Travis Barker – Give The Drummer Some (2011)

Artist: Travis Barker
Album: Give The Drummer Some
Genre: Alternative Rap, Rap-Rock
Year: 2011
Label: Interscope

Jay z - Dead President

One of the old songs that we used to love. Jay Z was always one who leads the rap music. Everyone who trying to understand rap music, you must explore his albums. Dead president is one of the core song on hardcore rap music.

2pac - I Ain't Mad at Cha

It's been a long time passed but still legendary. One of the all time bests.

Biography of the Rolling Stones: Young Stones (Part 1: Young Bill Wyman or Bill Perks)

Young Bill Perks

The bombs began to fall on London in early September 1940. The Nazi blitzkrieg was designed not only to destroy property and people but also to crush the will to fight, to convince Britain to surrender to the German onslaught before the country was destroyed. Th e bombing was not unexpected; it was a matter of when it would begin. Anticipating the attacks on the capital, thousands of women and children were evacuated to the countryside, usually to the homes of relatives or sympathetic countrymen. Th at was the case with young William Perks Jr. (b. October 24, 1936), the oldest child of William and Kathleen (known as Molly), who accompanied his mother and two siblings to Pembrokeshire, Wales, in April 1940. Bill’s mother was lonely and unhappy in Wales, however, and the brood returned to London a few weeks later to become observers  victims of the Battle of Britain, which raged in the skies above England from July through October 1940. Bill remembered gazing at the skies above London as waves of German bombers crossed from occupied France to England for their bombing runs and to be attacked by the British Royal Air Force fighter planes. It was an exciting and dangerous time. Many nights the family slept in their back garden air-raid shelter, as did thousands of other Britons. Extended families were thrown together for safety; commercial buildings and homes were destroyed by the seemingly ceaseless bombing raids. After October, the regular nightly raids ended, but bombing runs still continued through May 1941. At that point, it was clear to the Germans that there would be no British surrender and that the continued raids were futile. Nevertheless sporadic raids went on for years until the end of World War II in 1945. Much of Great Britain, particularly the important cities, was reduced to rubble. By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombing, and more than a million houses had been destroyed or damaged in London alone. London had a population of about 9 million people at the start of the war.

Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters was the single most important artist to emerge in post-war American blues. A peerless singer, a gifted songwriter, an able guitarist, and leader of one of the strongest bands in the genre (which became a proving ground for a number of musicians who would become legends in their own right), Waters absorbed the influences of rural blues from the Deep South and moved them uptown, injecting his music with a fierce, electric energy and helping pioneer the Chicago Blues style that would come to dominate the music through the 1950s, ‘60s, and '70s. The depth of Waters' influence on rock as well as blues is almost incalculable, and remarkably, he made some of his strongest and most vital recordings in the last five years of his life.

Waters was born McKinley Morganfield, and historians argue about some details of his early life; while he often told reporters he was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi on April 4, 1915, researchers have uncovered census records and personal documents that would pin the year of his birth at 1913 or 1914, and others have cited the place of his birth as Jug's Corner, a town in Mississippi's Issaquena County. What is certain is that Morganfield's mother died when he just three years old, and from then on he was raised on the Stovall Plantation in Clarksdale, Mississippi by his grandmother, Della Grant. Grant is said to have given young Morganfield the nickname "Muddy" because he liked to play in the mud as a boy, and the name stuck, with "Water" and "Waters" being tacked on a few years later. The rural South was a hotbed for the blues in the '20s and ‘30s, and young Muddy became entranced with the music when he discovered a neighbor had a phonograph and records by the likes of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, and Tampa Red.

As Muddy became more deeply immersed in the blues, he took up the harmonica; he was performing locally at parties and fish fries by the age of 13, sometimes with guitarist Scott Bohanner, who lived and worked in Stovall. In his early teens,Muddy was introduced to the sound of contemporary Delta blues artists, such as Son House, Robert Johnson, and Charley Patton; their music inspired Waters to switch instruments, and he bought a guitar when he was 17, learning to play in the bottleneck style. Within a few years, he was performing on his own and with a local string band, the Son Simms Four; he also opened a juke joint on the Stovall grounds, where fellow sharecroppers could listen to music, enjoy a drink or a snack, and gamble.Waters became a fixture in Mississippi, performing with the likes of Big Joe Williams and Robert Nighthawk, and in the late summer of 1941, musical archivists Alan Lomax and John Work III arrived in Mississippi with a portable recording rig, eager to document local blues talent for the Library of Congress (it's said they were hoping to locate Robert Johnson, only to learn he had died three years earlier). Lomax and Work were strongly impressed with Waters, and recorded several sides of him performing in his juke joint; two of the songs were released as a 78, and when Waters received two copies of the single and $20 from Lomax, it encouraged him to seriously consider a professional career. In July 1943, Lomax returned to record more material with Waters; these early sessions with Lomax were collected on the album Down On Stovall's Plantation in 1966, and a 1994 reissue of the material, The Complete Plantation Recordings, won a Grammy award.

