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Bon Bon Vie (Gimme The Good Life)
"Bon Bon Vie (Gimme the Good Life)" is a single by American band T. S. Monk, released in August 1980 on Mirage Records. It was arranged by band leader Thelonious Monk, Jr. and written by songwriter Lawrence Russell Brown and producer Sandy Linzer. The song has a rhythmic style and lyrics about aspiring to a rich lifestyle. The song was released in promotion of the band's 1980 debut album ''House of Music''. It was T. S. Monk's best-selling song and only charting single on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, peaking at number 63. "Bon Bon Vie", particularly its horn intro, has been sampled by several hip hop artists. Music and lyrics According to Barry Lederer from ''Billboard'', "Bon Bon Vie" is a midtempo funk/jazz song with a brassy beat. It has also been defined as a record of post-disco. T. S. Monk's bandleader Thelonious Monk, Jr., served as arranger, drummer, and lead vocalist for the song. It was co-written by Sandy Linzer, who produced its album ''House of Music''. The song's ...
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Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in African Americans, African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the mid-20th century. It de-emphasizes melody and chord progressions and focuses on a strong rhythmic groove (music), groove of a bassline played by an electric bassist and a drum part played by a drum kit, percussionist, often at slower tempos than other popular music. Funk typically consists of a complex percussive groove with Rhythm section, rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves that create a "hypnotic" and "danceable" feel. Funk uses the same richly colored extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, or dominant seventh chords with altered ninths and thirteenths. Funk originated in the mid-1960s, with James Brown's development of a signature groove that emphasized t ...
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Beat (music)
In music and music theory, the beat is the basic unit of time, the pulse (regularly repeating event), of the ''mensural level'' (or ''beat level''). The beat is often defined as the rhythm listeners would tap their toes to when listening to a piece of music, or the numbers a musician counts while performing, though in practice this may be technically incorrect (often the first multiple level). In popular use, ''beat'' can refer to a variety of related concepts, including pulse, tempo, meter, specific rhythms, and groove. Rhythm in music is characterized by a repeating sequence of stressed and unstressed beats (often called "strong" and "weak") and divided into bars organized by time signature and tempo indications. Beats are related to and distinguished from pulse, rhythm (grouping), and meter: Metric levels faster than the beat level are division levels, and slower levels are multiple levels. Beat has always been an important part of music. Some music genres su ...
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Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk (, October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including " 'Round Midnight", " Blue Monk", " Straight, No Chaser", " Ruby, My Dear", "In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't". Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington. Monk's compositions and improvisations feature dissonances and angular melodic twists and are consistent with his unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of switched key releases, silences, and hesitations. Monk's distinct look included suits, hats, and sunglasses. He also had an idiosyncratic habit during performances: while other musicians continued playing, Monk would stop, stand up, and dance for a few moments before returning to the piano. Monk is one of five jazz musicians to have been featured on the cov ...
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Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West. Christgau spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for ''The Village Voice'', during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for ''Esquire'', '' Creem'', '' Newsday'', ''Playboy'', ''Rolling Stone'', '' Billboard'', NPR, ''Blender'', and '' MSN Music'', and was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world – when he talks, people listen." Christgau is best known for his terse, letter-graded capsule album reviews, composed in a co ...
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The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creative community of New York City. It ceased publication in 2017, although its online archives remained accessible. After an ownership change, the ''Voice'' reappeared in print as a quarterly in April 2021. Over its 63 years of publication, ''The Village Voice'' received three Pulitzer Prizes, the National Press Foundation Award, and the George Polk Award. ''The Village Voice'' hosted a variety of writers and artists, including writer Ezra Pound, cartoonist Lynda Barry, artist Greg Tate, and film critics Andrew Sarris, Jonas Mekas and J. Hoberman. In October 2015, ''The Village Voice'' changed ownership and severed all ties with former parent company Voice Media Group (VMG). The ''Voice'' announce ...
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Swing Music
Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, known as the swing era. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Musicians of the swing era include Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Django Reinhardt. Overview Swing has its roots in 1920s dance music ensembles, which began using new styles of written arrangements, incorporating rhythmic innovations pioneered by Louis Arms ...
