Violent Femmes are an American folk punk band from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The band consists of founding members Gordon Gano (guitar, lead vocals) and Brian Ritchie (bass, backing vocals), joined by multi-instrumentalist Blaise Garza (joined 2004), and drummer John Sparrow (joined 2016). Former members of the band include drummers Victor DeLorenzo (1980–1993, 2002–2013), Guy Hoffman (1993–2002), and Brian Viglione (2013–2016). Violent Femmes have released ten studio albums and 15 singles during the course of their career. The band found immediate success with the release of their self-titled debut album in early 1983. Featuring many of their well-known songs, including "Blister in the Sun", "Kiss Off", "Add It Up" and "Gone Daddy Gone", Violent Femmes became the band's biggest-selling album and was eventually certified platinum by the RIAA. Violent Femmes went on to become one of the most successful alternative rock bands of the 1980s, selling more than 9 million albums by 2005. After the release of their third album The Blind Leading the Naked (1986), the band's future was uncertain and they split up in 1987, when Gano and Ritchie went solo. However, they regrouped a year later, releasing the album 3 (1989). Their fifth album Why Do Birds Sing? (1991) contains the fan favorite and concert staple "American Music". In 1993, founding drummer Victor DeLorenzo left the band, and the band released the compilation album Add It Up (1981–1993), while their 1994 album New Times introduce new drummer Guy Hoffman to the lineup. A number of albums were released with this lineup throughout the 1990s, then DeLorenzo rejoined the band in 2002 for what was to be a farewell tour. The band stopped releasing new albums, though a number of compilation albums were released in the early 2000s, along with a few one-off songs. Some controversy over the licensing of the band's songs for commercial use led to an official break-up in 2009, though the band re-formed in 2013, and have since released two more studio albums of new material: We Can Do Anything (2016) and Hotel Last Resort (2019).
Violent Femmes is the band's most successful album to date. It went gold four years after its release and platinum four years after that despite never having appeared on the Billboard 200 album chart. After achieving platinum certification on February 1, 1991, the album finally charted for the first time on August 3, 1991, and peaked at #171. Since Nielsen Music began electronically tracking sales in 1991, the album has sold 1.8 million copies. Blending RIAA certifications and Nielsen Music sales data, the record's American sales were estimated at three million as of 2016. Slant Magazine listed the album at No. 21 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s"[9] and was ranked number 974 in All-Time Top 1000 Albums (third edition, 2000).[10] In 2014, the staff of PopMatters included the album on their list of "12 Essential Alternative Rock Albums from the 1980s."
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz composer, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba" and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever.[4] Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.
Recorded over a year after Chick Corea's debut Tones for Joan's Bones -- a record cut in late 1966 but not appearing until 1968 -- Now He Sings, Now He Sobs feels like his true first album, the place where he put all the pieces in motion for his long, adventurous career...
The strangest and most disturbing of the films Ingmar Bergman shot on the island of Fårö, Hour of the Wolf stars Max von Sydow as a haunted painter living in voluntary exile with his wife (Liv Ullmann). When the couple are invited to a nearby castle for dinner, things start to go wrong with a vengeance, as a coven of sinister aristocrats hastens the artist’s psychological deterioration. This gripping film is charged with a nightmarish power rare in the Bergman canon, and contains dreamlike effects that brilliantly underscore the tale’s horrific elements.
The Hour of the Wolf" is the hour between night and dawn. It is the hour when most people die. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful.
Hour of the Wolf (Swedish: Vargtimmen, lit. 'The Wolf Hour') is a 1968 Swedish psychological horror[n 1] film directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann. The story explores the disappearance of fictional painter Johan Borg (von Sydow), who lived on an island with his wife Alma (Ullmann) while plagued with frightening visions and insomnia.
Bergman originally conceived much of the story as part of an unproduced screenplay, The Cannibals, which he abandoned to make the 1966 film Persona. He took inspiration from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1791 opera The Magic Flute and E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1814 novella The Golden Pot, as well as some of his own nightmares. Principal photography took place at Hovs Hallar, Stockholm and Fårö.
Themes include insanity, particularly as experienced by an artist, sexuality, and relationships, conveyed in a surreal style and with elements of folklore. Analysts have found allusions to vampire and werewolf legend. Authors have also connected the work to Bergman's life and his relationship with Ullmann; Bergman said he was experiencing his own "hour of the wolf" when he conceived the story.
The film was initially met with negative reviews in Sweden. In later years Hour of the Wolf received generally positive reviews and was ranked one of the 50 greatest films ever made in a 2012 directors' poll by the British Film Institute. The film was followed by Bergman's thematically related films Shame (1968) and The Passion of Anna (1969). Ullmann won awards in 1968 for her performances in both Hour of the Wolf and Shame.