Tuesday 23 November 2010

Article Research

For the article I am going to write, I need to conduct research. This is the research I found to help me conduct the article of Maroon 5: Now & Then.


Band Members:
James Valentine - Guitar
Jesse Carmichael - Keyboards
Mickey Madden - Bass
Matt Flynn - Drums
Adam Levine - Guitarist/Lead Vocalist

The four original members of Maroon 5 have known each other since attending Brentwood School together in Los Angeles. While attending Brentwood Scholo, Adam Levine and Jesse Carmichael joined up with Mickey Madden and Ryan Dusick to form Kara's Flowers, a garage/grunge candee. The name was taken from a girl that the band had a "collective crush" on. The band played its first gig at Whisky a Go Go on September 16, 1995. While they were playing a beach party in Malibu, indie producer Tommy Allen heard them playing and offered to manage them and record a complete record with his partner, songwriter John DeNicola (Dirty Dancing ). While shopping for a deal for the band, Bob Cavallo's management team heard the record Allen and DeNicola produced, which eventually led to their deal with Reprise Records and producer Rob Cavallo.  Very early on, their sound was what Carmichael called "Fugazi [the sound] meets Sesame Street [the lyrics]". However, by the release of The Fourth World in 1996, they had morphed into band reminiscent of 1960s Brit pop. Despite high expectations from the band and record company, the album failed to catch on and their lead single, "Soap Disco", was a failure.  According to Levine, the failure of the album was "a huge disappointment" that nearly led them to break up in 1998. The album sold around 5,000 copies and they were dropped after only six months.

Levine and Carmichael went to college at Five Towns College in Long Island, New York, while Madden and Dusick stayed home in L.A., and attended a semester of college at UCLA. At Five Towns College, Levine and Carmichael were exposed for the first time to the gospel, hip-hop and R&B of their largely African-American schoolmates .Levine credits the period with informing the band's new style stating:


When the two returned in 2000, they brought those influences with them. Sam Farrar (bassist of the band Phantom Planet, which is currently on hiatus, and former roommate of Levine and Valentine) says that the Aaliyah song "Are You That Somebody?" affected the band and influenced the song "Not Coming Home." Producer Tim Sommer signed them to a demo deal with MCA records and produced three tracks with them in Los Angeles in the middle of 2000 with Mark Dearnly engineering. Against Sommer's advice, MCA declined to pick up the band, and these tracks were never released. Jordan Felstein, a friend of Levine's family and a junior agent at ICM, stopped by one of the band's rehearsals and was so surprised by what he heard that he quit his job in order to manage the band full time. The band put together a demo that was rejected by several labels, before falling into the hands of Octone Records executives James Diener, Ben Berkman and David Boxenbaum. While looking for talent for the new Octone label, Berkman was given a bunch of demos by the brother of a former colleague at Columbia Records and the song that caught his attention was "a genius song called 'Sunday Morning'". Berkman was surprised the song was credited to Kara's Flowers because they sounded completely different to the band he had heard while at Warner Brothers.
Berkman encouraged Diener and Boxenbaum to fly out to L.A. to watch a showcase gig at the Viper Room for the four-piece Kara's Flowers. After watching Levine onstage, they were convinced. Berkman told HitQuarters he believed what the band needed was a "fifth member to play the guitar and free up the singer, so he could be the star I perceived him to be." Within a month of hearing the demo Kara's Flowers became the new label's first act.

Octone immediately insisted that the band change its name to break with its pop-rock past. Also, the label began looking for a full-time guitarist to enable Levine to focus on performing as the frontman. James Valentine (from the L.A. band Square) was recruited for the job. Even still, the only songs of their repertoire that showcased the band's new direction were "Sunday Morning" and the soon-to-be-written "She Will Be Loved"—neither of which the label approved of as a first single. The band toured for a full year before entering the studio with producer Matt Wallace. Levine's frustration with Berkman's demands for a lead single inspired him to write just that—a song called "Harder to Breathe".

