WA2K Radio is now on the air

Good morning, WA2K radio audience.

Hey, Rock, thanks for the "Time After Time" song. I particularly like the chorus, buddy.

CHORUS:
If you're lost you can look--and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you--I'll be waiting
Time after time

After my picture fades and darkness has
Turned to gray
Watching through windows--you're wondering
If I'm OK
Secrets stolen from deep inside
The drum beats out of time--

Well, folks, today is Kris' birthday, so here's a good one from him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl6x64sk1CI&feature=related

And for our Raggedy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KmDLGf-DTk&feature=related

Hope this one works, folks.

Henry Rider Haggard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Born June 22, 1856(1856-06-22)
Bradenham, Norfolk
Died May 14, 1925 (aged 68)
London
Occupation Novelist, scholar
Nationality British
Writing period 19th & 20th century
Genres Adventure, Fantasy, Fables, Romance, Science Fiction, History
Subjects Africa

Influences
Robert Louis Stevenson ; Rudyard Kipling

Influenced
Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Carl Jung, Joseph Conrad

Official website
http://www.riderhaggardsociety.org.uk

Biography

Sir Henry Rider Haggard KBE (June 22, 1856 - May 14, 1925), was a prolific writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire. His stories, situated at the lighter end of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential to this day.





Biography

Henry Rider Haggard was born at Bradenham, Norfolk, to Sir William Meybohm Rider Haggard, a barrister, and Ella Doveton, an author and poet. He was the eighth of ten children. He was initially sent to Garsington Rectory in Oxfordshire to study under Reverend H. J. Graham, but unlike his older brothers who graduated from various public schools, he ended up attending Ipswich Grammar School.[1] This was because his father, who perhaps regarded him as somebody who was not going to amount to much, could no longer afford to maintain his expensive private education. After failing his army entrance exam he was sent to a private crammer in London to prepare for the entrance exam for the British Foreign Office,[1] for which he never sat.

Instead, Haggard's father sent him[citation needed] to what is now South Africa, in an unpaid position as assistant to the secretary to Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Natal. It was in this role that Haggard was present in Pretoria for the official announcement of the British annexation of the Boer Republic of the Transvaal. Indeed, Haggard raised the Union flag and read out much of the proclamation following the loss of voice of the official originally entrusted with the duty.[2]

At about that time, Haggard fell in love with Mary Elizabeth "Lilly" Jackson, whom he intended to marry once he obtained paid employment in Africa. In 1878 he became Registrar of the High Court in the Transvaal, and wrote to his father informing him that he intended to return to England and marry her. His father forbade it until Haggard had made a career for himself, and by 1879 Jackson had married Frank Archer, a well-to-do banker. When Haggard eventually returned to England, he married a friend of his sister, Mariana Louisa Margitson, and the couple travelled to Africa together. They had a son named Jock (who died of measles at age 10) and three daughters, Angela, Dorothy and Lilias. Lilias became an author, edited The Rabbit Skin Cap, and wrote a biography of her father entitled The Cloak That I Left.

Moving back to England in 1882, the couple settled in Ditchingham, Norfolk, Louisa's ancestral home. Later they lived in Kessingland and had connections with the church in Bungay, Suffolk. Haggard turned to the study of law and was called to the bar in 1884. His practice of law was somewhat desultory, and much of his time was taken up by the writing of novels, which he saw as being more profitable. Heavily influenced by the larger-than-life adventurers he met in Colonial Africa (most notably Frederick Selous and Frederick Russell Burnham), the great mineral wealth discovered in Africa, and the ruins of ancient lost civilizations in Africa, such as Great Zimbabwe, Haggard created his Allan Quatermain adventures.[3][4] Three of his books, The Wizard (1896), Elissa; the doom of Zimbabwe (1899), and Black Heart and White Heart; a Zulu idyll (1900), are dedicated to Burnham's daughter, Nada, the first white child born in Bulawayo; she had been named after Haggard's 1892 book Nada the Lily.[5]

Years later,[citation needed] when Haggard was a successful novelist, he was contacted by his former love, Lilly Archer, née Jackson. She had been deserted by her husband, who had embezzled funds entrusted to him and fled, bankrupt, to Africa. Lilly was penniless, and so Haggard installed her and her sons in a house and saw to the children's education. Lilly eventually followed her husband to Africa, where he infected her with syphilis before dying of it himself. Lilly returned to England in late 1907, where Haggard again supported her until her death on 22 April, 1909. These details were not generally known until the publication of Haggard's 1983 biography by D. S. Higgins.

Haggard was heavily involved in reforming agriculture and was a member of many commissions on land use and related affairs, work that involved several trips to the Colonies and Dominions. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1912 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1919. He stood unsuccessfully for parliament as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the 1895 summer election, losing by only 198 votes.


Writing career

Haggard is most famous as the author of the novels King Solomon's Mines and its sequel Allan Quatermain, and She and its sequel Ayesha, all swashbuckling adventure novels set in the context of the Scramble for Africa. He is also remembered for the epic Viking romance, Eric Brighteyes.

While his novels portray many of the stereotypes associated with colonialism, they are unusual for the degree of sympathy with which he often treats the native populations. Africans often serve heroic roles in his novels, although the protagonists are typically, though not invariably, European. A notable example is Ignosi, the rightful king of Kukuanaland, in King Solomon's Mines. Having developed an intense mutual friendship with the three Englishmen who help him reclaim his throne, he accepts their advice and abolishes witch-hunts and arbitrary capital punishment.

Haggard also wrote about agricultural and social issues reform, in part inspired by his experiences in Africa, but also based on what he saw in Europe. At the end of his life he was a staunch opponent of Bolshevikism, a position he shared with his friend Rudyard Kipling. The two has bonded upon Kipling's arrival at London in 1889 largely on the strength of their shared opinions, and the two remained lifelong friends.


Reputation and legacy

Haggard's stories are still widely read today. Ayesha, the female protagonist of She, has been cited as a prototype by psychoanalysts as different as Sigmund Freud (in The Interpretation of Dreams) and Carl Jung. Her epithet "She Who Must Be Obeyed" is used by British author John Mortimer in his Rumpole of the Bailey series as the private name the lead character, a barrister with some skill in court, uses for his wife, Hilda, before whom he trembles at home. Haggard's Lost World genre influenced the popular American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs.[citation needed] Allan Quatermain, the hero of King Solomon's Mines and its sequel Allan Quatermain, has influenced the American film character Indiana Jones, featured in the films Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.[citation needed] Quatermain has gained recent popularity thanks to being a main character in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Haggard was praised in 1965 by Roger Lancelyn Green, one of the Oxford Inklings, as a writer of a consistently high level of "literary skill or sheer imaginative power" and a co-originator with Robert Louis Stevenson of the Age of the Story Tellers[6].

Erich Maria Remarque
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born June 22, 1898(1898-06-22)
Osnabrück, Germany
Died September 25, 1970 (aged 72)
Locarno, Switzerland
Occupation Novelist
Nationality German
Notable work(s) All Quiet on the Western Front

Influences
Immanuel Kant, Karl May, Frank Wedekind, Rainer Maria Rilke

Influenced
William March

Erich Maria Remarque (June 22, 1898 - September 25, 1970), a German author.




Life

Erich Paul Remark was born in a working-class family in the German town of Osnabruck. He was conscripted into the army at the age of 18.

On 12 June, 1917 he was transferred to the Western Front, 2nd Company, Reserves, Field Depot of the 2nd Reserves Guards Division at Hem-Lenglet. On 26 June, he was stationed between Torhout and Houthulst, Trench Battalion Bethe (Name of commander), 2nd Company of the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment. On 31 July he was wounded by shrapnel in the left leg, right arm and neck, and repatriated to an army hospital in Germany, where he spent the rest of the war.[1]

After the war he changed his last name to Remarque, which had been the previous family name until his grandfather changed it in the 19th Century due to the German xenophobia of the time. He worked at a number of different jobs, including librarian, businessman, teacher, journalist and editor.

In 1929, Remarque published his most famous work, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) under the name Erich Maria Remarque (changing his middle name in honor of his mother). The novel described the utter cruelty of the war from the perspective of a twenty year-old soldier. A number of similar works followed; in simple, emotive language they described wartime and the postwar years.

In 1933, the Nazis banned and burned Remarque's works, and issued propaganda stating that he was a descendant of French Jews and that his real last name was Kramer, a Jewish-sounding name, and his original name spelled backwards. This is still listed in some biographies despite the complete lack of evidence. Also despite clear evidence to the contrary, their assertion that he had never seen active service remains in some references.

Remarque had been living in Switzerland since 1931, and in 1939 he emigrated to the United States of America with his first wife, Ilsa Jeanne Zamboui, whom he married and divorced twice, and they became naturalized citizens of the United States in 1947. In 1948 he went back to Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life. In 1958, Douglas Sirk directed the film A Time to Love and a Time to Die in Germany, based on Remarque's novel A Time to Live and a Time to Die. Remarque makes a cameo appearance in this film in the role of the Professor. He married the Hollywood actress Paulette Goddard in 1958 and they remained married until his death in 1970 at age 72. He is interred in the Ronco cemetery in Ronco, Ticino, Switzerland, where Goddard is also interred. Goddard left a bequest of $20 million to New York University to fund an institute for European study which is named after Remarque. The first Director of The Remarque Institute was Professor Tony Judt.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born Anne Spencer Morrow
June 22, 1906(1906-06-22)
Englewood, New Jersey
Died February 7, 2001 (aged 94)
Passumpsic, Vermont
Parents Dwight Whitney Morrow
Elizabeth Cutter Morrow

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (June 22, 1906 - February 7, 2001) was a pioneering American aviator, author, and the spouse of fellow aviator Charles Lindbergh.





Early life

Anne Spencer Morrow was the second of four children born to Dwight Whitney Morrow and Elizabeth Cutter Morrow. Her siblings were Elisabeth Reeve (born 1904), Dwight, Jr. (1908), and Constance (1913).

Anne was raised in a household that fostered achievement. Every day at 5 PM, her mother would drop everything and read to her children. After the young Morrows outgrew this practice, they would employ that hour to read by themselves, or to write poetry and diaries. Anne in particular later capitalized on this routine learned in her youth to write her diaries, eventually published to critical acclaim.

Her father was consecutively a lawyer, a partner at J. P. Morgan & Co., United States Ambassador to Mexico, and Senator from New Jersey. Her mother was active in women's education, serving on the board of trustees and briefly as acting president of her alma mater Smith College.

After graduating from The Chapin School in New York City in 1924, Anne attended Smith College, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1928. She received the Elizabeth Montagu Prize for her essay on women of the eighteenth century and Madame d'Houdetot, and the Mary Augusta Jordan Literary Prize for her fictional piece entitled "Lida Was Beautiful".

Anne and Charles Lindbergh met in Mexico, when Dwight Morrow, Lindbergh's financial adviser at J.P. Morgan and Co., invited Lindbergh to Mexico, shortly before Morrow resigned to become the American ambassador, in order to advance good relations between that country and the United States.

Anne Morrow and Charles Lindbergh were married at the home of her parents in Englewood on May 27, 1929. That year, she flew solo for the first time, and in 1930 became the first American woman to earn a first class glider pilot's license. In the 1930s, Anne and Charles together explored and charted air routes between continents. Thus the Lindberghs were the first to fly from Africa to South America, and explored polar air routes from North America to Asia and Europe.

