#indian best drummer

[gaijin-fujin-resonance]

TIKI TIKI BOOM

I was trying to remember the last time I stayed up until midnight to buy or listen to a new album. Honestly, not since 1997? I certainly never have during the streaming age. And yet the night before Subrosa was released, I set my alarm clock for 23:55 and put on a pair of sleep headphones to listen, the second that it became available in my time zone.

Half asleep, face mashed against my pillow, TIKI TIKI BOOM was probably my single most instantaneous “OMG I LOVE THIS!” reaction of overwhelming aural buzz from the whole album. Just a straight blast of pure Imai serotonin joy. It’s just sheer bubblegum bliss, one of those songs that scratches an itch you didn’t even know you had until you find yourself listening to it 20 times in a row.

What is it with this song? With my music journo head, I’m aware that it’s such a silly little snippet. Musically, it’s hardly there. It’s just one chord all the way through the whole verse. There’s barely a melody. Even the chorus only adds suspended harmonies, rather than actually shifting to a different chord. Yet it's that stompy, swaying RHYTHM that lights up my pleasure receptors like a flight control deck!

The beat is basically Diwali Riddim, a Dancehall backing track originally derived from a brief snippet of Indian handclaps. The full album will likely drive you insane (I had a former flatmate who used to play it on repeat, so it is burned into my brain) but probably the most successful pop song based off it was Lumidee’s Never Leave You. It’s just such an irresistible dance beat that you could basically recite a shopping list over the top of it, and still fill a dancefloor.

The track starts with a bouncing bass, and an electronic whistle like a radio tuning in, then it’s just one hammered chord and that irresistible beat. And over this tight tension, Imai drizzles one of his signature tongue-twister raps. Honestly, Imai’s singing voice has always been far more about personality than technique, but his sense of flow is undeniable. His quicksilver words tumble out like slippery fish, evocative of the playful wordplay of Mona Lisa - the same burst of surreal rebel imagery wrapped up in doublets and triplets, filled with clever rhyming, consonance and assonance.

The sonic landscape really rewards close listens - although it may sound like a simple march of drums and distorted bass, there are so many bursts of slithering insect noises, machine gun samples and gorgeously grating groans of industrial gears woven through the propulsive beat. The chorus is an absurdly catchy nursery rhyme nonsense with a cute story behind it: Yokoyama-san revealed that the “Tiki tiki boom” riff was originally just a temporary vocal filler on Imai's demo before he wrote proper words. But since the manipulator loved it so much that he sampled it to use it for a rhythm loop, Imai decided to keep it as the main riff.

There’s an instrumental break around 2:00 where Imai just throws all of his weird space noises, industrial samples and mechanical squeaks and groans into the mix, panned playfully about the stereo field. And then it gives way to a heavily flanged-out 3-note guitar solo, scratching away like an infected mosquito bite. It took me ages to work out what it reminded me of: I Hate Pretending by Secret Machines.

I would be surprised if Imai had ever heard of the psychedelic Texan space-rockers, but (the sadly missed) Benjamin Curtis was one of the few American guitarists I ever witnessed who could match the sheer freeform inventiveness of Imai’s distinctive heavily-processed, melodic-noize guitar style. (That band also had a classic rock-obsessed drummer who Toll would probably really appreciate, too.)

Best moment: around 2:36, at the end of the break, where all the instruments drop out, there’s a sudden sample of a deep, pitch-shifted “TIKI TIKI BOOM!” which flies across the stereo field from left to right like a hand grenade. It’s so silly, and yet so absurdly satisfying.

[talesfromcordonia]

Books fully body female sprites are seen in

Some sprites are used in multiple books, here’s a list of them. No LI or MC sprites are listed here as they are generally not reused.

All sprites can be found here.

Please note the names listed here are based on the PB file names.

Full body sprites are listed in these posts - Female - Male - Ambiguous - Children/Teens/Young Adult - Period Costume. Half body sprites are listed in this post. Non Human sprites are listed in this post. Animal Sprites are listed in this post.

This post is not complete and will be updated as each sprite is added

Adventurous Ambiguous Female FireFighter

Hot Couture, Surrender

This is a version of Beautiful Ambiguous Dancer (F)

Alert Asian Female EMT

Big Sky Country, Open Heart, Rising Tides, Wishful Thinking, With Every Heartbeat

This is a version of Futuristic White Female Guard & Mean Asian Female Cop

Ambitious Indian Mother

Foreign Affairs, High School Story: Class Act, Laws Of Attraction, Mother Of The Year, Open Heart, The Elementalists, The Nanny Affair, With Every Heartbeat

Amicable White Female Nurse

Baby Bump, My Two First Loves, Open Heart, The Nanny Affair, With Every Heartbeat

Arrogant Black Sister

Open Heart, Platinum, Sunkissed, The Nanny Affair, The Royal Romance, Veil Of Secrets

Attractive Asian Female Actress

Laws Of Attraction, Queen B

Aunt Hispanic

The Royal Romance (Bianca), With Every Heartbeat

Badass Female SouthEast Asian Raider

Wake The Dead (Sledge)

This is a redraw of

Beautiful Ambiguous Dancer

BloodBound (Serafine), Foreign Affairs, Queen B

This is a version of Adventurous Ambiguous Female FireFighter (F)

Boho Ambiguous Female Contestant

America’s Most Eligible (Teagan), Platinum, Save The Date, Untameable, Wolf Bride

Calm Black Female Athlete

All Of Us, Alpha, Getaway Girls, High School Story: Class Act, Immortal Desires, The Royal Romance

Caring Ambiguous Mother

A Very Scandalous Proposal,  Laws Of Attraction, Save The Date, Sunkissed

Charming Asian Actress

Foreign Affair, Open Heart, Save The Date, The Nanny Affair

Charming Asian Female Judge

America’s Most Eligible (Penny), Foreign Affair, Laws Of Attraction, Open Heart, The Nanny Affair

Charming Asian Gamer

All Of Us, America's Most Eligible, Foreign Affairs, Queen B, The Ghost Of Us

Chic Hispanic Housewife

The Nanny Affair

Competitive Black Female Reporter

Platinum, Rising Tides, The Royal Romance, Wishful Thinking (Ellen Thompson), Witness: A Bodyguard Romance

This is a redraw of Tough Black Female Raider (F)

Confident Arabic Priestess

A Courtesan Of Rome

Confident Black Female Chief

Open Heart (Dr Emery), With Every Heartbeat

Confident Black Female Teacher

Queen B

This is a redraw of Excited Black Female Professor (H)

Conservative White Tech Mother

The Nanny Affair

Daunting Black Female Model

Foreign Affair, Hot Couture, The Nanny Affair

Dignified Ambiguous Mother Young

Baby Bump, The Royal Romance

This is a redraw of Dignified Ambiguous Mother (H) & Sweet Ambiguous Mother (F)

Drained White Female Prisoner

Wake The Dead, Wolf Bride

Eccentric Black Female eGirl

All of Us, Kindred, Queen B, Roommates With Benefits

Eclectic Hispanic Female Shopowner

All Of Us, Kindred, Plus One

Excited Hispanic Female Resident

High School Story: Class Act, Open Heart, Wake The Dead

Fashionable Asian Female Friend

The Nanny Affair (Jenny)

This is a redraw of

Flirty Ambiguous Female Best Friend

Baby Bump, Hot Couture, Ms Match, Night Bound, Save the Date, With Every Heartbeat

Flirty Hispanic Assistant Female

Baby Bump, Laws Of Attraction, The Nanny Affair (Robin)

Focused Camera Woman

Baby Bump, Big Sky Country, Open Heart, Platinum, Rising Tides

Friendly Ambiguous Female Dominant

Surrender

Friendly Arabic Lady

A Courtesan Of Rome

Friendly Asian Female Wilderness Guide

Laws Of Attraction, Shipwrecked

Friendly Hispanic Female Attending

Open Heart, The Royal Romance, With Every Heartbeat

Friendly Hispanic Female Drummer

All Of Us, Alpha, Red Carpet Diaries, Roommates with Benefits, The Freshman Series, The Royal Romance

Friendly Hispanic Female Dialect Coach

Bachelorette Party, Mother Of The Year, Open Heart, Red Carpet Diaries, Save The Date, With Every Heartbeat

Friendly Hispanic Female Patient

Baby Bump, Big Sky Country, BloodBound, My Two First Loves, Open Heart, Rising Tides

Friendly MiddleEastern Mother

High School Story: Class Act, Hot Couture, Laws Of Attraction, With Every Heartbeat

Friendly White Female Flight Attendant

High School Story: Class Act, Passport To Romance, Open Heart, Red Carpet Diaries, The Nanny Affair

This is a redraw of Friendly White Bartender (H) & Postal Clerk White (F)

Futuristic White Female Guard

Bachelorette Party, BloodBound, Night Bound, Perfect Match, The Royal Romance, ShipWrecked, Wake The Dead, Witness: A Bodyguard Romance

This is a version of Alert Asian Female EMT (F) & Mean Asian Female Cop (F)

Injured Ambiguous Female Stranger

Open Heart, Wake The Dead

Insincere Wife

Surrender

Intimidating Arabic Female Executive

Slow Burn

This is a version of Outgoing Arabic Female Partyer (F) & Seductive Female Arabic Empress (F)

Intimidating Asian Female Smuggler

Shipwrecked

Jealous Native American Female Leader

Wolf Bride

Mean Asian Female Cop

Baby Bump, My Two First Loves, Queen B, Ride Or Die, Surrender

This is a version of Futuristic White Female Guard (F) & Alert Asian Female EMT (F)

Mischievous Ambiguous Female Witch

Ms Match, Night Bound, Queen B

Mother Black Conservative Tech/Generous/Trustworthy

My Two First Loves, Rising Tides, Slow Burn, The Nanny Affair, With Every Heartbeat

Mother Asian Generous/Trustworthy

Rising Tides, With Every Heartbeat

Mother Asian Powerful

Foreign Affairs

This is a redraw of Strict Asian Secretary (F), Trainer Scientist Female Asian (F) & Serious Asian Executive (H)

