The personification of suave and sophisticated, James Bond is perhaps as well known for his love of cars as he is for his love of women. In fact, many of his cars live on in the memory of fans long after those of the Bond girls have faded away.

The cars most associated with James Bond have never been your average family run around; after all it would be hard to imagine the super-spy driving a Ford Escort equipped with machine guns and rocket launchers! However, while James Bond did make use of more mundane vehicles when the need arose throughout his adventures, he is perhaps better known though for his use of those gadget-laden cars which featured heavily in the movies.

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I used to tell people I met on airplanes or at parties that I wrote about jazz for a living. Once they got past wondering just what type of “living” that amounted to, they’d smile and say, “I love jazz,” then pause, adding, “But I don’t know that much about it.”

They were leery, thrown off by chart-and-graph references to jazz’s development — stuff like how ’40s swing begat ’50s bebop, which gave rise to ’60s free-jazz and all that. As if there was a textbook (well, actually some critic friends of mine are writing one, but that’s another story) and there might be a test, you know. Not to mention the political squabbles: why swing was king or bop the thing or how ’70s fusion killed it all.

Or maybe they’d been put off by all that technical talk: flatted fifths and extended chords and the numbers behind swing’s rhythmic propulsion — like it was rocket science or something.

Then there’s the cult aspect: those older guys bending and swaying at the back of the club, making like Jewish elders swaying to an fro at temple, or the generalized bowing down before deities such as Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker and John Coltrane (not to mention the infighting about just who deserves saintly status).

Thing is, jazz isn’t any of that — and is all that. Appreciation requires no previous knowledge, yet continued listening offers all constant enrichment. The technical aspects of jazz’s musical achievements have both the beauty and complexity of higher math: And the music has genuine religious heft, owing to both time-honored spiritual traditions and in-the-moment meditative thought.

I can’t give you a 12-best list, or tell you that what follows tells the story in full. But the following list expresses lineages of thought, instrumental technique, rhythmic ideas and group conception. The dots are easy to connect, the names clearly indicated and the sounds unforgettable.

And this list is like those sponge toys that, placed in water, magically grow overnight. Listen, and you’ll find expansive knowledge easily absorbed, not to mention natural links to many more artists and recordings.

Listen Hot Fives And Sevens

Artist: Louis Armstrong

Release Date: 1925

To tell the story of jazz without Louis Armstrong up top is to cut off the head of the living organism that is jazz. Armstrong was a giant of a trumpeter, he was an influential singer and perhaps most important, he transformed jazz from a strictly instrumental music into a complicated blend of solo and ensemble sound. In that sense, nearly all the 20th century jazz that followed flowed from the innovation of these recordings. Over the course of these sessions, you can hear the transformation in process, from traditional New Orleans collective style to a different blend, with the clarion call of Armstrong’s horn pointing the way.

Listen The Art Tatum Solo Masterpieces Volume 1

Artist: Art Tatum

Release Date: 2001

Any one edition drawn from this eight-CD set will do. And any one is enough to give a sense of the enormity of Tatum’s genius and its far-reaching effects on all the music that followed. Tatum simply played more piano — got more out the instrument — than any other musician. He was a direct link from the whorehouse piano men to the classical soloist. Here, late in life, he plays song after song and, beginning with “Too Marvelous for Words,” he builds each one into a concerto of melody, harmonics, and improvisation that set the bar high and establish the logic for much of modern jazz.

Listen The Carnegie Hall Concerts: January 1943

Artist: Duke Ellington

Release Date: 1943

Little in jazz compares with the majesty, finesse, integrity and spark of Duke Ellington’s bands during the ’40s. It was a moment when jazz straddled two functions as it never will again: it was popular music, reflective of the nation’s heart and mind, and artistic revolution, charting new waters. In Ellington, as perhaps in no musician other than Louis Armstrong, jazz had a leader who understood both drives. It was a dream of Ellington’s to play Carnegie Hall, and it anticipated the Lincoln Center achievements of Wynton Marsalis today. This recording contains both shorter tunes (marvelous miniatures of great scope) and Ellington’s more ambitious, longer-form work “Black, Brown, and Beige.” There are stellar solo statements by players including saxophonists Ben Webster and Johnny Hodges, but really, it’s the brilliant cohesion of the full band and Ellington’s overall vision that makes this music timeless.

