Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 - June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, dancer, and singer-songwriter. His contribution to music, dance and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a figure in popular culture for over four decades. The eighth child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5 in the mid-1960's, and began his solo career in 1971.
In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music. The music videos for his songs including Beat It,



Billie Jean, and



Thriller, were credited with transforming the medium into an art form and a promotional tool, and the popularity of these videos helped to bring the relatively new television channel MTV to fame. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made him a staple on MTV in the 1990s. Through stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style have influenced numerous hip hop, pop, contemporary R&B and rock musicians.

Jackson's 1982 album Thriller is the best-selling album of all time. His other records, including Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), and HIStory (1995), also rank among the world's best-selling. Jackson is one of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. He was also inducted into the Dance Hall of Fame as the first (and currently only) dancer from the world of pop and rock 'n' roll. Some of his other achievements include multiple Guinness World Records; 13 Grammy Awards (as well as the Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award); 26 American Music Awards (more than any other artist, including the "Artist of the Century"); 13 number-one singles in the United States in his solo career (more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era); and the estimated sale of over 750 million records worldwide. Jackson won hundreds of awards, which have made him the most-awarded recording artist in the history of music.

Aspects of Jackson's personal life, including his changing appearance, personal relationships and behavior, have generated controversy. In 1993, he was accused of child sexual abuse, but the case was settled out of court and no formal charges were brought. In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of further sexual abuse allegations and several other charges after the jury ruled him not guilty on all counts. While preparing for his concert series This Is It, Jackson died on June 25, 2009, after suffering from cardiac arrest. Before his death, Jackson had reportedly been administered drugs such as propofol and lorazepam. The Los Angeles County Coroner declared his death a homicide, and his personal physician pleaded not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter. In March 2010, Sony Music Entertainment signed a US$250 million deal with Jackson's estate to retain distribution rights to his recordings until 2017, and to release seven posthumous albums over the decade following his death. His first posthumous album of new material, simply titled Michael, will be released on December 14, 2010.

***


Nikki Sixx (born Frank Carlton Serafino Ferrana, Jr., December 11, 1958) is an American musician, songwriter, author, fashion designer and photographer best known as the founder and bassist of the band Mötley Crüe.

Prior to forming Mötley Crüe, Sixx was a member of Sister before going on to form London with his Sister band associate Lizzie Grey.

***


Mötley Crüe is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. The group was founded by bass guitarist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee, who were later joined by lead guitarist Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil. Mötley Crüe has sold more than 80 million album copies worldwide, including 25 million in the U.S.

The band members have often been noted for their hard-living lifestyles, and the persona they maintained. All members have had numerous brushes with the law, spent time in jail, suffered from alcoholism, long addictions to drugs, had countless escapades with women, and are heavily tattooed. Their ninth studio album, Saints of Los Angeles, was released on June 24, 2008.





[1959 Hartley / 1958 Michael Jackson / 1958 Prince]

Madonna (b. 1958)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgkOCJ9PGkk

Madonna (born Madonna Louise Ciccone, August 16, 1958) is an American recording artist, actress, and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983. She followed it with a series of albums in which she found immense popularity by pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music and imagery in her music videos, which became a fixture on MTV. Throughout her career, many of her songs have hit number one on the record charts, including Like a Virgin, Papa Don't Preach, Like a Prayer, Vogue, Frozen, Music, Hung Up, and 4 Minutes. Madonna has been praised by critics for her diverse musical productions while at the same time serving as a lightning rod for religious controversy.

Her career was further enhanced by film appearances that began in 1979, despite mixed commentary. She won critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her role in Evita (1996), but has received harsh feedback for other film roles. Madonna's other ventures include being a fashion designer, children's book author, film director and producer, and owner of her own recording company Maverick corporation, as a joint venture with Time Warner. She has been acclaimed as a businesswoman, and in 2007, she signed an unprecedented US $120 million contract with Live Nation.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second top-selling female artist in the United States, behind Barbra Streisand, with 64 million certified albums.



[8958 Michael Jackson / 8958 Madonna / 8958 Prince]

Prince (b. 1958) - Purple Rain

Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson; June 7, 1958) is a singer, songwriter, musician, and actor.

He has been known under an unpronounceable symbol, which he used between 1993 and 2000.

During that period he was frequently referred to in the media as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince,, often abbreviated to "TAFKAP," or simply "The Artist."

According to Robert Larsen in his book, History of Rock and Roll, Prince is "one of the most talented and commercially successful pop musicians of the last 20 years,, producing ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career.

Prince founded his own recording studio and label, writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of the instruments on his recordings.

In addition, Prince has been a "talent promoter" for the careers of Sheila E., Carmen Electra, The Time and Vanity 6, and has written songs for these artists and others (including Chaka Khan, The Bangles, and Sinéad O'Connor).

Prince also has several hundred unreleased songs in his "vault."

He has won seven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe,[5] and an Academy Award.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the first year he was eligible.

Prince's music has been influenced by rock, R&B, soul, funk, rap, blues, New Wave, electronica, disco, psychedelia, folk, jazz, and hip hop.

