Fear of Pop | |
---|---|
Origin | United States |
Genres | Indie rock, experimental |
Years active | 1997–1999 |
Labels | 550/Sony |
Members | Ben Folds Caleb Southern John Mark Painter Fleming McWilliams William Shatner Frally Hynes |
Fear of Pop is the name of an experimental recording project by Ben Folds (of Ben Folds Five) and Caleb Southern (Ben Folds Five's long-time producer), along with John Mark Painter (of Fleming and John), William Shatner and others. [1] Their only album, Volume 1 , was released in 1998.
Folds and Southern began recording music for the "Fear of Pop" project during 1997 in various locations around the United States as an outlet to make music away from Ben Folds Five. In an open letter to fans on Frank Maynard's quasi-official Ben Folds Five website, Folds said that Fear of Pop had "helped satisfy my need to express some things musically - textures, orchestration, rhythms - things that don't always naturally fall into the standard three-minute singer/song format. I love to paint sounds in an abstract way, discovering their effect after it's all put together. Once you’ve sold a million records, you've earned the right to experiment self-indulgently at the expense of your record company."
In 1998, 550 Records (under Epic/Sony) released Folds' Volume 1 . The cover of the album, an image entitled "Just Your Average Second On This Planet" by David Bethell, featured the silhouette of a running man being pursued by cowboys on horseback with lassos. The back of the album case showed the silhouette of a boy in a cowboy outfit sitting on a park bench. The inner cover showed a woman being stabbed by a man on a television set seen by an open city window. At some stores, a limited edition 12" vinyl single for "In Love" was bundled for free with Volume 1. It featured a remix of the song by Thievery Corporation, as well as a couple of cuts from the album.
The band also included a cast of musicians other than Folds, Southern and Painter. William Shatner provided vocals on "In Love" (as well as the reprise, "Still in Love"). [2] [3] Painter's wife, Fleming McWilliams, also sang on several tracks. [4] Frally Hynes, Folds' then-girlfriend (and now ex-wife), performed frantic lead vocals on "Root to This."
On January 22, 1999 Fear of Pop gave their first and only live performance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien . They performed "In Love", with William Shatner on lead vocals, along with Folds and McWilliams quietly duetting underneath the actor's monologue. Eddie Walker, the drummer for Folds' first band, Majosha, played drums during this appearance.
Fleming and John is a musical husband and wife team, Fleming McWilliams and John Mark Painter, currently living in Nashville, Tennessee, United States.
John Mark Painter is an American multi-instrumental musician, composer and arranger. He is best known for his role, with his wife, singer Fleming McWilliams, in the rock duo Fleming and John.
The 37th Annual Grammy Awards were presented on March 1, 1995, at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. Bruce Springsteen was the night's biggest winner with 4 awards, including Song of the Year while opening the show with his Grammy nominated hit.
Rockin' the Suburbs is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Ben Folds released on September 11, 2001. His first solo album after leaving his band Ben Folds Five, Rockin' the Suburbs was recorded in Adelaide, Australia, where Folds was living at the time.
Ben Folds Five was an American alternative rock trio formed in 1993 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The group comprised Ben Folds, Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee. The group achieved success in the alternative, indie and pop music scenes. Their single "Brick" from the second album, Whatever and Ever Amen (1997), gained airplay on many mainstream radio stations.
Benjamin Scott Folds is an American singer-songwriter from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. After playing in several small independent bands throughout the late 80s and into the early 90s, Folds came to prominence as the eponymous frontman and pianist of the alternative rock trio Ben Folds Five from 1993 to 2000, and again during their reunion from 2011 to 2013. He has recorded a number of solo albums – the most recent of which, What Matters Most, was released in June 2023. He has also collaborated with musicians such as Regina Spektor, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and yMusic, and undertaken experimental songwriting projects with actor William Shatner and authors such as Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman. Since May 2017, he has been the first artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Lyle Pearce Lovett is an American country singer. Active since 1980, he has recorded 14 albums and released 25 singles to date, including his highest entry, the number 10 chart hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, "Cowboy Man". Lovett has won four Grammy Awards, including Best Male Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Album. His most recent album is 12th of June, released in 2022.