Listen Tomorrow Is The Question

Artist: Ornette Coleman

Release Date: 1959

Ornette Coleman’s music has always leaned on tradition — listen to some Charlie Parker and you’ll hear echoes of it here — distilled into something new and pointed straight toward the future, or curled up like a quizzical phrase. Here, Coleman’s title begs both ideas. And the music announced his pianoless quartet setup: the harmonics of chord changes alone would no longer confine Coleman’s music, replaced by his own personal science bent on liberation. The way Coleman and trumpeter Don Cherry shadow each other’s lines and exchange ideas, the process sounds closer to pure joy than hard science. Nearly a half-century later, it still sounds fresh.

Listen Alone In San Francisco

Artist: Thelonious Monk

Release Date: 1959

The hippest, most addictive thing I got turned onto in college was Monk’s music. I’d never heard anything like it, and it opened up a whole new idea for me of how the piano could sound and of what music could do: his compositions, his every arpeggio or tone cluster, contained math, R&B, Abstract Expressionism and slapstick humor. I went on to discover a world of jazz musicians, all touched directly or indirectly by Monk, but none who sounded quite like him. And though Monk recorded quite a few notable albums leading stellar bands, though his music led others to play with a special insight and cohesion, it’s Monk alone at the piano that I crave: Straight, no chaser. Here, early in his career, by himself, Monk transforms San Francisco’s Fugazi Hall with the unique architecture of his piano playing. This isn’t what all of jazz sounds like: It’s what the world of jazz after Monk looks like.

Listen Bill Evans Trio: Sunday At The Village Vanguard

Artist: Bill Evans

Release Date: 1961

There’s plenty of religious, folkloric and literary evidence to support the idea that three is a magical number: Bill Evans’s trio might be jazz’s mightiest argument for that case. Evans was one of jazz’s most lyrical pianists, and he’s at his best here. But it’s the nature of this trio that elevates most of all: neither Evans nor bassist Scott LaFaro nor drummer Paul Motian stick to customary roles. And in the three-pointed cheese slice of a room that is the Village Vanguard (the closest thing to sacred space remaining in jazz today) the music takes on a prayer-like quality.

Listen Live Trane: The European Tours

Artist: John Coltrane

Release Date: 1961

By 1961, Coltrane’s soloing style — the free flow through chord changes and scale-based improvisations that critic Ira Gitler dubbed “sheets of sound” — was his signature. His band concept was similarly bent on expanding boundaries and explosive energy. Coltrane may have laid down some of jazz’s most memorable studio sessions, but there’s really nothing like him caught live. These tracks, drawn from a three-LP set, find him in two powerful contexts over the course of four years: in a 1961 quintet including Eric Dolphy on alto sax, flute and clarinet; and fronting his classic quartet at concerts in 1963 and 1965. The fire and especially the communion between Coltrane and drummer Elvin Jones on the later material is a thing to behold.

Listen Spiritual Unity

Artist: Albert Ayler

Release Date: 1964

The first release on Bernard Stollman’s ESP label, this is the session that pushed Albert Ayler to the forefront of jazz’s avant garde. He remains a touchstone for any open-minded musician wishing to explore the sonic possibilities of a given instrument, to exploit the aggregate effect of any small group and to mine the spiritual heft of musical expression. To some, the arsenal of sounds Ayler coaxed from his saxophone — screams, squeals, wails, honks and a mile-wide vibrato when he felt like it — represented newfound contortions of sound; to others, they harked back to early jazz evocations, like Sidney Bechet’s soprano sax. Ayler’s appeal anticipates the current axis that connects punk rockers to free jazz: He took the simplest of song structures and turned them into the most complex of visceral splatters. His “Ghosts,” here rendered in two versions, will truly haunt you.

