[atlantaprog] Mannheim Steamroller

The New York Times has a long article about Mannheim Steamroller and their leader Chip Davis.

"Lutes + Synthesizers +Rock Beats = America's Most Popular Christmas Music?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/magazine/18christmas.html?8hpib

In addition to being a perennial arena-filling concert act (6-member band and 22-piece backing orchestra), Davis has sold 37 million albums on his own indie label.

"He is one of the most successful recording artists in the history of American music. Mannheim Steamroller has sold more than 27 million albums, more than Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, R.E.M. or Eminem, according to the Recording Industry Association of America."

"This year, more than 160 radio stations around the country have switched to an all-Christmas music format during the holiday season... Mannheim Steamroller dominates those radio playlists, with as many as 15 songs in regular rotation on some stations."

"The music is strange: a hodgepodge of rock rhythms, blipping synthesizers, Renaissance instrumentation and orchestral extravagance - a big, bright and, even by Christmas standards, fearlessly schlocky sound that Davis has called "18th-century classical rock." In Davis's reworked carols, the showy time-signature changes and keyboard passages of 70's progressive rock rub up against lutes, cornemuses and other 15th-century instruments; classical piano filigrees and gusty Muzak strings rise over a thudding backbeat."

Love it or hate it, Mannheim Steamroller has been hugely influential and lucrative. And prog.

Wheat Williams
5345 Pinnacle Peak Lane
Norcross, GA 30071-4914
United States of America

wheat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

770-448-9734


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