In an incident widely known as the "Lindbergh kidnapping", the Lindberghs' first child, Charles Augustus Lindbergh III, was kidnapped at 20 months of age from their home outside Hopewell, New Jersey on March 1, 1932. After a massive investigation, a baby's body, presumed to be that of Charles Lindbergh III, was discovered the following May 12, some four miles from the Lindberghs' home, at the summit of a hill on the Hopewell-Mt. Rose Highway.

She was the basis for Sonia Armstrong in the novel Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie


The frenzied press attention paid to the Lindberghs, particularly after the kidnapping of their son and later the trial, conviction and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, prompted Charles and Anne to move first to England, to a house called "Long Barn" owned by Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, and later to the small island of Iliec, off the coast of France. Charles and Anne Lindbergh had five more children: sons Jon, Land and Scott, and daughters Anne and Reeve.

While in Europe, the Lindberghs came to advocate isolationist views that led to their fall from grace in the eyes of many. In the late 1930s, the U.S. Air Attaché in Berlin invited Charles Lindbergh to inspect the rising power of Nazi Germany's Air Force. Impressed by German technology and their apparent number of planes, as well as influenced by the staggering number of deaths from World War I, Lindbergh opposed U.S. entry into the impending European conflict. Anne wrote a book titled The Wave of the Future, arguing that something resembling fascism was the unfortunate "wave of the future", echoing authors such as Lawrence Dennis and later James Burnham.

The antiwar America First Committee quickly adopted Charles Lindbergh as their leader, but after Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war, the committee disbanded.


Later life

After the war, Anne and Charles wrote books that rebuilt the reputations they had gained and lost before WWII. Over the course of their 45-year marriage, Charles and Anne lived in New Jersey, New York, England, France, Maine, Michigan, Connecticut, Switzerland, and Hawaii. Charles died on Maui in 1974.

After suffering a series of strokes in the early 1990s, which left her confused and disabled, Anne continued to live in her home in Connecticut with the assistance of round-the-clock caregivers. During a visit to her daughter Reeve's family in 1999, she came down with pneumonia, after which she went to live near Reeve in a small home built on Reeve's Vermont farm, where Anne died in 2001 at the age of 94. Reeve Lindbergh's book "No More Words" tells the story of her mother's last years.


Anne received numerous awards and honors, in recognition of her contributions to both literature and aviation. The U.S. Flag Association honored her with its Cross of Honor in 1933 for having taken part in surveying transatlantic air routes. The following year, she was awarded the Hubbard Medal by the National Geographic Society for having completed 40,000 miles of exploratory flying with Charles, a feat that took them to five continents. Later, in 1993, Women in Aerospace presented her with an Aerospace Explorer Award in recognition of her achievements in, and contributions to, the aerospace field.

In addition to being the recipient of honorary Masters and Doctor of Letters degrees from her alma mater Smith College (1935; 1970), Anne also received honorary degrees from Amherst College (1939), the University of Rochester (1939), Middlebury College (1976), and Gustavus Adolphus College (1985). She was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, the National Women's Hall of Fame, and the Aviation Hall of Fame of New Jersey. War Within and Without, the last installment of her published diaries, received the Christopher Award.

Though (typically) he never showed it, Charles was hurt by Anne's 3-year affair in the early 50's with her personal doctor. This may have led to the fact that from 1957 until his death in 1974, Charles had an affair with a Bavarian woman 24 years his junior, whom he supported financially. The affair was kept secret, and only in 2003, after Anne and the mistress were both dead, did DNA testing prove that Charles had fathered the mistress's three children. One child came to suspect that Lindbergh was their father and made her suspicions public, after finding among her dead mother's effects snapshots of, and letters from, Charles. He is also suspected of having fathered children by a sister of his Bavarian mistress, and by his personal secretary. All this may have contributed to the stoic character of Anne's later life.

Gower Champion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Born Gower Carlyle Champion
June 22, 1919(1919-06-22)
Geneva, Illinois, USA
Died August 25, 1980 (aged 61)
Miami Beach, Florida, USA
Spouse(s) Marjorie Belcher (1947-1973)

Awards won
Tony Awards
Best Direction of a Musical
1961 Bye Bye Birdie
1964 Hello, Dolly!
1968 The Happy Time (musical)

Gower Carlyle Champion (June 22, 1919 - August 25, 1980) was an American Tony Award-winning theatre director, choreographer, and dancer.





Biography

Champion was born in Geneva, Illinois, the son of John W. Champion and Beatrice Carlisle. He was raised in Los Angeles, California, where he graduated from Fairfax High School.[1] He studied dance from an early age and at the age of fifteen toured nightclubs with friend Jeanne Tyler billed as "Gower and Jeanne, America's Youngest Dance Team."

During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Champion worked on Broadway as a solo dancer and choreographer. After serving in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II, Champion met Marjorie Belcher, who became his new partner, and the two were married in 1947. Throughout the 1950s, they performed on a number of television variety shows, and in 1957 they starred in their own short-lived CBS sitcom, The Marge and Gower Champion Show, which was based on their actual career experiences. During this period, they also made several film musicals, including the 1951 remake of Show Boat (with Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson), the autobiographical Everything I Have is Yours (1952), Give a Girl a Break (1953), and Three for the Show (1955).

In 1948, Champion had begun to direct as well, and he won the first of eight Tony Awards for his staging of Lend an Ear, the show that introduced Carol Channing to New York theater audiences. During the 1950s, he only worked on two Broadway musicals--choreographing Make a Wish in 1951 and directing, starring and staging 3 For Tonight in 1955--preferring to spend most of his time in Hollywood. However, in the 1960s, he directed a number of Broadway hits that put him at the top of his profession.

He had a solid success in 1960 with Bye Bye Birdie, a show about an Elvis-like rock star about to be inducted into the army. The show starred relative unknowns Chita Rivera and Dick Van Dyke along with a youthful cast. It ran 607 performances and won four Tony awards, including Best Musical and two for Champion's direction and choreography. Next came Carnival! in 1961, which ran 719 performances and garnered seven Tony nominations, including one for Champion's direction.

In 1964, he directed one of Broadway's biggest blockbusters, Hello, Dolly!. It ran for 2844 performances--almost seven years. Starring Carol Channing, it's best remembered for the title number, where Dolly is greeted by the staff of a restaurant after having been away for years. The show won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, as well as two for Champion's direction and choreography.

Champion had his fourth consecutive hit musical with I Do! I Do! in 1966. It featured a cast of two--veterans Mary Martin and Robert Preston--playing a couple seen throughout the years of their marriage. The show ran for 560 performances and got seven Tony nominations, including one for Champion's direction.

His next show, The Happy Time in 1968, broke his streak. It had a relatively disappointing run of only 286 performances. This would be followed by many more disappointments and worse. In the 1970s, Champion directed minor hits (Sugar in 1972 and the revival Irene in 1973), flops (Mack And Mabel in 1974) and complete disasters ( Rockabye Hamlet--seven performances in 1976--and A Broadway Musical running only one night in 1978, not to mention Prettybelle, which closed out of town in 1971). On top of all this, he and Marge were divorced in 1973.

After all the failure of the previous decade, Champion was able to make a comeback with his longest-running show. In 1980, he choreographed and directed a stage adaptation of the movie classic, 42nd Street. It won the Tony for Best Musical, and Champion was nominated for his direction and choreography, winning for the latter. The show ran for 3486 performances, but Champion did not live to see any. During the show's tryout in Washington, D.C., he learned he had a rare form of blood cancer, and after numerous curtain calls on opening night, producer David Merrick stunned the cast and audience by announcing Champion had died earlier that day.

Kris Kristofferson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Background information

Birth name Kristoffer Kristofferson
Also known as The Reptile
Born June 22, 1936 (1936-06-22) (age 71)
Brownsville, Texas, USA
Genre(s) Country, Folk. Rock
Occupation(s) Musician, Songwriter, Actor
Instrument(s) Guitar, Piano, Harmonica
Voice type(s) Baritone
Years active 1966 - present
Label(s) Monument, Mercury, Warner Bros., New West
Associated acts The Highwaymen
Website kriskristofferson.com

Kristoffer "Kris" Kristofferson (born June 22, 1936) is an influential American country music singer-songwriter and actor. He is best known for hits such as "Me and Bobby McGee", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night". Kristofferson is the sole writer of most of his songs, but he has collaborated with various other figures of the Nashville scene such as Shel Silverstein and Fred Rumfelt.





Early life

Born in Brownsville, Texas, Kristofferson's parents were Mary Ann (née Ashbrook) and Lars Henry Kristofferson, a U.S. Air Force major general.[1] As a child, his father pushed his son toward a military career (and Kristofferson's paternal grandfather was an officer in the Swedish Army).[2] Like most military brats, he moved around frequently as a youth, finally settling down in San Mateo, California, where he graduated from San Mateo High School. Kristofferson experienced his first dose of fame when he appeared in Sports Illustrated's "Faces In The Crowd" for his achievements while attending Pomona College of the Claremont Colleges in rugby union, football, and track and field. He and fellow classmates revived the Claremont Colleges Rugby Club in 1958, which has remained a Southern California rugby dynasty. An aspiring writer, Kristofferson earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University (Merton College, Oxford) after previously attending Pomona College. While at Oxford he was awarded his blue for boxing. While in England, Kristofferson began writing songs and working with his manager Larry Parnes; he recorded for Top Rank Records under the name Kris Carson, but was unsuccessful in this very early phase of his musical career.

As an undergraduate, Kristofferson was a member of the non-nationalized Kappa Delta Fraternity at Pomona College.

In 1960, Kristofferson graduated with a master's degree in English literature and married an old girlfriend, Fran Beer. Kristofferson ultimately joined the U.S. Army and achieved the rank of captain. He became a helicopter pilot after receiving flight training at Fort Rucker in southeastern Alabama. Later, during the early 1960s, he was stationed in West Germany and returned to music and formed a band. In 1965, he resigned his commission to pursue songwriting. He had just been assigned to become an English Literature professor at West Point. Kristofferson sent some of his compositions to a friend's relative, Marijohn Wilkin, a successful Nashville, Tennessee, songwriter.


Music career

After resigning his commission in 1965, Kristofferson moved to Nashville intent on becoming a professional songwriter. He worked a variety of odd jobs while struggling to make it in the music business, burdened with expensive medical bills as a result of his son's defective esophagus. He and his wife soon divorced.

He got a job sweeping floors at Columbia Studios in Nashville. There he met Johnny Cash, and his best friend, Asbjørn Mølgaard. who initially accepted some of Kristofferson's songs but chose not to use them. During Kristofferson's janitorial stint for Columbia, Bob Dylan recorded his landmark 1966 album Blonde on Blonde at the studio. Though he had the opportunity to watch some of Dylan's recording sessions, Kristofferson never met Dylan because of his fear that he would be fired for approaching him.

