Ralph Joseph Gleason was an American music critic and columnist. He contributed for many years to the San Francisco Chronicle, was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and cofounder of the Monterey Jazz Festival. A pioneering jazz and rock critic, he helped the San Francisco Chronicle transition into the rock era.
Ashley Nicolle Ross-Naess known professionally as Ashlee Simpson, is an American singer and actress. The younger sister of singer and actress Jessica Simpson, she began her career as a back-up dancer for her sister and appeared in television commercials at the age of 15. She later pursued a career as an actress and had a main role on the family drama 7th Heaven. She appeared on the reality show Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, broadcast on MTV between 2003 and 2005, which focused on Ashlee's older sister Jessica and Jessica's then-husband Nick Lachey. While working on her debut studio album, Simpson became the star of a spin-off reality series, The Ashlee Simpson Show, which was broadcast on MTV between 2004 and 2005. Like her sister before her, Simpson became the center of considerable media attention.
The Solid Gold Sound of the UCLA Bruin Marching Band represents the university at major athletic and extracurricular events. During the fall marching season, this 250-member band performs at the Rose Bowl for UCLA Bruin home football games. Pregame shows by the band aim to build crowd energy and enthusiasm with traditional UCLA songs like "Strike Up the Band for UCLA", "Bruin Warriors", and "The Mighty Bruins". Throughout the game, the band performs custom-arranged rock and pop songs, as well as the traditional fight songs and cheers of the university. The UCLA Varsity Band appears at basketball games and other athletic contests in Pauley Pavilion. In 2018, the Bruin Marching Band was featured on the Muse album "Simulation Theory" performing the Super Deluxe version of the song "Pressure."
Mark Kemp is an American music journalist and author. A graduate of East Carolina University, he has served as music editor for Rolling Stone and vice president of music editorial for MTV Networks. In 1997 he received a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to the CD Farewells & Fantasies, a retrospective of music by '60s protest singer Phil Ochs. His book Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race and New Beginnings in a New South was published by Free Press/Simon & Schuster in 2004 and issued in soft cover by the University of Georgia Press in 2006.
Crawdaddy was an American rock music magazine launched in 1966. It was created by Paul Williams, a Swarthmore College student at the time, in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music. The magazine was named after the Crawdaddy Club in London and published during its early years as Crawdaddy!.
David Weir is a journalist, author, and co-founder and former Executive Director of the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Benjamin Fong-Torres is an American rock journalist best known for his association with Rolling Stone magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle.
MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 is a live album by American singer and rapper Lauryn Hill. The performance comes from her 2002 MTV Unplugged special recorded on July 21, 2001, at MTV Studios in Times Square, New York City. Hill abandoned the hip hop sounds of her debut album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998) in favor of folk and soul songs she performed with an acoustic guitar. The songs were interspersed with spoken interludes about her personal and artistic struggles.
Mary Roach is an American author specializing in popular science and humor. She has published seven New York Times bestsellers: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008), Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010), Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013), Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (2016), and Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (2021).
Maureen Herman is an American writer and a musician known as the bassist for the Minneapolis-based band Babes in Toyland from 1992 until 1996 and from 2014 until August 2015.
Krystal Nicole Meyers is an American Christian rock and contemporary Christian singer, songwriter and musician. She released three albums under Essential Records: Krystal Meyers, Dying for a Heart, and Make Some Noise and is known best for her songs: "The Way to Begin", "The Beauty of Grace" and "Hallelujah" and for her international crossover singles "Anticonformity" and "Make Some Noise".
San Francisco is an American monthly magazine devoted to the people, culture, food, politics, and arts of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published monthly by Modern Luxury publications.