Listen Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods

Artist: Dizzy Gillespie And Machito

Release Date: 1975

Back when I edited a jazz magazine, I’d find regular annoyance with writers who thought Latin jazz was a tiny sidebar to American jazz. Jazz is many stories, a central one being the African Diaspora. The music of Latin America, South America and the Caribbean are cousins to American music (and they contain some rhythmic secrets we’ve forgotten, I’d say). Cuba in particular has a special musical relationship with the United States, and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie was one among jazz’s ranks who honored that truth with depth and style. Though Dizzy made his Big Cuban Bang decades earlier, this 1975 session finds him with the famed band of Frank “Machito” Grillo, featuring the great Cuban trumpeter Mario Bauzá. Composer/arranger Chico O’Farrill’s “Oro, Incienso y Mirra” is as modern a fusion of cross-cultural ideas as you’ll hear today.

Listen Raining On The Moon

Artist: William Parker

Release Date: 2002

Born in 1955 [ck], William Parker is just a bit older than the music we know as free jazz. Some say that that musical revolution is dead: They’re wrong. The most vital life signs are found on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and at the center of this scene is the loud, insistent sound of Parker’s bass. He is something of a father figure, dispensing life lessons as well as musical wisdom, much like legendary bandleaders Duke Ellington, Art Blakey and Charles Mingus. Among Parker’s many bands is the quartet he leads here (with Leena Conquest adding soulful vocals). Among the deep connections he shares is the one you can feel powerfully throughout this music, with drummer Hamid Drake.

Author Detail: -

Here author Larry Blumenfeld writes about jazz’s development and jazz instrumental. The technical aspects of jazz’s musical achievements have both the beauty and complexity of higher math. There are many people in the world who love jazz but know nothing much about it. Visit emusic.com and enjoy the real taste of jazz music and some excellent jazz music albums with mp3 downloads, music downloads, Online Music, Audio Books etc…

Flamenco is a popular style of Spanish Guitar Music. Flamenco has its own three forms which are Cante, Baile, and Guitarra. Cante is the song, Baile is the dance, and Guitarra is the guitar part of flamenco. Flamenco is a very important part of Spanish Guitar Music. It usually consists of someone playing the guitar, while people are dancing, and other people also join in with hand clapping. Although it is mostly popular in Spain, flamenco was influenced by other cultures as well.

Flamenco Guitar The Flamenco Guitar is very similar to the classical guitar. That is no surprise however, because flamenco music and classical music are very similar. Both of the instruments are descendants from the lute. The normal flamenco guitar is made out of the Spanish woods cypress and spruce. Even though this guitar is similar to a normal classical guitar, it is also different. For example, the flamenco guitar weighs less and is smaller than a normal classical guitar. These features attribute to giving the flamenco guitar the sharp flamenco sound. Nearly all flamenco guitars come with a golpeador.

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Do you need a special type of guitar?
The simple answer is No! For a beginner, any (nylon stringed) classical guitar will do the job.

1) Any guitar with steel strings on it is NOT suitable. There was a time when certain styles of Country and Western and jazz guitars were advertised as “Spanish guitars” for some unknown reason. (I think because they have roughly the same shape as a classical / flamenco guitar). If you look hard enough you may even find a few books of the 1920’s , 30’s, and 40’s which have plectrum style music for these “Spanish guitars”. The equation seems to be: Flamenco = Spanish music = let’s play it on my grandpa’s Spanish guitar. Now where did he put those plectrums? Or something like that.

2) Another common misconception is that the bass strings on a classical guitar are steel. On the outside they look the same as their steel brothers but that’s where the similarity ends. Classical guitar bass strings have many fine strands of nylon woven together inside the copper winding. If you look closely you will see these strands poking out of the end of the string.