Mother Black Friendly

All Of Us, Along Came Treble, Big Sky Country, Getaway Girls, Immortal Desires, Laws Of Attraction, Miss Match, My Two First Love, Open Heart, Prefect Match, Plus One

Mother Hispanic Conservative Tech

The Nanny Affair

Mother Hispanic Generous/Trustworthy

High School Story: Class Act, Rising Tides, With Every Heartbeat

Mother White Generous/Trustworthy

Queen B, Murder At Homecoming, Rising Tides, Wake The Dead, With Every Heartbeat

This is a redraw of Supportive White Mother 

Muscular Female Asian Female Builder

Wake The Dead

This is a redraw of Strict Asian Female Dean

Mysterious Black Female Broker

The Heist: Monaco, The Nanny Affair

This is a redraw of Stern Black Female Judge

Mysterious White Female Busker

Baby Bump, BloodBound, High School Story: Class Act, Hot Couture, Night Bound, Perfect Match, Platinum, Red Carpet Diaries, Ride Or Die, Save The Date, The Freshman Series, Wishful Thinking

This is a redraw of Nice White Female Hippie 

Nice White Female Hippie

America’s Most Eligible, Big Sky Country, Hot Couture Red Carpet Diaries, Rising Tides, The Elementalists, The Unexpected Heiress, Wake The Dead, Wolf Bride

This is a redraw of Mysterious White Female Busker (F)

Nurse Black Female Amicable/Attentive

Baby Bump, Big Sky Country, High School Story: Class Act, My Two First Loves, Open Heart, Red Carpet Diaries, The Heist Monaco, With Every Heartbeat

Outgoing Arabic Female Partyer

America’s Most Eligible (Lina), BloodBound, Crimes Of Passion, Hot Couture, Platinum, Queen B, Save The Date, Witness: A Bodyguard Romance

This is a redraw of Seductive Female Arabic Empress (F) & Intimidating Arabic Female Executive (F)

Persistant Black Female Reporter

All of Us, Along Came Treble, Laws Of Attraction, Unbreakable

Postal Clerk White Female

Big Sky Country, Mother Of The Year, Open Heart, Passport To Romance, Queen B, Rising Tides, Save The Date, The Elementalist, The Heist: Monaco

This is a version of Friendly White Bartender (H) & Friendly White Flight Attendant (F)

Pragmatic Black Female Boss

All of Us

Pregnant Black Female Friend

Wolf Bride

Productive Hispanic Female Assistant

All Of Us, Guarded

This is a redraw of Shy Hispanic Female Student

Protective Asian Sister (+Zombie version)

Wake The Dead (Brynn)

Protective Black Sister (+Zombie version)

Wake The Dead (Brynn)

Protective Hispanic Sister (+Zombie version)

Wake The Dead (Brynn)

Protective White Sister (+Zombie version)

Wake The Dead (Brynn)

Public Relations Black Female

The Nanny Affair

Radio Stern Female Cop

Witness: A Bodyguard Romance

Rich White Female Fiancee

Ms Match, The Nanny Affair (Sofia)

Rough White Female Blacksmith

Blades Of Light And Shadow, Wake The Dead

Rude White Female Business Woman

All Of Us, Terror Fest, Unbreakable

Seductive Female Arabic Empress

Bachelorette Party

This is a redraw of Outgoing Arabic Female Partyer (F) & Intimidating Arabic Female Executive

Sensitive Hispanic Female Girlfriend

All Of Us, First Comes Love, Plus One

Serious Ambiguous Female Restauranteur

Slow Burn

This is a redraw of

Serious Hispanic Cowgirl

Big Sky Country, Untameable, Wake The Dead

This is a redraw of

Serious Hispanic Queen

A Very Scandalous Proposal, Baby Bump, Hot Couture, Ms Match, Open Heart, Platinum, Queen B, Slow Burn, The Nanny Affair, The Royal Romance

Serious Hispanic Goth

All Of Us, Along Came Treble, BloodBound, Kindred, Platinum, Queen B, Rising Tides

Serious White Female Executive

Baby Bump, BloodBound, Laws Of Attraction, Night Bound, Open Heart, Perfect Match, Platinum, Rising Tides, Slow Burn

This is a redraw of Upbeat Indian Woman (H)

Serious White Female Resident

Big Sky Country, Mother Of The Year, Open Heart, The Royal Romance, Wake The Dead, Wolf Bride

Service Agent White Female

Foreign Affairs, Hot Couture, Passport To Romance, Perfect Match, The Royal Romance, Wishful Thinking

Scientist Female Asian

Open Heart, Perfect Match, Wishful Thinking

Smug Rebellious Ambiguous Female

All Of Us, Crimes of Passion, Plus One

Sneaky Paparazzi Black Female

Foreign Affairs, Slow Burn, The Nanny Affair

Snobby White Female + Makeover

All Of Us, Dirty Little Secrets

Snobby White Matriarch

A Very Scandalous Proposal, Big Sky Country, Mother Of The Year, Open Heart, Passport To Romance, The Elementalists, The Nanny Affair, The Royal Romance (Lucretia Nevrakis)

Snooty White Housewife

The Nanny Affair

Staunch South Asian Female Sister

All of Us, Filthy Rich, The Ghost Of Us, Years Apart

Starving Indian Female Prisoner

Blades Of Light And Shadow, Wake The Dead

Stern Ambiguous Female EMT Supervisor

Open Heart, With Every Heartbeat, Witness: A Bodyguard Romance

Stern Black Female Judge

Laws Of Attraction, Mother Of the Year, The Freshman Series, Veil of Secrets, Witness: A Bodyguard Romance

The same face is used for the sprite Mysterious Black Female Broker (f)

Stern Ambiguous Female Priest

Blades Of Light And Shadow

Strict Asian Female Dean

Foreign Affairs, The Nanny Affair

This is a redraw of Muscular Female Asian Builder

Strict Asian Female Secretary

America’s Most Eligible, Big Sky Country, Hot Couture, Passport To Romance, Perfect Match, Platinum, Red Carpet Diaries, Ride Or Die, Rising Tides, The Freshman Series, The Heist: Monaco, The Royal Romance

This is a redraw of Mother Asian Powerful (F), Trainer Scientist Asian Female (F) & Serious Asian Executive (H)

Strict Middle Eastern Female Manager

All Of Us

Strong Ambiguous Female Trooper

Bloodbound

Sweet Ambiguous Female Doctor

Baby Bump, Hot Couture, Open Heart

This is a version of

Sweet Ambiguous Mother

America’s Most Eligible, Baby Bump, My Two First Loves, Open Heart

This is a redraw of Dignified Ambiguous Mother (H) & Dignified Ambiguous Mother Young (F)

Tough Black Female Raider

BloodBound, Wake The Dead

This is a redraw of Competitive Black Female Reporter (F)

Tough Hispanic Female Driver

Bachelorette Party, Save The Date, Witness: A Bodyguard Romance

Tough Hispanic Female Welder

Wake The Dead

This is a redraw of

Trainer Scientist Asian Female

Open Heart, Perfect Match, Shipwrecked, Wishful Thinking

This is a redraw of Strict Asian Secretary, Mother Asian Powerful & Serious Asian Executive 

Trendy Black Girlfriend v1 & v2

Baby Bump (v2), Mother Of The Year (v1 & v2), Sunkissed (v1), Wolf Bride (v1)

Unkind Ambiguous Female Ex

Crimes Of Passion, Foreign Affairs, Open Heart, Save The Date

Upbeat Indian Female Resident

Open Heart, With Every Heartbeat

Vain Ambiguous Mother

America’s Most Eligible, Baby Bump, Open Heart

Wealthy Ambiguous Female Daughter

A Very Scandalous Proposal, The Heist: Monaco, Hot Couture, Queen B, Save The Date, Slow Burn, The Royal Romance

Wise White Female Elder

Wolf Bride

Youthful Black Female Friend

Surrender

[astrophysicist-guitar-god]

'Freddie Mercury felt like a god. Then he started behaving like one,' by the man who signed Queen

By NORMAN J SHEFFIELD, Founder of Trident Studios where Queen first recorded // PUBLISHED: 17:00 EDT, 20 July 2013 | UPDATED: 17:16 EDT, 20 July 2013 (x)

NORMAN J SHEFFIELD on the amazing story of how one of Britain's best loved rock bands made it big

Freddie Mercury used to say there was no question in his mind that Queen would be a success

I was sitting in my office one day in 1971 when I got a call from my brother Barry down in the studio.

‘Norman, come down and have a listen to something,’ he said.

John Anthony, Trident’s A&R man, had discovered a band called Smile.

At the start, the lead guitarist was an astrophysics student from Imperial College called Brian May, the bassist and singer was an art student called Tim Staffell, and the drummer was a biology student called Roger Taylor.

It turned out that they’d now reshaped the band.

Staffell had been replaced by this little Indian-looking guy with a big, operatic voice and they had a new bass player.

John had asked for their demo. It was raw but there was definitely something there. I’d opened Trident Studios in 1968 in Soho.

Its cutting-edge facilities and happening vibe were attracting the greatest talents of the era, from The Beatles and Elton John to David Bowie and Marc Bolan.

The four guys who came into my office a couple of weeks later were an intriguing mix of characters.

Roger Taylor was a really good-looking kid, with long blond hair and charm. Brian May was tall with a mane of curls and a little introverted but clearly very intelligent. The bass player, John Deacon, was also quiet. I could tell right away that the fourth member was going to be high maintenance.

His real name was Farokh Bulsara. He was born in Zanzibar and educated in India. The family had immigrated to England when he was a teenager. He’d gone to Ealing Art College to study art and graphic design. He was also a gifted singer and pianist.

When he joined the band, he immediately gave himself a more rock ’n’ roll name: Freddie Mercury.

He was charming, acted a bit shy and reserved at times and spoke in quite a posh, mannered voice. When he relaxed he had a very sharp sense of humour and spoke at a hundred miles an hour.

