Black Sabbath

BLACK SABBATH is the English heavy metal rock band from Birmingham formed in 1969, by Ozzy Osbourne (lead vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass guitar), and Bill Ward (drums).


The band was earlier known as "Earth" and had a very different blues/hard rock sound. The band has had multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years.

Black Sabbath are cited as pioneers of heavy metal and helped define the genre with releases such as quadruple-platinum Paranoid, released in 1970.


They were ranked by MTV as the "Greatest Metal Band" of all time, and placed second in VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" list, behind Led Zeppelin.

Ozzy Osbourne's heavy drug usage led to his firing from the band in April 1979, after which he began a very successful solo music career, selling over 100 million albums and television celebrity.

The original line-up reunited with Osbourne in 1997 and released a live album Reunion. The line-up featuring Iommi, Butler, Dio, and Appice reformed in 2006 under the moniker Heaven & Hell until Dio's death in May 2010.

Black Sabbath, the  film

HISTORY:  While playing shows in England in 1969, the band discovered they were being mistaken for another English group also named Earth, and that summer they decided to change their name. A cinema across the street from the band's rehearsal room was showing the 1963 horror film Black Sabbath starring Boris Karloff.

Subsequently, Osbourne and Butler wrote the lyrics for a song called "Black Sabbath" (listen to track), which was inspired by the work of English occult writer Dennis Wheatley. Butler also claimed to have had a vision of a black silhouetted figure standing at the foot of his bed.The song uses the musical tritone, AKA "The Devil's Interval" along with an ominous sound and dark lyrics which became the themes for their musical sound.

Official Website: http://www.blacksabbath.com

Thin Lizzy

Thin Lizzy at the Manchester Apollo, 1983

L to R: Sykes, Lynott, Gorham, Wharton; Downey not visible.

Thin Lizzy are an Irish rock band formed in Dublin in 1969. Two of the founding members, drummer Brian Downey and bass guitarist/vocalist Phil Lynott, met while still in school. Lynott assumed the role of frontman and led them throughout their recording career of twelve studio albums.

Thin Lizzy are best known for their songs "Whiskey in the Jar", "Jailbreak" and "The Boys Are Back In Town" from the album Jailbreak.

After Lynott's death in 1986, various incarnations of the band have emerged over the years based around guitarists Scott Gorham and John Sykes (Sykes left the band in 2009).

Thin Lizzy original lead guitarist, Eric Bell, came up with the band's name.  He was a fan of  John Mayall's Bluesbreakers band and noted that Eric Clapton was reading the comic "The Beano" on the cover of the  1966 album Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton. In a sister comic, The Dandy, there is a robot character named Tin Lizzie (like the Ford Model T car). Bell suggested it and a change from "Tin" to "Thin" to play on the Irish accent's propensity to drop the 'h'.

The Pogues

The Pogues are a Celtic punk band from London fronted by Shane MacGowan. Their politically tinged music was informed by MacGowan and Spider Stacy's punk backgrounds, but they also used traditional Irish instruments such as the tin whistle, cittern, mandolin and accordion.

The band reached peaked in popularity in the late 80s and early 1990s. MacGowan left the band in 1991 due to drinking problems but the band continued first with Joe Strummer and then with Spider Stacy on vocals before breaking up in 1996.




The Pogues were founded in Kings Cross, a district of North London, in 1982 as Pogue Mahone. Pogue mahone is the Anglicisation of the Irish póg mo thóin, meaning "kiss my arse (ass)".

The band reformed in 2001, and has been playing fairly regularly since, particularly U.S. East Coast around St Patrick's Day, and across the UK and Ireland every December, though they have not released any other records.




Pogue Mahone is also the name of the seventh and last studio album by the band which was released in 1996.

Despite their limited output, Amazon.com lists 69 albums under The Pogues

LEGO

Lego (trademarked in capitals as LEGO) is a popular line of construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. http://www.lego.com

The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, mini-figures and various other parts. Lego bricks can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct such objects as vehicles, buildings, and even working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects.

Lego began manufacturing interlocking toy bricks in 1949.


In the years since, a global Lego subculture has developed, supporting movies, games, competitions, and five themed amusement parks.

The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932.

In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means "play well".

Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield, l-r: Stephen Stills, Dewey Martin,
Bruce Palmer, Richie Furay, Neil Young

Buffalo Springfield was a North American folk-rock band known not only for their music, but for the bands and careers that emerged after they disbanded. 

They were one of the first bands to emerge after the "British invasion." The band's music combined rock, folk, and country music into a sound all its own.

Their best-selling song was "For What It's Worth" which became a political anthem in the late 1960s and is still used today for political statements.


The band formed in 1966 and lasted only two years before infighting, drug-related arrests, and line-up changes led to disbanding.

Neil Young and Stephen Stills first met briefly in Ontario, Canada while Young was playing with The Squires, and Stills was on tour with The Company, a spin-off from the Au Go Go Singers. When The Company broke up at the end of that tour, Stills moved to the West Coast, where he worked as a studio musician and auditioned unsuccessfully for, among other things, The Monkees.

He decided to assemble his own band and Richie Furay and former Squires bass player Ken Koblun to come join him in California. (Koblun left after a short time.)

Back in Canada, Young met Bruce Palmer of The Mynah Birds and joined as the lead guitarist. Oddly enough, their singer was Ricky James Matthews (later known as Rick James) who was arrested for being AWOL from the U.S. Navy, thereby killing their Motown record deal.

Young and Palmer decided to head for Los Angeles where, after some searching, they joined Stills, Furay and Friedman, and drummer Dewey Martin.

According to the liner notes on the 4 CD box set, the band got its name from the side of a steamroller, made by the Buffalo-Springfield Roller Company. It was parked on the street outside record producer Barry Friedman's house where Stills and Furay were staying. The newly-named group debuted on April 11, 1966, at The Troubadour in Hollywood and then started a short tour of California as the opening act on a bill featuring The Dillards and The Byrds. Jim Messina replaced Palmer early in 1968.

The band produced three original albums Buffalo Springfield (1966), Buffalo Springfield Again (1967), and Last Time Around (1968), and several compilations in the years since the breakup.

After the breakup, the members went on to form Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Poco, Loggins & Messina and Crazy Horse, as well as all producing solo albums.

Despite the band's short tenure and limited output, it was one of the most influential of its era and they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.