Armstrong's father was a jazz guitarist and his mother a blues singer. Having learned the guitar at a young age, Armstrong formed his first band at school, and was touring the United States in his late teens. Inspired by Albert King and Robert Cray, his musical education included backing musicians such as Albert Collins, Big Joe Turner and Smokey Wilson. Armstrong relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area and, in 1995, released his debut album, Sleeping with a Stranger, on HighTone.
However, in April 1997, Armstrong was almost stabbed to death by an intruder at his home. The shoulder injury necessitated months of rehabilitation, which still left Armstrong with limited guitar playing ability in his left hand. He adjusted his playing style, hired a lead guitar player, and realised that playing slide guitar helped to slowly recover his dexterity. His second, introspective, album, Dark Night, was issued in 1998. It incorporated Joe Louis Walker and Doug MacLeod playing lead guitar on a couple of the songs.[1] The album track, "Bank of Love", was used in the films Hear No Evil and The Florentine.
Armstrong recommenced live performances on the blues festival circuit, with a noteworthy appearance at the 1999 Pocono Blues Festival in Pennsylvania. In early 2000, Armstrong returned to the recording studio to work on his next album, Got It Goin' On. He was aided in the project by utilising Walker's rhythm section, plus a guest appearance from the keyboardist Jim Pugh.[1] In 2001, Armstrong's song "Pennies and Picks" from Got It Goin' On, earned him a W.C. Handy Award nomination for 'Song of the Year'. Armstrong himself was nominated for 'Contemporary Male Blues Guitarist of the Year'. "2 Sides," another song from Got It Goin' On was included in the film soundtrack for Speechless.
Armstrong's 2011 release on Catfood Records, Blues At The Border, was his first recording in 11 years. James released Guitar Angels on Catfood Records in 2014.
In 2016 James Armstrong started his own record label, Guitar Angels Records. The first release on his label, in May 2016, was the self-titled CD Mary Jo Curry from the Springfield, IL vocalist.
Eric Benet, cantante de R&B y neo soul estadounidense. Su estilo mezcla las formas musicales adultas de la música afrodescendiente con el hip hop y las nuevas tendencias del soul.
Comenzó en la música siendo adolescente, en el grupo vocal Benet junto a su hermana Lisa Marie Jordan. El dúo firmó por Capitol, y en 1992 editaron un álbum homónimo que pasó desapercibido en el mercado musical. Muy poco después de esto Eric emprendió su carrera en solitario firmando por la discográfica Warner Bros. En 1996 editó su álbum debut, "True to myself". En 1999, con su segundo álbum "A day in the life", logró su primer éxito, con la versión del tema de Toto "Georgy porgy"; pero su verdadero hit fue el sencillo que siguió a este, en el cual colaboraba Tamia "Spend my life with you". La canción llegó al número uno y fue nominada a los Grammy en 2000 como mejor canción R&B de grupo o dúo. Con este, su segundo álbum, consiguió el Soul Train Award al mejor álbum de R&B/soul de un solista masculino. Durante este tiempo entró en el estudio para colaborar en el CD 5tributo del 30 aniversario de Earth, Wind & Fire. En 2001 se casó con la actriz Halle Berry. Ese mismo año hizo su debut en la gran pantalla de la mano de Mariah Carey, en su película "Glitter". En 2004 se separó de Halle Berry tras tres años de matrimonio. Un año después editó su tercer álbum "Hurricane", del que se extrajeron los sencillos "I wanna be loved", "Pretty baby" y "Hurricane".
Faith Renée Evans (born June 10, 1973) is an American singer. Born in Lakeland, Florida, and raised in New Jersey, she relocated to Los Angeles in 1991 for a career in the music business. After working as a backing vocalist for Al B. Sure! and Christopher Williams, she became the first female artist to contract with Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs' Bad Boy Records in 1994 at age 20. On the label, she featured on records with several label mates such as 112 and Carl Thomas, and released three platinum-certified studio albums between 1995 and 2001: Faith (1995) and Keep the Faith (1998), and Faithfully (2001).
