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Anthony DeCurtis | |
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Born | New York City | June 25, 1951
Occupation(s) | Journalist, author, television personality, critic, columnist |
Anthony DeCurtis (born June 25, 1951) is an American author and music critic, who has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times , Relix and many other publications.
DeCurtis is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where his work has appeared for more than thirty years. He received a B.A. from Hunter College in 1974 and a Ph.D in American literature from Indiana University Bloomington in 1981 and is a Distinguished Lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania. He collaborated with Clive Davis on Davis's autobiography, The Soundtrack of My Life, which was published by Simon & Schuster in February 2013 and rose to number two on the The New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller list. He appears in Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives , a documentary based on the book that opened the Tribeca Festival in April 2017. His biography of Lou Reed, titled Lou Reed: A Life, was published by Little, Brown and Company on 10 October 2017.
DeCurtis's essay accompanying the 1988 Eric Clapton box set Crossroads won a Grammy Award in the "Best Album Notes" category, and on three occasions he has won ASCAP's Deems Taylor awards for excellence in writing about music. He has appeared as a commentator on MTV, VH1, the Today Show , and many other news and entertainment programs. In 1996, DeCurtis served as the moderator on the VH1 show Four on the Floor and as editorial director for the channel's nonfiction programming. He has served as a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee for more than twenty years.
From 2006 through June 2008, DeCurtis directed and helped design the arts-and-culture curriculum at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He was an editorial consultant and the primary interviewer for "Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound," a documentary for the PBS series American Masters . DeCurtis appeared in the 2011 documentary Reggae Got Soul: The Story of Toots and the Maytals which was featured on BBC and described as “The untold story of one of the most influential artists ever to come out of Jamaica”. [1] [2]
In 2015, DeCurtis joined the judging panel of the 14th annual Independent Music Awards to assist independent musicians' careers. [3] [4] [5] He was a judge for the 7th, 8th, [6] 9th, [7] 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th Independent Music Awards.
Lewis Allan Reed was an American musician and songwriter. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band The Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. Although not commercially successful during its existence, the Velvet Underground came to be regarded as one of the most influential bands in the history of underground and alternative rock music. Reed's distinctive deadpan voice, poetic and transgressive lyrics, and experimental guitar playing were trademarks throughout his long career.
Island Records is a Jamaican multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded in 1959 by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall, and Leslie Kong in Jamaica, and was eventually sold to PolyGram in 1989. Island and A&M Records, another label recently acquired by PolyGram, were both at the time the largest independent record labels in history, with Island having exerted a major influence on the progressive music scene in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. Island Records operates four international divisions: Island US, Island UK, Island Australia, and Island France. Current key people include Island US president Darcus Beese, and MD Jon Turner. Partially due to its significant legacy, Island remains one of UMG's pre-eminent record labels.
Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, singer and record producer who is an original member, guitarist, secondary vocalist, and co-principal songwriter of the Rolling Stones. His songwriting partnership with the band's lead vocalist Mick Jagger is one of the most successful in history. His career spans over six decades, and his guitar playing style has been a trademark of the Rolling Stones throughout the band's career. Richards gained press notoriety for his romantic involvements and illicit drug use, and he was often portrayed as a countercultural figure. First professionally known as Keith Richard, by the early 1970s he had fully asserted his family name.
James Chambers, OM, known professionally as Jimmy Cliff, is a Jamaican ska, rocksteady, reggae and soul musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and actor. He is the only living reggae musician to hold the Order of Merit, the highest honour that can be granted by the Jamaican government for achievements in the arts and sciences.
Zak Richard Starkey is an English rock drummer who has performed and recorded with the Who since 1996. He is also the third drummer to have appeared with Oasis. Other musicians and bands he has worked with include Johnny Marr, the Icicle Works, the Lightning Seeds, and the Semantics. He is the son of the Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr and Maureen Starkey.
The Maytals, known from 1972 to 2020 as Toots and the Maytals, are a Jamaican musical group, one of the best known ska and rocksteady vocal groups. The Maytals were formed in the early 1960s and were key figures in popularizing reggae music.
Lowell Fillmore "Sly" Dunbar is a Jamaican drummer, best known as one half of the prolific Jamaican rhythm section and reggae production duo Sly and Robbie.
