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Lou Reed
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Lou Reed (born March 2, 1942), is an American rock and roll singer-songwriter, originally from Brooklyn, New York. Especially while a member of the The Velvet Underground in the 1960s, Reed broke new ground for the rock genre in several important dimensions, influencing the rock and roll movement in general, introducing more mature and intellectual themes to what was then considered a music genre for children and teenagers.

Reed first found prominence as the guitarist and principal singer-songwriter of The Velvet Underground. The band, which lasted from 1965 until 1973 (with Reed departing in late 1970 during the Loaded sessions), gained relatively little notice during its life but is often considered the seed from which most alternative traditions of rock music sprang. As the Velvets' songwriter, Reed wrote about such taboo subjects as S&M ("Venus in Furs"), transvestites and transsexuals ("Sister Ray" and "Lady Godiva's Operation"), prostitution ("There She Goes Again"), and drug addiction ("I'm Waiting for the Man", "White Light/White Heat", "Heroin"). As a guitarist, he made innovative use of abrasive distortion, volume-driven feedback, and nonstandard tunings. Reed's flat, New York voice, stripped of superficial emotions and, like Bob Dylan's, flaunting its lack of conventional training, was no less important to the music's radical effect.

Reed began a long and varied solo career in 1972. He scored a hit that year with Walk on the Wild Side. For more than a decade he then seemed purposely to evade mainstream commercial success. One of rock's most volatile personalities, Reed made inconsistent albums that frustrated critics who wished for a return of the Velvet Underground. The most notable example is 1975's infamous double LP of recorded feedback loops, Metal Machine Music, upon which Reed later commented, "no one is supposed to be able to do a thing like that and survive."

Despite erratic turns, Reed's work won him by the late 1980s wide recognition as an essential elder statesman of rock. He had for decades written frankly on subjects more intense than the genre had seemed capable of handling. The industry had matured, to the extent that his commercial position as an "art rocker" was secure.

Reed has lived in New York City for most of his life and much of his music invokes the city, earning the singer comparisons (which he has encouraged) to William Faulkner and James Joyce as writers of regional interest.


Career

His name at birth is sometimes given as Lewis Allen Firbank, but this is misinformation he himself once provided an interviewer; he was born Lewis Allen Reed. Born into a Jewish family (originally Rabinowitz) in New York, Reed as a child was a fan of rock and rhythm and blues, playing in several high school rock bands. His first recording was a doo wop-style single as a member of The Shades.

Reed attended Syracuse University and graduated with a degree in English. Delmore Schwartz, then in the last years of his life, taught at Syracuse and befriended Reed, who would later sing, "My Dedalus to your Bloom was such a perfect wit." Schwartz's greater influence on the aspiring writer seems to have been general encouragement, but Reed also credits him for insisting on colloquial language in writing. At college, Reed also developed a taste for free jazz and experimental music. Reed said later his goals were "to bring the sensitivities of the novel to rock music," or to write the Great American Novel in a record album.

In 1965, Reed moved to New York City, working as an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records, where he came up with "The Ostrich," a parody of then-popular dances. His employers felt the song had hit record potential, and arranged for a band to be assembled around Reed to promote the recording. The ad hoc group, called The Primitives, included John Cale. Cale, born a week after Reed, was then playing with the avant-garde composer La Monte Young, after coming to the United States from Wales to study avant garde music under Aaron Copeland. Cale was surprised to find that for the would-be novelty song, Reed tuned each string of his guitar to the same note. This technique created a drone effect similar to that which Cale's avant-garde ensemble was experimenting with. When Cale heard the rest of Reed's early repertoire, including "Heroin," the songs' inventive and uncompromising nature convinced him to join Reed as a collaborator.

The pair rented an apartment on the Lower East Side and, adding Reed's college acquaintance Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker to the group, launched The Velvet Underground. Though internally unstable (Cale left in 1968; Reed in 1970) and never commercially viable, the V.U.'s reputation as one of the most influential underground bands in rock history has only grown.

Playing in downtown clubs, the group soon caught the attention of Andy Warhol, who raised their profile immeasurably, if not their immediate fortunes. Lou Reed fell into a thriving, multifacted artistic scene, and Reed rarely gives an interview today without paying homage to Warhol as another mentor figure. Still, conflict emerged when Warhol had the idea for the group to take on a "chanteuse," the German former model Nico. Reed and the others registered their objection by titling their debut album The Velvet Underground and Nico. Despite his resistance, Reed wrote several delicate songs for Nico to sing, which have since become classics, and the two were briefly lovers.