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Chic (band)
Chic ( ), currently called Nile Rodgers & Chic, is an American band that was formed in 1972 by guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards. It recorded many commercially successful disco songs, including " Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" (1977), " Everybody Dance" (1977), " Le Freak" (1978), " I Want Your Love" (1978), "Good Times" (1979), and " My Forbidden Lover" (1979). The group regarded themselves as a rock band for the disco movement "that made good on hippie peace, love and freedom". In 2017, Chic was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the eleventh time. History 1970–1978: Origins and early singers Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards met in 1970 as session musicians working in the New York City area. They formed a rock band initially named The Boys, but soon changed it to The Big Apple Band, and played numerous gigs around New York City. Despite interest in their demos, they never garnered a record contract. Both ...
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Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden (born July 18, 1941) is an American writer, poet, and music and film critic. Biography Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963. He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually became an A&R executive for RCA Records before turning to writing pop music reviews and related articles for ''Rolling Stone'' magazine, ''Blender'', ''The Village Voice'', ''The Atlantic'', and '' Vanity Fair'', among other publications. He first achieved prominence with his 1970s ''Rolling Stone'' work, where he tended to cover singer-songwriter and traditional pop artists. He joined the staff of ''The New York Times'' in 1981, and subsequently became one of the newspaper's leading theatre and film critics. Holden's experiences as a journalist and executive with RCA led him to write the satirical novel ''Triple Platinum'', which was published by Dell Books in 1980. He is the recipient of the 1986 Grammy Award for Best Album Notes for '' ...
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Official Charts Company
The Official Charts (legal name: The Official UK Charts Company Limited) is a British inter-professional organization that compiles various "official" record charts in the United Kingdom, Ireland and France. In the United Kingdom, its charts include ones for singles, albums and films, with the data compiled from a mixture of downloads, purchases (of physical media) and streaming. The OCC produces its charts by gathering and combining sales data from retailers through market researchers Kantar, and claims to cover 99% of the singles market and 95% of the album market, and aims to collect data from any retailer who sells more than 100 chart items per week. The OCC is operated jointly by the British Phonographic Industry and the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) (formerly the British Association of Record Dealers (BARD)) and is incorporated as a private company limited by shares jointly owned by BPI and ERA. The Chart Information Network (CIN) took over as compilers of ...
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UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-selling Single (music), singles in the United Kingdom, based upon physical sales, paid-for downloads and music streaming, streaming. The Official Chart, broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and MTV (Official UK Top 40), is the UK music industry's recognised official measure of singles and albums popularity because it is the most comprehensive research panel of its kind, today surveying over 15,000 retailers and digital services daily, capturing 99.9% of all singles consumed in Britain across the week, and over 98% of albums. To be eligible for the chart, a Single (music), single is currently defined by the Official Charts Company (OCC) as either a 'single bundle' having no more than four tracks and not lasting longer than 25 minutes or one digital audio ...
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Hot Dance Club Songs
Dance Club Songs is a chart published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine in the United States. It is a national look over of club disc jockeys to determine the most popular songs being played in nightclubs across the country. It was launched as the Disco Action Top 30 chart on August 28, 1976, and became the first chart by ''Billboard'' to document the popularity of dance music. The first number-one song on the chart for the issue dated August 28, 1976, was "You Should Be Dancing" by the Bee Gees, spending five weeks atop the chart and the group's only number-one song on the chart. In January 2017, ''Billboard'' proclaimed Madonna as the most successful artist in the history of the chart, ranking her first in their list of the 100 top all-time dance artists. Madonna holds the record for the most number-one songs with 50. Katy Perry holds the record for having eighteen consecutive number-one songs. Perry's third studio album, ''Teenage Dream'' (2010), became the first album in t ...
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Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
The Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart ranks the most popular R&B and hip hop songs in the United States and is published weekly by '' Billboard''. Rankings are based on a measure of radio airplay, sales data, and streaming activity. The chart had 100 positions but was shortened to 50 positions in October 2012. The chart is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, rock and roll, soul, and funk, it is today dominated by contemporary R&B and hip hop. Since its inception, the chart has changed its name many times in order to accurately reflect the industry at the time. History Beginning in 1942, ''Billboard'' published a chart of bestselling black music, first as the Harlem Hit Parade, then as Race Records. Then in 1949, ''Billboard'' began publishing a Rhythm and Blues chart, which entered "R&B" into mainstream lexicon. These three charts were conso ...
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