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In a way, Creedence Clearwater Revival was lucky. Based in the terminally unhip East Bay suburb of El Cerrito, looking to classic rock & roll and the Beatles for inspiration in their early incarnation as the Golliwogs instead of the folk-rock which powered the San Francisco scene’s big-name bands, they were shunned by the psychedelic ballrooms and had lots of time to refine a sound that was completely their own. The result was a run of nine Top Ten singles (and one, “Suzie Q,” which peaked at number 11) of a directness and simplicity that the other bands missed. For this, they were derided by the hipoisie, who seem to have forgotten that popular music was supposed to be, um, popular.

Certainly their songwriting powerhouse, John Fogerty, didn’t mind at all. He was too busy crafting powerful songs that the country reacted to immediately, honing songwriting, singing, and guitar skills that turned Creedence into one of America’s top bands. After they broke up, Fogerty continued to pursue his vision, adding a dash of country music which only broadened his appeal, although legal issues and changing tastes meant that his sales might not have reflected his mastery as they once might have.

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The northern city of Manchester has a long pedigree of top nightclubs, but the famed Hacienda was without doubt Manchester’s most famous night spot; so renowned, in fact, that several books were written about it’s influence, and even a film was made - ‘24 Hour Party people’ - which featured the life and times of Anthony (Tony) Wilson, a legendary Manchester music supremo nicknamed ‘Mr Manchester’, who was responsible for the success of Manchester’s music scene during the late eighties and early nineties.

Owned by Factory Records and the band New Order, the Hacienda consisted of a stage, dance area, bar, café, DJ balcony and cocktail bar, but had a stark, and industrial interior featuring steel girders and traffic bollards that was very different to other clubs of the time.

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Every job has a respective platform and unlike that the world of music also requires a platform to search for new artists and to promote them through their industries.

The would be stars are the results of this search only. This search is made easier by using music e-books. The known music companies are also engaged in such things to run their business successfully. The music companies provide the business plans to users so that they can sort out their queries relating to music. The upcoming ones put their art in front of music businessmen by such music e-books. They are then further offered the contracts by the music personnel who genuinely help to built up their careers. Early in their careers most musicians find it hard to believe that their band might ever make enough money to fight over. But sooner than you think success may arrive, and without clear terms of how the band is organized and who controls what rights, your best friends and fellow musicians may become your worst enemies. Anyone who seeks to enter the complex world of the music business ought to know what to do in order to avoid derailing a high-speed ride to the top of the charts. And this thing has been made easier through music e-books . Moreover the aspirants looking for music as their career have an impact of music e-books in their minds. A song writer can use this source to pitch his work to the urban Artists and Repertoire (A&R) - a division of a record label company that is responsible for scouting and artist development - at publishers like Universal, EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group etc. Not only this, he can use the sample letter’s and mail out techniques to contact and pitch to Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, Sugar Babes , Amy Winehouse , Mary J Blige , Lilly Allen, Mariah Carey, Usher and others.

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Cada persona tiene su propia forma de celebrar su cumpleaños pero recuerden que siempre es bueno hacer algo diferente para que ese día sea un día especial para la persona que cumple años.

Hay quienes deciden deprimirse y quedarse en sus casas a pensar en lo viejos que se han vuelto y lo que odian sus cumpleaños, pero por lo contrario hay gente que sale de sus casas para celebrar que han pasado un año mas de vida y que hay un día en el que pueden sentir que es suyo y hacer cosas que lo alegren.

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The Grammy Awards (originally known as the Gramophone Awards) are presented annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States for outstanding achievement in the record industry, and is considered by many to be the most prestigious award available in music.

The award ceremony sees performances from prominent artists and the presentations of major awards being broadcast to millions of television viewers. A series of taped annual specials broadcast in the 1960s called “The Best on Record” were the precursor to the first live Grammys telecast in 1971. Since then the award ceremony has been regularly held in Los Angeles during February, with the 50th ceremony having recently taken place.

The process through which artists are nominated for a Grammy is entirely orchestrated by The Recording Academy and the record companies. They are responsible for entering the musical works they deem most deserving into nomination. Once a work is entered, 150 experts from the recording industry preside over reviewing sessions, held to determine whether or not a work is eligible or entered in the right category. After this, the voting takes places with the 150 experts only being able to vote in their fields of expertise, as well as in the general categories of Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist.