He also worked as a commercial helicopter pilot at that time for a south Louisiana firm called Petroleum Helicopters International (PHI), based in Lafayette, Louisiana. Kristofferson recalled of his days as a pilot, "That was about the last three years before I started performing, before people started cutting my songs... I would work a week down here [in south Louisiana] for PHI, sitting on an oil platform and flying helicopters. Then I'd go back to Nashville at the end of the week and spend a week up there trying to pitch the songs, then come back down and write songs for another week... I can remember 'Help Me Make It Through The Night' I wrote sitting on top of an oil platform. I wrote 'Bobby Mcgee' down here, and a lot of them [in south Louisiana]."[3]

In 1966, Dave Dudley released a successful Kristofferson single, "Viet Nam Blues". The following year, Kristofferson signed to Epic Records and released a single, "Golden Idol"/"Killing Time", but the song was not successful. Within the next few years, more Kristofferson originals hit the charts, performed by Roy Drusky ("Jody and the Kid"), Billy Walker & the Tennessee Walkers ("From the Bottle to the Bottom"), Ray Stevens ("Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down"), Jerry Lee Lewis ("Once More with Feeling") Faron Young ("Your Time's Comin'") and Roger Miller ("Me and Bobby McGee", "Best of all Possible Worlds", "Darby's Castle"). Further, he achieved some success as a performer himself, resulting from Johnny Cash's introduction of Kristofferson at the Newport Folk Festival.

In a distinctly notable fashion, Kristofferson grabbed Cash's attention when he unexpectedly landed his helicopter in Cash's yard and gave him some tapes including "Sunday Morning Coming Down".

Kristofferson signed to Monument Records as a recording artist. In addition to running that label, Fred Foster also served as manager of Combine Music, Kristofferson's songwriting label. His debut album for Monument in 1970 was Kristofferson, which included a few new songs as well as many of his previous hits. Sales were poor, although this debut album would become a success the following year when it was re-released under the title Me & Bobby McGee. Kristofferson's compositions were still in high demand. Ray Price ("For the Good Times"), Waylon Jennings ("The Taker"), Bobby Bare ("Come Sundown"), Johnny Cash ("Sunday Morning Coming Down") and Sammi Smith ("Help Me Make It Through the Night") all recorded successful versions of his songs in the early 1970s. "For the Good Times" (Ray Price) won 'Song of the Year" in 1970 from the Academy of Country Music, while "Sunday Morning Coming Down" (Johnny Cash) won the same award from the Academy's rival, the Country Music Association in the same year. This is the only time an individual received the same award from these two organizations in the same year for different songs.

In 1971, Janis Joplin, who dated Kris until her death, had a number 1 hit with "Me and Bobby McGee" from her posthumous Pearl. Joplin's take is considered the definitive version of the song as it ranked high on Rolling Stones 500 greatest songs list, and when released, it stayed on the number one spot on the charts for weeks. More hits followed from others: Ray Price ("I Won't Mention It Again", "I'd Rather Be Sorry"), Joe Simon ("Help Me Make It Through the Night"), Bobby Bare ("Please Don't Tell Me How the Story Ends"), O.C. Smith ("Help Me Make It Through the Night") Jerry Lee Lewis ("Me and Bobby McGee"), Patti Page ("I'd Rather Be Sorry") and Peggy Little ("I've Got to Have You"). Kristofferson released his second album, The Silver Tongued Devil and I in 1971; the album was a success and established Kristofferson's career as a recording artist in his own right. Not long after, Kristofferson made his acting debut in The Last Movie (directed by Dennis Hopper) and appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival. In 1972, he acted in Cisco Pike and released his third album, Border Lord; the album was all-new material and sales were sluggish. He also swept the Grammies that year with numerous songs nominated and several winning song of the year. Kristofferson's 1972 fourth album, Jesus Was a Capricorn initially had slow sales, but the third single, "Why Me", was a success and significantly increased album sales.



Film career

For the next few. years, Kristofferson focused on acting. He appeared in Blume in Love (directed by Paul Mazursky) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (directed by Sam Peckinpah). He continued acting, in Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Convoy, (another Sam Peckinpah film which was released in 1978), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Vigilante Force, a film based on the Yukio Mishima novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, and A Star Is Born (with Barbra Streisand). In spite of his success with Streisand, Kristofferson's solo musical career headed downward with his non-charting ninth album, Shake Hands with the Devil. His next film, Freedom Road, did not earn a theatrical release in the U.S. Kristofferson's next film was Heaven's Gate, a phenomenal industry-changing failure -- in which, nonetheless, he turned in a nuanced performance.


Mid-career

Also during this time period, he married singer Rita Coolidge in 1973. With his new wife, Kristofferson released an album called Full Moon, another success buoyed by numerous hit singles and Grammy nominations. However, his fifth album, Spooky Lady's Sideshow, released in 1974, was a commercial failure, setting the trend for most of the rest of his career. Artists such as Ronnie Milsap and Johnny Duncan continued to record Kristofferson's material with much success, but his amazing yet rough voice and anti-pop sound kept his own audience to a minimum. Meanwhile, more artists took his songs to the top of the charts, including Willie Nelson, whose 1979 LP release of Willie Nelson Sings Kris Kristofferson proved to be a smash success.He and Rita Coolidge then divorced in 1980.


Later career

In 1982, Kristofferson participated (with Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Brenda Lee) on The Winning Hand, a country success that failed to break into mainstream audiences. He then married again, to Lisa Meyers, and concentrated on films for a time, appearing in The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck, Flashpoint, and Songwriter. The latter also starred Willie Nelson. Kristofferson was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. Music from Songwriter (an album of duets between Nelson and Kristofferson) was a massive country success.

Nelson and Kristofferson continued their partnership, and added Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash to form the supergroup The Highwaymen. Their first album, Highwayman was a huge success, and the supergroup continued working together for a time. In 1985, Kristofferson starred in Trouble in Mind and released Repossessed, a politically aware album that was a country success, particularly "They Killed Him" (also performed by Bob Dylan), a tribute to his heroes, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus, and Mohandas Gandhi. Kristofferson also appeared in Amerika at about the same time; the mini-series was controversial, hypothesizing life under Communist domination.

In spite of the success of Highwayman 2 in 1990, Kristofferson's solo recording career slipped significantly in the early 1990s, though he continued to record successfully with the Highwaymen. Lone Star (1996 film by John Sayles) reinvigorated Kristofferson's acting career, and he soon appeared in Blade, Blade II, Blade: Trinity, A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, Fire Down Below, Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes, Chelsea Walls, Payback, The Jacket and Fast Food Nation.

The Songwriters Hall of Fame inducted Kristofferson in 1985, as did the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1977. 1999 saw the release of The Austin Sessions. An album on which Kristofferson reworked some of his favorite songs with the help of befriended artists such as Mark Knopfler, Steve Earle and Jackson Browne. In 2003 Broken Freedom Song was released, a live album recorded in San Francisco.

In 2004 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2006, he received the Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and released his first album full of new material in 11 years; This Old Road. On April 21 2007, Kristofferson won CMT's Johnny Cash Visionary Award. Rosanne Cash, Cash's daughter, presented the honor during the April 16 awards show in Nashville. Previous recipients include Cash, Hank Williams Jr., Loretta Lynn, Reba McEntire and the Dixie Chicks. "John was my hero before he was my friend, and anything with his name on it is really an honor in my eyes," Kristofferson said during a phone interview. "I was thinking back to when I first met him, and if I ever thought that I'd be getting an award with his name on it, it would have carried me through a lot of hard times."

In July 2007, Kristofferson was featured on CMT's "Studio 330 Sessions" where he played many of his hits.

On June 13, 2008 Kristofferson performed an acoustic in the round set with Patty Griffin and Randy Owen (Alabama) for a special taping of a PBS songwriters series to be aired in December. Each performer played 5 songs. Kristofferson's included "The Best of All Possible World's," "Darby's Castle," "Casey's Last Ride," "Me and Bobby McGee," and "Here Comes that Rainbow Again." Taping was done in Nashville, TN.


Personal life

Kristofferson has two younger siblings, Karen Kristofferson Kirschenbauer and Kraigher Kristofferson. His sister attended Pomona College where she studied acting but she then married a career military officer and moved around the world regularly with him and their three sons. After her sons grew up, she decided to get involved in acting. She acted in a number of films, TV and commercials. She died in May 2005. Kraigher, known as Kraig, is a high end commercial real estate broker in Southern California.[citation needed]

Kristofferson has been married three times and has eight children. In 1960, Kristofferson married his high school sweetheart Frances (Fran) Beer. They had two children, a daughter Tracy Kristofferson and a son Kris Kristofferson before divorcing in 1969. After Kristofferson dated Janis Joplin until her death and then dated Barbra Streisand. In 1973, he married singer Rita Coolidge and together they had one child, Casey Kristofferson. They divorced in 1980. In 1983 he married Lisa Meyers and together they have five children - Jesse Turner Kristofferson, Jody Ray Kristofferson, Johnny Kristofferson, Kelly Marie Kristofferson, and Blake Cameron Kristofferson.

He has said that he would like the first couple of lines of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire" on his tombstone, "Like a bird on the wire, / Like a drunk in a midnight choir, / I have tried in my way to be free."

On February 29, 2008 Kristofferson officially endorsed Barack Obama for President.[4] A member of Veterans for Peace, Kristofferson took several trips to Nicaragua with peace activist S. Brian Willson during the 1980s. He also opposes the war in Iraq and has been calling for an end to it as demonstrated in his song "In The News".[5]

Klaus Maria Brandauer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born Klaus Georg Steng
June 22, 1944 (1944-06-22) (age 63)
Bad Aussee, Austria
Years active 1962-present
Spouse(s) Karin Braundauer (1963-1992);Natalie Krenn ( July 2007 - present)
Awards won
Golden Globe Awards
Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
1986 Out of Africa

Klaus Maria Brandauer (born June 22, 1944) is an Austrian actor, film director, and pedagogue.




Biography

Born as Klaus Georg Steng in Bad Aussee, Austria, he subsequently took his mother's maiden name - Maria Brandauer - as part of his stage name, Klaus Maria Brandauer. He began acting onstage in 1962. After working in national theatre and television, he made his film debut in 1972. His starring and award-winning role in István Szabó's Mephisto (1981) as a self-absorbed actor playing an actor, launched his career, internationally.

He followed this with parts in Never Say Never Again (1983), Out of Africa (1985, for which he was nominated for an Oscar) and Szabó's Oberst Redl (1985) and Hanussen (1988). Brandauer was originally cast as Marko Ramius in The Hunt for Red October. That role eventually went to Oscar winner Sean Connery, who played James Bond to Brandauer's Largo in Never Say Never Again (1983). He co-starred with Connery again in The Russia House, released in 1990.

Brandauer directed his first film in 1989, Georg Elser - Einer aus Deutschland, with himself in the title role. His other film roles have been in The Lightship (1986), Streets of Gold (1986), Burning Secret (1988), The Russia House (1990), White Fang (1991), Becoming Colette (1992), Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999) and Everyman's Feast (2002).

In August 2006, Brandauer's much-awaited production of The Threepenny Opera got a mixed reception. Brandauer had resisted questions about how his production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's classic musical comedy about the criminal MacHeath would differ from earlier versions, and his production featured Mack the Knife in a three-piece suit and white gloves, stuck to Brecht's text, and avoided any references to contemporary politics or issues. Some at Friday night's premiere apparently found it too conventional and there were boos after the curtain for Brandauer when he took his bow.[citation needed]

Brandauer is fluent in four languages: German, Hungarian, English and French and has acted in each, and is a professor at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. He won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in 1986 for his performance as Bror Blixen in Out of Africa.


Private life

He was married to Karin Brandauer from 1963 until her death in 1992; they had one son.