Queen turned out to be every bit as good - and demanding - as we'd anticipated. Things had to be one hundred per cent right, otherwise they wouldn't be happy

They’d rightly decided to ditch Smile as their name. I nearly choked on my coffee when I heard their new one: Queen. The world wasn’t as enlightened then as it is today.

We were worried that it would be a real turn-off, especially given the band’s look. Freddie apparently had a girlfriend but we were pretty certain he was gay.

But the name wasn’t up for negotiation. I agreed to offer the Queenies, as we christened them, a loose kind of arrangement. There were times when the studio was ‘dark’, usually at 2am. So we said: ‘We’ll give you this downtime in the studio to see what you can do.’

They turned out to be every bit as good – and demanding – as we’d anticipated. Things had to be one hundred per cent right, otherwise they wouldn’t be happy. They’d spend days and nights working on the harmonies.

Arguments would start about the tiniest little detail. They’d start screaming, shouting and chucking things. Sometimes it would blow over in a few minutes, but at other times they would stew on it, not talking to each other for a day or two. They’d always sort it out, however. It wasn’t personal, it was about the work.

The more adulation Freddie received on stage, the harder he became to work with offstage

Freddie used to say there was no question in his mind that Queen would be a success.

‘There was never a doubt, darling, never,’ he’d say with an imperious wave of his hand.

The title of their first album was simply Queen.

Another suggestion had been Dearie Me, Freddie’s catchphrase, which was quite funny but the band were a hard enough sell as it was.

They spent ages arguing about the album sleeve. The front cover was a single image of Freddie on stage, with two spotlights in the background.

For the back cover the boys put together a collage of snaps of themselves.

Freddie had driven everyone to distraction fretting over whether he looked ‘gorgeous enough’ in them.

By the end of the year they were on the road with Mott the Hoople, but Queen were getting more encores and bigger cheers than the headliners.

They were due to go to Australia for a gig when Brian suddenly developed a really high fever. His arm had swollen up to the size of a football and doctors diagnosed gangrene.

At one point it was touch and go whether he would lose it. Luckily the crisis eased and he was allowed to fly.

However, the gig was a disaster. The local DJ introducing them had clearly taken against them because he introduced them as ‘stuck-up Pommies’. When they got on stage, the crowd turned against them, too.

The boys were mightily relieved when they got on a plane back to London. For some bizarre reason, the British press had been tipped off that Her Majesty the Queen was arriving at Heathrow. So when they saw four knackered musicians emerging through Customs, they weren’t too happy.

On their first tour of America, Brian’s health was deteriorating. Our worst fears were confirmed when doctors announced he had hepatitis.

The rest of the tour had to be cancelled. It was a disaster, professionally and personally. Then, when they came back to London in August, he had to have an emergency operation for an ulcer.

The opening track on A Night At The Opera attacked their management

But on October 11, 1974, EMI put out Killer Queen, from their third album, Sheer Heart Attack.

Within weeks it had given the boys the thing they’d most wanted – a No. 1 single.

As Queen hit the road again, this time as a headline act in their own right, it was clear they were on the verge of major success.

But the more adulation Freddie received on stage, the harder he became to work with offstage.

The tour came to an end at the famous Rainbow Theatre in London. The day before the gig, Freddie was being even more pedantic than usual.

‘Oh, stop being such a tart, Freddie,’ Brian said.

Freddie was outraged. He tossed back his head, waved his arms and stormed off in a strop.

When it was time for the soundcheck, Brian turned the mic on.

‘Freddiepoos, where are you?’ he shouted.

Freddie appeared immediately with a face like thunder. He flounced on stage, gave Brian a vicious look and then just got on with it. That’s what they always did.

In 1975 they went to Japan and found 3,000 fans waiting for them, all chanting the band’s name. It was like Beatlemania. Freddie had finally found the acclaim he’d craved all his life. He felt like a god. Unfortunately, he soon started behaving like one, too.

The more successful they became, the more agitated Queen had grown about money. One of the most heated rows came when John got married. In the run-up to the wedding he announced he wanted me to spring £10,000 (about £90,000 in 2013 values) for him to buy a house. I didn’t react too well.

Then Freddie demanded a grand piano. When I turned him down, he  banged his fist on my desk. ‘I have to get a grand piano,’ he said.

Norman J Sheffield: By the time I realised things were badly wrong it was too late

I wasn’t being mean. We knew there was a huge amount of money due to come flooding our way from Queen’s success. I explained that some of it was already coming in but the vast majority of it hadn’t arrived yet.

‘But we’re stars. We’re selling millions of records,’ Freddie said.

‘And I’m still living in the same flat I’ve been in for the past three years.’

The amount of money we’d invested in the band was huge.

We’d advanced them equipment and salaries right at the beginning and had continued to pour money into them for four years.

The fact the band owed Trident close to £200,000 (£1.75 million today) didn’t seem to register with Freddie.

I can remember the conversation.

‘The money will come in December,’ I said. ‘So wait.’

Then came a phrase he would make famous around the world in years to come, although no one would have known where it was born.

Freddie stamped his feet and raised his voice: ‘No, I am not prepared to wait any longer. I want it all. I want it now.’

By late 1975 I was hearing that they were making all sorts of derogatory comments about Trident.

Then I heard a track from A Night At The Opera called Death On Two Legs. The opening two lines summed up what was to come.

‘You suck my blood like a leech/you break the law and you breach’, then, ‘Do you feel like suicide?’ it went on, ‘I think that you should’. It was some kind of nasty hate mail from Freddie to me.

Soon Bohemian Rhapsody roared to the top of the UK charts and stayed there for nine weeks. A bittersweet moment, it came as news was beginning to leak that we had split from Queen.

We should have talked more. And I should have been more attentive to their feelings. By the time I realised things were badly wrong, it was too late.

In March 1977 the company settled with the band for the sale of all of its future rights, the rights to the old albums and the settlement of the management debt.

Freddie’s dream finally came true and he became a very wealthy man. When he died, no one was sadder than me. He may have been a monster to deal with, but he was also a genius.

I did see him once, in the years following our fallout, in 1986, when I took the family to their Knebworth concert. He was friendly, as if the rows of the past were forgotten. It turned out to be their last live concert, which meant I was at their first and last.

Years later, after his death, I went to the Freddie Mercury Memorial Concert at Wembley, where I saw the three remaining members being photographed.

John Deacon pointed at me and said: ‘And if it hadn’t been for that man we wouldn’t be here.’

Brian and Roger looked at me and nodded. That gesture went a long way towards exorcising the ghosts of the past. 

(Extracted from ‘Life On Two Legs: Set The Record Straight’ by Norman J Sheffield, out now and online from Amazon and in bookshops priced £14.95 for paperback, £7.49 for Kindle.

A limited-edition hardback is also available at £24.95. For more images, visit facebook.com/lifeontwolegs)

[kulturegroupie]

October 16, 1972: Page, Plant and the Indian jam lost to history

It was a slow Monday in October 1972, and the Slip Disc nightclub in Mumbai could hardly be described as “jumping”.

Around 10 people were in the venue, which was the hangout for the city’s nascent rock scene. Slip Disc measured just 30 by 18 feet, with a third of its floor-space taken up by a stage and DJ booth.

That night, three strangers walked in. They were long-haired Westerners who’d just been refused entry into Blow Up, a far more staid nightclub underneath the grand waterfront Taj Mahal Hotel where they were staying.

Madhukar Dhas, aka Madoo, the singer in Indian psychedelic rock band Atomic Forest, was in Slip Disc that evening. “We didn’t recognise them as they walked in,” Dhas, now 72, tells me. “I thought, ‘Who are these guys?’”. But a second glance changed all that. “I thought, ‘Oh shoot. It’s Led Zeppelin.’”

Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were the singer and guitarist in arguably the world’s biggest band. The Zeppelin members were en route home from a tour of Japan, which itself was part of a vast global tour to promote Led Zeppelin IV, their career-high album.

That year, the band had already played to hundreds of thousands of delirious fans from Tucson to Tokyo, and here were Page and Plant – along with tour manager Richard Cole – in a broom-cupboard dive-bar in downtown Mumbai. Not only that, but Atomic Forest and a handful of other Indian rock bands had made a career out of playing covers of Zeppelin, Stones and Jethro Tull tracks. These men were living legends. And they were now in their midst.

What happened next must rank as one of the more extraordinary “I was there” moments in rock history. It also yielded one of music’s most tantalising lost bootlegs. The evening had a broader cultural significance too. In the retelling and the myth-making that accompanied that night, the events at Slip Disc played a role in establishing Western rock ’n’ roll music in India.

As soon as Page, Plant and Cole arrived at the venue and sat down, it was clear to everyone who they were. Slip Disc’s owner, a man called Ramzan, sent over bottles of local beer: it had no head and glistened with what Dhas said looked like soap bubbles. The trio drank. “They were getting tipsy,” Dhas remembers, “but there was no entertainment. A band was there but it wasn’t their time to play. So this guy Ramzan comes to me and says, ‘Come on, sing!’”

Then just 22 years old, Dhas froze with nerves, telling the owner that his band wasn’t contracted to sing at Slip Disc. “I said, ‘It’s Robert Plant, I can’t sing in front of him.’ [Ramzan] dug his nails into my ribs and said, ‘Go sing, you bastard.’ He was desperate. So I thought, ‘What the hell.’”

Dhas took to the stage with a band comprising a musician called Willie on guitar and a drummer called Jamal (possibly from the band Velvett Fogg). Some reports suggest that the bassist with local band Human Bondage, a man called Xerxes Gobhai, also played. They’d never rehearsed together. After a brief conflab, the group launched into Honky Tonk Woman by the Stones, Dhas doing his best to channel Mick Jagger’s manic energy as one of the world’s greatest rock vocalists sat within spitting distance.

“Plant was about six feet away,” he says. “Jimmy Page was probably 10 feet away. They were enjoying themselves.” He dared to catch Plant’s eye. “Robert Plant gave me the thumbs-up. I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ It was the highlight of my musical career.”