Christopher Percy Gordon Blackwell OJ is a Jamaican-British former record producer and the founder of Island Records, which has been called "one of Britain's great independent labels." According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to which Blackwell was inducted in 2001, he is "the single person most responsible for turning the world on to reggae music." Variety describes him as "indisputably one of the greatest record executives in history," while Barron's has described him as "a contender for most interesting man in the world."
Frederick Nathaniel "Toots" Hibbert, was a Jamaican singer and songwriter who was the lead vocalist for the reggae and ska band Toots and the Maytals. A reggae pioneer, he performed for six decades and helped establish some of the fundamentals of reggae music. Hibbert's 1968 song "Do the Reggay" is widely credited as the genesis of the genre name reggae. His band's album True Love won a Grammy Award in 2005.
Sly and Robbie were a prolific Jamaican rhythm section and production duo, associated primarily with the reggae and dub genres. Drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare teamed up in the mid-1970s after establishing themselves separately in Jamaica as professional musicians. Shakespeare died in December 2021 following kidney surgery.
Robert Warren Dale Shakespeare was a Jamaican bass guitarist and record producer, best known as half of the reggae rhythm section and production duo Sly and Robbie, with drummer Sly Dunbar. Regarded as one of the most influential reggae bassists, Shakespeare was also known for his creative use of electronics and production effects units. He was sometimes nicknamed "Basspeare".
Marcia Llyneth Griffiths is a Jamaican singer best known for the 1989 remix of her single "Electric Boogie", which serves as the music for the four-wall "Electric Slide" line dance. It is the best-selling single of all time by a female reggae singer.
Rock 'n' Roll Animal is a live album by American musician Lou Reed, released in February 1974 by RCA Records. In its original form, it features five songs, four of which were initially recorded by The Velvet Underground. Reed's band included Pentti Glan (drums), Prakash John (bass), Ray Colcord (keyboards), and Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter (guitars).
Funky Kingston is the name of two albums by Jamaican reggae group Toots and the Maytals. The first was issued in Jamaica and the United Kingdom in 1973 on Dragon Records, a subsidiary label of Island Records, owned by Chris Blackwell. A different album, with the same cover and title, was issued in the United States in 1975 on Mango Records. That album was compiled from three previous Maytals albums by Island Records employee Danny Holloway and peaked at No. 164 on the Billboard 200. It was voted the eleventh best album of 1975 in the annual Jazz & Pop poll. In 2003, the American version was placed at number 378 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", 380 in a 2012 revised list and 344 in a 2020 revised list.
Wayne Jobson, also known as Native Wayne, is a Jamaican record producer of European ancestry. He has worked with such artists as No Doubt, Gregory Isaacs and Toots & the Maytals. He hosts the weekly radio show "Alter Native" every Sunday afternoon on Indie 103.1. He previously hosted a similar radio show, "Reggae Revolution", at Indie's main competitor KROQ-FM. Jobson is also known as a musician. He recorded an album in 1977 produced by Lee 'Scratch' Perry at the Black Ark.
Gary Kurfirst was an American music promoter, producer, manager, publisher, and record label executive. Kurfirst founded Radioactive Records, whose acts included Live, Black Grape, Ramones, Big Audio Dynamite, Talking Heads, Eurythmics and Shirley Manson. He managed a variety of artists including Manson, Blondie, Tom Tom Club, the Ramones, Jean Beauvoir, Eurythmics, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, and The B-52s.
Carl Harvey is a Jamaican born Canadian guitarist and record producer who recorded as a member of Crack of Dawn and The Aggrovators in the 1970s, and later became guitarist for Toots & the Maytals.
Paul Douglas is a Jamaican musician, best known for his work as the drummer, percussionist and bandleader of Toots and the Maytals. His career spans more than five decades as one of reggae's most recorded drummers. Music journalist and reggae historian David Katz wrote, "dependable drummer Paul Douglas played on countless reggae hits."
Pass the Pipe is an album by the Jamaican reggae band Toots and the Maytals. It was released in 1979 on Mango Records.
Toots in Memphis is an album by the Jamaican musician Toots Hibbert. Released in 1988, Toots in Memphis was recorded without the Maytals. The majority of the album's tracks are covers of American R&B songs.