Meryl Streep
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born Mary Louise Streep
June 22, 1949 (1949-06-22) (age 59)
Summit, New Jersey, USA
Years active 1977-present
Spouse(s) Don Gummer (1978-present)
Awards won
Academy Awards
Best Actress
1982 Sophie's Choice

Best Supporting Actress
1979 Kramer vs. Kramer


Australian Film Institute Awards
Best Actress in a Leading Role
1989 A Cry in the Dark

BAFTA Awards
Best Actress in a Leading Role
1981 The French Lieutenant's Woman

César Awards
Honorary César - Lifetime Achievement
2003

Emmy Awards
Best Actress in a Mini-series
1978 Holocaust
2004 Angels in America

Golden Globe Awards
Best Actress ?- Motion Picture Drama
1982 The French Lieutenant's Woman
1983 Sophie's Choice

Best Supporting Actress ?- Motion Picture
1980 Kramer vs. Kramer
2003 Adaptation.
Best Actress ?- Mini-series
2004 Angels in America
Best Actress ?- Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
2006 The Devil Wears Prada


Other Awards
NYFCC Award for Best Supporting Actress
1979 Kramer vs. Kramer
1979 The Seduction of Joe Tynan

NYFCC Award for Best Actress
1982 Sophie's Choice
1988 A Cry in the Dark
Best Actress Award ?- Cannes Film Festival
1989 A Cry in the Dark
Berlin Silver Bear for Best Actress
2003 The Hours
AFI Life Achievement Award
2004



Mary Louise ("Meryl") Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American two-time Academy Award winning actress who has worked in theatre, television, and film. She made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, and her screen debut came in 1977's made-for-television movie, The Deadliest Season. Streep made her film debut in Julia (1977), opposite Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave.

Both critical and commercial success came quickly with roles in The Deer Hunter, with Robert De Niro, and Kramer vs. Kramer, with Dustin Hoffman, the former giving Streep her first Oscar nomination and the latter her first win. Streep's work has earned her two Academy Awards, a Cannes award, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG), four Grammy Award nominations, two Emmy Awards, a BAFTA award, and a Tony Award nomination. She has received 14 Academy Award nominations, more than any other actor or actress in the history of the awards, and is tied with Jack Nicholson for most Golden Globe Award wins, with six each. She has been nominated a remarkable 21 times for a Golden Globe, second only to Jack Lemmon, who had 22. Streep is widely considered to be one of the most respected and talented film actors of all time.[1][2] She is also one of the few actors to have won all four major screen acting awards (Oscars, Golden Globes, SAG, and BAFTA awards).




Biography

Early life

Streep was born Mary Louise Streep in Summit, New Jersey, the daughter of Mary W. Streep, a commercial artist, and Harry William Streep, Jr., a pharmaceutical executive.[3][4] Streep's mother had Swiss, Irish, and English ancestry, and her father's family was of Dutch descent, with distant Sephardic Jewish ancestors from Spain (although Streep was raised Presbyterian).[5][6][7][8] She has two younger brothers, Dana and Harry.[9] Streep was raised in Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she attended and graduated from Bernards High School.[10] She received her B.A. in Drama at Vassar College and earned an M.F.A. from Yale University.


Early career

Streep's first feature film was Julia, in which she played a small but pivotal role during a flashback scene. The Deer Hunter (1978) was her second feature film, and it earned Streep her first Academy Award nomination (for Best Supporting Actress). The following year, she won an Academy Award for her role opposite Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer (Best Supporting Actress, 1979). In 1982 she won again, for Sophie's Choice (Best Actress), where she starred alongside Peter MacNicol and Kevin Kline.

In 1978, she won her first Emmy Award, for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series for the miniseries Holocaust. A year later, she appeared in her only Woody Allen film, Manhattan. Streep was engaged to John Cazale ("Fredo" in The Godfather), her costar in The Deer Hunter, until his death from bone cancer on March 12, 1978. In September 1978, she married sculptor Don Gummer. They have four children: Henry W. "Hank" Gummer (born in 1979 and attended Dartmouth College- same class as Kai Wong), Mamie Gummer (1983), Grace Jane Gummer (1986), and Louisa Jacobson Gummer (1991).[11] Mamie has chosen acting as a career, and made her off-Broadway debut as Lucy in a 2005 production of Mr. Marmalade at the Laura Pels Theatre.


1980-present

In the 1980s, Streep appeared in the acclaimed films The French Lieutenant's Woman; Silkwood, with Kurt Russell and Cher; Out of Africa, with Robert Redford; and Ironweed, with Jack Nicholson. She received strong reviews and an Oscar nomination for Silkwood, portraying activist Karen Silkwood. In A Cry in the Dark, Streep portrayed Lindy Chamberlain, the Australian mother who was accused of being responsible for the death of her infant after claiming that a dingo took her baby. For her performance, she was awarded Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. From 1984 to 1990, Streep won six People's Choice Awards for Favorite Motion Picture Actress and, in 1990, was named World Favorite.

In the 1990s, Streep took a greater variety of roles, including a strung-out B-movie actor in a screen adaptation of Carrie Fisher's novel Postcards from the Edge, with Dennis Quaid and Shirley MacLaine, and a farcical role in Death Becomes Her, with Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. Streep also appeared in the movie version of Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits; Clint Eastwood's screen adaptation of The Bridges of Madison County; The River Wild; She-Devil; Marvin's Room (with Diane Keaton and Leonardo DiCaprio); One True Thing; and Music of the Heart, in a role that required her to learn to play the violin.

She was a voice actor for the animated series The Simpsons (playing Reverend Timothy Lovejoy's daughter) and King of the Hill. She also voiced the Blue Fairy character in the Steven Spielberg film A.I.

In 2002, she costarred with Nicolas Cage in Spike Jonze's quirky Adaptation. as real-life author Susan Orlean, and with Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore in The Hours. She also appeared with Al Pacino and Emma Thompson in the HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner's six-hour play, Angels in America, in which she had four roles. She received her second Emmy Award for Angels in America, which reunited her with director Mike Nichols (who directed her in Silkwood, Heartburn, and Postcards from the Edge).

In addition, she appeared in Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate, costarring Denzel Washington, in which she played a role made famous by Angela Lansbury. She also starred with Jim Carrey in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Since 2002, Meryl Streep has hosted the annual event Poetry & the Creative Mind, a benefit in support of National Poetry Month and a program of the Academy of American Poets. Streep also cohosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert with Liam Neeson in Oslo, Norway in 2001.

Streep's most recent film releases are Prime (2005); the Robert Altman film A Prairie Home Companion, with Lindsay Lohan and Lily Tomlin; and the box office success The Devil Wears Prada, with Anne Hathaway, which grossed nearly US$125 million and earned Streep the 2007 Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. On January 23, 2007, Streep earned her 14th Academy Award nomination (her 11th for Best Actress) for The Devil Wears Prada. Streep's newest film, Dark Matter, debuted at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

She has been confirmed for the role of Donna in the film version of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia!, which will hit theaters July 18, 2008. She has also been confirmed to play Sister Aloysius in the 2008 film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, which will come to theatres in 2008. Other upcoming projects include Julie and Julia, as Julia Child; Dirty Tricks, as Martha Mitchell; and A Question of Mercy, which will come to theatres in 2009. (Source: imdb.com)


Theatre

In New York City, she appeared in the 1976 Broadway double bill of Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Arthur Miller's A Memory of Two Mondays. For the latter, she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Her other early Broadway credits include Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical, Happy End, which she originally appeared in off-Broadway at the Chelsea Theater Center. She received Drama Desk Award nominations for both productions. Once Streep's film career flourished, she took a long break from stage acting.

In July 2001, Streep returned to the stage for the first time in more than twenty years, playing Arkadina in the Public Theater's revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. The staging, directed by Mike Nichols, also featured Kevin Kline, Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Marcia Gay Harden, and John Goodman.

In August and September 2006, she starred onstage at the Public Theater's production of Mother Courage and Her Children at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park.[12] The show performed to crowds that lined up for hours, sometimes in the pouring rain, to get highly coveted seats. It was originally written by Bertolt Brecht in 1939 and first performed in 1941. The Public Theater production was a new translation by famed playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America), with songs in the Weill/Brecht style written by composer Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change); veteran director George C. Wolfe was at the helm. Streep starred alongside Kevin Kline and Austin Pendleton in this three-and-a-half-hour play, in which she sang several songs and was in nearly every scene.


Awards

Streep holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any actor, having been nominated 14 times since her first nomination in 1979 for The Deer Hunter (11 for Best Actress and 3 for Best Supporting Actress).

Meryl Streep also holds the record for actress with the most Golden Globe Awards, with six wins. She is also the second-most nominated performer for a Golden Globe Award (she has 21 nominations to Jack Lemmon's 22). Streep is also tied with Jack Nicholson for most Golden Globes overall by an actor or actress (six wins). Streep has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Cyndi Lauper
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Background information

Birth name Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper
Born June 22, 1953 (1953-06-22) (age 55)
Origin Queens, New York, United States
Genre(s) Pop
Rock
Dance-pop
New Wave
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter, producer, actress (film & stage)
Instrument(s) Vocals, Appalachian dulcimer, guitar, recorder, omnichord, trombone, percussion, electric bass
Years active 1977?-present
Label(s) Portrait / Epic (1982-1986)
Epic (1987-1998)
Edel (1999-2002)
Daylight / Epic (2003-present)
Associated acts Blue Angel
Website www.cyndilauper.com
Notable instrument(s)
Appalachian dulcimer

Cynthia Ann Stephanie "Cyndi" Lauper (born June 22, 1953) is an American Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and MTV VMA-winning video and Emmy Award-winning film, television and Theater actress. She became a household name in the mid-eighties with the release of the album, She's So Unusual and became the first artist in history to have four top-five singles released from one album. Lauper has released 11 albums, over 40 singles, and has sold more than 25 million albums worldwide. She continues to tour the world in support of human rights.




Biography

Early life and pre-fame

Lauper was born to Fred and Catrine Lauper in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in a rough area of Queens.[1] Her mother uses the stagename, "Catrine Dominique" for the music videos she has starred in.[2] Her father was of German and Swiss descent and her mother was Italian American (from Campania, precisely).[3] She has a sister named Ellen and a brother named Fred (nicknamed Butch).

At the age of five, Lauper's parents divorced and her mother moved with the three children to Ozone Park which was at that time a poor neighborhood in Queens, New York.

Lauper's mother remarried and divorced again, and went to work as a waitress trying to support three children. It was during this time that Lauper began listening to artists like Judy Garland, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Beatles. Her mother encouraged her independence and creativity.

At the age of twelve, Lauper learned how to play a guitar that she had inherited from her sister. Lauper started to write her own lyrics during this time. She had a great love of art and music and tried to find ways to express herself. Even at the early age of twelve, Lauper started dyeing her hair different colors and wearing clothes that most people would find unusual.

Lauper was accepted in a special public high school for students with talent in the visual arts, but she was held back and eventually dropped out and earned her GED sometime later. At the age of seventeen she left home planning to study art. Her journey would take her to Canada, where she spent two weeks in the woods with her dog, Sparkle, trying to find herself. She eventually wound up in Vermont where she ended up taking art classes at Johnson State College. She supported herself by working various odd jobs. Feeling homesick, she eventually returned to Ozone Park.

In the mid-seventies Lauper performed as a vocalist with various cover bands (such as Doc West and Flyer who still perform under the names Gap Wilson Band and Red, White and Blues Band) in the New York metropolitan area, singing hits by bands such as Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin, and Bad Company. Even though Lauper was now performing onstage, she wasn't happy singing cover songs.