Maroon 5 - V

Artist: Maroon 5
Album: V
Genre: Alternative Rock
Year: 2014

Coldplay – Ghost Stories (2014)

Artist: Coldplay
Album: Ghost Stories
Year: 2014
Genre: Alternative Rock

Coldplay always give us the bright and warm feelings. Some might say Coldplay is the modified Radiohead. But I'm not agree with them. They have their own style, own atmosphere and own fans. Maybe their music is not deep enough others like Oasis, Radiohead, Blur and go on. No body have to be deep in the end.

Linkin Park – The Hunting Party (2014)

Artist: Linkin Park
Album: The Hunting Party
Year: 2014
Genre: Alternative metal, Rap Rock, Nu Metal, Heavy Metal

They changed a lot, they did a lot and they stayed a lot. I'm not really a fan of Linkin Park. But maybe you can check on this album. It's the tenth studio album from Hybrid Theory, and released in 2014. Unlike their previous albums, this one maybe give you another feeling of Linkin Park.

Sum 41 – Screaming Bloody Murder (2011)

Artist: Sum 41
Album: Screaming Bloody Murder
Genre: Punk-Pop, Alternative/Indie Rock, Punk Revival, Punk/New Wave
Year: 2011
Label: Mercury

In this time, gloomy, sad and suicidal way of style named emo spread-ed around the world. This album is for those kind of listeners. Just in case, bring your sad friend with you and cheer him up.

Within Temptation – The Unforgiving (2011)

Artist: Within Temptation
Album: The Unforgiving
Genre: Heavy Metal, Goth Rock
Year: 2011
Label: Roadrunner Records

There was a one time a goth lover who is friend of mine said Within Temptation is the not so good band, but this album is maybe their best. I don't want to judge, because I'm not a fan of heavy metal. So, you maybe can judge about it.

Snoop Dogg – Doggumentary [Deluxe Edition] (2011)

Artist: Snoop Dogg
Album: Doggumentary [Deluxe Edition]
Genre: G-Funk, Gangsta Rap, West Coast Rap
Year: 2011
Label: Doggystyle Records

The Strokes – Angles (2011)

Artist: The Strokes
Album: Angles
Genre: Alternative Pop/Rock
Year: 2011
Label: RCA

Radiohead – The King Of Limbs (2011)

Artist: Radiohead
Album: The King Of Limbs
Genre: Experimental rock
Year: 2011

Britney Spears – Femme Fatale (2011)

Artist: Britney Spears
Album: Femme Fatale
Genre: Pop
Year: 2011

Chris Brown – F.A.M.E. [Deluxe Version] (2011)

Artist: Chris Brown
Album: F.A.M.E. [Deluxe Version]
Genre: Pop, Contemporary R&B, Dance-Pop
Year: 2011

Chicago Blues (Essay)

Probably no strain of blues has a more universally recognized form, feel and sound than Chicago blues. Chicago is where the music became amplified and had the big beat put to it and like Muddy Waters said, the blues had a baby and they named it rock'n'roll. As a simple point of reference, it's the music that most sounds like 50s rhythm and blues/rock'n'roll, its first notable offspring; when you hear a tv commercial with blues in it, it's usually the Chicago style they're playing. It's the sound of amplified harmonicas, electric slide guitars, big boogie piano and a rhythm section that just won't quit, with fierce, declamatory vocals booming over the top of it. It's the genius of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, and Little Walter knocking an urban audience on their collective ears at some smoky, noisy South Side tavern, then transmitting that signal to the world. It's the infectious boogie of Hound Dog Taylor, John Brim, Jimmy Reed, Joe Carter mining similar turf while Robert Nighthawk and Big John Wrencher lay it down with rough and tumble combos Sunday mornings on the Maxwell Street open air market. And it's the up to date, gospel inspired vocals and B.B. King single note style of Otis Rush, Magic Sam and Buddy Guy meshing with it all. Though there's much primitive beauty to be found in this strain of the music, there's nothing subtle about it; its rough edge ambience is the sound of the Delta, coming to terms with the various elements of city life and plugging in and going electric to keep pace with a changing world. Chicago blues was the first style to reach a mass audience and, with the passage of time, the first to reach a world wide audience as well. When the average Joe thinks of the blues, one of two musical sounds pop into their brain pan; one is the sound of Delta blues-usually slide-played on an acoustic guitar. The other-if it's played through an amplifier-is almost always Chicago blues.

