Band Aid was the collective name of a charity supergroup featuring mainly British and Irish musicians and recording artists. It was founded in 1984 by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise money for anti-famine efforts in Ethiopia by releasing the song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" for the Christmas market that year. On 25 November 1984, the song was recorded at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, and was released in the UK on Monday 3 December. The single surpassed the hopes of the producers to become the Christmas number one on that release. Three re-recordings of the song to raise further money for charity also topped the charts, first the Band Aid II version in 1989 and the Band Aid 20 version in 2004 and finally the Band Aid 30 version in 2014. The original was produced by Ure. The 12" version was mixed by Trevor Horn.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were an American rock band from Gainesville, Florida. Formed in 1976, the band originally comprised lead singer and rhythm guitarist Tom Petty, lead guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, drummer Stan Lynch and bassist Ron Blair. In 1982, Blair, weary of the touring lifestyle, departed the band. His replacement, Howie Epstein, stayed with the band for the next two decades. In 1991, Scott Thurston joined the band as a multi-instrumentalist—mostly on rhythm guitar and second keyboard. In 1994, Steve Ferrone replaced Lynch on drums. Blair returned to the Heartbreakers in 2002, the year before Epstein's death. The band had a long string of hit singles including "Breakdown", "American Girl", "Refugee", "The Waiting", "Learning to Fly", and "Mary Jane's Last Dance", among many others, that stretched over several decades of work.
John Symon Asher Bruce was a Scottish musician. He gained popularity as the primary lead vocalist and bassist of rock band Cream. After the group disbanded in 1968, he pursued a solo career and also played with several bands.
Rocks is the fourth studio album by American rock band Aerosmith, released on 3 May 1976. AllMusic described Rocks as having "captured Aerosmith at their most raw and rocking." Rocks was ranked number 366 on the updated Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2020. It has greatly influenced many hard rock and heavy metal artists, including Guns N' Roses, Metallica, and Nirvana. The album was a commercial success, charting three singles on the Billboard Hot 100, two of which reached the Top 40. The album was one of the first to ship platinum when it was released, and has since gone quadruple platinum.
Toys in the Attic is the third studio album by American rock band Aerosmith, released on April 8, 1975, by Columbia Records. Its first single, "Sweet Emotion", was released on May 19 and the original version of "Walk This Way" followed on August 28 in the same year. The album is the band's most commercially successful studio LP in the United States, with nine million copies sold, according to the RIAA. In 2003, the album was ranked No. 228 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album's title track and their collaboration with Run-DMC on a cover version of "Walk This Way" are included on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll".
Subhumans are an English punk rock band formed in the Warminster and Melksham areas of Wiltshire in 1980. Singer Dick Lucas had formerly been in another local band, the Mental, and other members had been in The Stupid Humans. The band's musical style is typically classified as hardcore punk or anarcho-punk.
The Boomtown Rats are an Irish rock band originally formed in Dublin in 1975. Between 1977 and 1985, they had a series of Irish and UK hits including "Like Clockwork", "Rat Trap", "I Don't Like Mondays" and "Banana Republic". The original line-up comprised six musicians; five from Dún Laoghaire in County Dublin; Gerry Cott, Simon Crowe (drums), Johnnie Fingers (keyboards), Bob Geldof (vocals) and Garry Roberts, plus Fingers' cousin Pete Briquette (bass). The Boomtown Rats broke up in 1986, but reformed in 2013, without Fingers or Cott. Garry Roberts died in 2022. The band's fame and notability have been overshadowed by the charity work of frontman Bob Geldof, a former journalist with the New Musical Express.
Michael Owen Bruce is a founding member of the original Alice Cooper band. Bruce is best known for writing the hits that cemented the Alice Cooper band's legacy in rock history.
Hot Rats is the second solo album by Frank Zappa, released in October 1969. It was Zappa's first recording project after the dissolution of the original version of the Mothers of Invention. Five of the six songs are instrumental; while "Willie the Pimp", features vocals by Captain Beefheart. In his original sleeve notes, Zappa described the album as "a movie for your ears".
Subhumans were a Canadian punk rock band formed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1978.
Lace and Whiskey is the third solo and tenth overall studio album by American rock singer Alice Cooper, released on April 29, 1977 by Warner Bros. Records.
The Day the Country Died is the debut studio album by English anarcho-punk band Subhumans. It was recorded in five days in June 1982 and was released in January 1983 through Spiderleg Records. The album was later re-released via Bluurg, the band's own record label.
"My Sharona" is the debut single by the Knack. The song was written by Berton Averre and Doug Fieger, and it was released in 1979 from their debut album, Get the Knack. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, where it remained for six weeks, and was number one on Billboard's 1979 Top Pop Singles year-end chart.
Richard Allen Wagner was an American rock guitarist, songwriter and author best known for his work with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, and Kiss. He also fronted his own Michigan-based bands, the Frost and the Bossmen.
Let Them Eat Jellybeans!, subtitled "17 Extracts From America's Darker Side", is a compilation album released by Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles in 1981. It was one of the earliest compilations of underground music in the United States and its original release included an insert of all of the punk bands known to be playing in the U.S. and Canada at that time. The first side of the LP features songs by a number of bands that formed the canon of American hardcore punk in the 1980s, while the second side features more of an art rock sound.
The Coalesce / Boysetsfire is a split EP released in 2000. It featured six tracks: two covers of Boysetsfire by Coalesce, two Coalesce covers by Boysetsfire, and an original song from each band.
"Flight of Icarus" is a song by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It was their eighth single, the first from their fourth studio album, Piece of Mind (1983), and their first in the United States, where it was one of their few with substantial airplay, peaking at a personal best No. 8 on the Billboard Top Album Tracks chart. It was a lesser success in the UK, peaking at No. 11 on the UK Singles Chart.
Blood Brothers is a five-song EP by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, released in 1996. The EP was originally released along with a film, also titled Blood Brothers, which documented the 1995 temporary reuniting of Springsteen with the band to record extra tracks for his Greatest Hits release of that year. Long out of print, the EP was re-released in January 2014 to ITunes, Spotify and other download sites.
Merry Christmas is the tenth self-released music cassette album by singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston, recorded in 1988. The back of the cover features a typed message from Daniel: "Thanks to everyone who's helped in the past year, especially those who have bought and played my album. Thanks again."
Live Collection is the name of a Japanese 1987 four song live Bruce Springsteen EP. The EP features two tracks that did not make it into the Live/1975-85 collection: "For You" and "Incident on 57th Street". The River Tour performance of "Incident on 57th Street" released on this EP was the song's last outing until their 1999 reunion tour and has helped make this song a live favorite. The original LP included a fold-out color poster, and lyric sheet with the lyrics to all four tracks in English, and Japanese. The album has since been re-released starting in 2001 on compact disc.
