Al Shipley

1 week ago | spin.com | Al Shipley

Andrew Farriss invited high school classmate Michael Hutchence to join his band Doctor Dolphin in Sydney, Australia in the mid-’70s. Over the next few years, Farriss’s brothers Jon and Tim joined the band along with Garry Beers and Kirk Pengilly, as the sextet changed their name to the Farris Brothers, the Vegetables, and finally the name the world would know them by, INXS. The band were still playing the Sydney pub circuit when they began opening for the city’s biggest band, Midnight Oil.

3 weeks ago | complex.com | Al Shipley

As hip-hop has grown into a billion dollar industry, hooks from R&B singers have helped rappers take over the pop charts, and hip-hop has, in turn, influenced the changing sound of soul music. Rakim’s 1989 guest verse on Jody Watley’s top 10 hit “Friends” and Rhonda Parris’s singalong hook on Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock’s 1988 summer jam “It Takes Two” were early demonstrations of the commercial potential of the fusion of rap and R&B.

3 weeks ago | spin.com | Al Shipley

Steven Paul Smith was born in Omaha in 1969 and raised outside Dallas, moving to Portland, Oregon, as a teenager to live with his father—or perhaps more pointedly, to get away from his abusive stepfather. In high school, Smith began to go by a first name that he felt suited him more, Elliott, and recorded songs on a 4-track with his friends.

1 month ago | spin.com | Al Shipley

Joey Kramer, a drummer from the Bronx, came up with the band name Aerosmith in high school, and wrote it all over his notebooks long before he started the band that would eventually bear that name. While attending Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Kramer began playing with guitarist Joe Perry and bassist Tom Hamilton, and eventually they joined forces with two other Berklee students, singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Brad Whitford.

1 month ago | yahoo.com | Al Shipley

Joey Kramer, a drummer from the Bronx, came up with the band name Aerosmith in high school, and wrote it all over his notebooks long before he started the band that would eventually bear that name. While attending Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Kramer began playing with guitarist Joe Perry and bassist Tom Hamilton, and eventually they joined forces with two other Berklee students, singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Brad Whitford.