Although the Windy City had a burgeoning blues scene before World War II (see separate essay on Lester Melrose and Early Chicago Blues), a number of elements combined after the war to put the modern Chicago scene into motion.

First, there was the societal aftermath of World War II to deal with. Blacks-after serving their country and seeing how the rest of the world was-came back home, packed up their few belongings and headed North to greener pastures, better paying jobs and the promise of a better life. It was a simple case of "how ya keep 'em down on the farm;" once Blacks had left the oppressive life of Southern plantation life behind and 'had seen the world,' the prospect of toiling in a meat packing plant in Chicago looked a whole lot more upscale than standing behind a mule somewhere in Mississippi.

And so they headed North. This influx of new migrants all finding new jobs and housing also infused Chicago with a lot of capital to be had and spent in these flush post-War times. The rise of the independent recording label after shellac rationing (and the development of space age plastics) also had a lot to do with the development of the sound as well. New record labels that dealt exclusively with blues for a Black market started to proliferate after 1950. Chess and its myriad subsidiaries and Vee-Jay had the lion's share of the market, but medium to tiny imprints like Ora-Nelle (an offshoot of the Maxwell Street Radio Repair Shop), JOB, Tempo Tone, Parkway, Cool, Atomic H, Cobra, Chance, Opera, United, States, Blue Lake, Parrot, C.J. and others all helped to bring the music to a wider audience.

Up to this point, John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red were the three acknowledged kingpins of the local scene, but their hegemony was soon to be challenged and eventually relinquished to the new breed. The new migrants wanted to be citified and upscale, but still had strong down home roots that needed to be tended to. The jazzier jump blues offerings in the city were fine, but newly arrived Southerners wanted something a little more gritty, packed with a little more realism and a lot more emotional wallop. One day a train dropped a young slide guitarist from Mississippi into the city and soon the new audience had the sound and the style that suited their needs, both urban, rural and emotionally. Muddy Waters had come to Chicago and the sound of Chicago blues as we know it was about to be born.

Waters worked the house party circuit at first, driving truck by day and playing his music wherever he had the chance. He fell in with a loose group of players which included guitarists Baby Face Leroy Foster, Blue Smitty, and Jimmy Rogers. Muddy had tried to plug into the Melrose style recording scene three years after arriving, but a one-off recording session issued on Columbia under an assumed name did the singer little good. The sound was urban, but it wasn't his style, the sound that captivated his listeners at house rent parties along the South side.

Muddy noticed two things about playing in Chicago. One, he needed amplification if he was going to be heard over the noisy din in your neighborhood tavern. He needed an electric guitar and an amplifier to go with it and he needed to turn both of them full blast if he was going to make an impression. Secondly, he needed a band; not a band with trumpets and saxophones in it, but a modern version of the kind of string band he worked in around Clarksdale, Mississippi. It stands as a testament to Muddy Waters' genius that he created the blueprint for the first modern electric blues band and honed that design into a modern, lustrous musical sheen. There had certainly been blues combos in the city previous to Waters' arrival, but none sounded like this.

Muddy's first band was euphemistically called the Headhunters because of their competitive nature of blowing any band off the stage they came in contact with and usually taking their gig from them in the bargain. Although Muddy was having hits on Chess with just his guitar and a string bass in support, in a live situation it was a different matter entirely. Baby Face Leroy Foster was soon replaced by Elgar Edmonds (aka Elgin Evans) on drums, Jimmy Rogers wove complex second guitar patterns into the mix and in due time, Otis Spann would bring his beautiful piano stylings to the combo, following Muddy's every move. But it was with the addition of harmonica genius Little Walter where the face of the Chicago blues sound began to change. If the Muddy and Jimmy's guitars were amplified and cranked up, Walter got his own microphone and amplifier and responded in kind. Though others played electric before him (Walter Horton among them), it was Little Walter who virtually defined the role and sound of amplified harmonica as it sat in this new band context. His honking, defiant tone-full of distortion, hand controlled compression wedded to swooping saxophone-styled licks-became the sound for every aspiring combo and harmonica player to go after. By the time Walter left Muddy to form his own band, the Jukes (named after his hit instrumental), his sound was so pervasive that club owners would only hire combos that had a harmonica player working in that style. Bands would do without a drummer if need be, but the message was clear; one had to have that harp in order to work.

