America are a British-American rock band formed in London in 1970 by English-born American Dewey Bunnell and Americans Dan Peek and Gerry Beckley. The trio met as sons of US Air Force personnel stationed in London, where they began performing live. Achieving significant popularity in the 1970s, the trio was famous for its close vocal harmonies and light acoustic folk rock sound. The band released a string of hit albums and singles, many of which found airplay on pop and soft rock stations.
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk group formed in New York City in 1961 during the American folk music revival phenomenon. The trio consisted of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, and Mary Travers. The group's repertoire included songs written by Yarrow and Stookey, early songs by Bob Dylan, and covers of other folk musicians. They were enormously successful in the early- and mid-1960s, with their debut album topping the charts for weeks, and helped popularize the folk music revival. After Travers's death in 2009, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform as a duo under their individual names. Yarrow died in 2025, leaving Stookey as the only surviving member of the trio.
Francesco Stephen Castelluccio, better known by his stage name Frankie Valli, is an American singer and occasional actor, best known as the frontman of the Four Seasons. He is known for his unusually powerful lead falsetto voice.
The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to the late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds. It rose to international popularity fueled by unprecedented sales of LP records and helped alter the direction of popular music in the U.S.
"Blowin' in the Wind" is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1962. It was released as a single and included on his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963. It has been described as a protest song and poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war, and freedom. The refrain "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind" has been described as "impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind".
"Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia", also known as "C vs. I", is a song by English electronic music group the Cuban Boys. The song consists almost in its entirety of an unofficial soundalike sampled loop from "Whistle Stop" by Roger Miller which was featured in the Disney movie Robin Hood, played at high speed in a manner similar to the classic "Chipmunks" records. The original sample, also sped up, was first featured on the Internet as part of "The Hampster Dance" song on the website of the same name.
Cuban Boys are an English electronic group and production team, currently composed of Skreen B and Ricardo Autobahn; the band formerly also included B.L. Underwood ("Blu") and Jenny McLaren. Their music is characterised by fast electronic beats, heavy reliance upon samples and the repetition of the name drop "The Cuban Boys" in the background of many of their tracks. They achieved success after being aired on John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show with sample-heavy dance tracks and cut-ups and were responsible for the UK No. 4 hit single "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" which was released through EMI.
Spray is a synth-pop duo from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, consisting of siblings Jenny McLaren and Ricardo Autobahn. Following the demise of their previous band, the Cuban Boys, McLaren and Autobahn released the album Living In Neon on Ninthwave Records in the United States. This was followed in 2003 by the extended single "I Am Gothic". A new album, Children of a Laser God was released online in 2006, along with the single "Run With Us", a cover of the theme tune of the popular 1980's cartoon The Raccoons with the "Michael Trenfield" remix as the main single accompanied with the original version and remixes from JKZ, Absorb, FMU and Diskowarp.
Paul Rutherford is an English singer, musician and dancer. He is best known as the dancer, keyboardist, and backing vocalist of the synth-pop band Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban music has deep roots in African ritual and rhythm. The genre emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauzá and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City. In 1947, the collaborations of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, such as the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as "Manteca" and "Mangó Mangüé", were commonly referred to as "Cubop" for Cuban bebop.
Uniting Nations are a British dance music act formed in Liverpool in 2004. They achieved chart success across Europe. The act was originally made up of Paul Keenan and Daz Sampson as band members, songwriters and producers. After their 2005 hit "Out of Touch", which was the debut and most successful single of the band, Craig Powell joined in as frontman of the band. A number of songs on the Uniting Nations' debut and only album One World, released in 2005 on Gut Records, were also performed by vocalist and session artist Jinian Wilde.
Darren "Daz" Sampson is a British musician, singer-songwriter and record producer. Sampson is known for his commercial dance music as part of several groups and his television appearances. He has had nine Top 30 UK singles.
"Teenage Life" was the British entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2006, which was sung by Daz Sampson in English.
Bus Stop was a British dance act made up of Darren Sampson, alongside Graham Turner, Mark Hall and Nikki Reid (Lane). The group was formed in 1998 and had a string of hit singles before disbanding in 2002. Main vocalist, Sampson, went on to represent the UK in the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest.
"Rhinestone Cowboy" is a song written and recorded by Larry Weiss in 1974, then popularized the next year by American country music singer Glen Campbell. When released on May 26, 1975, as the lead single and title track from his album Rhinestone Cowboy, it enjoyed huge popularity with both country and pop audiences.
"I'll Tell Me Ma" is a traditional children's song. It was collected in various parts of the United Kingdom in the 19th century and again appears in collections from shortly after the turn of the 20th century. In Ireland, especially within Ulster, the chorus usually refers to Belfast city and is known colloquially as "The Belle of Belfast City", although it is also adapted to other Irish cities, such as Dublin. Other versions refer to the "Golden City" or "London City". This song is Roud Folk Song Index number 2649.
John Matthews, better known by his stage name Ricardo Autobahn, is an English producer, songwriter and musician. He is also known in collaborations with Daz Sampson as in Rikki & Daz and the projects like Barndance Boys, Cuban Boys, and his current project Spray.
John Gregory Bettis is an American lyricist, best known for his long-term songwriting partnership with Richard Carpenter of the Carpenters. He wrote the lyrics for "Top of the World", a hit for both Lynn Anderson and the Carpenters. He wrote several more hits for the Carpenters, including "Only Yesterday", "Goodbye to Love","Yesterday Once More" and "I Need to Be in Love". He later wrote hits for other artists including: Madonna, Michael Jackson, the Pointer Sisters, Conway Twitty, Diana Ross, Westlife, Jennifer Warnes, Peabo Bryson, Maria Vidal, George Strait ("Heartland"), Juice Newton, Ronnie Milsap, Barbara Mandrell, Louise Mandrell, 38 Special, New Kids on the Block, Donna Summer, Barbra Streisand, Eric Clapton and Whitney Houston.
Rikki & Daz, was a pop music duo, formed in 2002 by John Matthews and Daz Sampson. John Matthews of the Cuban Boys fame and also known as Ricardo Autobahn, became Rikki in the duo. He teamed up with Sampson, named just Daz in the duo and went on to release the single, "Rhinestone Cowboy ", a take on Glen Campbell's hit "Rhinestone Cowboy". It featured the country singer in a new vocal for the release, and Campbell appeared in the video. The single went on to reach No. 12 in the UK Singles Chart and No. 16 in the Irish Singles Chart. The pair also contributed separately to a cover of their version of the song with the band Hyperbubble on their 2017 album Western Ware.
Western Ware is an album by the American synth-pop/electropop band Hyperbubble from Fellowshipwreck released on February 26, 2017. An aim of the collection was to follow through on the promise of band member Jess DeCuir to "plan to produce, mix and create the first electro Country & Western LP" since the work of Gil Trythall. One reviewer noted that the recording also marked a change for Hyperbubble in that while Jess is regarded as "the voice of band, ...on this album Jeff (DeCuir) cleans up rather nicely as lead vocalist on a good number of tracks."