Whatever and Ever Amen is the second album by Ben Folds Five, released on March 18, 1997. Three singles were released from the album, including the lead single, "Battle of Who Could Care Less", which received significant airplay on alternative radio and on MTV, and peaked at number 26 on the UK Singles Chart and number 22 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, and the band's biggest hit, "Brick", which was a top-40 song in numerous countries.
Cowboy Junkies are an alternative country and folk rock band formed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1985 by Alan Anton (bassist), Michael Timmins, Peter Timmins (drummer) and Margo Timmins (vocalist). The three Timminses are siblings, and Anton worked with Michael Timmins during their first couple of bands. John Timmins was a member of the band but left the group before the recording of their debut studio album. The band line-up has never changed since, although they use several guest musicians on many of their studio albums, including multi-instrumentalist Jeff Bird who has performed on every album except the first.
Has Been is William Shatner's second musical album after 1968's The Transformed Man, released in 2004. The album was produced and arranged by Ben Folds and most of the songs are co-written by Folds and Shatner, with Folds creating arrangements for Shatner's prose-poems. The album features guest appearances from Joe Jackson, Folds and Aimee Mann, Lemon Jelly, Henry Rollins, Adrian Belew, and Brad Paisley.
The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner is the third studio album by Ben Folds Five, released on April 27, 1999. Produced by the band's usual collaborator, Caleb Southern, it represented a departure for the band from their usual pop-rock sound to material influenced by classical and chamber music, with darker, introspective lyrics on subjects such as regret, death, and loss of innocence. The band broke up shortly after the touring period of the album, and as a result the record was considered the final release from the trio until they reunited in 2011 and released The Sound of the Life of the Mind the following year.
Trespassers William was an American indie rock band formed in 1997 from Orange County, California. The band released three albums from 1997 to 2006, relocating to the SoDo/Capitol Hill area of Seattle, Washington before their third album Having. Trespassers William disbanded in 2012, reuniting in 2020 for the release of a non-album single.
Volume 1 is the name of the first album by the experimental band Fear of Pop. The album was a project of Ben Folds, John Mark Painter, Fleming McWilliams, and others. It was released on November 17, 1998 on 550 Records.
Songbook is a 2002 collection of 26 essays by English writer Nick Hornby about songs and the particular emotional resonance they carry for him. In the UK, Sony released a stand-alone CD, A Selection of Music from 31 Songs, featuring 18 songs. The hardcover edition of Songbook, published in the US by McSweeney's and illustrated by Marcel Dzama, includes a CD with 11 of the songs featured in the book.
"Brick" is a song by American alternative rock group Ben Folds Five. It was released in November 1997 as a single from their album Whatever and Ever Amen and later on Ben Folds Live. The verses were written by Ben Folds about his high school girlfriend getting an abortion, and the chorus was written by the band's drummer, Darren Jessee. "Brick" was one of Ben Folds Five's biggest hits, gaining much mainstream radio play in the US, the UK, and Australia.
Dick's Picks Volume 18 is a three-CD live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It was recorded on February 3, 1978, at the Dane County Coliseum in Madison, Wisconsin and on February 5, 1978, at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls, Iowa. There are also two songs from the February 4, 1978 show at the Milwaukee Auditorium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The album was released in June 2000.
The discography of Ben Folds, an American singer-songwriter, consists of seven studio albums, two live albums, ten compilation albums, two video albums, eight extended plays, and eighteen singles. See also Ben Folds Five discography.
The Way We Are is an album by Fleming and John, released on February 23, 1999 by Universal Records.
William Shatner is a Canadian actor. In a career spanning seven decades, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise, from his 1966 debut as the captain of the starship Enterprise in the second pilot of the first Star Trek television series to his final appearance as Captain Kirk in the seventh Star Trek feature film, Star Trek Generations (1994).
The 61st Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held on February 10, 2019, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Singer-songwriter Alicia Keys hosted. During her opening monologue, Keys brought out Lady Gaga, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jennifer Lopez, and former First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama, each of whom spoke about the impact that music had on their lives.