ABBA -
the starting point. The 1st band to impress me so much that I
started collecting their music, never getting disappoined with
it.
Left to right: Bjorn Ulvaeus
(25.04.45) - guitars, vocals, music, lyrics; Agnetha Faeltskog
(05.04.50) - vocals; Anni-Frid Lingstad
(15.11.45) - vocals; Benny Ansersson
(16.12.46) - keyboards, vocals, music, lyrics.
Favourite Album: "ABBA - The Album" '77. Favourite song: "Elaine"
The Brothers Gibb - or
the Bee Gees are another
favourite of mine from the disco era. However, as I found out
later, they had been making great music since well over 10 years
before the triumph of Saturday Night Fever in 1977, and they go
on making great music today... Please also check for the Wind of Change, a very
informative website on the Bee Gees with lots of photographs.
Left to right: Maurice 'Mo' Gibb
(22.12.49) - vocals, bass, keyboards, etc.; Robin
Gibb (22.12.49) - vocals; Barry Gibb
(01.09.47) - guitars, vocals. All the Bee Gees compositions are
co-written by all the three brothers.
Favourite Album: "Spirits Having Flown" '79. Favourite Song: "Staying Alive"
The Fab Four!!! The Beatles!!! Here
I can't say anything more then the commonplace Meet the
Rock'n'roll Band of All Times and Nations. What other musical
group could be so fabulously famous - and missed by so many
people in the world - almost 30 years after their breakup? Not
only the band of four men each of a very unique talent - they are
the legend, the time, the history... The dream, which is not -
and won't ever be - over (I beg pardon, John...)
Left to right: Paul McCartney
(18.06.42), George
Harrison (25.02.43) (who alone makes a great part in my
collection to be presented here! - also check for Nelson
(Spike) Wilbury of the Traveling
Wilburys), Ringo
Starr (07.07.40), John
Lennon (09.10.40 - 08.12.80)
New: Paul McCartney released his Run
Devil Run new album in 2 variants - ordinary and box set;
Ringo Starr released an album of Christmas songs, called I Wanna
Be Santa Claus
Favourite Album: "Abbey Road" '69. Favourite Song: "Strawberry Fields Forever"
The Pnk Floyd
is another great band, which created a number of all-time classic
rock albums, and whose music. thoughtful and exquisite, has
recruited them millions and millions fans all over the world.
Left to right: Rick
Wright - keyboards, vocals (with the band from the beginning
till 1981 and again from 1987); David
Gilmour - guitars, vocals (with the band from 1968); Roger Waters - bass,
vocals (with the band from the beginning till 1986); Nick Mason - drums. Another original
member of the band: Syd Barret -
guitars and vocals, with the band from the beginning till 1968.
Favourite Album: "Wish You Were Here" '75 Favourite Record: "Shine on You Crazy Diamond Part 9"
The
Pnk
Floyd is another great band, which created a number of
all-time classic rock albums, and whose music. thoughtful and
exquisite, has recruited them millions and millions fans all over
the world.
Left to right: Rick
Wright - keyboards, vocals (with the band from the beginning
till 1981 and again from 1987); David
Gilmour - guitars, vocals (with the band from 1968); Roger Waters - bass,
vocals (with the band from the beginning till 1986); Nick Mason - drums. Another original
member of the band: Syd Barret -
guitars and vocals, with the band from the beginning till 1968.
Favourite Album: "Wish You Were Here" '75 Favourite Record: "Shine on You Crazy Diamond Part 9"
Jeff Lynne, the leader and frontman of
the Electric Light
Orchestra and a musician who masters almost every musical
instrument one may think of, is a long-time supplier of
well-built and beautifully arranged musical compositions. The
degree of the recognition his talent receives can be easily seen
from the fact that he worked with such megastars as George Harrison (Cloud Nine), Roy Orbison (Mystery Girl), Tom Petty (Fool Moon Fever, Into the Great Wide
Open), Joe Cocker (Night Calls),
Ringo Starr (Time Takes Time), and
finally, the Beatles (Free As a Bird and Real Love)
and Paul McCartney (Flaming Pie)...
Also check for Otis
(Clayton) Wilbury of the Traveling
Wilburys.
Favourite Album: "Face the Music" '75. Favourite Record: "Bouncer"
"Today, The Rolling Stones
are revered as mush for their mythological baggage as they are
for their music and incredibly, they're still looked up to by
today's hip young guitar-slingers. And that' in a medium which
was once dismissed as ephemeral, surely counts for
something"
James Hector "The Complete Guide to the Music of The
Rolling Stones"
Favourite Album: "Exile on Main St." '72. Favourite song: "Gimme Shelter"
"Bob
Dylan has reached into the life of everyone with even a
passing inerest in popular music... It's a cliche but, without
Bob Dylan, pop would be a duller, emptier space... There would
have been no groups singing anything more than "Love ya,
baby". No Sex Pistols, Oasis, Guns'n'Roses or Led Zeppelin
"
Patrick Humphries, "The Complete Guide to the Music of
Bob Dylan"
And one more thing - to this man, I owe my diploma paper,
which I wrote on Mr. Dylan's interviews.
Also check for Lucky (Boo)
Wilbury of the Traveling
Wilburys.
