Swing Out Sister is a British sophisti-pop musical group best known worldwide for their 1987 song “Breakout”, which was their only song to reach the US top 10.
Although Swing Out Sister is currently a duo, they began as a trio in the UK. The group was formed by Andy Connell (keyboards) and Martin Jackson (drums), and were later joined by Corinne Drewery (vocals). (The name came from a 1945 movie starring Arthur Treacher, called Swing Out, Sister.) Both Connell and Jackson had been playing in other bands prior to forming SOS, while Drewery was actually a fashion designer before she became the band’s lead vocalist.
Late 2005 saw Swing Out Sister return to their studio in London to commence recording of their new CD, which has the working title of Even When Tonight Is Over.
The band planned on making a second tour of America in 2006, however due to recording commitments this had to be cancelled.
In 2006 they composed incidential music for the ITV1 drama The Outsiders, a new television drama featuring Nigel Harman. The music will be featured on their forthcoming album.
Posted by CoyoteDJ on Tuesday, 21 of November , 2006 at 6:59 am
Katrina and the Waves
were a pop rock band of the 1980s, best known for their smash hit “Walking on Sunshine” and their 1997 Eurovision Song Contest victory.
Formed in 1981 in Cambridge, England, the Waves were fronted by American-born singer Katrina Leskanich until she left the group in 1999. Their lead guitarist is Kimberley Rew, formerly of the Soft Boys.
In 1985 the group had a worldwide hit with the song “Walking on Sunshine“, a Top 10 UK success, still popular today as a feel-good summer track, used in numerous feature films and advertisements. A Grammy award nominee for “Best New Artist” followed, and several seasons of touring were followed by moderate sales of new releases. “Sun Street” was a UK Top 30 hit in 1986, though subsequent releases, including the infectious “Rock’n'Roll Girl” in 1988, failed to chart.
By the late nineties, the band had all but disappeared, but briefly surged back into the limelight by winning the Eurovision Song Contest for the United Kingdom on 3 May 1997 with the song “Love Shine A Light”. Reacting to the win, Katrina said it was the second landslide victory in a week; the song won by a record points margin, and Tony Blair had won the 1997 British general election two days previously.
Six years after the original band split up, Katrina formed a new group in an attempt to repeat the Waves’ Eurovision triumph, this time in Sweden. At the 2005 Melodifestivalen, the competition to select Sweden’s entry, the group failed to qualify directly from the fourth semi-final of the competition, and were eventually eliminated in a ’second-chance semi’. Having planned to call themselves “Katrina and the New Wave”, they dubbed themselves “Katrina and the Nameless” after legal objections from the original Waves.
In 2005, the storm surge of a storm named Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the Gulf Coast, including the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. The MSNBC news program Countdown with Keith Olbermann dubbed its coverage of the hurricane “Katrina and the Waves”, referring to the storm itself and its storm surge, and that name also appeared in numerous headlines and blog posts. As the Waves lead singer Katrina Leskanich now shares her name with the devastation, she was quoted in the New York Times as saying the following:
“The first time I opened the paper and saw ‘Katrina kills 9,’ it was a bit of a shock. It’s a very sad situation, but I’m sure the strength and good will of the survivors will turn it around. I hope that the true spirit of ‘Walking on Sunshine’ will prevail. I would hate for the title to be tinged with sadness, and I will have to do my own part to help turn that around.”
Diego Torres an Argentinean singer scored good with his cover of the song named “Por la vereda del sol” in a record called “Tratar de Estar Mejor” which sold over 500.000 copies.
Los Lobos released an independent LP in the late 1970s, and an EP in 1983. Their first major-label, critically acclaimed release was 1984’s T-Bone Burnett-produced How Will the Wolf Survive? They released a follow up album entitled By the Light of the Moon in 1987. In the same year they recorded some Ritchie Valens covers for the soundtrack to the film La Bamba, including the title track which became a number one single for the band. In 1988 they followed with another album, La Pistola y El Corazón featuring original and classical norteño songs. Seen as akin to commercial suicide, the album sold poorly.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s the band toured extensively throughout the world, opening for such acts as Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead.