Reed's insecurity ensured that the rest of the band's tenure would be turbulent. By the time the band recorded White Light/White Heat, Nico had been dropped and Warhol fired. Warhol's replacement as manager, Steve Sesnick, was a more typical industry figure who in a bid for control next convinced Reed to drive out Cale.

In 1972 Reed, now a solo artist, released the career-making glam rock album Transformer. David Bowie and Mick Ronson produced the album and introduced Reed to mainstream pop audiences. The hit single was "Walk on the Wild Side," a wry and graphic salute to (or swipe at) the misfits, male hustlers and transvestites at Andy Warhol's Factory. It rapidly became Reed's signature tune, and only in recent years has he regularly performed concerts without its inclusion. The song was a result of Reed having been commissioned to compose a soundtrack for a film adaptation of Algren's novel that failed to materialize.

The stately, elegiac "Perfect Day" features a superb string arrangement by Mick Ronson which was lauded by Reed in the Transformer episode of the BBC's "Classic Albums" series. The song was later included on the soundtrack to Trainspotting and used in an extensive promotional campaign by the BBC. In his chosen material Reed followed, and updated, such authors as Allen Ginsberg and Jean Genet.

He followed Transformer with the much darker Berlin, which tells something like a love story of two junkies in the city of the same name. This, one of the more depressing albums ever made, includes "Caroline Says II" (violence), "The Kids" (prostitution and drug addiction), "The Bed" (suicide) and, unsurprisingly, "Sad Song."

Reed's persona and image were also far advanced. He preferred black leather, cropped his hair and dyed it blonde (and even silver) and dressed in S&M-like gear even in the hippie-infested 1960s. For many years Reed affected a deliberately 'camp' manner and image, sometimes colloquially referred to as his "junkie fag" look.

Understandably frustrated and bored by the tiresome and vacuous questions of the press, Reed's idiosyncratic media persona solidified during this period. His style was no doubt influenced to some extent by Bob Dylan's famously provocative approach to press conferences and interviews (cf D.A. Pennebaker's Dont Look Back), and Reed rapidly became known in the Seventies as one of the most difficult of all rock personalities to interview (a reputation he has maintained). Recently rediscovered footage of Reed's legendary 1974 Sydney press conference shows Reed at his sarcastic best.

In 1975, he produced a daring double studio album of pure guitar feedback Metal Machine Music. Some regarded it as an attempt to break his record company contract, although Reed has stated on several occasions that the album was a genuine artistic effort. The rock journalist Lester Bangs declared it genius, but the album was reportedly returned to stores by the thousands by fans. Though admitting that the liner notes' list of instruments used is fictitious and parodistic, Reed maintains that MMM was and is a serious album. His albums of the late 1970s are often regarded as a mixed affair by rock critics, owing at least partly to the addictions that were then overtaking Reed, although some of his work from this period (including his excellent late '70s LP Street Hassle) is long overdue for critical reassessment.

He married Sylvia Morales in 1980 (later divorced). Reed showed political concerns in 1986 when he joined the Amnesty International A Conspiracy of Hope Tour. Reed then fired an angry salvo at his hometown's political problems on the hit 1989 album New York, denouncing crime, high rents, Jesse Jackson, even Pope John Paul II and Kurt Waldheim; the album's "Dirty Blvd." gained fresh radio airplay.

When one-time Velvet Underground patron and producer Andy Warhol died after a routine surgery, Reed ended a 25-year estrangement to collaborate with fellow ex-V.U. John Cale on Songs for Drella, a Warhol biography in minimalist pop music, which Reed and Cale first performed as a duo stage performance in New York; the songs were subsequently recorded in the studio and released on CD. Ranking among Reed's very best work, Songs For Drella is touchingly affectionate and painfully confessional, often witty, but Reed's vocals blister and his anger is palpable when he sings of alleged medical errors and the 1968 assassination attempt on Warhol by Valerie Solanas.