As Madooo sang, word seeped onto the street about the VIPs in Slip Disc. The venue started to fill up. By the time the Stones cover was over, the crowd had swollen to around 50 people – or full capacity. The audience turned their attention to the Zeppelin men swigging beer. A chant of “Jam, jam, jam!” slowly filled the venue.

To everyone’s surprise, Page and Plant stood and walked to the stage. A frantic few minutes followed, as Cole tried to get the best possible sound from the amps and Page found that one of the guitars had been strung with piano strings. “You could only get what was available,” Dhas says. Ironically, Page and Plant had an aircraft full of the most expensive and cutting-edge musical equipment at the airport, but customs officials were refusing to release it. They tuned up and played.

Precise recollections of the impromptu set-list vary. It was recorded by Slip Disc’s resident DJ, Arul Harris, but the whereabouts of the only tape remain unknown. According to Dhas, Page and Plant started with a bluesy ad-lib about turning up at Blow Up, the club under the Taj, and not being allowed in. They had apparently gone to the club in traditional dress – kurta tops and Kolhapuri chappal shoes – and the doorman had dismissed them as hippies. By the time they arrived at Slip Disc, they had changed into Western clothes.

Plant sang in his distinctive high voice, with his trademark vocal stammer: ‘I was walking down / And the man wouldn’t let me in / The m-m-mmmmaaan…’ Meanwhile, Dhas remembers, the “dumbfounded” rhythm section tried their best to join in. After about ten minutes of the Blow Up jam, the band segued into Whole Lotta Love from 1969’s Led Zeppelin II. The crowd went predictably wild, although Dhas found himself with a job to do.

The microphone that Plant was using was called an Ahuja mic. It was the only type available in India at the time, and it was screwed onto its stand, unlike the handheld ones that Plant was used to yanking away. As the singer tried to untwist the microphone, its connection with the cable loosened, and his voice cut in and out. Dhas dashed forward to hold the cable close to the mic so it made a connection. He recalls: “I was literally six inches from [Plant’s] face when he was screaming ‘Loooooove’. I was deaf for about two hours after that. That high-pitched voice right into my right ear – oh boy.”

Others who were present have recalled the band starting with Rock and Roll and ending with Black Dog, with the Blow Up jam happening in the middle. Either way, Page and Plant played for just under half an hour. As the cheers faded, Plant promised the pair would return the following evening. “We listen to you, you listen to us, we’re all one in this music,” he is reported to have said.

They returned the next day as promised, only to find the world and his wife at Slip Disc, many with cameras. Page and Plant hated it, staying for around 10 minutes only. Dhas says it was a “fiasco”: “When the crowd turned up they became these rock stars again.”

Plant has acknowledged the role that the night played in spawning rock in India:

“Jimmy and I played in a club in Bombay in 1972,” the singer said in 2012. “Somehow or other we ended up in there with loads and loads of illicit substances. Some guy is writing a book about rock in India – and apparently it was born in this club, with Page and I wired out of our faces.” (He also recalled playing the drums, something other accounts don’t mention.)

In 1981, Plant appeared as a guest on New York’s WNEW 102.7FM rock radio station. Dhas was having a martini with his wife when they heard the show, and he decided to ring in. “I kept calling, and my wife said, ‘Forget about it, you’re not going to get through.’ I said, ‘No. Where there’s a will there’s a way’, and I kept on trying.” He eventually got through, telling the receptionist: “I’d like to say a word to Robert Plant. I am a guy from India, and we jammed.’”

The disbelieving receptionist hung up. But Dhas rang back on a different number and suggested they run his story by Plant. They did, and eventually the Led Zeppelin singer came on the line. “He remembered the night with fondness,” Dhas says.

The sheer joy of the Slip Disc jam is still present in Dhas’s retelling. Plant’s voice may have stopped ringing in his ear – but the memory of that Monday night in October on the Mumbai waterfront lives on.

[singeratlarge]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Red Allen, Al Bowlly, Iona Brown, Nicolas Cage, Marshall Chapman, Katie Couric, Dave Cousins, Dustin Diamond, Millard Fillmore, Five for Fighting, Gerónimo Baqueiro Foster, Juan Gabriel, the Gibson Flying V guitar (1958), Leslie Grace, Erin Gray, Clara Haskil, Sammo Hung, Zora Neale Hurston, Irrfan Khan, Linda Kozlowski, Earl Lindo, Kenny Loggins, Rick Marotta, Mike McGear (McCartney), Butterfly McQueen, Ruth Negga, Wintley Phipps, Richard Podolor, Francis Poulenc, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Jeremy Renner, John Rich, Bernadette Soubirous a.k.a. St. Bernadette of Lourdes, Kathy Valentine, guitarist Alan Lee Williams, Bernadette Soubirous, Rory Storm, and the great entertainer, Paul Dick better known as Paul Revere. The ride of Paul Revere & The Raiders began in 1958 as a rock’n’roll update on Spike Jones. Later Mark Lindsay joined and PR&TR morphed into a tight music act, pushing back on the British Invasion bands of 1964 with garage band energy. The Raiders kicked out hit after hit in multiple genres including bubblegum, country rock, hard rock, psychedelia, and soul/r’n’b, all with dazzling excellence. They cut the first definitive version of “Louie Louie” before leaving their Oregon base for Los Angeles, joining Terry Melcher (Byrds producer) to launch a prolific and innovative run of great records that still play today: “Just Like Me”, “Kicks” and (recently in the film ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD) “Good Thing,” “Hungry,” “Mr. Sun Mr. Moon,” etc. 

 

In 1965, Dick Clark expanded his television jukebox, hiring PR&TR to host three TV shows, the best known being “Where The Action Is.” Before The Monkees even twanged “Last Train to Clarksville,” PR&TR had already set the bar for TV bands, gluing pre-adolescent me to the tube with rock’n’roll comedy and ear candy—and there was eye candy for 1000s of girls screaming for front man Mark Lindsay. He is also a powerhouse vocalist, able to croon soft sensual pop ballads then flip to paint-peeling bluesy growls. 

 

The hits crested in 1971 with “Indian Reservation.” Then the band line-up shifted while Paul rode on with new back-up musicians. Over the years I’ve intersected with various Raiders (sidebar: One of my former drummers, Erik Nielsen, worked with the late Drake Levin, an under-sung guitar marvel). 

 

Fast forward to January 2008. I’d been touring with Davy Jones (Monkees) for many years, and we often shared bills with Paul and long-time Raiders Ron Foos, Doug Heath, and Danny Krause—“brothers of the road.” We were on a cruise ship, floating somewhere on the Caribbean, partaking in Paul’s 70th birthday bash. During the revelry I got into a deep discussion with Paul about stage antics and how he got his Vox organ to “rhythmically float” on TV (he wouldn’t tell me the trick). Two years later, we were in Pittsburgh PA shooting a PBS-TV special and Paul enlisted me to persuade Davy to sing “Steppin’ Stone” with The Raiders (Davy balked, saying he didn’t want to wear Raider clothes, but eventually caved in). Sadly, Paul passed in 2014, but I’m glad I had the chance to tell him in person the joy and musical instruction he showed me on record and on stage.

 

If I had to pick one PR&TR track, it’s "Too Much Talk.” It blew my mind when I was a kid—my 45 of it cracked but I kept pressing it with my fingers till the vinyl tissued (the fidelity on this clip is a tad distorted, but the visuals speak volumes)…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG30aN53GkY Meanwhile, heavenly HB PR and thank you for your years of spreading fun on screen and stage.

 

#paulrevere #paulrevereandtheraiders #MarkLindsay #fang #VOX #60s #spikejones#davyjones #monkees #drakelevin #philvolk #paulreveresraiders #garagerock#countryrock #darrendowler #ronfoos #dannykrause #terrymelcher #birthday#psychedelic #psychedelicrock #bubblegum #britishinvasion #comedy #tvrock#dougheath #KeithAllison

[talesfrommedinastation]

Author's Note: The Indigenous Future

 I would be remiss if I did not mention the indigenous elephant in the room within ‘Far Past the Ring’.

As you might have gathered, much of the background of both Medina Station and the three original characters are deep within First Nations/American Indian backgrounds*. 

(left to right: Dr. Sjael Drummer, Camina Drummer, and Dr. Tanke Drummer)

I have written both Sjael and Tanke Drummer as being of mixed Ojibwe descent through the Drummer side of their family, as is their cousin, canon Expanse character, Camina Drummer (Cara Gee, her actress, is Ojibwe First Nations, though whether or not Camina is in the show is not confirmed). Additionally, Timon Chapelle, Tanke’s husband, is of mixed-Metis descent as well. More about the land practices of Medina Station and the indigenous heritage it is drawn on can be read in my previous piece on the matter. 

While researching for this work, I dug into the local history of the land I live on, which, coincidentally, is the unceded land of the Anishinaabe people. I am a settler, but I take deep pride in the place that I reside. I find it a responsibility as a citizen of my country to do so. 

(The region of the various Anishinaabe peoples, taken from Wikipedia. The author is not going to directly tell you where they are personally located)

As you might have guessed, the Kind Man (a form that the Protomolecule has taken in order to communicate with both Omega and James Holden) uses the form of Tanke and Sjael’s deceased father, Dr. Aki Drummer. 

(Image: Dr. Aki Drummer, drawn by the author in a quick sketch)

Aki is a Belter man of Ojibwe descent, who, while his story is not fully explored in this piece, does recall and use his heritage to better understand the nature of the humans that he serves as a physician, and later on, the Protomolecule uses to better understand the humans creating contact with each other from across the stars. 

The Kind Man also tells Omega the story of the Legend of the Bluebonnet, which comes from the Comanche tribe of Texas, another American tribe who made the prairies of the United States their home for time immeasurable. The Kind Man mentions that, although he is not Comanche, he understands the story. The tale is a legend of a young girl’s sacrifice to save her prairie home and her people ... .the story that Omega will find herself repeating at the end of ‘Far Past the Ring’. 

