Salvatore Phillip "Sonny" Bono was an American singer, songwriter, actor, and politician. In partnership with his second wife, Cher, he formed the singing duo Sonny & Cher. A member of the Republican Party, Bono served as the 16th mayor of Palm Springs, California, from 1988 to 1992, and served as the U.S. representative for California's 44th district from 1995 until his death in 1998.
Samuel Ervin Beam, better known by his stage name Iron & Wine, is an American singer-songwriter. He has released six studio albums, several EPs and singles, as well as a few download-only releases, which include a live album. He occasionally tours with a full band.
Leslie Thompson Baxter was an American musician, composer and conductor. After working as an arranger and composer for swing bands, he developed his own style of easy listening music, known as exotica and scored over 250 radio, television and motion pictures numbers.
The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline endorheic lake in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough, which stretches to the Gulf of California in Mexico. The lake is about 15 by 35 miles at its widest and longest. A 2023 report puts the surface area at 318 square miles (823.6 km2). The Salton Sea became a resort destination in the 20th Century, but saw die-offs of fish and birds in the 1980s due to contamination from farm runoff, and clouds of toxic dust in the current century as evaporation exposed parts of the lake bed.
Joseph Donald Mascis Jr., better known as J Mascis, is an American musician who is the singer, guitarist and main songwriter for the alternative rock band Dinosaur Jr. He has also released several albums as a solo artist and played drums and guitar on other projects. He was ranked number 74 in a Rolling Stone list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists", and number 5 in a similar list for Spin magazine in 2012.
Calexico is an American indie rock band based in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1996, the band's two main members, Joey Burns and John Convertino, first played together in Los Angeles as part of the group Giant Sand. They have recorded a number of albums on Quarterstick Records and City Slang, and their 2005 EP, In the Reins, recorded with Iron & Wine, reached the Billboard 200 album charts. Their musical style is influenced by traditional Latin sounds of mariachi, conjunto, cumbia, and tejano mixed with country, jazz, and post-rock.
"Wichita Lineman" is a 1968 song written by Jimmy Webb for American country music artist Glen Campbell, who recorded it backed by members of the Wrecking Crew. Widely covered by other artists, it has been called "the first existential country song."
The Supersuckers are an American rock band, formed in 1988, whose music ranges from alternative rock to country rock to cowpunk. AllMusic describes the band as "the bastard sons of Foghat, AC/DC, and ZZ Top after being weaned on punk rock, unafraid of massive guitar riffs, outsized personalities, or pledging allegiance to sex, weed, and Satan with a wink and a nudge."
Naked Prey was an American rock band from Tucson, Arizona. United States, which was formed in 1982 by the former Green on Red drummer Van Christian and David Seeger, who had been in the original line-up of the Giant Sandworms as well as The Pedestrians, a band credited with having performed the first punk rock show in Tucson. Other artists who recorded or performed with the band included members of Green on Red and the Sand Rubies, John Convertino and Joey Burns, later of Calexico, Chuck Prophet, Rainer Ptacek and longtime drummer Tommy Larkins, who currently plays with Jonathan Richman, famously appearing with him as half of the two-man Greek chorus in There's Something About Mary. Christian himself also performed with The Band of Blacky Ranchette and was in the original lineup of The Friends of Dean Martinez.
The Embarrassment was an American rock band formed in 1979 in Wichita, Kansas, that was initially active from 1979 to 1983 and has reunited several times since then. The band consisted of guitarist Bill Goffrier, lead singer and organist John Nichols, bassist Ron Klaus, and drummer Brent Giessmann. After the band broke up, Giessmann played for the Del Fuegos and Goffrier formed Big Dipper. The band was considered a prominent part of the music scene in Lawrence, Kansas, in the early 1980s.
Dan Boeckner is a Canadian singer, songwriter, guitarist and podcaster. He is best known as one of the frontmen of Wolf Parade, which he helped found in 2003. Since 2013, he has also been a member of the Montreal-based band Operators. Boeckner began his career in the Victoria, Canada music scene, playing in multiple bands including Atlas Strategic. Since that time, he has been part of projects including Handsome Furs and Divine Fits with Spoon frontman Britt Daniel.
Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea is a documentary film by Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer, with narration by John Waters and music by Friends of Dean Martinez.
Chris Metzler is an American film director known for documentaries. His documentary Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone (2010) is listed in the 100 Best Documentaries ranked by the Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes
A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding in Your Mind: Volume 1 is a 2008 compilation album with selections by Amorphous Androgynous It was released on CD in November 2008. It is an extensive compilation mix album featuring a wide variety of artists, selected and mixed by the duo. Cosmic Space Music is the first in the series, and focuses on the band's psychedelic side, featuring everything from 1960s pop to film scores and modern psychedelia.
American country music singer Glen Campbell released fifteen video albums and was featured in twenty-one music videos in his lifetime. His first two music videos, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Wichita Lineman", were directed by Gene Weed in 1967 and 1968 respectively. Campbell released his final music video, "I'm Not Gonna Miss You", in 2014 to coincide with the release of the documentary Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me.
Mathew Etter Brooke is an American musician, best known as the lead singer of American rock band Grand Archives and a former member of the bands Band of Horses and Carissa's Wierd.
Tucson, Arizona has a strong, growing independent music culture that focuses on locally grown and locally derived musical genres. The city is home to musical organizations that seek to nurture artists from the local music scene as well as introduce the community to other musical styles from beyond Southern Arizona.
The music for the 2010 action-adventure western video game Red Dead Redemption, developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games, was composed by musicians Bill Elm and Woody Jackson. Recorded at Jackson's studio in Los Angeles, the soundtracks were produced by David Holmes. The music was intended to imitate soundtracks of 1960s Western films, such as Ennio Morricone's work on the Dollars Trilogy. In collaboration with each other, Elm and Jackson produced over fourteen hours of music across fifteen months. The composers used unconventional instruments to create unique sounds, and worked with artists such as Tommy Morgan during production. Four supplementary vocal recordings were also produced for the game.
Woodrow Wilson Jackson III is an American composer and session musician. He is best known for his work with Rockstar Games, composing scores for its video games Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, Grand Theft Auto V, and Red Dead Redemption 2. Born in Oil City, Pennsylvania, Jackson studied at Virginia State University for one year, taking harmonica lessons before dropping out and playing guitar in a band. He moved to Los Angeles in 1992, and eventually joined the band Friends of Dean Martinez. He later became a session musician, working on the soundtracks of films like Ocean's Twelve (2004) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Since 2009, he has owned and operated Electro-Vox Recording Studios, where he has recorded two original albums and much of his composing work. He is an avid collector of vintage instruments.
The Shadow of Your Smile is the debut album by the American band Friends of Dean Martinez, released in 1995. The band included members of two Arizona bands: Joey Burns and John Convertino, of Giant Sand, and Bill Elm, Tom Larkins, and Van Christian, of Naked Prey. The band changed their name from Friends of Dean Martin right before the album's release, after threat of legal action by Martin's representatives.
