Search Music Artists beginning with W for Artist Links, Information, Birthdays and more
W.A.S.P.
W.A.S.P. is an American heavy metal band formed in 1982. They emerged from the same L.A. scene that spawned Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Quiet Riot and others. The band's popularity peaked in the 1980s, yet they continue to record and tour, making them one of the most enduring of the West Coast heavy metal bands. W.A.S.P. gained notoriety for their shock rock themed image, lyrics and live performances. The band were a prominent target in the mid-1980s of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) led by Tipper Gore, wife of then-Sen. Al Gore (D-Tenn.), an organization that pushed for warning labels on recorded music. The band immortalized its fight with the PMRC on the song "Harder, Faster" from their 1987 live album, Live...In the Raw. Blackie Lawless remains the only member from the original line-up. They released their most recent album in April, 2007 entitled Dominator. In October 2007, W.A.S.P. embarked on The Crimson Idol Tour, to celebrate that album's 15th anniversary. It is the first time that the album, often regarded to be among the band's finest work, was to be played in full from start to finish. The tour kicked off in Greece, in Thessaloniki at the Principal Club Theater on October 26, 2007. It was also announced that this tour would be W.A.S.P.'s last tour for some time. However, the band already confirmed some European festival appearances for summer 2009.
Walter Murphy
Walter Murphy was born in New York City and grew up in Manhattan. He attended the Manhattan School of Music where he studied jazz and classical piano. After finishing school, Murphy served as an arranger for Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band, before becoming a jingle writer. Murphy was the leader of a band called WAM in the early 1970s that played the NYC tristate area. The band was a poor man's Tower of Power and played R&B and Soul cover music. They frequently played a club in New Rochelle named Pearly's. Another group which played this local circuit was the Billy Vera band. In the early 1970s, Murphy became interested in adapting classical music into disco songs and coming out with hits, after seeing two songs of different genres based on composer Johann Sebastian Bach's music, "Joy" by Apollo 100, and "A Lover's Concerto" by the Toys, become popular. To try to attain this feat, Murphy made a demo tape with disco adaptations of several classical and neo-classical works in it, and mailed it to every record label in New York City. The response was unimpressive, and only a rendition of Ludwig Beethoven's "Symphony No. 5 In 'C' Minor" generated any interest amongst the various labels. This interest led to the owner of Private Stock Records, Larry Uttal, giving Murphy the chance to record the rendition, which was creatively dubbed "A Fifth of Beethoven".