There has been much debate about whether or not this sort of nominating and voting process is the result of commercial or industry bias. Some critics have suggested that the event is nothing more than an exercise in self promotion and corporate back slapping, as well as an opportunity for the record companies to advertise their ideas and products through the use of selection bias in the nomination process.

Renowned and respected musicians such as Maynard James Keenan and Trent Reznor (front men of the bands Tool and Nine Inch Nails respectively) have voiced their concern over the awards, arguing that major award shows such as the Grammys do not adequately represent the views of the public and that much of the ceremony itself is “filler” with too many awards being handed out.

Despite this, evidence seems to suggest that winning a Grammy is highly beneficial to many artists’ careers, with Billboard magazine regularly observing a spike in sales of winning artists’ albums after achieving success at the ceremony.

Having just celebrated its 50th successful year, with the streets and luxury hotels of L.A once again packed with stars, it’s safe to say that, despite the naysayers, the Grammy awards will continue to be considered the benchmark for excellence in the music industry for some time to come.

To many people, the image of Hollywood, and of LA in general, is either a place that’s full of glitz and glamour, and positively swarming with celebrities – or as devoid of celebrities, with them hiding out in their mansions or at exclusive, elitist clubs where only celebrities themselves are allowed to go.



The reality is that neither of these extremes is correct. If you’re visiting LA, the chances are that you won’t see a celebrity. But equally, if you live in Hollywood, celebrity spotting is just another perk of living in glamorous surroundings.



Another nugget of truth that can be sifted out of the rumours of Hollywood is that there are specific places where celebrities go to do the things that everyday people enjoy – there are shops, restaurants, nightspots, even video stores that are favourites of the stars. But the fact is, everyone is welcome - not just celebrities!



Some of the stars’ favourite restaurants include seafood specialist Crustacean, where the key is to dress and act like a movie-star; Spago, famous chef Wolfgang Puck’s own restaurant, which many argue sets the standard for eating in Hollywood (which, when you consider some of the richest people in the world live here, is certainly saying something!); Patrick’s Roadhouse, a favourite spot for a celebrity breakfast (where now-governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger had a permanent table!); and of course The Ivy, favourite of Demi Moore and Kiefer Sutherland, which itself has made several movie appearances, notably in John Travolta and Danny DeVito’s ‘Get Shorty’ and 1992 smash-hit ‘The Bodyguard’.



The top nightspots where the stars choose to shine include music venues The Viper Room, which, although small and intimate, has seen stars of sizeable magnitude, including Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, The Counting Crows and Lenny Kravitz; The Roxy, which was once a second home to rockers Guns ‘n Roses; and The Troubadour, which has seen the likes of Elton John and Tom Waits performing. Favourite nightclubs include world-famous Whisky a Go Go (which itself has a impressive musical history), El Floradita and The Sky Bar.



And finally, if you feel you need to take something with you from the land of the stars, the shops that are best-loved by celebrities include Di Fabrizio Shoes, shoemaker to the likes of Frank Sinatra, Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli; Book Soup, a book store that often has star-signings as well; Illume Candles, candle makers that keep the stars’ homes glowing; and every celebrities’ favourite fashion store, Fred Segal, which is mentioned in fashion-obsessed films like ‘Clueless’ and ‘Legally Blonde’, and has a reputation for trend-setting and essential fashion.



LA has two Fred Segal stores, one in Hollywood and one in nearby Santa Monica, an area that is popular with celebs because of its beautiful beaches and relaxed way of life. It is home to Patrick’s Roadhouse, and as well as being the home of some of the best eateries and fashion stores and hotels in LA, is also home to many major stars, such as Bob Dylan, Anjelica Huston, Christina Ricci and Tobey Maguire.



There are also a great deal of top-quality hotels in Santa Monica, so if you feel like living like an LA star, this is the place to be!

Victoria Cochrane is a freelance writer for both online and print media. She lives with her husband and son, and enjoys travelling when not writing.