In 1977, Lauper damaged her vocal cords, and took a year off. She was told by three doctors that she would never sing again. Her friends told her to see a vocal coach, which led her to Katie Agresta, who helped Lauper regain her voice by teaching her proper vocal exercises.


Blue Angel

In 1978, after Lauper regained her voice, she met saxophone player John Turi through her manager Ted Rosenblatt. Turi and Lauper became writing partners and formed a band called Blue Angel. They decided to put everything they had into making an album of original material.

A few demos were recorded and the tape found its way over to Steve Massarsky, who was managing The Allman Brothers Band. Massarsky said the tape was horrible, but he was attracted to Lauper's voice. He saw them play live and eventually started managing the band after buying their contract out for $5,000. Many people wanted to sign Lauper only if she would sign on as a solo artist. Lauper held out, wanting the band to be included in any deal she made. Polydor Records eventually signed them as a band.

In 1980, they released a self-titled album on Polydor Records. The album charted #37 in Austria with the single "I'm Gonna Be Strong". In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine included it as one of the 100 best new wave album covers. Lauper hated the cover, often saying they made her look like Big Bird.

Despite critical acclaim, the album sold poorly (or "went lead", as Lauper says) and the band broke up. Polydor Records had a regime change, and the label wouldn't let the band back into the studio unless they had a hit. The members of Blue Angel had a falling out with Massarsky and fired him as their manager. He later filed an $80,000 suit against them. This forced Lauper into bankruptcy.

Lauper started working in retail stores such as the New York high-end thrift store Screaming Mimi's to make ends meet, and she still sang in local clubs. Her most frequent gigs were at El Sombrero. Music critics that saw Lauper perform with Blue Angel thought that she had star potential since she had a wide singing range (4 octaves)[4], perfect pitch, and a vocal style all her own. She was in her late twenties and had yet to achieve stardom. When asked about her age, Lauper would usually get defensive, saying, "What am I, a car?"

Then in 1981, while singing in a local New York bar, Lauper met David Wolff, who gave her a ride home that night. The two fell in love and eventually moved in together. They painted their living room pink and purchased a chihuahua.

Wolff took over as her manager and got her signed with Portrait Records, a subsidiary of Columbia Records. Wolff had been working with a band called Arc Angel. He introduced Lauper to CBS executive Lennie-Petze, who in turn introduced them to producer Rick Chertoff.

In 1985, the Blue Angel album was re-issued and it brought moderate success, particularly in South East Asia where it produced several hits like "Fade", "I'm Gonna Be Strong", and "Late".


She's So Unusual

On October 14, 1983, She's So Unusual was released, and became a worldwide hit. With help from Rick Chertoff, Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman (of The Hooters) as her primary studio musicians, She's So Unusual's popularity spread like wildfire. At the time, Lauper became popular with teenagers and critics, in part due to her hybrid punk image.

Lauper knew she could write songs, but the record company had a lot of material they wanted her to record. She altered a lot of the songs that were thrown her way, often changing the lyrics to suit her. (This would end up helping her in the long run financially as she could claim credit as a co-writer and collect royalties.)

An example is "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", Lauper says the original lyrics of the song dealt more with a girl pleasing a man, therefore she changed the lyrics, wanting the song to be more of an anthem as she felt the original song seemed misogynistic.

The album's second single was the ballad "Time After Time". Lauper co-wrote "Time After Time" when her producer, Rick Chertoff, suggested to the band that the album could use one more song. The record label didn't have much faith in Lauper as a songwriter, but they gave her the chance to prove herself. Notably, "Time After Time" was one of the biggest hits of 1984. It has been covered by more than 100 artists and is considered an American pop standard.

Lauper came up with the title for "Time After Time" while reading TV Guide. "Time After Time" was the name of a 1979 science fiction movie starring Malcolm McDowell as a man who invents a time machine. She has also stated that the apartment that she shared with David in New York had a very loud alarm clock, and that's where the lyrics "the clock ticks and I think of you" originated.

The third single, "She Bop", was a paean to masturbation. Lauper claimed in a 1993 interview with Howard Stern that she recorded the vocals for the song naked.[citation needed]

"All Through the Night" was written by Jules Shear. It was later re-recorded in Swedish and released as the B-side to a single from the debut album of Marie Fredriksson (who'd achieve international success later as Roxette's female lead vocalist), in 1984. In 2005, a cover by Tori Amos appeared on her set of live albums, The Original Bootlegs. Shear and Lauper had also collaborated on his hit single "Steady" which became a Billboard Top 40 hit that year.

The album also includes a cover of The Brains' New Wave track "Money Changes Everything" (another Top 40 hit for her), and "When You Were Mine", a cover of Prince's song that was later released as a promotional single in 1985.

Lauper spent 1984 touring and promoting She's So Unusual. By the end of the year, she was the first female to have four consecutive Billboard Hot 100 Top 5 hits from one album. The LP itself stayed in the Top 40 charts for more than 65 weeks and sold 16 million copies worldwide. The original title of She's So Unusual was "She's So Wonderful".

The video for "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" made Lauper an MTV staple. The video ran constantly on MTV, and featured wrestler Captain Lou Albano as Lauper's father. It won the first ever award for Best Female Video at the 1984 Video Music Awards. The video featured many of Lauper's family members and her dog, Sparkle. Lauper appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in May of 1984. The photo on the cover had been reversed to make room for the title. She also appeared on the cover of Time Magazine and Newsweek with the headline, "Women In Rock". Lauper was voted by Ms. Magazine as one of its women of the year.

The video for "Money Changes Everything" was shot during a concert at the Summit in Houston, Texas. The concert was broadcast over the radio and fans were told to show up wearing white t-shirts. The video featured pop singer Martika (of "Toy Soldiers") hugging Lauper onstage.

She started 1985 by participating on USA for Africa's famine-relief fund-raising single "We Are the World", singing the climactic soprano part of the bridge.


The WWF

Lauper always claims that David Wolff was a major fan of wrestling and it was his idea to get her involved with the WWF (World Wrestling Federation). The WWF television show had a massive audience, and Wolff thought that he could sell more albums if she appeared on the show. The idea worked, but Lauper's image as a songwriter and artist would be tarnished. Wolff set up a cross-promotion deal with the WWF. The wrestlers would be promoted through her videos and special appearances, and Lauper would be featured on the WWF program.

In 1985, Lauper won a Grammy Award in the Best New Artist category. At the event, she appeared with WWF Superstar Hulk Hogan, who played her "bodyguard". In return, she made many appearances as herself in a number of WWF's "Rock and Wrestling" events, where she was the manager of Wendi Richter. Their entrance music was "Girls Just Want to Have Fun".

Lauper and Wolff had a long drawn out storyline involving WWF wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. Lauper appeared on "Piper's Pit" which was Roddy Piper's segment on the WWF show. The story involved Captain Lou Albano, who came out during Lauper's segment claiming that he had given Lauper her start, and that he was the one that discovered her. Lauper became outraged, flipping over a table, and hitting the Captain over the head with her purse.

On December 28, 1984 at Madison Square Garden, an award was being presented to Captain Lou Albano by Cyndi Lauper and David Wolff. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper turned on Lauper and started attacking her music. Roddy climbed into the ring, slammed the award over Captain Lou's head, and during the confusion, Roddy kicked Lauper, knocking her back about two feet. Roddy then picked up David Wolff slamming him down in the ring. Hulk Hogan came to Lauper's rescue but Piper ran away.

The event made for good television, and Roddy's story is conflicting as to whether or not the kick was intentional or staged. On his most recent DVD "Born To Controversy", Piper claims he was asked to kick her. In 2007, during an interview at a GI-Joe convention in Atlanta, Piper claims it wasn't intentional (You Tube).

A small riot ensued, and Piper became the sworn enemy of Hulk Hogan. He and Hogan wound up in a match that took place a few weeks later called "The War to Settle the Score." Celebrities like Dee Snider and Little Richard filmed segments for the WWF talking about Lauper and Roddy Piper.

In February of 1985 "The War to Settle the Score" was aired live on MTV. The event would feature Hulk Hogan against Rowdy Piper. Paul Orndorff jumped into the ring to help Piper attack Hogan. Lauper was standing near the ring screaming at them, when they decided to come after her. Mr. T, who was sitting in the front row, came to her rescue. Paul Orndorff and Piper ganged up on Mr. T while Hogan was down, but when Hogan came to, Piper and Orndoff ran out of the ring. This was the event that started "WrestleMania".

The WWF wrestlers recorded an album in 1985 with David Wolff. Lauper contributed to "The Wrestling Album", under the pseudonym "Mona Flambé" as guest backing vocals. She later described the period as fun, but it became an increasing distraction to her musical ambitions. Also by the end of 1985 she started to feel that the WWF involvement was starting to turn her into a joke within the music industry. The album also led to a collaboration with Rick Derringer. Derringer wrote Real American, which featured Lauper on backing vocals. Derringer and Lauper would write "Calm Inside The Storm" for her True Colors album.

During David Wolff's early career, he produced a band called Captain Chameleon. They had a song called "Grab Them Cakes". That song would turn up again on the WWF wrestling album being sung by the wrestler Junkyard Dog. Lauper and Wolff became the associate producers for the animated series "Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling".


The Goonies

Steven Spielberg had asked Lauper to be the musical director of his latest film The Goonies, an adventurous family film about lost treasure. Lauper had the power to choose whom she wanted on the soundtrack, so she tried to make the album very diverse. The Bangles were just one of the bands that contributed to the soundtrack. Lauper thought the band was very raw and fresh.

Lauper worked so hard on the soundtrack that she wound up in the hospital.[citation needed] Lauper states in a 1986 interview that she had been working 12 hour days and had gynecological problems. Lauper had a minor operation and spent some time in the hospital. Her doctors told her that she needed some rest. This was the reason she wasn't able to participate in the Live Aid concert.

Lauper scored another hit with the single "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough", which earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, for the film The Goonies. The video featured many guests including WWF Wrestlers such as the Iron Sheik, Captain Lou Albano, Roddy Piper, André the Giant, "Classy" Freddie Blassie, The Fabulous Moolah & Nikolai Volkoff, the Goonies cast as well as the Bangles. The video was split up into two acts, making Lauper the very first artist to have a two-part video. Spielberg even allowed her access to the set pieces from the film. The soundtrack album reached #73 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

Lauper stopped performing "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough", in concert around 1987. During the Australian leg of her 2004 "At Last" tour, at the request of the crowd, she performed an a cappella version of the first verse and chorus at several shows. It was at a show in Baltimore on Lauper's 2006 tour that she finally played it in full again. The crowd was chanting "Goonies" and she sang the song a cappella to an ecstatic crowd. She finally agreed to play the song again on her "True Colors" tour in 2007 and it was featured in her 2008 tour of Australia as the second number performed at each show.

During the video commentary for "The Goonies" actor Sean Astin can be heard thanking Lauper for the song. He says that they all appeared tired on the set of the video, due to the rigorous shooting schedule, but they really did love the song. Sean apologizes to Lauper again in footage that can be seen in the upcoming "Goonies Documentary".

In 1985, The Women in Crystal Film Awards awarded her with the New Directions Award, given to those who are known for their creativity and originality.


True Colors

Lauper released her second album True Colors on September 15, 1986. It reached number four on the Billboard 200. For this album, she increased her involvement both in production and songwriting. Guests on the album included Angela Clemons-Patrick, Nile Rodgers, Aimee Mann, Billy Joel, Adrian Belew, The Bangles, Ellie Greenwich, and Rick Derringer. Lauper co-wrote most of the album with Essra Mohawk, John Turi, Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly.

