February 24: George Thorogood “Bad to the Bone,” is 64-years-old today.

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Besides his hit song "Bad to the Bone," George Thorogood is known for covers of blues standards by Hank Williams, John Lee Hooker and Bo Diddley.  

George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers have released 16 studio albums, including two that were certified Platinum. and six that have been certified Gold. The band has sold 15 million albums worldwide.

Thorogood was raised in Naamans Manor, in suburban Wilmington, Delaware. Thorogood played semi-professional baseball, but turned toward music after seeing John P. Hammond perform in 1970. His demo, “Better Than the Rest,” was recorded in 1974 and released in 1979.

In 1976 he recorded his debut album: George Thorogood & The Destroyers with his band - sometimes known as The Delaware Destroyers, or simply GT and D - and issued the album in 1977.

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Thorogood released his next album Move It On Over in 1978 with The Destroyers, which included the Hank Williams remake "Move It On Over." "Please Set a Date" and their remake of the Bo Diddley song "Who Do You Love?" both followed in 1979.

In the late 1970s, Thorogood played on a team in Delaware in the Roberto Clemente League which was created in 1976. He was the second baseman and was chosen rookie of the year in the league. Soon after The Destroyers made him quit baseball.

Thorogood gained his first mainstream exposure as a support act for the Rolling Stones during their 1981 U.S. tour. He also was the featured musical guest on Saturday Night Live in October 1982.

During this time, George and the Destroyers also became known for their rigorous schedule, including the "50/50" tour of 1980, on which the band toured 50 US states in the space of 50 days. After two shows in Boulder, Colorado, Thorogood and his band flew to Hawaii for one show and then performed a show in Alaska on the following night. The next day the band flew to Washington State, met their roadies who had their Checker car and a truck, and continued a one show per state tour for all fifty states in exactly fifty nights. In addition, they played Washington, DC on the same day that they performed a show in Maryland.

George signed with EMI America Records and in 1982 released his best-known song, "Bad to the Bone," and an album of the same name.

The song has been used frequently in television and film, including the sci-fi thriller Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the comedies Problem Child, and Problem Child 2, Stephen King's Christine, and many episodes of the television sitcom Married with Children, and during the intro to the movie Major Payne.

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For more about George, visit his Website at -

http://www.georgethorogood.com/

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February 16: British actress and “Britain’s Got Talent” judge, Amanda Holden, is 43-years-old today.

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Amanda Louise Holden was born in Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire and was brought up in the village of Waltham Chase. She joined the Bishop's Waltham Little Theatre Company when she was nine.

When she was 16 the family moved to Bournemouth and ran a small B&B while Amanda herself studied Drama and English literature A levels with Terry Clarke and Charles Lamb at the Jellicoe Theatre, now part of Bournemouth and Poole College. She successfully auditioned for the independent drama school Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in the Wood Green area of North London when she was 18, graduating in July 1994.

Her first television appearance was as a contestant on the UK game show Blind Date in 1991, since which she has become a familiar face on British television. Holden appeared in the ITV drama Wild at Heart as Sarah Trevanion. She is currently a judge on Britain's Got Talent alongside Simon Cowell, David Walliams and Alesha Dixon and previously Piers Morgan, Kelly Brook, Michael McIntyre and David Hasselhoff.

She has appeared on various British comedy and drama series such as Smack the Pony, EastEnders, Hearts and Bones, Cutting It and as a co-star with Harry Enfield in comedy series Celeb. In April 2009, it was reported that the US network CBS had offered Holden the job of one-time guest presenter on The Early Show, a daytime talk show.

Holden confirmed that she would host the show, and presented alongside regular presenters Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez on 1 June. Holden has since been signed up with CBS as a British correspondent for The Early Show.

In July 2009, Holden became a gossip columnist for the News of the World's celebrity-oriented magazine Fabulous. In January 2010, she started a new three-part show called Amanda Holden's Fantasy Lives.

In 2011, Holden hosted one-off documentary The Nation's Favourite Bee Gees Song on ITV1. On 6 July 2012 she guest presented Lorraine on ITV Breakfast.

Holden has appeared in several stage musicals and in 2004 was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance in the West End production of Thoroughly Modern Millie. She most recently finished playing the role of Princess Fiona in the original West End production of Shrek the Musical, which began on 6 May 2011. The show opened at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 14 June 2011.

Holden departed the show on 3 October 2011, ten weeks earlier than planned, to focus on her unborn child. She was replaced by Girls Aloud singer Kimberley Walsh.

For this role Holden won the WhatsOnStage.com Theatregoers' Choice Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

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For more about Amanda, visit her Website at -

http://www.officialamandaholden.com/

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February 14: Rob Thomas, lead vocalist for Matchbox 20, is 42-years-old today.