Stephen Henderson Talbot is an American TV documentary producer, reporter and writer. Talbot directed and produced "The Movement and the 'Madman' " for the PBS series American Experience in 2023. He is a longtime contributor to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and worked for over 16 years for the series Frontline. His more than 40 documentaries include the Frontline films "The Best Campaign Money Can Buy", "Rush Limbaugh's America", "The Long March of Newt Gingrich", "Justice for Sale", and "News War: What's Happening to the News". Talbot has also written and produced PBS biographies of writers Dashiell Hammett, Beryl Markham, Ken Kesey, Carlos Fuentes, Maxine Hong Kingston and John Dos Passos. He was co-creator and executive producer of the PBS music specials, Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders".
Lonn Friend is an American journalist and author. Friend is best known for his work in the late 1980s and '90s as editor of RIP Magazine. Friend began his career in 1982, as associate editor of Hustler Magazine, the flagship journal of Larry Flynt Publications (LFP). After rising to senior editor at Hustler, he transitioned to Executive Editor of Chic Magazine, and then to RIP in the Spring of 1987. RIP was the first non-pornographic publication produced by LFP. Friend documented his experiences with the heroes of heavy metal in his 2006 memoir, Life on Planet Rock, and released his follow-up, Sweet Demotion, in 2011. He is currently the host of Energize: The Lonn Friend Podcast.
Ace of Cups is an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1967 during the Summer of Love era. It has been described as one of the first all-female rock bands.
"The Rocky Horror Glee Show" is the fifth episode of the second season of the American television series Glee, and the twenty-seventh episode overall. It was written by series creator Ryan Murphy, from a story by Murphy and Tim Wollaston, directed by Adam Shankman, and premiered on Fox on October 26, 2010. The episode features the glee club paying tribute to the 1973 musical The Rocky Horror Show, with elements of its 1975 film adaptation The Rocky Horror Picture Show, by staging it as a school musical. While cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester attempts to sabotage the production, glee club director Will Schuester dwells on his feelings for guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury, and club members Finn and Sam deal with body image issues. Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf, who star in the original film, appear in cameo roles in this episode.
Kaila Yu is a Taiwanese American singer, songwriter, former model, and freelance journalist for The Rolling Stone, CNN, Glamour, and more. She was formerly the lead singer and vocalist for the all-Asian-American, female rock band Nylon Pink. In addition to having Yu on the lead vocals, Nylon Pink also features Katt Lee on the bass, Kiki Wongo as the lead guitarist, Jamie Scoles on the drums and Yuki Ito on the keyboards. Yu is also one of the founders of the jewelry/fashion line "Hello Drama" which is affiliated with the Nylon Pink band and style.
"Alright" is a song by American rapper Kendrick Lamar featured on the artist's third studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). The song expresses ideas of hope amid personal struggles and features uncredited vocals in its chorus from co-producer Pharrell Williams. "Alright" was released to radio stations as the album's fourth single on June 30, 2015. Many music publications considered it among the best songs and videos of the year. "Alright" received four nominations at the 58th Grammy Awards: Song of the Year, Best Music Video, Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song, winning the latter two. It was also nominated for a MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year.
Michael Goldberg is a novelist, journalist, animal rights activist, and pioneering digital music entrepreneur. He is known for his work (1983-1993) at Rolling Stone, where he was first a senior writer and later West Coast editor, and for envisioning and co-founding the first web music magazine, Addicted to Noise, in 1994, for which Newsweek included him in its 1995 "Net 50" list of "the 50 People Who Matter Most on the Internet". Between 2014 and the fall of 2016 he published the Freak Scene Dream trilogy of 1970s coming-of-age novels, and worked actively in animal rights causes. His nonfiction book, Wicked Game: The True Story of Guitarist James Calvin Wilsey, was published in June of 2022.
Rocky Rivera is a Filipino-American rapper and journalist from San Francisco, CA. She is a member of the hip-hop label, Beatrock Music, where she gained recognition for her socially conscious lyrics and advocacy for social justice. Her style can be described as "militant feminist Hip Hop." The subject matter in her music often touches on issues of sexism, racism, women empowerment, gentrification, systematic oppression, motherhood, capitalism, religion and politics.