(Image from 'The Legend of the Bluebonnet', by Tomie DiPaola. copyright Puffin Books)

The Kind Man also repeatedly uses a word in Ojibwe, one that, when I heard its meaning from James Vukelich (Ojibwe-Turtle Mountain) made me stop, write it down, and listen to his podcast episode again. I immediately knew this word would become a part of the story.  

(If you can, please give his work a listen. He is a wonderful speaker.) 

That word is Gidinawendimin, one word that means, ‘we are all related’. Vukelich goes into detail about how it is not only the people, but the animals, earth, water, all of life around us. And I could not help but think–”Holy hell, this is the thesis of the story.” 

So, why am I rambling on about all of this? 

Because indigeneity has its role in our future, and I tried my best to not only reflect that in this story, but because I staunchly believe in it as well. 

The Belters are the people who helped build the solar system in ‘The Expanse’. They worked and lived in space to the point where many of their bodies can not survive normal gravity. Throughout the series, they face issues regarding access to water, air, and so many things that we often take for granted. They are seen as less than human in their own native environment of the Belt, and are often discriminated against by citizens of planets like Earth and Mars. 

Additionally, in the Star Wars universe, the clones are copies of a man from Mandalore, portrayed by an indigenous actor, and whether or not their indigeneity is canon in the show, I prefer to see it as such.

I want to be under the impression that, like in the real world, the dehumanization of indigenous peoples has irreparable damage to culture and heritage, to say nothing of the social bonds between people. 

This is known as intergenerational trauma, and is explained beautifully here in a video from Australia. 

Fiction can be a powerful metaphor. In this case, this trauma rings through the clones within the Star Wars universe, and if they survive into greater society, will be a burden that their people will carry. Their descendants. The clones were people bred to serve one purpose, that of violence and war, and expected to be expendable machines, not as humans. They were stripped of culture, family, and heritage, and find themselves broken and lost when their use to the government is no longer sustainable.

It also isn’t lost on me that another character played by an indigenous actress–the incomparable Bobbie Draper, played by Samoan-Kiwi actress Frankie Adams–suffers a similar fate in The Expanse. She’s used by her government and tossed aside. But Draper rallies, finds camaraderie in others, and is able to be part of a team that saves the universe.

She, like some survivors of systematic abuse, is able to help others navigate through the challenges of finding oneself again thanks to her own experiences. This is especially seen in her friendship with Hunter in Far Past the Ring, whose own trauma comes out in painful paranoia, anxiety, and rage that almost destroys everything he loves. 

When common grounds are found, and alliances are made, a powerful voice of continuity and fortitude can be forged. With that, challenges, enemies can be fought, battled, and won. With friendship and the strength of rebuilding and reconnecting with culture–and respecting those of indigenous people–we can move forward. 

We are all related. 

I wrote all of this on the eve of September 30th, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, the country that brought us The Expanse.

(Taken from National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day - Waterloo Region District School Board (Waterloo Region District School Board)

This day is to commemorate the thousands of children of indigenous heritage who were taken from their homes, stripped of their culture and heritage. Many of them never came back to their families and homes. Thousands died.

It is only in recent history that this is acknowledged. 

Similar instances also occurred in the United States, Australia, and countless other nations where indigenous people and their cultures were seen as an alien threat. They were not seen as fellow men, but as a part of the land that needed to be eradicated, controlled, and wiped out.

But survival happened. Still happens.

I hope that is reflected here, in a fictional story about the future…where the descendants of indigenous people use their skills and culture to push their people forward in our solar system.

Who forge friendships and alliances, who work to heal their trauma with the strength of their fellow man.

Who work together to stop a terrible empire from destroying their home. 

I am a settler in the United States on the shores of Michigami, but I am a firm believer that the future of humanity lies within indigeneity. We will not reach the stars without it. 

I have humbly done my best to reflect that in this story.

Miigwich. 

More information can be found here:

National Day of Truth and Reconciliation: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/national-day-truth-reconciliation.html

James Vukelich’s website: https://www.jamesvukelich.com/ 

Ojibwe Rosetta Stone: https://www.culture.aanji.org/language/ojibwe-rosetta-stone/ 

*=I use both terms here, as the Ojibwe/Anishinaabe people, as well as the Metis, are located in both the United States and Canada. Cara Gee herself is Canadian.

[seanhowe]

THE THREE FACES OF CHICO (Warner Brothers, WS 1344) 1959

Chico Hamilton (d), Eric Dolphy (alto sax, bass clarinet, fl), Nate Gershman (cello), Dennis Budimir (g), Wyatt Ruther (b), plus Paul Horn (as), Buddy Collette (ts), Bill Green (bar) & String section.

Los Angeles, February-August, 1959.

Notes by Chico Hamilton

We've called this new album "The Three Faces of Chico" because I play three roles in it. I guess this set may surprise some people. and it even may annoy others. But I hope there's something of real interest in it for every jazz fan.

First of all, I guess I'm best known as a drummer. And that is one of the roles I play here. There are three tracks that are unaccompanied drum solos—Trinkets, Happy Little Dance, and No Speak No English, Man. On each of these I haven't tried to prove anything. but have tried to inject a little humor into some listeners' thoughts.

In regard to these drums tracks. I can only say that it's diffient for a drummer to play anything different than any other average drummer; although each drummer does have his own individual styling. I used the standard equipment I have with me whenever the Quintet takes the stand: two cymbals, sock cymbal, snare drum, tom toms, and bass drum. I didn't use tympani because I'm not a tympanist ... and I just don't carry them around. Instead, I work with sticks. mallets, and brushes to obtain different sound textures.

On Trinkets. for example. I worked eyclusively with brushes. It's a welcome change of sound. For Happy Little Dance, I used mallets throughout. And this one could be danced to, if you dig folk dancing. For No Speak No English, Man. which is a sort of wild thing, I worked with sticks, and played a lot on the rims. I wanted to get a sound like Indian drummers talking to each other.

We did these solos in one take each. I didn' work from a score but laid the sequences out in my mind before we started the tape rolling.

The second face I wear on this set is that of a singer. Now, this is a new thing for me on records, although I've done some singing on the floor with my group, mostly Foggy Day, because that was the one song I knew all the way through.

But having worked with such singers as Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, and Billy Eckstine, I felt I could do it. Actually, what I'm really interested in is phrasing. That's the most effective thing for a singer. That, and good material. I figured that if I was going to sing something, I'd better sing something everyone knows, so they could recognize the tune, if not the melody.

I used a reed section because I wanted to bring back the old Jimmie Lunceford sound with reeds. It's not often you hear a reed section playing ensemble choruses. Gerry Wiggins arranged The Best Things in Life Are Free, and John Anderson scored the other vocal sides: She's Funny That Way, Where or When and I Don't Know Why.

There's not much more to say about my singing, except that I hope you like it.

The third face I wear is that of the leader of the Quintet. My group consists of Wyatt Ruther on bass. Eric Dolphy on flute and reeds. Dennis Budimer on guitar, and Nathan Gershman on cello. Quite frankly, of all the Quintets I've had in the past, I think this one is the swingingest.

On these tracks, you hear a little different Quintet than what you've been used to. The Quintet is four years old and we've been constantly trying to broaden its range. Some may resent the hard swing we're going after, but one thing for sure: in the future we're going to try to please everyone's musical appetite with regard to the Quintet. Music and sounds don't stand still; you have to progress with the people. We play some hard swingers, but in our own intimate way. They're different than the average because of our instrumentation. Our old audiences, we feel, are still satisfied because we play numbers out of our o!d book. Then there are a lot of new people who are following us, and these hard swingers seem to be what they get excited about.

The only way to really broaden the range of the Quintet is by hiring new writers to write for it. In this set, we're introducing three. More Than You Know was arranged by Herb Pilhoffer, a pianist originally from Germany and now located in Minneapolis I think he captures the mood of the song and the Quintet very well Miss Movement is Eric Dolphy's first attempt at writing for the Quintet. Being an exciting player, he'd write an exciting kind of jazz tune. Kenny Dorham is a wonderful trumpet player and he's also a wonderful writer. Newport News is his first chart for our book. It's typical of the inventive, fine arrangements that I'm always grateful to have come my way. Without these, Chico would have no face at all, let alone three!

[burlveneer-music]

Buddy Rich & Alla Rakha - Rich à la Rakha - Sundazed has just reissued this 1968 album on vinyl & CD

Jazz snare & ride cymbal meet classical Indian tabla & pakhawaj! What happens when one of the best jazz drummers of all time combines efforts with one of India’s most renowned tabla players? Voilà! Rich À La Rakha. Calypso-flavored compositions, spontaneous jams, and a genuine instrumental dialogue between the two greats truly makes this a one-of-a-kind listen. Cut all analog and pressed on colored vinyl! In 1968, as young America’s interest in Indian classical music was surging to its peak, Alla Rakha made a landmark record with the big band jazz drummer Buddy Rich. Rich, like Alla Rakha, is an icon, often ranked very near the top of any list of ‘greatest drummers’ regardless of genre. Rich was an exuberant, hot tempered man who frequently alienated friends and peers but, at the same time, “was one of the most technically gifted drummers to ever walk our planet. He had incredible speed and control, power and touch.” Ravi Shankar composed several compositions for both men to play together and brought in smooth jazz flautist Paul Horn (who studied meditation in Rishikesh at the same time as The Beatles in 1968) as well as sitarist Shamim Ahmed to create a musical space within which the two geniuses could experiment. The album Rich à la Rakha, which we share today, is a milestone in the ‘jazz meets Indian classical music’ story. – Nate Rabe (Harmonium: Musical Culture from South Asia and the Diaspora) Includes: Khanda Kafi (Ravi Shankar) • Duet In Dadra • Rangeela (Ravi Shankar) • Nagma E Raksh (Alla Rakha) • Tal Sawari

[a-silent-symphony]

Nightwish's Floor Jansen: "Life is short. Time is not endless"

Floor Jansen opens up on her battle with breast cancer, going solo and what we can expect from the next Nightwish album

It’s Friday April 22, 2022 at Nokia Arena in Tampere, Finland. Fifteen thousand Nightwish fans await a much-delayed live taste of their heroes’ ninth album, Human. :II: Nature., released as the world shut down in 2020. Anticipation is high. The stage will soon be engulfed in enough fire to obliterate a small village. Aside from a handful of dates in Finland in 2021, this is Nightwish’s first full-scale show in more than three years.