In 2003, she ended her relationship with the company to sign with Capitol Records. Her first album released on the label, The First Lady (2005) became her highest-charting album at the time, reaching the top of the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts, while the holiday album A Faithful Christmas, released the same year, would become her last release before the company was bought in 2007. Following a longer hiatus, Evans released her fifth album Something About Faith on the independent label Prolific and Entertainment One Music in 2010. With a career spanning two decades, Evans has sold over 20 million records worldwide.
Other than her recording career, Evans is most known as the widow of New York rapper Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace, whom she married on August 4, 1994, a few months after meeting at a Bad Boy photoshoot. The turbulent marriage resulted in Evans' involvement in the East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry, dominating the rap music news at the time, and ended with Wallace's murder in an unsolveddrive-by shooting in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997. A 1997 tribute single featuring Puff Daddy and the band 112, named "I'll Be Missing You", won Evans a Grammy Award in 1998. Also an actress and writer, Evans made her screen debut in the 2000 musical drama Turn It Up by Robert Adetuyi. Her autobiography Keep the Faith: A Memoir was released by Grand Central Publishing in 2008 and won a 2009 African American Literary Award for the Best Biography/Memoir category
Jonathan William Coulton(born December 1, 1970), often called "JoCo" by fans, is an American folk/comedy singer-songwriter, known for his songs aboutgeekculture and his use of the Internet to draw fans. Among his most popular songs are "Code Monkey", "Re: Your Brains", "Still Alive" and "Want You Gone" (the last three being featured in games developed byValve:Left 4 Dead 2,Portal, andPortal 2respectively). He was the house musician forNPRweekly puzzle quiz showAsk Me Anotherfrom 2012 until its end in 2021.
Coulton graduated in 1993 from Yale, where he was a member of The Spizzwinks and the Yale Whiffenpoofs. In the 1990s, Coulton was in a short-lived band, named SuperGroup, with television producer Eric Salat and best-selling author Darin Strauss. A former computer programmer employed at Cluen, a New York City software company, and self-described geek, Coulton tended to write quirky, witty lyrics about science fiction and technology: a man who thinks in simian terms ("Code Monkey"), a mad scientist who falls in love with one of his captives ("Skullcrusher Mountain"), and the dangers of bacteria. Most of Coulton's recordings feature his singing over guitar, bass, and drums; some also feature the various other instruments Coulton plays, including accordion, harmonica, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, zendrum and glockenspiel.
Coulton's debut album, Smoking Monkey, was released in November 2003.
Several early podcasters discovered and made regular use of Coulton's music, notably Adam Curry of the Daily Source Code and The Wizards of Technology. In April 2006, he lent his voice to one such podcast, The Spoilers, in which he and hosts Rick Yaeger and Bill Douthett provided a 2-hour fan commentary for Raiders of the Lost Ark.
He was the Contributing Troubadour at Popular Science magazine, whose September 2005 issue was accompanied by a five-song set by Coulton called Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms. He was also the musical director for The Little Gray Book Lectures.
From September 16, 2005, to September 30, 2006, Coulton ran "Thing a Week", during which he recorded 52 musical pieces, one per week, in an effort to push his creative envelope via a "forced-march approach to writing and recording"; to prove to himself that he could produce creative output to a deadline; and to see whether a professional artist could use the Internet and distribution via Creative Commons to support himself. Rare topical songs include 2005's "W's Duty", which samples President George W. Bush, and 2006's "Tom Cruise Crazy." In a September 2006 interview, he said of the experiment, "In some parts of the country, I'd be making a decent living". In a February 25, 2008, interview with This Week in Tech, he said that he made more money in 2007 than he did in his last year of working as a programmer, 40% of it from digital downloads and 40% from merchandise and performances.