His artistic influences include Sly & the Family Stone, Parliament-Funkadelic, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Duke Ellington, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Wonder.

Prince pioneered the "Minneapolis sound," a hybrid mixture of funk, rock, pop, R&B, and New Wave that has influenced many other musicians.



***



Purple Rain is the sixth album by Prince and The Revolution, the soundtrack album to the 1984 film Purple Rain.

Purple Rain is regularly ranked among the best albums in rock music history. It placed 18th on VH1's Greatest Rock and Roll Albums of All Time countdown.

All songs composed and arranged by Prince; except Computer Blue, words by Prince, music by Prince, John L. Nelson, Wendy & Lisa, and Dr. Fink.

Side One

"Let's Go Crazy" – 4:39

"Take Me with U" – 3:54

"The Beautiful Ones" – 5:13

"Computer Blue" – 3:59



"Darling Nikki" – 4:14

Side Two

"When Doves Cry" – 5:54

"I Would Die 4 U" – 2:49

"Baby I'm a Star" – 4:24

"Purple Rain" – 8:41

***



Darling Nikki is a song produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince and originally released on his Grammy Award-winning 1984 album, Purple Rain. Though the song was not released as a single, it gained wide notoriety for its sexual lyrics. Partly because of the lyrical content of "Darling Nikki", Tipper Gore founded the Parents Music Resource Center, which eventually led to the use of "Parental Advisory" stickers and imprints on album covers.

The song tells the story of a "sex fiend" named Nikki who seduces the singer. In the film Purple Rain, the song is directed toward Apollonia Kotero's character when she decides to work with Prince's character's rival, played by Morris Day.

Near the end of the song, the music stops into the sound of rain and wind. There is singing, but played in reverse. The vocals, unreversed, are Prince singing,

"Hello, how are you?
I'm fine 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon
Coming, coming soon."

During the Purple Rain tour performances of Darling Nikki, the recording at the end was played forward. This can be heard in the live video Prince and the Revolution Live.

[1958 Madonna / 1958 Prince / 1958 Wold]

Erling Wold (b. 1958) / Art Objects

Erling Wold (b. 1958)

A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil

Queer

Sub Pontio Pilato: Credo



Mordake

Erling Wold (b. January 30, 1958) is a San Francisco based composer of opera and contemporary classical music. He is best known for his later chamber operas, especially A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil and his early experiments as a microtonalist. Although he rejected religion in his teens, he returned many times to religious themes in his works, including many of his operatic works, and his mass named for Notker the Stammerer commissioned by the Cathedral of St Gall. His earliest music was atonal and arrhythmic, but the influences of just intonation and the music of the minimalists led to the bulk of his music being composed in a variety of tonal genres. He was attracted by the theater and much of his music is either directly dramatic or is based on dramatic rather than purely musical structures. Wold is an eclectic composer who has also been called "the Eric Satie of Berkeley surrealist/minimalist electro-art rock" by the Village Voice. He composed the soundtracks for a number of films by the independent film director Jon Jost.

***


Jeanette Winterson (b. August 27, 1959, Manchester, UK) was raised in Accrington, Lancashire, by adoptive parents Constance and John William Winterson. Intending to become a Pentecostal Christian missionary, she began evangelising and writing sermons at age six, but by 16 Winterson declared she was lesbian and left home.

She soon after attended Accrington and Rossendale College and supported herself at a variety of odd jobs while reading for a degree in English at St Catherine's College, Oxford.

After moving to London, her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published when she was 26 years old. It won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, and was adapted for television by Winterson in 1990, which in turn won the BAFTA Award for Best Drama. She won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Passion, a novel set in Napoleonic Europe.

Winterson's subsequent novels explore the boundaries of physicality and the imagination, gender polarities, and sexual identities, and have won several literary awards. Her stage adaptation of The PowerBook in 2002 opened at the Royal National Theatre, London. She also bought a derelict terraced house in Spitalfields, East London, which she refurbished into a flat as a pied-a-terre and a ground-floor shop, Verde's, to sell organic food.

In 2002, Winterson ended her 12-year relationship with BBC radio broadcaster and academic, Peggy Reynolds.

Her novel Written on the Body was inspired by her affair with Pat Kavanagh, her literary agent.

Bibliography

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)
Boating for Beginners (1985)
Fit For The Future: The Guide for Women Who Want to Live Well (1986)
The Passion (1987)
Sexing the Cherry (1989)
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit: the script (1990)
Written on the Body (1992)
Art & Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd (1994)
Great Moments in Aviation: the script (1995)
Art Objects (1995)
Gut Symmetries (1997)
The World and Other Places (1998)
The PowerBook (2000)
The King of Capri (2003)
Lighthousekeeping (2004)
Weight (2005)
Tanglewreck (2006)
The Stone Gods (2007)
The Battle of the Sun (2009)
The Lion, The Unicorn and Me: The Donkey's Christmas Story (2009)

[1958 Prince / 1958 Wold / 1957 Tan Dun]