Although the album was not as commercially successful as its predecessor, it contained three high-charting singles, including the title track (which become her second platinum number-one hit), "Change of Heart" (#3) and a cover of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" (#12). The album also featured an older song called "Maybe He'll Know" which was on Lauper's Blue Angel album.

The album covers for both She's So Unusual and True Colors were composed by photographer Annie Leibovitz. "True Colors" was licensed to Kodak for use in its commercials. Lauper had no control over the song which was written by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly.

The 4th single from the album, "Boy Blue", became Lauper's first non top 40 song. The proceeds of the song were donated to AIDS research.

In 1986, Lauper appeared on the Billy Joel album The Bridge on a song called "Code of Silence". Lauper also sang the theme song for the series "Pee-wee's Playhouse" the same year, though she was credited as "Ellen Shaw". The theme song is speeded up making Lauper's voice sound a bit distorted.[citation needed] On adult swim broadcasts, Lauper's portion of the opening was cut out. Playhouse star Paul Reubens appeared on the True Colors album track "911" as an emergency operator. The album sold nearly 12 million copies.


Late 1980's

In 1987 David Wolff produced a concert film for Lauper called Cyndi: Live in Paris. The concert was broadcast on HBO that same year.

Lauper made her film debut in August of 1988 in the quirky comedy Vibes, alongside Jeff Goldblum, Julian Sands, Rosie Pena and Peter Falk. Lauper played a psychic in search of a city of gold in South America. The film was produced by Ron Howard and David Wolff acted as the film's associate producer.

To prepare for the role, Lauper took a few classes in finger waving and hair setting at the Robert Fiance School of Beauty in New York and studied with a few Manhattan psychics. The film was poorly received by critics and commercially flopped, though it reached the Top 30 in America"s Most Rented Movies. Lauper contributed a track called "Hole in My Heart (All the Way to China)" but the song was not included on the soundtrack. A video was released, which was meant to be a high energy, hysterically funny action/adventure romp through a Chinese laundry. The song hit #54 on the US charts, but fared better in Australia, peaking at #8 and becoming her fifth and final Top 10 single in Australia. It was performed as the opening track on her 2008 Australian tour.

Lauper was often compared[who?] to Madonna during this period. Many of their marketing ploys were similar, which eventually pushed them to be as different as possible by 1986.

At the beginning of 1988, Lauper traveled to the former Soviet Union as part of a project to collaborate with Russian songwriters. Her trip resulted in the song "Cold Sky", a duet with Russian superstar Igor Nikolaev, which appeared on the album Music Speaks Louder Than Words. Lauper says she was unhappy about the way the album was mixed.[citation needed]

Lauper received an honorary diploma from Richmond High School, Queens, in 1988.


A Night to Remember

A Night to Remember, Lauper's third album, was released on May 23, 1989. Though critically well-received, it was not as big a commercial success as her previous albums. The album spawned only one big hit, "I Drove All Night", originally penned for Roy Orbison, although his version was not released until 1992, three years after Lauper's version and four years after his death. She also wrote and produced most of the album. Contributing writers were Desmond Child, Christina Amphlett of Divinyls, Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, Diane Warren, and Frank Previte. Guest musicians include Bootsy Collins, Larry Blackmon, Batkini Khumalo, Eric Clapton, and Nile Rodgers. The video for "My First Night Without You", released in 1989, was one of the first to be closed-captioned for the hearing impaired.

On July 21st, 1990, Lauper joined many other guests for Roger Waters' massive performance of The Wall in Berlin, performing "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II". Lauper wore a school girl outfit performing to over 300,000 people. The concert was watched live by over five million people worldwide.

Lauper had become close friends with Yoko Ono. In 1990 she took part in a John Lennon tribute concert in Liverpool, performing the Beatles song "Hey Bulldog" and the John Lennon song "Working Class Hero". The concert was aired on the Disney Channel. She also took part in a project Ono and Lennon developed called "The Peace Choir". They performed a new version of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance". The reworked "Give Peace a Chance" was written by Sean Lennon.

In 1990, Lauper co-wrote the song "Paper Heart" (a song about drug addiction) with Go-Go's alumna Jane Weidlin. The song appeared on Weidlin's CD Tangled.


Love and marriage

A mutual breakup between Cyndi Lauper and David Wolff occurred in 1989. Most of the details about the breakup have not been published, but Lauper later stated: "The business got in the way of the relationship." In a 1993 interview with Howard Stern, Lauper hinted that Wolff didn't want to marry her.[citation needed]

Lauper worked on movie called Moon Over Miami which later became Off and Running with David Keith, Richard Belzer and David Thornton, whom she started seeing romantically. Lauper claims that Miami was a great place to fall in love. The film was released in Europe but never made it off the ground in the US market. (David Wolff was the music supervisor for the film.)

On November 24, 1991 38-year-old Lauper married Thornton, only ten days her senior, at the 205-year-old Friends Meeting House at 15th St. and Rutherford Place on Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan, New York City. Rock and Roll pioneer Little Richard, who at one time gave up Rock and Roll to become a minister (and remains one) performed the ceremony. Patti LaBelle sang Procol Harum's classic "A Whiter Shade of Pale", and Lauper 's grandmother served as the maid of honor. Other guests included Paul Reubens, best known for his Pee-wee Herman character, and John Turturro, star of the 1991 Coen brothers film Barton Fink. Lauper had threatened to dress like a lighted Christmas tree, but settled on a traditional white wedding dress.


Tycoon and a Duet with Sinatra

In 1992, Lauper contributed two tracks to the European musical Tycoon, an English version of the hit French stage show Starmania. She scored another Top 20 hit in Europe (it went to #2 in France, earning a 2x platinum certification there) with "The World Is Stone", penned by Tim Rice, Michel Berger, and Luc Plamondon. It was quoted that Tim Rice and Luc Plamandon would only work on the song if Lauper would record it. Neither the musical nor the songs were released in the U.S., though the two tracks did see the light of day stateside with the quiet release of a compilation in 2000.

Lauper recorded "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", a duet with Frank Sinatra, which was released on the album Very Special Christmas II. Sinatra's vocals were taken from his original recording and mixed with Lauper's in the studio.


Hat Full of Stars

In June of 1993, Lauper released her critically acclaimed[citation needed] fourth album Hat Full of Stars. With a smooth new R&B sound, world music instrumentation, and production by Junior Vasquez, she tackled such topics as homophobia, spousal abuse, racism and abortion. Despite significant accolades, sales were poor (just 4 million copies worldwide[citation needed]), largely because the album suffered from a lack of promotion. Lauper appeared on the Howard Stern Show to promote the album.

Lauper said the song "A Hat Full of Stars" was written as a message to David Wolff. The video for "Who Let in the Rain" features a chalk drawing of David Wolff on the sidewalk.

"A Part Hate" was written collaboratively by Lauper and husband David Thorntorn. The video for "Sally's Pigeons" features the then unknown Julia Stiles as the young Cyndi.

Tommy Mottola, president of CBS Records, told Lauper to go out and make her own Graceland (referring to Paul Simon's offbeat critically acclaimed album). Lauper wanted to write her own material and stop doing cover songs. She decided to write a few songs on the album with other people, including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ailee Willis, Nicky Holland, Tom Gray, Hugh Masekela and The Hooters.

The same year, Lauper recorded "Boys will be Boys" with The Hooters, and another duet called "Private Emotion". (The Hooters dedicated this song to Lauper.) Both songs appeared on the Hooter's CD Out of Body. Lauper also returned to acting, playing Michael J. Fox's ditzy secretary in 1993's Life with Mikey, which also starred Nathan Lane.


12 Deadly Cyns

Twelve Deadly Cyns...and Then Some, was released worldwide in 1994 (except in the U.S., where it was held back until the summer of 1995). The album was a greatest hits compilation that included two re-recorded tracks, "I'm Gonna be Strong", first recorded with her band Blue Angel, and a reworking of her first big hit, newly christened "Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)". The Japanese edition of the CD includes the single "Hole In My Heart (All The Way To China)" as the final track.

The album was released under a number of different titles, and had different packaging and track listings for certain countries. Twelve Deadly Cyns sold over 6 million copies worldwide and Lauper began a world tour to promote the album. It was especially popular in the UK, reaching number two on the music charts, while the new "(Hey Now) Girls Just Want to Have Fun" hit number four (the single also returned Lauper to the US Hot 100, albeit briefly). The song includes special appearances by Snow and Patra. The album also included a hot reggae influenced song, "Come On Home", which was remixed by Junior Vasquez with a special appearance by Demetrius "Sir Jam" Ross. Due to the success of the album Lauper's next studio album was delayed.[citation needed]

Lauper won a Emmy Award for her role as Marianne on the sitcom Mad About You. The network set up a production deal for a spin off sitcom featuring Lauper, but the show she proposed seemed too radical.[citation needed]

A 12 Deadly Cyns VHS tape featuring most of Lauper's videos was released. The DVD was released in 2000.


Sisters of Avalon

In 1997 Lauper announced that she was expecting a child. Declyn Wallace Thornton Lauper was born on November 17th of that year; he was named after Elvis Costello,[citation needed] whose first name is Declan. He was born while Lauper was putting the finishing touches on her new album.

Her fifth album, Sisters of Avalon (released in Japan in 1996 and everywhere else in 1997) brought her moderate success, but only sold 1 million copies worldwide. The album was quickly embraced by the gay community for its dance and club stylings. The topical themes of the album also contributed to its "pink" appeal. The album was written and produced with the help of Jan Pulsford (Lauper's keyboard player) and Producer Mark Saunders. Guest musicians include, Bush lead guitarist Nigel Pulsford on "You Don't Know" and "Love To Hate". The album was written and recorded in Tennessee and Connecticut and finished in an old mansion in Tuxedo Park, N.Y., where she lived and worked at that time.

The song "Ballad of Cleo and Joe" addressed the complications of a drag queen's double life. Lauper started writing the song around 1994. "Brimstone and Fire" painted a portrait of a lesbian relationship, and "You Don't Know" showed Lauper flexing more political muscle than on her previous albums. The song "Say a Prayer" was written for a friend of hers who had died from AIDS. The song "Searchin'" was used in one of Baywatch's episodes. "Unhook The Stars" was made into a movie of the same name starring Marisa Tomei, Gerard Depardieu, Gena Rowlands and David Thorntorn.

Lauper's sister Ellen had "come out" and Lauper considered her to be a role model.[citation needed] Ellen was doing a lot of charity work for the gay community, and was working out of a clinic, helping people who were suffering from AIDS.

Lauper began performing as a featured artist at gay pride events around the world. She also served as the opening act for Tina Turner's summer tour, which was one of the highest grossing tours that year. Lauper took up the dulcimer which would have a huge effect on her future projects.[original research?] She took lessons from David Schnauffer.

Lauper's stepfather died during this period.


Merry Christmas

Lauper churned out her last album for Epic in late 1998. Merry Christmas, Have A Nice Life, as the title implies, was a Christmas collection of original material and standards. It is a combination of folk-rock, cajun and celtic music. Her version of "Silent Night" was used in a Pampers commercial.