Born Robert Kelly in Landstuhl, West Germany on Ramstein Air Base to parents serving in the U.S. Army, who moved the family place to place around the world, Rob has been the primary songwriter and lead singer of the band Matchbox Twenty. Thomas also records and performs as a solo artist.

He and his siblings spent much time with their mother in Gainesville, Florida and with their grandparents in Manning, South Carolina where he dropped out in the twelfth grade at the age of 17.

Thomas earned three Grammy awards for co-writing and singing on the Carlos Santana triple-platinum hit "Smooth," on the album Supernatural in 1999. He has also lent his songwriting talents to such artists as Tom Petty, Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Marc Anthony, Pat Green, Taylor Hicks, Travis Tritt and Daughtry.

Since 1995, his band has released a string of hit singles to radio including "Push," "3 A.M.," "Real World," "Back 2 Good," "Bent," "If You're Gone," "Mad Season," "Disease," "Unwell," "Bright Lights," and "How Far We've Come."

In 2004, the Songwriters Hall of Fame awarded Thomas its first Starlight Award, recognizing young songwriters who have already had a lasting influence in the music industry.

In April 2005, after nearly 10 years with Matchbox Twenty, Thomas began his solo career with the release of Something to Be which shot to #1 on the album chart. This marked the first time a male artist from a rock and/or pop group had debuted at number one with his first solo album since the Billboard 200 was introduced 50 years prior.

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His first single off this album, "Lonely No More," reached number six on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. The single debuted in the Top 10 of the Australian ARIAnet singles chart on the week of April 4, 2005.

The second single, "This Is How a Heart Breaks," (used during a majority of telecasts for ABC's coverage of the NBA Playoffs), was not as successful, but the third single, "Ever The Same," went gold and became a top-five Adult Contemporary hit.

In January 2007, Thomas released a single entitled "Little Wonders" from the soundtrack to the Disney animated feature, Meet the Robinsons. "Little Wonders" reached #5 on the Mediabase Hot Adult Contemporary chart. Thomas was featured on the June 14, 2007 episode of the long-running PBS series Soundstage.

In 2007, Thomas and his band Matchbox Twenty released another album entitled Exile on Mainstream. The album was a two-disc set with one disc featuring the band's greatest hits to date and the second disc featuring six new songs. The album released three singles: "How Far We've Come," "All Your Reasons," and "These Hard Times."

Also in 2009, Rob Thomas and Rivers Cuomo began a collaboration due to popular demand to appear on Weezer's eighth album. 

On June 9, 2009, Thomas released "Give Me The Meltdown" on US iTunes. Similarly, "Someday" was released on June 16. On June 22, Cradlesong was made available for streaming only on the we7 website, one week ahead of its UK release date. In March 2010, Thomas announced plans to release a four song digital only EP entitled Someday EP featuring three new songs.

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for more about Rob, visit his website at -

http://www.robthomasmusic.com/

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Feb. 13: Leslie Feist - Broken Social Scene and "1234" - is 38-years-old today.

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Did you know?

At the age of twelve Feist performed as one of 1000 dancers in the opening ceremonies of the Calgary Winter Olympics, which she cites as inspiration for the video "1234."

At the 2008 Juno Awards in Calgary, she was the top winner with five awards, including Songwriter of the Year, Artist of the Year, Pop Album of the Year, Album of the Year and Single of the Year.

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Leslie Feist was born in 1976 in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada. She aspired to be a writer, and spent much of her youth singing in choirs. Because her father is American, Feist has dual Canadian-U.S. citizenship.

In 1991, at age 15, Feist got her start in music when she founded, and was the lead vocalist for a Calgary punk band called Placebo. She and her bandmates won a local Battle of the Bands competition and were awarded the opening slot at the festival Infest 1993. At this concert she met Brendan Canning, whose band hHead performed immediately before hers, and with whom she joined in Broken Social Scene ten years later.

She moved from Calgary to Toronto in 1996 and was asked by Noah Mintz of hHead to play bass in his solo project Noah's Arkweld. She played the bass guitar in the band for a year despite never having played bass before. In 1998, she became the rhythm guitarist for the band By Divine Right and toured with them from 1998 to 2000.

Beginning in 1999, Feist performed with an number of other musicians including Merrill Nisker and the electro-punk musician Peaches. Feist worked the back of the stage at Peaches' shows, using a sock puppet and calling herself "Bitch Lap Lap."

She also collaborated with Norwegian duo Kings of Convenience as co-writer and guest vocalist on their album Riot on an Empty Street. She also co-write and sang "The Simple Story" as a duet with Jane Birkin on her album Rendezvous.