Backstage, Floor Jansen feels like death. In her stage armour she looks fearsome – a tattooed Boudica for the modern age. Such a gig wouldn’t normally faze her. Floor, 41,has been fronting metal bands since she was 16. But just now she’s come down with a virulent stomach flu at the worst possible time, and she’s wondering how the hell she’ll get through the next two hours onstage.

“It was unlike anything I’ve ever done,” she says of the stomach flu that almost derailed that post-Covid comeback. “I mean, you get sick now and then, but this was brutal. I don’t know what kind of virus I picked up, but it was a very violent one. I was up all night, and then I still had to travel from Berlin to Tampere. It was horrible.” She shrugs. “But yeah, what can you do?”

It’s not hard to see why Floor gets called a ‘powerhouse’. Part opera singer, several parts rock star – with the dynamism of both – she exudes indestructibility. If Bruce Dickinson had a daughter with Xena: Warrior Princess, it would have been Floor. But there are other sides to her: different personas that reveal a more complex, interesting picture of a ‘powerhouse’ lead singer.

There’s the animal-loving homebody. The thrillseeker. The proud vegetarian. The whiskey drinker. The metal icon with a solo pop album on the way. The Highly Sensitive Person, whose hyper-stimulated sense of the world shines through her performances. The person who, just three weeks before headlining Wembley Arena with Nightwish, underwent surgery for breast cancer.

“I’m always myself,” she summarises, simply. “So whether I run around in jeans fixing a fence, or ride my horse, or go onstage in warrior outfits… it’s all the same. It’s just a different side, as you can see.”

We meet Floor over Zoom in December, as she wrestles with dodgy wi-fi backstage in Milan. “Is it noisy for you, in the background?” she asks in perturbed Dutch tones. “It’s basically one big open box here…” Dark-eyed and slightly frazzled in a grey hoodie, Floor has a business-like streak that softens as talk turns to things like her solo music, her bandmates and the cigars she enjoys with her husband, Sabaton drummer Hannes Van Dahl.

On another day she might have come in from feeding the horses at her rural property on Sweden’s west coast. You wouldn’t fuck with her, but you’d gladly go for a drink with her. Out on the road with Nightwish, there’s a decent amount of the latter. The band “wobble” around Christmas markets drinking glühwein. They rate vegetarian food in Indian restaurants as part of a longstanding curry club. The shows themselves have been jubilant affairs.

“Last night we were surprised with some bottles of champagne,” she grins, “which we then drank, and became very happy…”

It’s all so far removed from lingering notions of Nightwish as some sort of dictatorship or soap opera, with singers driven away by its founder’s maniacal demands. They seem like friends – as in, actual friends.

“It’s absolute genuine fun,” she nods. “We’ve always had that. And there are always ups and downs; it’s like a big marriage. But we’ve been longing for this tour a lot. Especially after the pandemic, we don’t take it for granted at all.”

For Floor, the isolation of lockdown reinforced her ties to the band, but it also kickstarted her solo work. She’d begun to think of it in 2019, following an appearance on Dutch TV show Beste Zangers (‘Best Singers’), but she was still very much a band person, with a new Nightwish album cycle around the corner. Come March 2020, for the first time in her career, she found herself separated from that group mentality.

She spent time with her husband and daughter, now five. She grew vegetables and looked after her horses, cats and enormous Irish wolfhound. She worked on her online profile, communicating with her fans on a regular, down-to-earth level. At the same time, she began working with collaborators on solo material. An alternative, poppier sound started to brew.

In spring 2022 she appeared on Germany’s Beste Zangers equivalent, Sing Meinen Song, for which she sang in German (one of the four languages she speaks in addition to Dutch, English and Swedish). Gradually, a standalone Floor Jansen was evolving.

“My desire from the get-go was to find a sound that fits with me, not something created around me. But how do you do that? So I used up a large part of the pandemic in a trial-and-error search for this sound.”

It wasn’t easy. Ten years of bringing Tuomas Holopainen’s visions to life had left her with phenomenal vocal skills, but limited songwriting practice. Her first ideas, she says, “weren’t that great”.

“I’ve done it [songwriting], but I haven’t been doing much in the last 10 years,” she admits. “Plus I’m in a band with someone like Tuomas. It makes me feel very small, like, ‘What do I have to add to a world full of music?’ So from that insecurity I had to find my way and accept that I am more limited, and that I have different ideas.”

Teaming up with Dutch producer Gordon Groothedde (Snoop Dogg; Katie Melua; Floor’s previous band, After Forever) was a turning point. The first song they wrote together was Fire. A darkly atmospheric, orchestral swirl of intelligent modern pop, with the grandeur of Florence & The Machine’s cover of 1986 dance hit You’ve Got The Love, it ignited Floor’s confidence as a creator in her own right.

“I have a really hard time with love songs,” she says. “I know the majority of pop music is about love songs, and that’s also why I find it boring to listen to. So I wanted to create something that still has a message.”

Accordingly, her solo album, Paragon, shuns frothy clichés in favour of meatier subjects. Fire is about returning to life after lockdown. One song, Invincible, was written for the injured war veterans at Prince Harry’s Invictus Games – originally planned to take place in 2020 in the Hague until the pandemic got in the way.

“It’s inspired by the idea of being physically or mentally wounded, after you’ve just given everything you have,” she explains, “and something that’s left of you has to pick up life, and recover from something that you never really wanted to recover from. I want to raise awareness of the fact that this happens so incredibly often, but also to empower them. Like, ‘You already went through Hell, now you’re on your way back, you are invincible.’”

It’s hard to hear this story now without thinking of Floor’s recent health issues. Diagnosed in October 2022 at a routine mammogram screening, her breast cancer came as a total shock – two weeks before Nightwish were due to fly to South America.

“They [the doctors] said, ‘We want you to come back.’ And the thing I thought, in my naïve brain, was, ‘Oh, they fucked up something with the pictures.’ Never, ‘Oh, they found something.’” She shakes her head. “Not a single moment. Until I was there.”

Surgery was planned for the day after they came home. Until then, she says, the intense business of touring Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico proved a good distraction. The pace of it all was brutal but helpful, and reading similar stories from her fans made her feel less alone – “But at the same time, it’s an overwhelming awareness of how many people actually got this fucking disease."

“I put my emotions into the music,” she reasons, “and also had really wonderful conversations within the band, crew, management, everyone has really been there for me. It’s very tough to do it all that fast, but at the same time it helped because I didn’t have to walk around with thoughts of it too long. Because as soon as you know you have a tumour in your body, the only thing you can think of is ‘get it out’. The whole mental aspect of a cancer diagnosis is shit.”

Back at home, she had three weeks after her operation before heading out in Europe and the UK. Scarred, bruised and exhausted, she was grateful for the support of her family.

“Jesus, how I underestimated it,” she half-laughs, of the recovery process. “I was jet-lagged, I barely slept for nights after the surgery because my system was completely upside-down, you get morphine… So everyone’s been really having my back in this.”

Just a couple of days before the Wembley gig, she learned that the operation was successful. It was both a relief and a wake-up call. In Sweden, mammogram screenings start for women at the age of 40. In the Netherlands, her birthplace –and in the UK – it’s 50. Now looked up to by many, as a public figure as well as a musician, she’s determined to persuade more women to go for their scans.

“On a purely personal level it’s a bit weird, because I’m just me,” she says, of her role-model status. “But from this position, I have the power to make a difference every now and then. I wanted to make sure it has this function by saying, ‘Go and get your mammogram done.’ If I had stayed in the Netherlands, this entire thing would have gone undetected. It was so small when they took it out, but it was growing, you know? I’m very lucky.”

Cancer casts a pervasive shadow, even when it’s caught quickly. For Floor, who (when we speak to her) still has three weeks of radiation therapy to complete, it’s realigned her priorities. “It’s not like I think ‘I’m gonna die’ all the time,” she explains, “but I realise how life is short. Time is not endless. We have it now.”

To that end, Floor is making the most of 2023. After her radiotherapy is finally over, she’ll join Nightwish for 70000Tons Of Metal in the Bahamas. Festival shows will follow. In the summer the band will head to the Röskö campsite in Kitee, Finland, to record the next Nightwish album (which will be released at some point in 2024).

Part three of a trilogy that began with Endless Forms Most Beautiful and continued through Human. :II: Nature., the new album will return to themes concerning our planet and our mortality. Sonically, Floor suggests, we can expect aheavy palette.

“I would say it’s a pretty heavy album,” she muses, “but once again, it’s the multicolour diversity that is Nightwish. It’s all there. It’s going to once again take you by the hand through beautiful stories – whether they are stories from this Earth or stories about this Earth. They’re beautiful.”

Creatively, Nightwish is still Tuomas’s brainchild, though there’s a sense of collaboration around this record. Armed with his demos, the band have been working up different parts and exchanging ideas on tour – in hotel rooms and dressing rooms across the world. For Floor, this has been a happy arrangement.

“I think Tuomas has a unique view on the world and has a unique way of putting that into words,” she says, “and I think he’s outdone himself on that end once again. And also visually, the ideas that are bubbling are going to be of a next level. So yeah, there’s lots to look forward to.”

Meanwhile, along with the release of Paragon, she has solo gigs planned in Europe. “And of course it would be wonderful to go to the UK,” she adds, “we are working on that as well.”

If all goes to plan, Floor Jansen could be a name that reaches well beyond metal circles – paving the way for a new kind of pop star with a darker heart. Once again the ‘powerhouse’ label feels apt, with all the truths and misconceptions that come with it.