Rob Hyman co-wrote the album opener "Home On Christmas Day", and provides accordion and organ accompaniment on a number of tracks. Producer William Wittman, who has been behind a mixing board for Lauper since her debut album She's So Unusual, was once again in a co-producing and mixing role. Lauper is ably assisted by Jan Pulsford, the keyboardist who tours with Lauper and co-produced her last disc, Sisters Of Avalon.

The Christmas album was recorded at Lauper's home in Connecticut. Lauper vocalized in a cedar closet that not only had great acoustics but apparently had enough of a Riverdance vibe that she was inspired to do some clog-dancing there, the sound of which can be heard on a not-quite traditional take of "Three Ships".[citation needed] She also stepped outside her back door to get the right vocal sound for "First Lullaby".

Declyn was the major inspiration on Merry Christmas, "December Child" was written for him. Declyn makes his vocal debut on "First Lullaby": Jan tickled him, grabbed the mike, and the results are on tape.

Lauper reprises two holiday-themed tracks for previous albums that blend seamlessly with the newer material: "Feels Like Christmas", a Cajun-spiced tune from Hat Full of Stars and "Early Christmas Morning" from Sisters of Avalon. She closes the album with a stark rendition of "Silent Night" in memory of the late Peter Wood, the close friend and musician to whom Lauper dedicated her hits compilation, Seven Deadly Cyns...And Then Some. Wood, whom Lauper recalls as a "magical musician", was a keyboardist who toured with the singer and performed in the studio on many of her best-loved tracks.

Lauper recalls another old friend on "Minnie and Santa", a not-quite-naughty tale of a woman with her sights set on seducing Santa. Lauper based the tune, which sounds like some long-lost holiday drinking song, on a deceptively sweet elderly co-worker from Lauper's days at a downtown Brooklyn five and dime who delighted in shocking her younger colleagues with her salty wit.

On January 17, 1999, Lauper appeared on The Simpsons. Lauper appeared on the show as herself singing the National Anthem. The episode was called "Wild Barts Can't Be Broken". The same year, Lauper co-headlined a tour alongside Cher. The tour was called the Do You Believe? Tour. Lauper and Cher performed "Turn Back Time" on VH1 Divas. She also garnered critical plaudits for her roles in several independent films including Mrs. Parker And The Vicious Circle, and The Opportunists (with Christopher Walken) where she was nominated in the best supporting actress category for her role.

Lauper contributed a cover version of The Trammps's classic "Disco Inferno" to the soundtrack for the film A Night at the Roxbury. The remixed version became a club hit and received a Grammy nomination that year for Best Dance Recording. The single was released as an EP, featuring several remixes.

In 2000, Lauper contributed a song called "I Want A Mom That Will Last Forever" for the children's movie Rugrats in Paris. The song was written with Mark Mothersbaugh (of the new wave group DEVO). The song won the best theme song in a movie in a European film festival. Also in 2000, Lauper co-write a song, "If You Believe", with Faye Tozer of the British pop group Steps. It appeared on the band's third studio album, "Buzz", and was subsequently released in the US in July 2001.


Shine

Lauper prepared her seventh album in 2001, Shine, which saw her returning to her early pop/rock sound. It features Japanese pop superstar Ryuichi Sakamoto, and George Fullan of Train. Just weeks before the album's scheduled release on September 11, 2001, her label, Edel America Records, folded, and the tracks were leaked to the public.

Although a five song EP of the same name was made available through her website and at Tower Records, the full-length album concept was scrapped. The five song EP was released in June of 2002, and was made available at Best Buy. An album of Shine remixes was eventually released through Tower Records. The complete Shine album was released on April 21, 2004, exclusively in Japan. The album has become a collector's item often selling at high prices on places like Amazon.com.

On October 12, 2000, Lauper took part in a television show called Women in Rock, Girls With Guitars. The show featured Sheryl Crow, Ann and Nancy Wilson (guitarist), Melissa Etheridge, Amy Grant, Wynonna Judd, and Destiny's Child. Lauper performed the Paul McCartney hit "Maybe I'm Amazed" with Ann Wilson of Heart. She also sang the R&B classic "Ooh Child" with the girl group Destiny's Child. Lauper was well received at the event, getting standing ovations after every song. She also performed a new song called "Water's Edge" with Ann Wilson. The song was well received and critics saw that performance as one of the highlights of the night.

A CD was issued that contained the studio versions of some songs performed during the concert. The only live song on the disc was "Maybe I'm Amazed" but unfortunately the version is edited. Lauper's part remains intact, but the entire verse by Wilson was removed, totally skipping her first verse and going into her second. This CD was exclusively released to Sears stores from September 30 to October 31, 2001. The CD cost $4.99, $1.00 of which went to breast cancer research. The CD was released as a "Sony Music special product".

Lauper's former label Sony issued a new best-of CD entitled The Essential Cyndi Lauper. She re-signed with Sony/Epic Records and a cover album tentatively called Naked City was in the works.

Lauper toured with Cher on her Living Proof: The Farewell Tour in 2002. In 2004, Lauper contributed two tracks to the Creole Bred CD, which was a tribute to Cajun and Zydeco music. The album was released on May 11, 2004.


At Last

In November 2003, an album of covers was released entitled At Last (formerly Naked City), which became a Top-40 hit in the U.S. and Australia. Lauper was nominated in 2005 for a Grammy Award in the category of "Best Instrumental Composition Accompanying a Vocal". The nomination was for her interpretation of the song "Unchained Melody".

At Last became Lauper's best selling album since Twelve Deadly Cyns, with 4.5 million copies. The album was also voted as the best CD of covered songs beating those of Rod Stewart, K. D. Lang and Tony Bennet. The success of the CD prompted Sony-BMG to release the DVD Live... At Last which went gold in less than a year.

Lauper took part in VH1 Divas Live with Patti La Belle, Jessica Simpson, Debbie Harry, Ashanti, Sheila E., and the Pussycat Dolls.


2005-2007: The Body Acoustic and other projects

Under a new contract with Sony Music, Lauper released The Body Acoustic, an album that featured acoustic reinterpretations of tracks from her back catalog. Two new tracks were also written and recorded, one of which is "Above the Clouds". Guests on the album included Shaggy, Ani DiFranco, Adam Lazzara of Taking Back Sunday, Jeff Beck, Puffy AmiYumi, Sarah McLachlan,and Vivian Green.

"Time After Time" and "Above The Clouds" became Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart staples.[citation needed] "All Through The Night" hit the top 5 in the Latin American countries.

Though she hasn't released an album of new material since 1997's Sisters of Avalon, Lauper has remained busy over the years. Appearing on Showtime's hit show Queer As Folk in 2005, making her Broadway debut in The Threepenny Opera in 2006 (where she won as best actress in a broadway by an internet poll), and directing a commercial for Totally 80's edition of the board game Trivial Pursuit.

VH1 Classic honored Lauper with a television special called Decades Rock Live. The show featured Lauper performing with many artists such as Shaggy, Scott Weiland of Velvet Revolver/Stone Temple Pilots, Pat Monahan of Train, Ani di Franco, and the Hooters.

On October 16, 2006, she was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame.[5] In 2007, she sang "Beecharmer" with Nellie McKay on Nellie's Pretty Little Head album, and "Letters To Michael" with Dionne Warwick.

In September 2006, Lauper served as the vocal coach of the Top 8 contestants in the Canadian Idol. Eventual winner Eva Avila recorded her version of Lauper's "This Kind Of Love".

In June 2007, Lauper headlined the True Colors Tour 2007 for Human Rights through the United States and Canada which also included Deborah Harry, Erasure, The Dresden Dolls, and Gossip, with Margaret Cho as MC and special guests in different cities. The tour, sponsored by Logo, the MTV Networks channel targeting gay audiences, provided information to fans who attend, as well as purple wristbands with the slogan "Erase Hate" from The Matthew Shepard Foundation.[6] A dollar from every ticket sold was earmarked for the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.[7]. In October 2007 the Matthew Shepard Bill was passed into a law by the US Congress,[dubious - discuss] largely due to the great success of the True Colors Tour.

In September of 2007, Lauper performed "The Lady in Pink" for Nickelodeon's hit preschool series The Backyardigans, for their first hour-long, primetime TV movie called Super Secret Super Spy.


2008: Bring Ya to the Brink

Lauper recorded an album of all new material during 2007. The working title given to the project was Savoir-faire, but she announced at her Perth, Australia concert in February 2008 that the name of the album was Bring Ya to the Brink and that it would be released in the Spring.

Lauper visited England and France during summer 2007 to write for the album and wrote songs with dance artists Basement Jaxx, Digital Dog, Dragonette, Kleerup and others. She described it as a mainly dance album with good rhythm.

The first single released in Japan was "Set Your Heart" which gained significant airplay there and was also used in the advertising campaign for the new 2008 Toyota Car Model (Mark X ZIO) starring actor and singer Takeshi Kaneshiro.

Lauper embarked on an Australian tour playing at the King's Park Botanic Gardens in Perth, Western Australia, supported by Katie Noonan and Kate Miller-Heidke on February 22, 2008 and she was the headline and final act at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Party, on March 2, 2008 where she performed at 8:00am. She sang "Same Ol' Story" followed by a newly remixed version of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun". Lauper got into the spirit of the Mardi Gras weekend by later dancing till dawn at various nightclubs along Sydney's famous gay strip, Oxford St, which earlier in the night, was the location for the world-famous parade.

"Same Ol' Story" was released as the album's first worldwide single and was released as a download only on May 6, 2008. It was the number one downloaded song on the day of release. Several remixes of the track were released to DJs. The album was released on May 27, 2008 in the United States.

The 2008 True Colors Tour debuted on May 31, 2008. Joining Lauper at various venues are Rosie O'Donnell, The B52's, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, The Cliks, Indigo Girls, Kat Deluna, Joan Armatrading, Regina Spektor, Tegan and Sara, Nona Hendryx, Deborah Cox, Wanda Sykes, among others. The MC will be Carson Kressley from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Sara Mclachlan will also be featured at the Vancouver, BC show.

Dan Brown
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Born June 22, 1964 (1964-06-22) (age 44)
Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S.
Occupation Novelist
Genres Thriller,
Mystery fiction

Official website
http://www.danbrown.com/

Dan Brown (born June 22, 1964) is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for the 2003 bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code.

Brown is interested in cryptography, keys, and codes, which are a recurring theme in his stories. Currently his novels have been translated into more than 40 languages.[1]

Although many perceive Brown's books as anti-Christian, Brown states on his website that he is a Christian[2] and says of his book The Da Vinci Code that it is simply "an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate" and suggests that the book may be used "as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our faith".[2]




Early life and education

Dan Brown was born and raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA, the eldest of three children. His mother Constance (Connie) was a professional musician, playing organ at church. Brown's father Richard G. Brown was a prominent mathematics teacher, writing textbooks and teaching high school mathematics at Phillips Exeter Academy from 1968 until his retirement in 1982.

Phillips Exeter Academy is an exclusive boarding school, which requires new teachers to live on campus for ten years, so Brown and his siblings were raised at the school. His own schooling was at public schools in Exeter until the 9th grade, at which time he enrolled in Phillips Exeter (Class of 1982), as did his younger siblings Valerie (1985) and Gregory (1993).

After graduating from Phillips Exeter in 1982 Brown attended Amherst College, where he was a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity. He played squash and sang in the Amherst Glee Club, and was a writing student of novelist Alan Lelchuk. Brown graduated from Amherst with a double major in Spanish and English in 1986.