Favourite Album: "Saved" '80. Favourite song: "Make You Feel My Love"
There is
nothing one can do when listening to another blues guitar solo
delivered by the one and only Mr. Eric
Clapton, nothing but be once again amazed by that great lot
of emotion expressed with incredible power and technique only by
means of a (very very very good, though) guitar. Greatest guitar
player, crafty tunesmith, singer, and, notably, one of the very
few white musicians who can really interpret and deliver the
blues - all that in only one man. Unbelievable!!!
... But no God, please.
Please also check for The Yardbirds, John
Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind
Faith, and Derek and
the Dominos.
Eric Clapton recently released a compilation of his latest material ('85 - 99), called Clapton Chronicles - The Best of Eric Clapton
Favourite Album: "Derek and the Dominos: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" '71. Favourite Record: "Have You Ever Loved a Woman (live at the Long Beach Arena, Long Beach, CA, 19/07/74)"
Muddy
Waters (McKinley Morganfield, 04.04.15 - 30.04.83) "...
came from worlds away: from the Mississipi Delta before America
entered the fiirst World War... He lived a little more than 68
years, and in that time he fulfilled his life's ambition: he made
his mark on the world. Though many other musicians and many other
musics made that journey from the rural South to the urban North
during and after World War II, it was Muddy Waters who brought
the Delta blues that he sythesized from the work of Robert
Johnson, Son House and untold others from Mississipi to Chicago,
and there transformed it into a music that would - literally -
rock the world." Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical
Express
Muddy Waters is the man whose art introduced me to the world
of authentic Delta blues, today one of my most favourite music
styles.
Favourite Album: "Live (at the Kelly's)" '71. Favourite track: "Rollin' and Tumblin' Pt.1"
Howlin' Wolf (Chester Arthur Burnett,
1910 - 1976) has something amazing about him in every aspect. They say he was
amazingly bulky, amazingly tough, and held amazingly spectacular blues shows.
Today, all we have to do is only believe all this. However, from his records
we can always hear that amazingly raw, hypnotising, groovy sound and that amazingly
brutal, soullful, heavy voice, that will go howling, moaning and groaning as
long as anyone takes any interest in the blues...
I never thought I could ever hear any voice of any resemblance to that. However,
that happened to me once, in the hotel in the town of Khorog, in the Pamirs.That
voice belonged to a old drunk junkie Tajik man and, boy, it did sound scaring!...
Favourite Album: "The Genuine Article"
'97. Favourite track: "You'll Be Mine"
Photo: (c) 1968/89/2003 Sandy Guy Schoenfeld -- www.howlingwolfphotos.com
John Lee Hooker (b.
1917)"...is now one of the last real Mississipi bluesmen,
and perhaps the only one whose music harks back to pre-blues
music... John Lee Hooker's music, particularly his early music,
tells us something about the way the blues was played before it
was formalized. The one-chord stomps and dark, ruminative pieces
are closer kin to early rural black music than to Chicago
blues." Dave Sax & Colin Escott, from "John Lee
Hooker: The Complete '50s Chess Recordings" booklet.
"John Lee Hooker is that incredible bridge between the
future and the past... I'm very grateful to have worked with him.
I have a lot of respect and admiration for John" Carlos
Santana
Favourite Album: "The Best of Hooker'n'Heat" '96. Favourite track: "Walking the Boogie"
B.B. King
(Riley B. King, 16.09.25) "... remains perhaps the best
known blues musician, respected and loved by both the
intransigent blues fan... and the casual listener, to whom he
represents their entire understanding of "blues"...
There's an emotional greatness to B.B. King... And in a
guitar-oriented music culture... B.B. King is a master, perhaps the
master of the electric blues guitar." Colin Escott, from
the "King of the Blues" box set booklet.
The recently released B.B. King's new album Let the Good Times Roll - The Music of Louis Jordan - is my favourite in the last 7 years!
Favourite Album: "Live at the Regal" '64. Favourite track: "How Blue Can You Get"
... And after all the big people
above, I was just hit by the music and fascinating images of the
Russian band called AuctYon.
They are nearly the one and only Russian band that I enjoy
listening to so much and attend concerts every year. Here, you
will also find the Unofficial Homepage of Lenia Fedorov, the
main composer, frontman, guitarist and the voice of this
prominent Russian rock band.
AuctYon also are: Oleg Garkusha (23.02.61) - vocals,
dances, small percussion, lyrics; Nikolai
'Kolik' Rubanov - saxophones; Victor
Bondarik - bass; Dmitri Ozersky
- keyboards, lyrics; Boris Shaveinikov
- drums; Pavel Litvinov -
percussion; Mikhail Kolovsky - tuba.
On 12 November '99 I've been to Auctyon's live show at the Tabula Rasa club in Moscow, which was very good again, and even had my t-shirt signed by Lenia, as well as exchanged a few words with Oleg and Pasha, and even had a couple of drinks with Kolik! Woohoo!!!
Favourite Album: "Ptitsa (Bird)" '93. Favourite song: "Eshche ne pozdno (Not Too Late Yet)".
The other most favourite artists of mine that you may check for are:
[Willie
Dixon] [Ray Charles] [Elvis Presley] [Marvin Gaye] [Stevie Wonder] [The Doors] [Joe Cocker] [Robert Fripp
& King Crimson] [Led
Zeppelin] [Santana] [Brian Eno] [Queen] [Dire Straits]
[V.S. Vysotsky] [Aquarium] [Piknik] [Kolibri]