Feist's solo debut album, Monarch (Lay Your Jewelled Head Down), was released in 1999. It is composed of 10 songs, including "Monarch" and "That's What I Say, It's Not What I Mean."

In the summer of 2001, Feist self-produced seven songs at home which she called The Red Demos, which have never been released commercially. She spent more than two years touring throughout Europe. She then joined a group of old friends in forming a new version Toronto indie rock group Broken Social Scene. While on tour in Europe she began recording new versions of her home recorded Red Demos, which would later become her major label debut Let It Die.

She won two Canadian Juno Awards for "Best New Artist" and "Best Alternative Rock Album" in 2004. Sales of Let It Die totaled 500,000 internationally, and she was awarded a platinum record in Canada, as well as a gold album in France.

Fellow Canadian Buck 65 appeared in the Feist-directed music video for "One Evening," which was also nominated for Video of the Year at the 2004 Juno Awards.

Feist's third solo album, The Reminder, was released on 23 April 2007 in Europe, and on 1 May 2007 in Canada, the USA, and the rest of the world. The album features "1234," a song co-written by New Buffalo's Sally Seltmann, that became a surprise hit after being featured in a commercial for the iPod nano, hitting #8 in the US, a rare feat for indie rock musicians and even more notable since it hit the Top Ten on the strength of downloads alone.

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Leslie has been lauded in the press and was featured on the cover of the New York Times arts section in June 2007. The Reminder had sold worldwide over 1,000,000 copies and is certified gold in the U.S. The album also won a 2008 Juno Award for "Album of the Year" in April 2008.

Feist performed an alternate version of "1234" on Sesame Street during its 39th season, teaching children to count. Also in 2007, Feist was placed #9 on Spinner.com's 2007 Women Who Rock Right Now. and named both Spin’s and Blender’s Breakout Artist of the Year.

In 2009, Feist was featured in the CTV television film "My Musical Brain" with neuroscientist and writer Daniel Levitin, based on Levitin's bestselling book This Is Your Brain On Music.

Feist collaborated with Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear on the song "Service Bell" for the AIDS charity the Red Hot Organization.

On September 22, 2010, Feist announced through her website the release of a documentary film about the creative process of making of The Reminder, called Look at What the Light Did Now. The film focuses on the recording of The Reminder as well as the development of the tour through puppetry and projection.

In December 2010, Feist released of a documentary film about the creative process of making of The Reminder, called Look at What the Light Did Now. It was directed by Canadian film director Anthony Seck and was shot on Super 8 mm film. The film focuses on the recording of The Reminder as well as the development of the tour through puppetry and projection. Feist also had a cameo in the 2011 movie The Muppets.

Her album Metals was released on 30 September 2011. She received three Juno awards at the 2012 ceremony: Artist of the Year, Adult Alternative Album of the Year for Metals, and Music DVD of the Year for her documentary Look at What the Light Did Now.

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For more about Leslie, visit her Website at -

http://www.listentofeist.com/

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February 12: Gene McDaniels - "Tower of Strength" & "A Hundred Pounds of Clay" - was born on this date in 1935...

... he died on July 29, 2011 when he was 76 years-old. 

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Eugene Booker McDaniels was born in Kansas City, Missouri and grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and went on to have six Top 40 hits in the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The two that went into the Top 5 were 1961's "Tower of Strength" (#5 on the pop chart) and "A Hundred Pounds of Clay," which reached #3 on the pop chart, and sold over one million records, earning gold disc status. "Tower of Strength" reached #49 in the UK Singles Chart.


In the late 1960s, McDaniels focused on black consciousness, and his best-known song in this genre was "Compared to What," a jazz-soul protest song made famous by Les McCann and Eddie Harris on their album, Swiss Movement, and also covered by Roberta Flack. McDaniels also attained the top spot on the chart as a songwriter.

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In 1974, Roberta Flack reached #1 with McDaniels' "Feel Like Makin' Love." This won a Grammy award and McDaniels also received a BMI award for outstanding radio airplay, at the time of the award the song had already had over 5 million plays.

Other songs that McDaniels recorded included "Point Of No Return" and "Spanish Lace." In the early 1970s, McDaniels recorded on the Atlantic label, which released the McDaniels albums, Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse and Outlaw.

In the 1980s, McDaniels recorded an album with the percussionist Terry Silverlight, which has not yet been released. In 2005, McDaniels released Screams & Whispers on his own record label.

In 2009,  he released a new album, Evolution's Child, which features his lyrics, and a number of songs composed or arranged with pianist Ted Brancato. Some of the songs are said to feature jazz musician Ron Carter on concert bass.
McDaniel's "Jagger the Dagger" was featured on the Tribe Vibes breakbeat compilation album, after it had been sampled by A Tribe Called Quest.