In 2006, Coulton began touring with comedy duo Paul and Storm. Coulton initially opened the concerts, but as his popularity grew, he began headlining.
Coulton wrote and performed a song titled "Still Alive" for the ending credits of Valve's 2007 video game Portal, with vocals by Ellen McLain. On April 1, 2008, Harmonix made this track available as free downloadable content for the game Rock Band. A version with Coulton's vocals was also included on the Orange Box Original Soundtrack, in addition to the one heard at the end of the game. "Re: Your Brains" made an appearance as an easter egg in Left 4 Dead 2. "Still Alive" has been called "the most influential game music". In 2011, Coulton followed up the success of "Still Alive" with a new song at the end of Portal 2, "Want You Gone". He also wrote the Portal-themed song "You Wouldn't Know" for Lego Dimensions.
Coulton is also known for original pieces such as "Code Monkey", which was featured on Slashdot on April 23, 2006, and linked from the webcomic Penny Arcade. It was also the theme song for an animated show on G4 called Code Monkeys.
Coulton accompanied John Hodgman on his "700 Hobo Names" promotional track for Hodgman's book The Areas of My Expertise as the guitarist (he was credited as "Jonathan William Coulton, the Colchester Kid"). Coulton also can be heard throughout the audiobook version of the same book, playing the theme song to the book, playing incidental music, and bantering with Hodgman, who reads the audio version of his work. Hodgman has also mentioned Coulton on The Daily Show: a Jonathan Coulton of Colchester, Connecticut, was Hodgman's pick to win an essay contest on overpowering Iraqi resistance to American invasion. Coulton wrote and performed "the winning entry", a song about dropping snakes from airplanes. Coulton appeared on the tour for Hodgman's second book, More Information Than You Require.
Coulton composed the title music for the show Mystery Diagnosis, and also has contributed other songs under "The Little Gray Book Lectures", a series of audio releases from John Hodgman.
Coulton had been working on his follow-up to the Thing a Week albums, tentatively titled The Aftermath. He said the title was an umbrella term for unreleased tracks recorded after Thing a Week. "The Aftermath" was then released in 2009.
On May 25, 2010, Coulton said on his official site that he would work on a new album, to be produced by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, and for the first time ever with a full band, including Marty Beller of They Might Be Giants, in a professional recording studio. The resulting album, Artificial Heart, was released on November 8, 2011. It contains 18 songs, including his two songs from Portal.
In May 2012, Coulton became the house musician for the NPR game show Ask Me Another. Coulton performs some of his own songs on the show, as well as covers of other songs related to the trivia and puzzle challenges.
Since 2011, Coulton has hosted his own annual week-long affinity cruise, the JoCo Cruise.
On April 15, 2013, Coulton announced that he was working with comic book writer Greg Pak on a graphic novel based on the characters in his songs, called Code Monkey Save World. The project was funded on Kickstarter, and reached its goal within 12 hours.
On August 31, 2013, it was announced that Coulton would be contributing lyrics to The SpongeBob Musical, which premiered in Chicago in June 2016. Coulton composed the opening number "Bikini Bottom Day", which is reprised multiple times throughout the show as SpongeBob's main theme. Coulton also contributed to additional lyrics for other musical numbers featured in the show. Along with other musical contributors to the show, Coulton won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Score, and was nominated for Best Original Score for the 72nd Tony Awards.
In June 2016, Coulton started doing a one-minute "Previously On" song at the beginning of the CBS TV series BrainDead, a summer series with a planned run of 13 episodes.
On April 28, 2017, Coulton released a new album Solid State which is for sale through his website and iTunes as well as being available for streaming on SoundCloud
Coulton co-wrote the songs "Good for Me", "Patient Zero" and "Rollercoaster" with Aimee Mann for her 2017 album "Mental Illness", for which he also contributed acoustic guitar and backing vocals. He joined Mann as opening support act on the European and North American tour of "Mental Illness", contributing additional guitar and vocals to her main set.