“Power is often connected to, especially women…” she searches for the words, “…it’s like, ‘powerful women are bitches’, you know? Maybe that’s the misconception of the century. But a powerful woman is also a woman who is intouch withher emotions, and one who can have absolute soft sides and embrace them. The idea that high sensitivity would be a weakness? That is actually the absolute misperception.

“And that goes for men, too: for men to be in touch with their feelings and to be able to communicate them… that is a bigger strength than [makes growling, macho noise]. That’s going to bring us a whole lot further.”

Between travels, Floor will recharge at home in the Swedish countryside. On cold evenings, she and Hannes sometimes retreat to their grillhouse, light the fire and relax over single malts and a cigar – things that bonded them when they first met on tour with Iced Earth. Small connections between worlds.

“I can say that my happiest place is home, but that’s not true because after half a year I’ll claw up the walls,” she laughs. “I can say it’s on tour, but after a month I really want to go home. I can say it’s onstage, but then putting my daughter to bed is equally amazing at times. The ultimate thing is to have the luxury of both.”

[historicminiaturesnorthernva]

Loudoun County Militia as they would’ve appeared in the 1781 Yorktown Campaign. Virginia militia laws enacted by Governor Thomas Jefferson largely mimicked the previous British system in place in the colony since the first settlement at Jamestown.

The law required every free white (non-catholic) man to have a firearm, powder, and shot in case of emergencies declared by either the county or colonial government. This precluded black people from participating in the armed militia and from firearm ownership, though they were often in service in non-armed roles such as drummer, which I have shown in my miniatures.

In peacetime, militias held regular musters at times determined by the county. Some took place monthly, others maybe once or twice in a year. They would be called up largely to control the enslaved population and march west during Indian attacks, but mostly militias served as a “who’s who” for local politics and culture.

In wartime, their quality was negligible at best, and disastrous at worst. In battle they were often quick to break and retreat when used the wrong way, and the Loudoun County militia ended up serving mostly in a logistical role. Ferrying prisoners and supplies through the “Continental Breadbasket” of Loudoun’s hills and roads, these men made it possible for the army to survive and thrive against a powerful enemy.

[crosseddestiny]

@sleuthwitch liked for a manfred singing starter!

He wasn’t sure how long Penelope would be staying in town, or if she was just passing through. Regardless, he’d offered her a bed to crash on while she was here, and he’d taken up the couch in the front room. The only troublesome part of the whole sleep arrangement was that he often forgot to close the front blinds. That would never happen on a full moon, but on a regular phase of it, he’d not bother.

Morning sun had streamed through the large cracks, and he’d rolled off the couch with a moan, grabbed his button shirt off the floor and slipped one arm through. Bare feet padding towards the front window, he stretched, slipped his other arm into his shirt, and pushed open the blinds, blinking and squinting against the bright light.

“Cause she was blinded by the light!” he sang a little loudly, half chuckling at the irony as the song popped into his head. Doing a quick one eighty turn, he grinned as he continued with the song, “Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night!” He pumped a hand at an air guitar, fingers wiggling against invisible strings while his other hand pretended to hold the neck of it.

“Blinded by the liiiiiight! Madman, drummers, bummers, Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat!” he screeched in a playful sing-song voice and jammed his way into the kitchen. “In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat! With a boulder on my shoulder, feelinnn’ kinda older, I - ” His performance came to a screeching halt when he noticed the young woman sitting at his kitchen table, and he quickly composed himself as best he could. “Oh god, I’m sorry you had to see that. How long have you been up?"

[diptanshukashyapofficial]

B-8 : Sixty Years of The Beatles - The Memories of A Fan

As I write this article, I've started watching the Disney+ Series called The Beatles: Get Back. It was about the recording of Let It Be, their final album. It talked about the tension and differences among the Fab Four (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr) and the end of an era of music. 

What you're going to read is not a theoretical research paper about the history of the four Liverpool lads. It's not about their early stint as The Quarrymen, their original lineup with bassist Stuart Sutcliffe & drummer Pete Best, or their early gigs in Hamburg (Germany). It's not even about how manager Brian Epstein discovered the young talent, or for that matter - how Ringo replaced Pete Best as the drummer. It's about how a fan feels about it and its place in the fan's heart - as the band celebrated sixty years of its first album, Please Please Me (1963) - in March this year.

Talking a bit about myself, I first heard about the Beatles in a childhood story of John Lennon (1940-1980) that got published in Scharda Dubey's book The Best Days of Our Lives. I read it in September 2012. More than three years later (December 9, 2015), I came across a news story about the Beatles Ashram reopening at Rishikesh, Uttarakhand. I know the exact date because the previous day was the 35th death anniversary of Lennon. After reading it, I searched for them on YouTube - and that's when I heard the first ever song of The Beatles - We Can Work It Out. I kept to it for days before exploring the other musical gems. I was fourteen - and in ninth grade back then.

Every teenager faces adolescence-related problems (physical & emotional changes, insecurities, mental health, peer pressure, etcetera). For rescue comes a solution that proves to be life-changing. In my case, it was the music of the four lads from the unknown coastal city of Liverpool (not to mention that it became famous because of the band). Many of their contemporaries came along the way.

My personal Beatles souvenir Collection (Which I have maintained since 2016)

Coming back to The Beatles, my favorite Beatle was Lennon. Seeing them in live performances and music videos, I began practicing their songs on my keyboard - and eventually bought a guitar to match them. Like an ordinary obsessed fan, I bought souvenirs - guitar pics, music CDs, T-shirts, books, phone covers, etcetera online. I don't think any Indian fan could get such stuff in here that easily - even during the band's popularity years. They would get in the USA and UK - where such things would sell like hotcakes. I even made a poster at 15 about the band - which I pasted in my room.

Thanks to the band, I had quite a reputation as a music performer in school, college, and my locality. I would perform their covers at parties and musical events. Although, I couldn't play their songs in school. But thanks to them, I could look beneath myself to find the skills I possess. Hence, I decided to pursue entertainment journalism/writing. I often write similar songs - and try looking for a music producer to record them. When people suggest music software for completing the songs, I politely respond, "They won't have the same fun as the Beatles - and I want to keep that element in my songs."

As their first single, Love Me Do (1962), celebrated its diamond jubilee on October 5 last year - and their debut album on March 22, I can only say that the boys with the mop-tops are immortal and irreplaceable. Even today, I listen to the entire album the way I did seven years ago. I'm sure there are similar fans like me in different parts of the world - who admire the boys and express their admiration and obsession through various methods. With this, I put my pen down.

[sheetmusiclibrarypdf]

John McLaughlin, guitarist, pianist, bandleader and composer (#botd in 1942)

John McLaughlin, guitarist, pianist, bandleader, synthesizer and self-taught composer, (#botd in 1942).Best Sheet Music download from our Library.Please, subscribe to our Library.Awards and nominationsJohn McLaughlin discographyJohn McLaughlin, Jean-Luc Ponty, Zakir Hussain: "Lotus Feet" | International Jazz Day IstanbulMiroslav Vitous - 1972 Mountain in the Clouds - 01 "Freedom Jazz Dance", from the album The Bass.Browse in the Library:

John McLaughlin, guitarist, pianist, bandleader, synthesizer and self-taught composer, (#botd in 1942).

Guitarist, pianist, synthesizer and self-taught composer, John McLaughlin, (Doncaster, January 4, 1942), began his career very young, playing in the late fifties with the group "Big Pete Deuchar and His Professors of Ragtime." In the early sixties he performed with some of the most important British rhythm and blues musicians, such as Graham Bond, Jack Bruce and Brian Auger. John McLaughlin (born 4 January 1942), also known as Mahavishnu, is an English guitarist, bandleader, and composer. A pioneer of jazz fusion, his music combines elements of jazz with rock, world music, Western classical music, flamenco, and blues.

After contributing to several key British groups of the early 1960s, McLaughlin made Extrapolation, his first album as a bandleader, in 1969. He then moved to the U.S., where he played with drummer Tony Williams's group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his electric jazz fusion albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, and On the Corner. His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.

He became interested in jazz and joined the saxophonist John Surman's group, working with Dave Holland, Karl Berger and others. He moved to the United States in the early seventies and joined the group "Lifetime" led by drummer Tony Williams, who found in McLaughlin the ideal companion in musical adventures to perform a mix of jazz and rock. With "Lifetime" he recorded two very important albums, the one titled "Turn It Over" (Verve, 1970) and "Emergency" (Verve, 1969), in which he demonstrated that he had perfectly assimilated the language of new music. Thanks to the collaboration with Williams, McLaughlin came into contact with Miles Davis, who at that time was immersed in his electrical experiences. In fact, McLaughlin participated in two of Miles' cult albums of that time: "In A Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew." Converted to Hinduism, in 1970 he recorded in his name the album that definitively established him as an extraordinary guitarist: "My Goal's Beyond", an album that, through techniques typical of Indian music, attempted to express his religious creed. In 1971, he founded the "Mahavishnu Orchestra", another twist in McLaughlin's new musical conception. Among the great albums that he recorded within the "Mahavishnu" it is worth mentioning the extraordinary: "The Iner Mountain Flame" (Columbia, 1971), an album considered one of the best in the field of progressive rock and its fusion with the so-called , «Electric jazz». McLaughlin's 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, included violinist Jerry Goodman, keyboardist Jan Hammer, bassist Rick Laird, and drummer Billy Cobham. They performed a technically difficult and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Eastern and Indian influences. This band helped establish fusion as a new and growing style. McLaughlin's playing at this time was distinguished by fast solos and non-western musical scales. When the "Mahavishnu" disbanded, McLaughlin went through a period of crisis that ended when he formed an acoustic group in the late 1970s with Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams, Billy Cobham and Jack DeJohnette. With them he recorded an album titled: "Electric Guitarist" (Columbia, 1979) that marked the guitarist's return to jazz fields.

