Paul J Allen's British Pop Music Pages

The Lost Brothers The Lost Brothers are an Irish musical duo consisting of by Mark

McCausland and Oisin Leech, formerly of The 747s. Their first

album Trails Of The Lonely was released in 2008 and produced

by Mike Coykendall (Bright Eyes, M Ward) and Decembrists

collaborator Adam Selzer.

Leech appears on Arctic Monkeys' cover of Barbara Lewis's

"Baby I'm Yours", sharing lead vocals with Arctic Monkeys' Alex

Turner. The song was released as a b-side on Arctic Monkeys'

single "Leave Before the Lights Come On". The band appeared

with at the BBC Electric Proms in 2008 and played a string of

festivals the following year, including Glastonbury Festival,

Electric Picnic and SXSW.

In 2010 The Lost Brothers recorded their second album, So

Long John Fante, in Sheffield with producer Colin Elliot with

members of Richard Hawleys band backing them in the studio.

The album received positive reviews in The Irish Times, Hot

Press and the Irish Examiner and saw the band perform live on

The Late Late Show and on BBCs The Culture Show.

In 2011, the band travelled to Nashville where they recorded new

material with Brendan Benson as producer. Members of Old

Crow Medicine Show and The Cardinals performed as their band for the recordings which became their third album, The Passing

of the Night. The album will be released on Benson's

Readymade Records label in the US and on Lojinx in Europe.

In 2011, Barbara Orbison invited the band to record a song for

the 75th Roy Orbison anniversary album

THE FOUNDATIONS The Foundations were a British soul band, active

from 1967 to 1970. The group, made up of West

Indians, White British, and a Sri Lankan, are best known for

their two biggest hits, "Baby Now That I've Found You" (a

Number One hit in the UK Singles Chart and Canada, and

subsequently Top 10 in the US), written by Tony Macaulay

and John MacLeod; and "Build Me Up Buttercup" (a number

3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 1 in Canada), co-

written by Macaulay with Mike d'Abo, at the time the lead

vocalist with Manfred Mann. The group was the first multi-

racial group to have a number 1 hit in the UK in the 1960s.

The Foundations are notable for being one of the few

label acts to successfully imitate what became known as the

Motown Sound. In terms of line-up and musical style, they

anticipated the sound of the more successful Hot Chocolate.

They were in a similar musical vein as Love Affair, who also

topped the UK charts in 1968 with their version of Robert

Knight's "Everlasting Love". The Foundations signed to Pye,

at the time one of only four big UK record companies (the

others being EMI with its HMV, Columbia Records, and

Parlophone labels; Decca; and Philips who also owned

Fontana). Billy Fury (17 April 1940 - 28

January 1983) born Ronald Wycherley, was

an internationally successful English singer

from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s, and

remained an active songwriter until the

1980s. Rheumatic fever, which he first

contracted as a child, damaged his heart and

ultimately contributed to his death.[2] An

early British rock and roll (and film) star,

he equalled The Beatles' record of 24 hits in

the 1960s, and spent 332 weeks on the UK

chart, without a chart-topping single or album]

Allmusic journalist, Bruce

Eder, stated, "His mix of rough-

hewn good looks and

unassuming masculinity,

coupled with an underlying

vulnerability, all presented with

a good voice and some serious musical talent,

helped turn Fury into a major rock and roll star

in short order". Others have suggested that

Fury's rapid rise to prominence was due to his

"Elvis Presley-influenced, hip-swivelling, and

at times highly suggestive stage act."

Pop Pages 1950s By 1950 indigenous forms of British popular music were

already giving way to the influence of American forms of

music including jazz, swing and traditional pop, mediated

through film and records. The mid-1950s significant change

was the impact of American rock and roll, which provided a

new model for performance and recording, based on a youth

market. Initially this was dominated by American acts, or re-

creations of American forms of music, but soon distinctly

British forms began to appear, first in the uniquely British

take on American folk music in the Skiffle craze of the

1950s, in the beginnings of a folk revival that came to place

an emphasis on national traditions and then in early

attempts to produce British rock and roll.