In 1990, after a 20 year hiatus, the Velvet Underground played again at a Cartier benefit in France - performing 'Heroin" to a stunned crowd of 500 fans. In 1993, the band reunited and performed throughout Europe, but plans for a North American tour were scrapped due to another (and presumably irrevocable) falling out between Reed and Cale. Cale has since been quoted as saying that he could not understand how Reed who could write such tender and heartfelt songs, and yet "could be the complete opposite as a human being".

Reed continued on those dark notes with Magic and Loss, an album about mortality, inspired by the death of a close friend. In 1997 over thirty artists covered "Perfect Day" for the BBC's "Children in Need" appeal. Incorrect reports of his death were broadcast by numerous US radio stations in 2001, caused by a hoax email (purporting to be from Reuters) which said he had died of an overdose. In 2003, he released a 2-CD set, The Raven, based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. In 2004, a Groovefinder remix of his song, "Satellite of Love" (called "Satellite of Love '04") was released. It reached #10 in the UK singles chart.

In 1996, the Velvet Underground were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the induction ceremony, Reed performed a song entitled "Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend" with former bandmates John Cale and Maureen Tucker, in dedication to VU guitarist Sterling Morrison who had died the previous August.

A tribute album, After Hours, was released by Wampus Multimedia in 2003.

He has been in a relationship with the artist Laurie Anderson for several years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Reed

Jon Bon Jovi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Jon Bon Jovi (born March 2, 1962) is an American singer, composer, musician (guitar, piano, harmonica, keyboard) of the rock band Bon Jovi, and Hollywood actor.

Biography

He was born John Francis Bongiovi, in Perth Amboy, New Jersey to Italian-American parents. His mother, Carol Sharkey, was a former playboy bunny and his father, John Bongiovi, was a coiffeur/hair stylist of partial Italian ancestry.

John Bongiovi attended high school in Sayreville, New Jersey, and later adopted the stage name Jon Bon Jovi at the behest of the record company that he signed with. His early career was assisted by his cousin, Tony Bongiovi, a notable record producer who owned the Power Station recording studio. Jon worked as a janitor at the studio, and in periods of studio downtime recorded his own material, helped by his uncle. An album of these early recordings John Bongiovi: The Power Station Years was released in 1999.

Bon Jovi married Dorothea Hurley on April 29, 1989 in the Graceland Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. He fathered one daughter, Stephanie Rose Bongiovi (born on May 31, 1993), and three sons, Jesse James Louis Bongiovi (born on February 19, 1995) Jacob Hurley Bongiovi (born on May 7, 2002) and Romeo Jon Bongiovi (born on March 29, 2004).

Bon Jovi is a credited actor in the movies Moonlight and Valentino, The Leading Man, Destination Anywhere, Homegrown, Little City, No Looking Back, 'Row Your Boat, Vampires Los Muertos, U-571 and Cry Wolf. He also had a supporting role in the movie Pay It Forward, where he played Helen Hunt's abusive ex-husband. His TV series appearances include Sex and the City and an extended stint on Ally McBeal.

Bon Jovi's first appearance in any musical production was in the 1980 Star Wars album, Christmas in the Stars. He was the lead in singing the song, "R2-D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas."

Jon Bon Jovi has recorded two solo albums: Blaze of Glory (1990) and Destination anywhere (1997) and sold over 100 million albums with the band Bon Jovi.

Jon Bon Jovi has worked on behalf of the Special Olympics, the American Red Cross, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and other groups.

On June 15, 2001, Jon Bon Jovi addressed the prestigious Oxford Union debate society.

An American football fan all of his life, in 2003 he became founder and owner of the Philadelphia Soul of the Arena Football League. He appeared in several television commercials for the league.

On September 21, 2005, during an appearance on her show, the Bon Jovi band donated $1,000,000 to Oprah Winfrey for her Angel Network foundation.

His cousin is Robert Hegyes, who played Epstein on the popular 1970s sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter.

He currently lives in a wealthy part of Middletown, New Jersey along with Geraldo Rivera. He is an active and outspoken member of the Democratic Party.


Awards

* 1989: American Music Award: Best Pop/Rock Band, Duo or Group; award shared with his band
* 1990: Golden Globe: Best Song, Blaze of Glory (from Young Guns II soundtrack)
* 1991: MTV Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award; shared with his band
* 2001: Humanitarian of the Year by The Food Bank of Monmouth & Ocean Counties for his charitable work on behalf of the people of New Jersey
* 2001: Honorary Doctorate in Humanities degree from Monmouth University in New Jersey, for his success as an entertainer and his humanitarian work
* 2004 He and his band get the Award of merit at the American music awards for their long career
* 2005 He and his band get the Diamond award at the Worlds music awards for selling 100 million albums


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bon_Jovi

Ladies have come up with all these expressions to reassure men.
"Oh honey, it's not the size of the ship, it's the motion of the ocean."