Los Lobos returned with The Neighborhood in 1990, and the creative and wildly experimental Kiko (produced by Mitchell Froom) in 1992. In 1991, the band contributed a lively cover of Bertha, a song which they often performed live, to the Grateful Dead tribute/rain forest benefit album Deadicated. In 1994 they also contributed a track, Down Where the Drunkards Roll, to the Richard Thompson tribute album Beat the Retreat.
On the band’s twenty-year anniversary they released a two-CD collection of singles, out-takes, live recordings and hits entitled Just Another Band from East L.A.
In 1995, Los Lobos released the children’s record Papa’s Dream on Music for Little People Records. The band also scored the film Desperado and contributed tracks to several other soundtracks and tribute albums. In 1996 they released Colossal Head. In spite of the fact that the album was critically acclaimed, Warner Brothers decided to drop the band from their roster. Los Lobos spent the next few years on side projects.
Los Lobos signed to Hollywood Records in 1999, and released This Time. Hollywood also reissued 1977’s Del Este de Los Angeles. In 2000, Rhino/Warner Archives released the Cancionero: Mas y Mas boxed set.
In 2002, the band released their Mammoth Records debut, Good Morning Aztlan; they released The Ride in 2004.
On the night of October 23, 1999, while the band was on tour, Sandra Rosas, wife of Cesar Rosas, was kidnapped from her house. She was found dead on November 22, 2000. Her half-brother Gabriel Gomez was convicted of her kidnapping and murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Black Box (later Blackbox) was an Italo-house music group popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, best known for their hit “Ride on Time“. The members of the group included a trio made up of a club DJ (Daniele Davoli), a classically trained clarinet teacher (Valerio Semplici) and a keyboard and electronic music “whizz” (Mirko Limoni.) The three had previously joined to form a group called Groove Groove Melody, producing dance music under names such as Starlight and Wood Allen. They went on to record music under many other aliases.
In 1989, they teamed up with singer/model Catherine Quinol (AKA Katrin) and formed Black Box. By early 1990 they had engaged Martha Wash to perform vocals on a number of tracks which, Ms Wash was apparently told, were ostensibly for club consumption and weren’t for mass-release.
Their first single “Ride on Time” was a hit around the world, making Top 10 in many countries and No.1 in the UK, soon becoming the UK’s best-selling single of 1989. The song sampled Holloway’s 1978 disco hit “Love Sensation” - the title comes from a mishearing of the lyrics “Cause you’re right on time”. “Love Sensation” was written by Dan Hartman who was unaware his song had been sampled by Black Box. According to Hartman’s attorney, Black Box ended up having to give Hartman a good percentage of the royalties. While the song did make it onto the “Dreamland” album when it was released later in 1990, the vocals had been entirely re-recorded, though not by Martha Wash. [1] Rather, Heather Small (best known as the lead singer of UK dance act M People) was enlisted to impersonate Holloway.
Soon after the success of “Ride on Time”, rumours began to surface that the girl in the video might not have been the vocalist. Eventually it was proven that singer Loleatta Holloway actually sang all of the vocals on “Ride on Time” and that Martha Wash was the vocalist featured on every other track on their subsequent album “Dreamland”. Quinol simply lip synched the vocals in live performances and in music videos.
Posted by CoyoteDJ on Wednesday, 1 of November , 2006 at 5:52 am
Desireless (born 25 December 1952, as Claudie Fritsch) is a French singer. In 1986/87, her hit song “Voyage Voyage” made it to number one in many European single charts and sold over five million copies.
Posted by CoyoteDJ on Tuesday, 31 of October , 2006 at 5:48 am
Laura Branigan from (July 3, 1957 – August 26, 2004) was a popular American singer/actressBrewster, New York, best known in the U.S. for the song “Gloria” (1982). She received the first of four Grammy Award nominations for the song. Branigan introduced the ballad “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” (1983), making the song a standard, recorded by dozens of artists throughout the world in the years since. “Self Control” (1984) was her biggest-selling album, and the title track became an international Number One hit. She was of Irish and Italian ancestry.
In 1984 MTV initially refused to air the music video for Branigan’s “Self Control”, which was directed by William Friedkin. A re-edited version was later aired.
I like one hit wonders because those who had at least one hit have done more in music than most of us. So big respect!
We'll try to rescue the hits that didn't last as long as they wished.
Milli Vanilli showed us the path, now pickup your fake ID and enjoy One Hit Wonders.