Violet is an album by The Birthday Massacre. It was first released as an extended play (EP) in October 25, 2004, then commercially released in August 9, 2005 as a long play (LP) through Metropolis Records. The LP version included four re-recorded and slightly reworked tracks from their Nothing and Nowhere album: "Happy Birthday", "Horror Show", "Video Kid" and "The Dream".
Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
With their fusion of blues, rock & roll, and R&B, the Fabulous Thunderbirds helped popularize roadhouse Texas blues with a mass audience in the '80s and, in the process, they helped kick-start a blues revival during the mid-'80s. During their heyday in the early '80s, they were the most popular attraction on the blues bar circuit, which eventually led to a breakthrough to the pop audience in 1986 with their fifth album, Tuff Enuff. The mass success didn't last too long, and founding member Jimmie Vaughan left in 1990, but the Fabulous Thunderbirds remained one of the most popular blues concert acts in America during the '90s.
Guitarist Jimmie Vaughan formed the Fabulous Thunderbirds with vocalist/harpist Kim Wilson in 1974; in addition to Vaughan and Wilson, the band's original lineup included bassist Keith Ferguson and drummer Mike Buck. Initially, the group also featured vocalist Lou Ann Barton, but she left the band shortly after its formation. Within a few years, the Thunderbirds became the house band for the Austin club Antone's, where they would play regular sets and support touring blues musicians. By the end of the decade, they had built a strong fan base, which led to a record contract with the local Takoma Records…..
Career retrospective from Pub Rock’s angriest man Graham Parker, spread over 6 CDs with a DVD featuring a live set at the Brook Southampton from last year’s final tour with the Rumour…LTW’s Ian Canty looks at 40 years of Camberley’s very own Punk Soul brother….. It wasn’t very promising on the face of it. A resentful 25 year old garage pump attendant with a run through the 60s from Mod to Hippy behind him and a headful of dreams about Van Morrison and Dr Feelgood, matched up with what might have been the cream of the Pub Rock scene. But this was after all of their respective bands had singularly failed to make an impact, so together, in 1976, they stood at the doors of the Last Chance saloon. What wasn’t expected was that with their musical power allied to the petrol pump punk’s lyrical smarts and alarming stage presence, they would blow the doors off the hinges. Ladies and gentleman, I give you Graham Parker and the Rumour.
Suffolk-based rustic psych-rockers The Future Kings Of England offer on their fourth album the soundtrack for a creepy ghost story written in 1904 by MR James, in which a sceptical professor has his certainties rattled when he finds a Bronze Age whistle and with it summons up… who knows what? A ghost? Evil spirit? Teasingly, the written extracts never fully explain, which is all to the good. Save for a few brief lines in two tracks, it's entirely instrumental, the band skilfully blending the bucolic with the eerily industrial into a vivid series of doomscapes. They stray at times into boggy progginess, but at their best ("The Globe Inn", "Convinced Disbeliever") they have the steady, unhurried manner of Pink Floyd en route to some grand epiphany.