Soon there were newly amplified bands springing up everywhere and coming from everywhere, as the word was soon out that Chicago was quickly becoming the new promised land of the blues. The competition was fierce and tough, with lesser bands like Bo Diddley's Langley Avenue Jivecats or Earl Hooker working for tips on Maxwell Street, while others squeezed onto postage stamp sized stages just trying to establish their reputations. Among these were future blues legends in the making Big Walter Horton, Johnny Shines, J.B. Lenoir, Snooky Pryor, Jimmy Reed, John Brim, Billy Boy Arnold, and J.B. Hutto. Muddy Waters' first challenge to his newly acquired crown as king of the circuit came from Memphis bluesman Howlin' Wolf. Wolf had just signed a contract with Chess Records and had a hit on the R&B charts to go with it. He came into town, looking for work and by all accounts, Muddy was most helpful in getting him started. But what started as professional courtesy soon blossomed into a bitter, intense rivalry between the two bandleaders that lasted until Wolf's death in 1976. They'd steal sidemen from each other, compete with each other over who would record Willie Dixon's best material and when booked on the same bill together, would pull every trick possible to try and outdo each other onstage.

The preponderance here on the club scene in Chicago is pivotal in understanding how the music developed. For all their business acumen and commercial expertise, Chess and every other Chicago label that was recording this music was doing it because it was popular music in the Black community. This was an untapped market that was tired of being spoon fed Billy Eckstine and Nat King Cole records and wanted to sent back home and a three minute 78 of it just might hit the spot. Just like every other honest trend or development in American music, it simply happened; the people responded, and somebody was smart enough to record it and sell it.

But by the mid 50s-as one bluesman put it-'the beat had changed.' The blues did have a baby and they did name it rock'n'roll. Suddenly everyone from Big Joe Turner to Bo Diddley were being lumped in with Elvis and Bill Haley and a hundred vocal groups named after birds or automobiles. The Black audience started to turn away from blues to the new music and suddenly the local scene needed a fresh transfusion of new blood. Over on the West Side, younger musicians were totally enamored of the B.B. King style of playing and singing and began to incorporate both into a new Chicago blues hybrid. Working with a pair of saxes, a bass player and a drummer, most West Side combos were scaled down approximations of B.B.'s big band. When the group couldn't afford the sax section, the guitarists started throwing in heavy jazz chord like fills to flesh out the sound. Suddenly Otis Rush, Buddy Guy and Magic Sam were on equal footing with the established heavies and even Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James started regularly recording and playing with saxophones. As rhythm and blues started getting a harder edged sound as it moved into soul music territory by the mid 60s, the blues started keeping its ear to the ground and its beat focused on the dance floor. While the three primary grooves up til now had been a slow blues, a boogie shuffle and a 'cut shuffle' (like Muddy's "Got My Mojo Working"), suddenly it was okay to put a blues to a rock groove, sometimes with quite satisfying results. One of the first to mine this turf was harmonica ace Junior Wells. Wells' first hit, "Messing With The Kid," was blues with a driving beat and a great guitar riff, signaling that once again, the blues had reinvented itself to keep with the crowd. Working in tandem with Buddy Guy at Pepper's Lounge, the duo worked like a downscale miniature blues'n'soul show, combining funky beats with the most down in the alley blues imaginable. By the middle 60s, Chicago produced its first racially mixed combo with the birth of the highly influential Paul Butterfield Blues Band, featuring the high voltage guitar work of Michael Bloomfield and members from Howlin' Wolf's rhythm section. And the permutations that have come since then and flourish in the current day Chicago club scene echo those last two developments of the Chicago style. The beats and bass lines may get funkier in approach, the guitars might be playing in a more modern style, sometimes even approaching rock pyrotechnics, in some cases. But every time a harmonica player cups his instrument around a cheap microphone or a crowd calls out for a slow one, the structure may change, but every musician and patron doffs their symbolic hats in appreciation to Muddy Waters and the beginnings of the Chicago blues, still very much alive and well today.

by Cub Koda

Children Of Bodom – Relentless Reckless Forever (2011)

Artist: Children Of Bodom
Album: Relentless, Reckless Forever
Genre: Heavy Metal, Melodic death metal
Year: 2011
Label: Fontana Universal

Lupe Fiasco – Lasers (2011)

Artist: Lupe Fiasco
Album: Lasers
Genre: Alternative Rap, Midwest Rap, Political Rap
Year: 2011
Label: Atlantic

Lena – Good News (2011)

Artist: Lena
Album:  Good News
Genre: Pop
Year: 2011
Label: Universal Music Germany

Adele - 21 (2011)

Artist: Adele
Album: 21
Genre: Adult Alternative Pop/Rock
Year: 2011
Label: XL Recordings

There is a lot of things I can say about this album. Also, many of you can comment on this peculiar one. I love most of the tracks in it. Maybe there is all things we share is same. Saturday morning album, I just say.