1960s By the early 1960s the British had developed a viable

national music industry and began to produce adapted forms

of American music in beat music and British blues which

would be re-exported to America by bands such as the

Beatles and Rolling Stones. This helped to make the

dominant forms of popular music something of a shared

Anglo-American project. Development of British blues rock

helped revitalised rock music and led to the growing

distinction between pop and rock music. In the mid 1960s,

British bands were at the forefront in the creation of the hard

rock genre. While pop music continued to dominate the

singles charts, rock began to develop into diverse and

creative sub-genres that characterised the form throughout

the rest of the twentieth century.

1970s In the 1970s British musicians played a major part in

developing the new forms of music that had emerged from

blues rock towards the end of the 1960s, including folk rock

and psychedelic rock. Several important and influential sub-

genres were created in Britain in this period, by pursuing the

possibilities of rock music, including electric folk and glam

rock, a process that reached its apogee in the development

of progressive rock and one of the most enduring sub-

genres in heavy metal music. While jazz began to suffer a

decline in popularity in this period, Britain began to be

increasingly influenced by aspects of World music, including

Jamaican music, resulting in new music scenes and sub-

genres. In the decade’s middle years the influence of the

pub rock and American punk rock movements led to the

British intensification of punk, which swept away much of the

existing landscape of popular music, replacing it with much

more diverse new wave and post punk bands who mixed

different forms of music and influences to dominate rock and

pop music into the 1980s

BOBBY VEE BILLY FURY

Robert Thomas Velline (b April 30, 1943), known as

Bobby Vee, Born in Fargo, North Dakota, to

Sydney Ronald Velline and Saima Cecilia

Tapanila, he had his first single with "Suzie

Baby", an original song penned by Vee that

nodded towards Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue"

for the Minneapolis-based Soma Records in

1959; it drew enough attention and chart

action to be purchased by Liberty Records,

which signed him to their label later that year.

His follow-up single, a cover of Adam Faith's

UK number 1 "What Do You Want?", charted

in the lower reaches of Billboard in early

1960; however, it was his fourth release, a

revival of The Clovers' doo-wop ballad "Devil

or Angel", that brought him into the big time

with U.S. buyers. His next single, "Rubber

Ball", was the record that made him an

international star. Vee's 1961 summer release "Take

Good Care of My Baby" went to No.1 on the

Billboard U.S. listings and number 3 in the

UK Singles Chart. Known primarily as a

performer of Brill Building pop material, he

went on to record a string of international hits

in the 1960s, including "Devil or Angel" (U.S.

#6), "Rubber Ball" (1961, U.S. #6), "More

Than I Can Say" (1961, U.K. #4), "Run to Him" (1961, U.S.

#2), "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" (1963, U.S. #3), and

"Come Back When You Grow Up" (U.S. #3). When Vee

recorded "Come Back When You Grow Up" in 1967, he was

joined by a band called "The Strangers". Vee was also a pioneer in the music video genre,

appearing in several musical motion pictures as well as in the

Scopitone series of early film-and-music jukebox recordings.

He is a 1999 inductee of the North Dakota "Roughrider

Award". He is mentioned in the movie No Direction Home,

regarding his brief musical association with Bob Dylan and

Dylan's suggestion that he was "Bobby Vee" after Vee's

regional hit.

EMI/UK released The Very Best of Bobby Vee on May

12, 2008. This package charted in the UK top five. On

January 17, 2011, EMI/UK released Rarities, a double CD

package with 61 tracks, many of which had been previously

unreleased. Others included were alternate takes and first-time

stereo releases, as well as tracks from the Bobby Vee Live on

Tour album minus the "canned" audience. On March 28, 2011, he became the 235th inductee into

the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

Pop Music, and many other types of music for all the various decades of my life have always been my great passion. My loves are so varied and so numerous, there wouldn’t be enough room on the net. So here are just a few examples of my loves.

Sounds of the Sixties Bob Harris - Sunday Bob Harris - Country BBC Folk

Sligo Live is a national festival celebrating traditional, roots and acoustic music. Over the past 8 years the festival has carved out a niche as one of the most relaxed, intimate and enjoyable music festivals in Ireland. Sligo Live is a modern continuation of a long and distinguished musical heritage going back hundreds and maybe thousands of years.