McDaniels also appeared in films. They included the 1962 film, It's Trad, Dad!, (released in the United States as Ring-A-Ding Rhythm), which was directed by Richard Lester. He also appeared in 1963's The Young Swingers. McDaniels is briefly seen singing in the choir in the 1974 film, Uptown Saturday Night.





McDaniels  lived as a self-described "hermit" in the state of Maine. In 2010, he launched series of YouTube videos on his website featuring his music and thoughts on some of his creations.

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For more about Gene, visit his Website at -

http://genemcdaniels.com/
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February 12: Chynna Phillips of Wilson Phillips is 46-years-old today.

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Phillips was born Gilliam Chynna Phillips in Los Angeles, California. She is known as a member of Wilson Phillips and for being the daughter of The Mamas & the Papas' band members John and Michelle Phillips and the half-sister of actress Mackenzie Phillips.

Phillips began her career in acting. She appeared in films such as 1987's Some Kind of Wonderful, 1988's Caddyshack II, 1989's Say Anything and as the title character Roxanne Pulitzer in the 1989 television biopic Roxanne: The Prize Pulitzer.

In the late 1980s, Phillips formed the trio Wilson Phillips with her childhood friends Carnie and Wendy Wilson. Wilson Phillips released their debut album, Wilson Phillips, in 1990. Their debut single, "Hold On", hit #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart on June 9, 1990, bumping Madonna's "Vogue" off the top spot.

The single was also #1 on the US Billboard Adult Contemporary and became a worldwide hit, peaking at #2 in Australia, #6 in the UK, #7 in Ireland, #10 in Sweden, and at #15 in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. The single also won Wilson Phillips the Billboard Music Award for Hot 100 Single of the Year for 1990.

The second and fourth singles from the album also became number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100: "Release Me" (2 weeks) and "You're in Love" (1 week). The singles "Impulsive" and "The Dream Is Still Alive'", peaked at #4 and #12, respectively, on the Hot 100.

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In 1992, Wilson Phillips also made rock history as Billboard declared their debut album the best selling album of all time by an all female group, peaking at #2 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and selling over 5 million copies in the US and over 10 million copies worldwide, which also made Wilson Phillips, at the time, the best selling female group of all time, breaking the previous record set by The Supremes.

In June 1992, Wilson Phillips released their second album, Shadows and Light. The album was deeply personal and adopted a more serious tone, with tracks exploring issues such as child abuse ("Where Are You") and their estrangement from their fathers ("Flesh and Blood", "All the Way From New York"). The first single, "You Won't See Me Cry,'" peaked at #20 in the US and #18 in the UK, the first time they had a higher-ranking single in the UK than in the US. The album peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum.

Shortly after the release of Shadows and Light, Chynna Phillips announced plans for a solo career, and the group decided to disband.


In 1995, Phillips released her debut solo album, Naked and Sacred, but failed to recapture the success she found with Wilson Phillips.

 In 1995, she returned to acting appearing as Kim MacAfee in the television movie Bye Bye Birdie. In 2004, she voiced the character of Kitty along with her husband William Baldwin as Johnny 13 in Danny Phantom.

Chynna appeared in brother-in-law Stephen Baldwin's documentary Livin It: Unusual Suspects. In 2009, she teamed up with singer/songwriter Vaughan Penn to form the duo "Chynna and Vaughan." The two released their debut album, "One Reason" on September 22, 2009.

In 2004, Wilson Phillips reunited to record their third album California which featured cover tunes from West Coast singers from the 1960s and 1970s.


In September 2009, Chynna's half-sister Mackenzie Phillips alleged in a her memoir that she and her father had a "non-consensual" ten-year incestuous relationship. While both Genevieve Waite, John's wife at the time, and Michelle Phillips, John's second wife, told the media that they did not believe her claims, Chynna Phillips stated on the record that she did believe Mackenzie was telling the truth.

Chynna Phillips entered rehab for anxiety on Feb. 12, 2010.

Chynna was a contestant on Dancing With the Stars in 2011, and was eliminated in Week 4 despite what many said, were strong performances.

Wilson Phillips reunitedfor an original album to celebrate their 20 years together as a musical group featuring Mamas and the Papas and Beach Boys' tunes. Dedicated, features covers of songs by the Beach Boys and the Mamas and the Papas. They had  Owen Elliot, the daughter of Mamas and the Papas singer Cass Elliot, to sing on "Dedicated to the One I Love."

The group was also featured in the blockbuster comedy film Bridesmaids.

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For more about Chynna and WilsonPhillips, visit their Websites at-  

http://www.chynnaphillips.com/

 http://www.wilsonphillipsmusic.com/

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