & B charts. The song, written by the songwriting husband and wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant , became their first million-seller. They soon became known as the stalwarts of Archie Bleyer's Cadence Records label.

2

However their next single, "Bye Bye Love," (which had been rejected by 30 other acts, including Elvis Presley) became an across-the-board smash, reaching #2 on the pop charts, and #1 on both the Country, and the R & B charts. The song, written by the songwriting husband and wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant , became their first million-seller. They soon became known as the stalwarts of Archie Bleyer's Cadence Records label.

everly br. 1

Don (born Isaac Donald Everly February 1, 1937 in Brownie, a small coal-mining town (now defunct) near Central City, Muhlenberg County, Kentucky) and Phil Everly (born Philip Everly January 18, 1939 in Chicago, Illinois) are country-influenced rock and roll performers who had their greatest success in the 1950s.The sons of two Kentucky country musicians, The Everly Brothers recorded their first single, "Keep A' Lovin' Me, " in 1956, under the aegis of Chet Atkins, but it flopped.

Chubby Checker

f course, "The Twist" is included; it's the song that went to #1 on the charts in two different years - 1961 and 1962 - a feat unprecedented and never repeated in Billboard chart history. Chubby's other dance hits that are all here including "The Hucklebuck," "Pony Time," "The Fly," "Limbo Rock," and of course, "Let's Twist Again." Duets with labelmates Dee Dee Sharp ("Slow Twistin'") and Bobby Rydell ("Jingle Bell Rock") are also among the 24 tracks that comprise The Best Of Chubby Checker.

jon b

Songwriter, producer, vocalist, and instrumentalist Jon B. brings a distinctive focus on smooth melodies to contemporary R&B. Proficient on keyboards, guitar, bass, and drums, he wrote and produced songs for such rap music legends as Toni Braxton, After 7, and Color Me Badd. Born in Rhode Island and raised in California, Jon B. was the son of a professor of music and a concert pianist. Influenced by music found in his grandparents' record store, he began combining '70s soul with '90s hip-hop on his 1995 debut album, Bonafide. It sold more than one million copies and went gold. His second album, 1997's Cool Relax, continued the emphasis on classic hip-hop soul. He continued entertaining audiences, with several concert tours throughout the world. Aside from personal performances, he writes for popular artists including Toni Braxton and the rap group Az Yet. In the new millennium, Jon B. returned to form for a third record. Pleasures U Like was issued in spring 2001. ~ Kim Summers, All Music Guide