On April 15, 2018, The Good Fight episode "Day 450" featured a song by Coulton, set to a short Schoolhouse Rock-style animation. The song echoed the episode's plotline around efforts to impeach Donald Trump and was later shared by the show's YouTube channel.
On March 29, 2019, Coulton released Some Guys, a cover album of songs from the 1970s.
Coulton releases his songs under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license, allowing others to use them in their own noncommercial works. As a result, a number of music videos have been created using his songs, including such machinima as the ILL Clan's video for "Code Monkey" and a kinetic typography video for the song "Shop Vac".
In May 2011, Coulton was interviewed on NPR's popular economics-related program Planet Money. He disclosed that he makes about $500,000 a year from his music despite lacking a record label contract. He expressed gratitude towards his fans for his surprise success, the degree of which he called "absurd". In a broader discussion of whether or not the internet is good for musicians, Coulton answered in the affirmative, while journalist Frannie Kelley described his success as a "fluke," comparing it to the unexpected popularity of the Snuggie. Coulton posted a tongue-in-cheek response on his blog about the comparison, saying "to which I say: snarkity snark snark!"
Most of Coulton's songs are published on his website as MP3 and FLAC downloads. Some of them are free, and none of them are subject to digital rights management. All of his original songs fall under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 License. "Still Alive", "Want You Gone" and "Wikipedia Chanukah" are the only exceptions to this, as Coulton assigned all rights for the former two songs to Valve and "Wikipedia Chanukah" is under a BY-SA license to comply with Wikipedia's similar license. Along with "Still Alive," Coulton's song "Re: Your Brains" appears in jukeboxes in Left 4 Dead 2. "Want You Gone" also features in the end credits of Portal 2. All three of these games were designed by Valve.
One of Coulton's best-known works is his 2005 light-acoustic cover of the Sir Mix-a-Lot hit song "Baby Got Back". Coulton wrote a new melody for his cover version of the song. Coulton's altered cover version was itself covered, but without permission (including his original line "Johnny C's in trouble"), by the American TV series Glee in 2013. Like Coulton's other work, he released his cover version of the song under a Creative Commons 3.0 license, which requires users to attribute the work to him, and forbids all commercial use of it. The show's lawyers contended that they were within their legal rights, and that Coulton should be happy for the exposure,[citation needed] though Coulton received no acknowledgement or credit. Coulton's own lawyers told him that as he only used a compulsory license to make the cover, it would be difficult to sue for damages using the argument that he retained copyright over his own version.
Instead, Coulton released the single "Baby Got Back (In the Style of Glee)", a "cover of Glee's cover of my cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's song, which is to say it's EXACTLY THE SAME as my original version." Coulton said he would donate the proceeds from all sales until the end of February 2013 to two Glee-related charities: The VH1 Save the Music Foundation, and The It Gets Better Project.
In January 2014, the CBS drama The Good Wife based its fifth season episode "Goliath and David" on the incident.
Cannons is an American indie pop band formed in 2013 in Los Angeles. The band consists of lead vocalist Michelle Joy [Lewis], guitarist Ryan Clapham, and keyboardist and bassist Paul Davis.
Ryan Clapham and Paul Davis, who have been friends since childhood, began composing music together in their teenage years. In 2013, Joy posted an advertisement on Craigslist seeking a band looking for a singer. Clapham and Davis connected with Joy, and she was recruited as Cannons' frontwoman.
Cannons issued their first EPUp All Night in 2014. The band then released their debut album Night Drive in 2017, as well as a second EP, In a Heartbeat, the following year. Shadows, Cannons' second album, was released in 2019 by AntiFragile Music.[7] "Fire for You", the first single from Shadows, gained significant commercial traction after being featured in a 2020 episode of the comedy-drama TV series Never Have I Ever. The band subsequently signed to Columbia Records. In early 2021, "Fire for You" reached number one on the BillboardAlternative Airplay chart. Fever Dream, the band's third album, was released in March 2022.