That may be true, but I know it takes a long time to get to England in a rowboat.

Well, listeners. That one liner by our hawkman signals the end of his bio's. I know most of 'em, Boston, but Lou Reed was a mystery, so I went to the archives to find this song:


Song: Walk on the wild side
Album: Transformer


Holly came from Miami F.L.A.
hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.

Plucked her eyebrows on the way
shaved her leg and then he was a she
She says, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side

Candy came from out on the island
in the backroom she was everybody's darling

But she never lost her head
even when she was given head
She says, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
and the coloured girls go

Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
(Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(Doo)

Little Joe never once gave it away
everybody had to pay and pay

A hustle here and a hustle there
New York city is the place where they said
Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
I Said hey Joe, take a walk on the wild side

Sugar Plum Fairy came and hit the streets
lookin' for soul food and a place to eat

Went to the Apollo
you should have seen him go go go
They said, hey Sugar, take a walk on the wild side
I said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
all right, huh

Jackie is just speeding away
thought she was James Dean for a day

Then I guess she had to crash
valium would have helped that dash
She said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
I said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side
and the coloured girls say

Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
(Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo)
(Doo)

Odd song.

Hey, OAK that cockney rhyming gets more difficult every time I try to figure it out.

Back later with a picture of Karen Carpenter.

Poor little girl. What a price we pay to be skinny

Well, fancy this, listeners. I just got a call from some lady with a Spanish accent that wanted me to dedicate the following song to our Bob:

(altered lyrics)


I'm wild again, beguiled again
A simpering, whimpering child again
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I

Couldn't sleep and wouldn't sleep
When love came and told me, I shouldn't sleep
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I

Lost my heart, but what of it
He is bold I agree
He can laugh, and I love it
When he laughs with me.

I'll sing to him, each spring to him
And long, for the day when I'll cling to him
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I

Ain't love grand, folks?

Dear Letty:

I'm touched! Pass this message on to the lady, please.

Bob

Words and music by neil diamond

The story of my life is very plain to read
It starts the day you came
And ends the day you leave
The story of my life begins and ends with you
The names are still the same
And the story's still the truth

I was alone.
You found me waiting and made me your own
I was afraid
That somehow I never could be a man that you wanted of me

You're the story of my life, and every word is true
Each chapter sings your name
Each page begins with you
It's the story of our times and never letting go
If I die today, I wannted yo to know

Stay with me here
Share with me, care with me
Stay and be near
And when it began I'd lie awake every night
Just knowing somewhere deep inside
That our affair just might write

The story of my life is very plain to read
It starts the day you came
It ends the day you leave

ah, Boston, that is beautiful. What a lucky lady she is, too.

How about this groupie song by the Carpenters, listeners:
Superstar

Long ago and oh so far away
I fell in love with you before the second show
Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear
But you're not really here
It's just the radio

[Chorus:]
Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby
You said you'd be coming back this way again baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do

Loneliness is a such a sad affair
And I can hardly wait to be with you again

What to say to make you come again
Come back to me again
And play your sad guitar

Karen Carpenter had such a divine voice. Flawless.

Well, there's our McTag, listeners. Yes, she did, and her brother, Ken, is also good, and if I remember correctly, has a formal background in music.

I need to check out some of his songs, folks.

Back in a few after another rummage through the archives.

Well, I found this, folks, but it is totally unfamiliar to me. I had no idea that Richard and Ken were the same person.