In the eighties and nineties, McLaughlin began to explore other musical forms, participating in different and fascinating guitar trios with the master of flamenco guitar, Paco de Lucía, with Larry Coryell or with, Al Di Meola. In all his projects, McLaughlin has shown extraordinary generosity and musical sincerity, and his projects and recording works are proof of his constant creative attitude. McLaughlin will go down in history, not only as a great guitarist, but as someone who did a lot of good with fusion in jazz. McLaughlin's solo on "Miles Beyond" from his album Live at Ronnie Scott's won the 2018 Grammy Award for the Best Improvised Jazz Solo. He has been awarded multiple "Guitarist of the Year" and "Best Jazz Guitarist" awards from magazines such as DownBeat and Guitar Player based on reader polls. In 2003, he was ranked 49th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". In 2009, DownBeat included McLaughlin in its unranked list of "75 Great Guitarists", in the "Modern Jazz Maestros" category. In 2012, Guitar World magazine ranked him 63rd on its top 100 list. In 2010, Jeff Beck called McLaughlin "the best guitarist alive", and Pat Metheny has also described him as the world's greatest guitarist. In 2017, McLaughlin was awarded an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music.

Awards and nominations

John McLaughlin discography

John McLaughlin, Jean-Luc Ponty, Zakir Hussain: "Lotus Feet" | International Jazz Day Istanbul

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDyfFNJGRDA John McLaughlin (guitar), Jean-Luc Ponty (violin) and Zakir Hussain (tabla) perform McLaughlin's renowned composition "Lotus Feet" as part of the International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert at the Hagia Irene in Istanbul, Turkey. Filmed on April 30, 2013.

Miroslav Vitous - 1972 Mountain in the Clouds - 01 "Freedom Jazz Dance", from the album The Bass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zafIe4Aduus Miroslav Vitous - Bass John Mclaughlin - Guitar Herbie Hancock - Keyboards Joe Henderson - Saxophone Jack Dejohnette - Drums. The Bass was recorded in November 1967, but was not released until 1972 on the Hör Zu Black label. "The Bass" was a huge critical success and found an audience within the jazz and fusion communities. The company "Warner Bros" decided to release The Bass in Europe in 1976 with the title "Magical Shepherd", and added a bonus track titled "New York". "The Bass" was an innovative and pioneering album in the fusion sound that began to emerge in European jazz at that time. The passage of time has placed "The Bass" as one of the most important fusion albums and its influence is still valid. The Bass not only launched Miroslav Vitous's career as a leader, but helped popularize fusion, and helped ensure that jazz in Europe remained relevant music. Read the full article

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 11.24

Beer Birthdays

Elias Daniel Barnitz (1677)

Frederick Miller (1824)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Billy Connolly; Scottish comedian, actor (1942)

Donald "Duck" Dunn; rock bassist (1941)

Scott Joplin; Ragtime composer (1868)

Stephen Merchant; British comedian (1974)

Henri-Toulouse Lautrec; French artist (1864)

Famous Birthdays

Pete Best; rock drummer & postman (1941)

William F. Buckley; writer, right-wing intellectual (1925)

Ted Bundy; serial killer (1946)

Dale Carnegie; writer (1888)

Johnny Carver; pop singer (1940)

Al Cohn; jazz saxophonist (1925)

Denise Crosby; actor (1957)

Candy Darling; actor (1944)

Howard Duff; actor (1913)

William Webb Ellis; Rugby creator (1801)

Rene Enriquez; actor (1933)

Geraldine Fitzgerald; actor (1913)

Cass Gilbert; architect (1859)

Katherine Heigl; actor (1978)

Bat Masterson; gambler, saloon keeper, lawman (1853)

Charles Theodore Pachelbel; German composer (1690)

Arundhati Roy; Indian writer (1961)

Dwight Schultz; actor (1947)

Junipero Serra; missionary (1713)

Benedict "Baruch" Spinoza; Dutch philosopher (1632)

Laurence Sterne; Irish/English writer (1713)

Zachary Taylor; 12th U.S. President (1784)

Teddy Wilson; jazz pianist (1912)

[musicverse11]

Thaman S's Top Musical Hits: Tracks that Shaped a Generation

When we talk about influential figures in the South Indian music industry, Thaman S stands out as one of the most transformative forces in recent years. Known for his powerful, catchy compositions and his ability to set the perfect tone for any scene, Thaman has redefined what it means to be a film composer in India. His soundtracks not only enhance the storytelling of the films but also leave a lasting impact on the listeners. With his unique style, he has crafted a soundtrack revolution that has reshaped the musical landscape in Telugu, Tamil, and other South Indian cinemas.

Early Life and Journey into Music

Thaman was born into a family deeply rooted in music. He hails from a lineage of Carnatic musicians, and music has always been an integral part of his life. However, his journey into film music composition was not straightforward. Thaman began his career as a drummer and percussionist, performing with several well-known composers like Ilaiyaraaja and A. R. Rahman. His talent was undeniable, and he quickly made a name for himself as a skilled instrumentalist. But Thaman had a vision that went beyond playing instruments; he wanted to create his own music.

In 2009, Thaman got his big break as a composer with the Telugu film Kick. The soundtrack’s success was instant, and audiences were captivated by his ability to merge traditional Indian sounds with contemporary elements, creating a fresh and unique auditory experience. Kick was just the beginning, and Thaman went on to score several hit films, each time pushing the boundaries of what film music could achieve.

Signature Style and Musical Innovations

Thaman’s music stands out not only because of its catchiness but also due to his distinctive style. He has an innate ability to understand the pulse of the audience and creates music that resonates with listeners on a deep level. His compositions are a blend of electronic beats, strong rhythms, and melodic arrangements that bring a modern touch to traditional South Indian sounds. This mix of genres has given Thaman a signature sound, one that’s immediately recognizable.

What sets Thaman apart from many other composers is his willingness to experiment. He incorporates a variety of instruments, both Western and Indian, and is known for his innovative use of percussion and bass. This approach gives his music a strong, impactful feel. Moreover, Thaman is constantly adapting and evolving with new trends. In a time where music and production techniques are rapidly changing, Thaman’s work remains relevant and fresh. His music not only enhances the cinematic experience but also reaches audiences far beyond the theater, making his songs popular across platforms and languages.

Iconic Soundtracks and Career Highlights

Over the years, Thaman has worked on numerous projects that have left an indelible mark on South Indian cinema. Movies like Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo, Dookudu, Race Gurram, and Sarrainodu showcase some of his best work. His soundtrack for Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo, particularly the hit song “Butta Bomma,” became a cultural phenomenon, with millions of views on YouTube and fans worldwide recreating the song in their own ways. The melody and energy of the track, combined with Thaman’s rich production style, perfectly encapsulated the mood of the film and resonated with fans across all age groups.

Each project brings new opportunities for Thaman to experiment and grow as an artist. He takes immense care to tailor his compositions to fit the narrative and mood of the film, working closely with directors to ensure that the music complements the story. His music doesn’t merely play in the background; it elevates the storytelling, often becoming one of the most memorable aspects of the movie.

Thaman’s Impact on South Indian Music Culture

Thaman S has inspired a new generation of music composers, encouraging them to think outside the box and explore beyond conventional boundaries. His music has a youthful, energetic vibe that appeals to a broad audience, bridging generational and cultural gaps. Through his innovative work, he has not only gained a massive fan following but has also set a new standard in the industry.

Thaman’s impact is evident in the way his soundtracks are celebrated and revered. His music transcends language barriers and cultural divides, capturing hearts from Chennai to Hyderabad and beyond. His popularity has also paved the way for South Indian music to reach a global audience, bringing more recognition to the region’s film and music industries on the international stage.

Conclusion

Thaman S is more than just a composer; he is a visionary who has fundamentally reshaped the soundscape of South Indian cinema. Through his unique style and ability to blend tradition with modernity, Thaman has created a revolutionary shift in how audiences experience film music. His dedication, innovation, and passion for music have cemented his place as one of the most influential figures in the industry.

What’s your favorite Thaman S soundtrack? Is there a song that resonates with you personally? Share your thoughts in the comments, and let’s celebrate the genius of Thaman together.

To stay updated on Thaman S’s latest projects and releases, follow him on your preferred music streaming platform. Share this article with fellow music lovers and discover together the genius behind the music that’s captivating millions.

[apsychicrage]

life update tiny brag played a show with Rubella Ballet, got to thank the guitarist (former drummer of Flux of Pink Indians) for being part of a project that changed my life (and buy a signed remaster of the album lol) and they were so so so sweet 😭 the new song i was nervous about performing fucking Went Off i honestly think it was the best song we did that night .

i have a full time job im considering whether i get credentials to continue full time next year and im thinking yes? i actually weirdly thrive on routine and i hate being broke lol

next paycheck im buying a ticket to CDMX so i can leave the american christmas stupidity to the american christians, ive never been i realized the tickets were fairly cheap (cheaper than some domestic flights) my spanish is getting good(ish) (i have a little gaggle of kids who dont speak english and hang off me making jokes in spanish ill call it a win) and i know people who live in cdmx (who come to the bay frequently) . I was gonna go like very early december but X is playing in Berkley and its truly likely one of their last shows ...

the election blows honestly more than i expected... this is the first election (i could vote in) where im not near trump country. I gotta get way outta the bay area to see how they feel ,, but trust and believe the bay is under some techie fascist shit. Oaklands new mayor undecided but theres a right wing recall of mayor that passed so we r gonna have a pro cop nutjob im sure. my neighborhood already crawls with corrupt police (exploiting street girlies) and its gonna b worse lol :(

election night itself made much better by punk music my friends (in the band above) made such a farce such a spectacle of the election it was perfect. I looked at results early and was like ah its a trump win and then didnt touch my phone the rest of the night. extremely bruised from the pit. I wore a sheisty during the set and ppl told me they recognized me from my dancing.

thinking about amping up cybersecurity (for me) and doing more mutual aid, amongst other shit i wont mention. Nervous that trump will try to expose sex workers (i have no doubt he will) as retaliation and as a former swer (who has some shit floating around the internet) im gonna join one of the sw activist groups here for sure. this is not a time to be still...