Songwriter and pop singer

After graduating from Amherst, Brown dabbled with a musical career, creating effects with a synthesizer, and self-producing a children's cassette entitled SynthAnimals which included a collection of tracks such as "Happy Frogs" and "Suzuki Elephants"; it sold a few hundred copies. He then formed his own record company called Dalliance, and in 1990 self-published a CD entitled Perspective, targeted to the adult market, which also sold a few hundred copies. In 1991 he moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as singer-songwriter and pianist. To support himself, he taught classes at Beverly Hills Preparatory School.

While in Los Angeles he joined the National Academy of Songwriters, and participated in many of its events. It was there that he met Blythe Newlon, a woman 12 years his senior, who was the Academy's Director of Artist Development. Though not officially part of her job, she took on the seemingly unusual task of helping to promote Brown's projects; she wrote press releases, set up promotional events, and put him in contact with individuals who could be helpful to his career. She and Brown also developed a personal relationship, though this was not known to all of their associates until 1993, when Brown moved back to New Hampshire, and it was learned that Blythe would accompany him. They married in 1997, at Pea Porridge Pond, a location near North Conway, New Hampshire.[3]

In 1993, Brown released the self-titled CD Dan Brown, which included songs such as "976-Love" and "If You Believe in Love".


New England teacher

Brown and Blythe moved to his home town in New Hampshire in 1993. Brown became an English teacher at his alma mater Phillips Exeter, and gave Spanish classes to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at Lincoln Akerman School, a small school for K-8th grade with about 250 students, in Hampton Falls.


Transition to writing

In 1994, Brown released a CD entitled Angels & Demons. Its artwork was the same ambigram by artist John Langdon which he later used for the novel Angels & Demons. The liner notes also again credited his wife for her involvement, thanking her "for being my tireless cowriter, coproducer, second engineer, significant other, and therapist."



Also in 1994, while on holiday in Tahiti, he read Sidney Sheldon's novel The Doomsday Conspiracy, and decided that he could do better.[5] He started work on Digital Fortress, and also co-wrote a humor book with his wife, 187 Men to Avoid: A Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman, under the pseudonym "Danielle Brown" (one of the 187 items in the book was "Men who write self-help books for women"). The book's author profile reads, "Danielle Brown currently lives in New England: teaching school, writing books, and avoiding men." The copyright is attributed to Dan Brown. It sold a few thousand copies before going out of print.[citation needed]


Writing career

In 1996, Brown quit teaching to become a full-time writer. Digital Fortress was published in 1998. Blythe did much of the book's promotion, writing press releases, booking Brown on talk shows, and setting up press interviews. A few months later, Brown and his wife released The Bald Book, another humor book. It was officially credited to his wife, though a representative of the publisher said that it was primarily written by Brown.

Brown's first three novels had little success, with fewer than 10,000 copies in each of their first printings; but the fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, became a runaway bestseller, going to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list during its first week of release in 2003. It is now credited with being one of the most popular books of all time, with 60.5 million copies sold worldwide as of 2006.[6] Its success has helped push sales of Brown's earlier books. In 2004, all four of his novels were on the New York Times list in the same week,[citation needed] and in 2005, he made Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the year. Forbes magazine placed Brown at #12 on their 2005 "Celebrity 100" list, and estimated his annual income at US$76.5 million. The Times estimated his income from 'Da Vinci Code' sales as $250 million.

Characters in Brown's books are often named after real people in his life. Robert Langdon is named after John Langdon, the artist who created the ambigrams used for the Angels & Demons CD and novel. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca is named after "On A Claire Day" cartoonist friend Carla Ventresca. In the Vatican Archives, Langdon recalls a wedding of two people named Dick and Connie, which are the names of his parents. Robert Langdon's editor Jonas Faukman, is named after Brown's real life editor Jason Kaufman. Brown also said that characters were based on a New Hampshire librarian, and a French teacher at Exeter, Andre Vernet.

In interviews, Brown has said that his wife is an art historian and painter. When they met, she was the Director of Artistic Development at the National Academy for Songwriters in Los Angeles. During the 2006 lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement in The Da Vinci Code, information was introduced at trial which showed that Blythe did indeed do a great deal of research for the book.[7] In one article, she was described as "chief researcher".[8]


Film adaptations

In 2006, Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code was released as a film by Columbia Pictures, with director Ron Howard; the film starred Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu and Sir Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing. It was considered one of the most anticipated films of the year, and was used to launch the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, though it received overall poor reviews. It was later listed as one of the worst films of 2006,[9] but also the second highest grossing film of the year, pulling in $750 million USD worldwide.[10] The next film, Angels & Demons, is due for release on May 15, 2009, with Howard and Hanks returning.

Brown was listed as one of the executive producers of the film The Da Vinci Code, and also created additional codes for the film. One of his songs, "Piano", which Brown wrote and performed, was listed as part of the film's soundtrack.

In the film, Brown and his wife can be seen in the background of one of the early booksigning scenes.


Copyright infringement cases

In August 2005, Brown won a court case in New York against author Lewis Perdue over charges of plagiarism, on the basis of claimed similarity between The Da Vinci Code and his novels, The Da Vinci Legacy (1983) and Daughter of God (2000). Judge George Daniels said, in part: "A reasonable average lay observer would not conclude that The Da Vinci Code is substantially similar to Daughter of God".[11]

On March 28, 2007, Brown's publisher, Random House, won an appeal copyright infringement case brought by authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. England's Court of Appeal rejected the efforts from two authors who claimed that Brown stole their ideas for his novel The Da Vinci Code. Baigent and Leigh, who wrote Holy Blood, Holy Grail in 1982, argued that Brown stole significant elements from their book. Both are based on a theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child and that the bloodline continues to this day. Baigent and Leigh are liable for paying legal expenses of nearly $6 million USD.[12] Brown even alluded to the two authors' names in his book. Leigh Teabing, a lead character in both the novel and the film, anagrammatically derives his last name from Baigent's, while using Leigh's name verbatim. A contributing factor for the outcome of the case is that these authors presented their work as nonfiction. Fiction writers often draw upon nonfiction resources for content research. An agreement decision by the court would have proved a disaster for fiction writers everywhere.[citation needed]


Planned works

Brown is working on a new novel, called The Solomon Key, which will reportedly take place in Washington D.C., and feature the "secret" society of the Freemasons. An exact release date has not been announced, but the most common media speculation says 2008.[citation needed] Brown's promotional website states that puzzles hidden in the bookjacket of The Da Vinci Code (including two referring to the Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia) give hints about the subject of this novel. This repeats a theme from some of Brown's earlier work. For example, a puzzle at the end of the book Deception Point decrypts to the message, "The Da Vinci Code will surface." (See: Deception Point) The book will probably explore the Skull and Bones fraternity at Yale, to which George Bush and John Kerry both belonged.[13]

He says that he has ideas for about 12 future books,[14] one of which involves a famous composer's "all factual" associations with a secret society. Speculation is that this may mean Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was also a Freemason.[citation needed]


Personal life

In a statement at trial in March 2006, Brown wrote that while he was growing up, on birthdays and Christmas, he and his siblings were led on elaborate treasure hunts to find their gifts, following cryptic clues and codes left by their father. This is the same event that he used to describe the fictional childhood of Sophie Neveu in The Da Vinci Code.

Brown plays tennis, and does his writing in his loft, often getting up at 4 a.m. to work. He keeps an antique hourglass on his desk, to remind himself to take breaks.

Brown has told fans that he uses inversion therapy to help with writer's block. He uses gravity boots and says, "hanging upside down seems to help me solve plot challenges by shifting my entire perspective."[15]


Philanthropy

In October 2004, Brown and his siblings donated US$2.2 million to Phillips Exeter Academy in honor of their father, to set up the "Richard G. Brown Technology Endowment," to help "provide computers and high-tech equipment for students in need."[16]


Criticism

Though it is undisputed that Brown is a highly popular author, much volatile criticism centers on his claim found in the preface to The Da Vinci Code that the novel is based on fact in relation to Opus Dei, the Priory of Sion and that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate".[17][18]

You can always tell if a man is henpecked because....


He wears the pants in the house - under his apron.

He comes right out and says what she tells him to think.

His wife doesn't have to raise the roof; all she has to do
is raise an eyebrow.

He always has the last word - he says, "I apologize".

The last big decision she let him make was whether
to wash or to dry.

He was a dude before marriage - now he is subdued.

He married her for her looks, but not the kind he's
getting now.

She even complains about the noise he makes, when
he is fixing his own breakfast.

He goes to a woman dentist - it's a relief to be told to
open his mouth instead of to shut it.

Every once in awhile she comes to him on her bended
knees. She dares him to come out from under the bed.

Thanks, Bob, for the bio's. Loved the henpecked one liners.

Have always been fascinated with H. Ryder Haggard story of She. Here is a clip from the Hammer film. "she who must be obeyed" perished in the fire of eternal youth because she over-exposed her bathing. There is evidence that "She" may have been Cleopatra.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFFPYjsbt9A

Good afternoon WA2K.

Loved the Fish Tale, Letty, but that "She" video was just a little too hot to handle.

Some of today's bios:

Gower Champion(with Marge); Kris Kristofferson (love his music); Klaus Maria Brandauer; Meryl Streep (love her acting) and Cyndi Lauper)





and a Good Day to all.

Hey, Raggedy, thanks for the quintet of notables. You're right, PA. That version was set in the desert, but I know there is another set in the Arctic and is probably better, but no YouTube version.

Well, life is wicked sometimes, puppy, so let's listen to Marge and Gower, shall we?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kY82gYVuBLE&feature=related

and Myrle on her day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkjhnCRqDF0&feature=related

Funny, puppy. I didn't even know that Myrle could sing.

Here's one for Myrle and Klaus. Frankly, y'all, the theme of the movie was by far the best part.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_fAEdw7ts0&feature=related

Sophie's choice was excellent, but quite depressing.

Dropping in to say, "good evening." I've been working most of the day, on my bathroom. Until I get a bit further along with it, we may have to hose each other off in the back yard. I almost have the shower installed; just having a dinner break.

Marvelous, edgar, and when you hose each other off, think of a place where bluer water lies.

Hope Raggedy is still lurking somewhere, because we'll say goodnight to her and to me with this lovely song.

(funny, someone in another area deprecated Mantovani. I like him)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hU_hwOD61_w

And here are the lyrics by the crooner, folks.

Sweet Leilani, heavenly flower oh.
I dreamt of paradise for two.
You are my paradise completed.
You are my dream come true.

Sweet Leilani, heavenly flower oh,
Tropic skies are jealous while they shine.
I think they're jealous of your blue eyes.
Jealous because you're mine.

I think they're jealous of your blue eyes.
Jealous because you're mine.

Sweet Leilani, heavenly flower oh,
Nature's fashion roses kissed with dew.
And then she placed them in a bower.
It was the start of you.
My lovely Lei-lan-i.

Goodnight, Hawaii and the world

From Letty with love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvPLf3GMnnU

Dorsy and Oconnel (sp)

Well, I made it in with a good night song.

Good morning, WA2K radio audience.

edgar, that was an interesting goodnight song. I checked out "Rubber Dolly" and found that lots of folks have done that including Ray Price.

I woke up this morning thinking about "Strange Music in My Ears" and tried to find info on the man who had done it, one Andres Ascenio, without much luck.

How about a morning song by the Fab Four, folks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBfdBnmE4Ps&feature=related