There was a certain face
that filled a thousand nights
with all the sweetest dreams and promises
of paradise
But that face was gone



When the dawn would come and steal you
Yet I still could feel you
waiting just a kiss away
I'd surely know your face
when love would cast its spell
I'd recognize each curve and line of you
I knew it well
Now at last you're here and I can tell
Something in your eyes I see
Is all I've ever wanted
(And) Something in your smile for me
is calling out my name
Your eyes it seems
are mirrors of my dreams
in ways I can't explain...
And my heart will never be the same
We never said a word
as if we'd always known
that through the bittersweet of waiting
we were not alone
Now we're close enough
for the touch of love to find us
fantasies designed us
But they never really could
begin to measure you
No pictures ever do
And as I watch you framed in sunlight
And a sky of blue
I know what my life's been leading to
Something in your eyes I see
Is all I've ever wanted
(And) Something in your smile for me
is calling out my name
Your eyes it seems
are mirrors of my dreams
in ways I can't explain...
And my heart will never be the same

this confronts the very nature of bias. I have never listened to any song performed by the Carpenters soley for reasons of my bias against them.

Well, you need to explain that, cowboy. Why should you be biased against The Carpenters?

Of course, listeners, you do realize that dys won't tell us a thing. It's the nature of the man, I guess. <frowns>

Come on, buddy. Listen to the music:

Don't you feel it growin', day by day
People gettin' ready for the news
Some are happy, some are sad
Oh, we got to let the music play
What the people need
Is a way to make 'em smile
It ain't so hard to do if you know how
Gotta get a message
Get it on through
Oh, now mama's go'n' to after 'while
Oh, oh, listen to the music
Oh, oh, listen to the music
Oh, oh, listen to the music
All the time
Well I know, you know better
Everything I say
Meet me in the country for a day
We'll be happy
And we'll dance
Oh, we're gonna dance our blues away
And if I'm feelin' good to you
And you're feelin' good to me
There ain't nothin' we can't do or say
Feelin' good, feeling fine
Oh, baby, let the music play
Oh, oh, listen to the music
Oh, oh, listen to the music
Oh, oh, listen to the music
All the time
Like a lazy flowing river
Surrounding castles in the sky
And the crowd is growing bigger
List'nin' for the happy sounds
And I got to let them fly
Oh, oh, listen to the music
Oh, oh, listen to the music
Oh, oh, listen to the music
All the time

Ms. Letty, it's nice to read about all the celebrity birthdays, but unfortunately, you've left out one that's more important to me than any of them.

My son turns 12 today.

(Proud Mama here.)

Happy B-Day Son-of-Eva!

(12, eh? The fun is only beginning, Mom.)

Hey, Eva, blame it on that Boston brat. He's not thinking straight since he's been smitten and bitten.

Happy Birthday to Eva's little lad, but listen to George and Miss Letty. Prepare youself for the terrible teens. <smile>

For Eva's birthday boy looking ahead:

Human Nature
Teenager In Love

Each time we have a quarrel
It almost breaks my heart
'Cos I am so afraid
That we will have to part
Each night I ask the stars
The stars up above
Why must I be a teenager in love
One day I feel so happy
Next day I feel so sad
I guess I'll learn to take
The good with the bad
Each night I ask the stars up above
(I ask them why)
Why must I be a teenage in love

I cried a tear (I cried a tear)
For nobody but you (Nobody but you)
I'll be the lonely one if you should say we're through

Well if you want to make me cry
That won't be so hard to do
And if you should say goodbye
I'll still go on loving you

Each night I ask the stars up above
(I ask them why)
Why must I be a teenager in love
I cried a tear (I cried a tear)
For nobody but you (For nobody but you)
I'll be the lonely one if you should say we're through

Yeah

Well if you want to make me cry
That won't be so hard to do
And if you should say goodbye
I'll still go on loving you

Each night I ask the stars up above
(I ask them why)
Why must I be a teenager in love
(tell me why)
Why must I be a teenager in love

[repeat last line to finish]

Heart Sisters

Nothing at all

I would walk home every evening
Through the pyramids of light
I would feed myself on silence
Wash it down with empty nights

Then your innocent distraction
Hit me so hard
My emotional reaction
Caught me off guard

It was nothing at all
Like anything I had felt before
And it was nothing at all
Like I thought no, it's so much more
No one else has ever
Made me feel this way
When I asked you how you did it
You just say
It was nothing at all

Now I walk home every evening
And my feet are quick to move
Cause I know my destination
Is a warm and waiting for you

From our first communication
If was clear
Any thought of moderation
Would soon disappear

It was nothing at all
Like anything I had felt before
And it was nothing at all
Like I thought - no, it's so much more
No one else has ever made me feel this way
When I ask you how you did it
You just say
Oh, it was nothing, nothing at all...

Naw, I think I'll make him stop growing right here. I like this age.