Showing 1 - 17 of 17
Artist: Swansea Jack
Artist: Mick Tems
The musical traditions of South Wales have been preserved through the efforts of ethnomusicologist and performer Mick Tems. A former member of '80s folk band Swansea Jack, Tems continues to work with vocalist, English dance caller, and concertina and spoons player Patricia Carron-Smith (born April 3, 1952), performing as the duo Calennig and as... [+] Read More
Artist: Hybrid
Hybrid is a trio of remixers based in the Welsh city of Swansea: Mike Truman, Chris Healings, and Lee Mullin. Meeting while going to clubs in the early '90s, the three made their own remixes of recordings, eventually earning assignments from record companies to pursue their hobby professionally. Finally, they were signed to Distinct'ive Records... [+] Read More
Artist: Andy Hunter
DJ Andy Hunter is a rare find in the electronic community. While dance bridges music with a higher spirituality, Hunter fully lives by the latter. He's a devout Christian and mixes a funky break. Born in the midlands of England in the mid-1970s, Hunter got his hand in music during his early teenage years. He found himself interested in sound... [+] Read More
Artist: Tangerine Zoo
Boston psychedelic band the Tangerine Zoo formed in 1967 in nearby Swansea, MA. Guitarist Robert "Benny" Benevides, bassist Tony Taveira, and drummer Donald Smith first collaborated in the Ebb Tides, which the previous year issued "My Baby's Gone" on the Arco label. With the additions of singer/guitarist Wayne Gagnon and keyboardist Ronald... [+] Read More
Artist: Dylan Thomas
Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was the son of an English master at Swansea Grammar School, which he attended. Moving to London, he pursued a career as a journalist and broadcaster. His first two books of poetry, Eighteen Poems (1934) and Twenty-Five Poems (1936), drew attention to him, but it was with his 1946 collection Deaths and Entrances (1946)... [+] Read More
Artist: Calennig
Calennig have been the foremost folk band in Wales for more than two decades. In addition to five albums, the group has been featured in two theater-based shows, "Trade Winds", which compiles early-twentieth century stories and sea chanteys by Rees Baldwin, and "A Tale Of Two Rivers". While most of its concerts and dance events, known in Wales... [+] Read More
Artist: Richard Barrett
Given the attention he has paid to the microscopic details of sound and the mechanical or physical processes by which they are produced, it is perhaps not surprising that Richard Barrett studied genetics rather than music at university. Born in 1959 in Swansea, Wales, Barrett is one of the more well-known of the New Complexity composers hailing... [+] Read More
Artist: Stone the Crows
Stone the Crows was a tough-luck, working class, progressive soul band that came out of the pubs of Scotland in the early '70s. They had everything going for them at the start: not one, but two gritty singers, a talented guitarist, a rhythm section that had played with John Mayall, and the name recognition of having Led Zeppelin manager Peter... [+] Read More
Artist: Ron Griffiths
Ron Griffiths was the odd-man-out when it came to the formation of Badfinger out of the band the Iveys. Born Ronald Llewellyn Griffiths in Swansea, Wales in 1946, he sang as a boy in his school's choir. He reached his teens after rock 'n' roll had secured its hold on British youth culture, amid the ascendancy of groups such as the Shadows, and... [+] Read More
Artist: Sir Harry Secombe
One of the most beloved British entertainers of the 20th century, Harry Secombe cut a swathe through comedy, music, theater, and motion pictures that eventually brought him international renown. Born in 1921 in Swansea, Wales, he first gained experience in performing as a choirboy, and subsequently played straight man in a comedy duo with his... [+] Read More
Artist: The Pooh Sticks
The Pooh Sticks were rock's most inside joke, a monumental yet affectionate prank on the very mythology of pop music itself. Cloaked behind ridculously-overblown marketing schemes, made-up histories and cartoon-character images, the Welsh group punctured the industry's myriad excesses, freely pilfering from the entirety of pop's past by... [+] Read More
Artist: Man
Man was one of the most promising rock bands to come out of Wales in the early 1970s. Along with Brinsley Schwarz, they helped establish the core of the pub-rock sound, but they played louder and also had a progressive component to their work that separated them from many of their rivals. The group originated as a Four Seasons-cum-Beach Boys... [+] Read More
Artist: Manic Street Preachers
Dressed in glam clothing, wearing heavy eyeliner, and shouting political rhetoric, the Manic Street Preachers emerged from their hometown of Blackwood, Wales, in 1991 as self-styled "Generation Terrorists." Fashioning themselves after the Clash and the Sex Pistols, the Manics were on a mission, intending to restore revolution to rock & roll at a... [+] Read More
Artist: Mike Gibbins
The longtime drummer for power pop deities Badfinger, Mike Gibbins also recorded as a solo act years after the group's tragic demise. Born in Swansea, Wales on March 12, 1949, Gibbins was the product of a large family, and claimed he took up the drums at 14 simply to make himself heard over the din. In 1965, after stints with the local beat... [+] Read More
Artist: The Iveys
Essentially the forerunners to Badfinger, the Iveys landed on the Beatles' Apple label in mid-1968 after the latter group's personal assistant, Mal Evans, encouraged them to submit tapes to Paul McCartney. Their bright, melodic, and harmony-filled pop/rock sound immediately drew comparisons to the Beatles and to the work of McCartney in... [+] Read More
Artist: Badfinger
There are few bands in the annals of rock music as star-crossed in their history as Badfinger. Pegged as one of the most promising British groups of the late '60s and the one world-class talent ever signed to the Beatles' Apple Records label that remained with the label, Badfinger enjoyed the kind of success in England and America that most... [+] Read More