While they were in high school,
 vocalist and rhythm guitarist Adam Levine, keyboardist Jesse Carmichael, bass guitarist Mickey Madden, and drummer Ryan Dusick formed a garage band called Kara's Flowers in 1995 and released one album in 1997. They reformed, with guitarist James Valentine, in 2001 and pursued a new direction as Maroon 5.
‘..started playing music together in junior high, under the sway of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and their ilk.’


             Los Angeles, California, was home to high school students Adam Levine, Jesse Carmichael, Ryan Dusick, and Mickey Madden. In the late 1990s, the friends started an alternative rock band called Kara's Flowers. They signed a deal with Reprise Records and released the 1997 record The Fourth World, but the album failed to chart and the band parted ways with Reprise. The young band wasn't quite prepared for stardom yet, and it wouldn't hit until nearly seven years later.
             "I think that we weren't ready musically or emotionally to be successful," Madden told Chart magazine's online news site about Kara's Flowers. "Not that success is any measure of quality, but there was definitely something missing." The guys put Kara's Flowers on an indefinite hiatus while Levine and Carmichael enrolled in classes at the State University of New York, and Dusick and Madden went to the University of California Los Angeles. Levine and Carmichael began to discover a whole new world of music while they were at school on the East Coast. "The halls would be blasting gospel music, and people would be listening to stuff that we'd never actually listened to, like Biggie Smalls, Missy Elliot, and Jay-Z," Levine stated in the band's official biography. "When I think of songwriting, I think of the Beatles, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, the stuff that I grew up on, but then I was like, 'I want to do this. Stevie Wonder came into my life at that point, and I just found a knack for doing it," he continued.
             Discovering this new music renewed Levine's interest, and in 1999, the musicians decided to re-start Kara's Flowers. But with their new sound—one that blended the classic pop styles of their teenage days with a fresh new funky R&B tint—the band needed a new name. Once they began recording demos in 2000, they were now known as Maroon 5—a moniker the band members have yet to explain. One year after recording their new demos with their new upbeat sound, Maroon 5 signed a deal with a new division of J Records/RCA. "I think when we started writing songs for Kara's Flowers, we didn't hit on any musical ideas lyrically," Madden told Chart. "But then once we came up with these songs for Maroon 5, we started playing in a way we never had before."
             With a pop face and funk undertones, Maroon 5's first album, Songs About Jane, was released in 2002. The band spent most of the year on the road opening up shows for Vanessa Carlton and their old friend John Mayer, whom Valentine had met at a high school summer camp. Octone Records released "Harder to Breathe" as the first single, but the record got little press or radio play. But slowly, after time, radio began to play the song, MTV screened the video, and Songs About Jane began to get positive reviews. All of this happened nearly a year after the record was released. Finally, in 2003, "Harder to Breathe," hit the top 10 and when the second single,
"This Love," was released, it too hit the top 10.             In a review of Songs About Jane, E! Online wrote, "Sensitive guy Adam Levine and his friends mix a bit of vintage Motown, some swooning sweater rock, and even a smidge of 'N SYNC." It took months before other critics really noticed the album. The band's song-writing had improved and matured greatly since Kara's Flowers—and a lot of it had to do with singer Levine's love life. The band's mix of mainstream pop formula and funky blue-eyed soul was based around Levine's emotional lyrics, which were mostly, as fans could guess, about a girl named Jane. "Jane is my ex-girlfriend," Levine told People. "We dated for about six months. It was a really beautiful experience." Levine didn't stay heartbroken for too long; he soon began dating Kelly McGee, who appeared with Levine in the steamy music video for the band's breakthrough hit, "This Love."
             At this point, the songs the band was now performing on late-night talk shows and concerts had been written for a few years before most people heard them. Luckily, their sentiments still resonated with millions of buyers. In an interview with Soundspike.com, Levine told writer Christina Fuoco about his lyrics. "It's the most emotion, the most soul I've ever poured into anything in my whole life. I'm so happy [and] comfortable with what we had to say, musically and lyrically. We've been through so much over the last ten years—turbulent relationships and stuff was rocky with the band, a lot of different things. I feel like this record is definitely a culmination of all those things."
             Two years after Songs About Jane was released, the album had raked in sales of over eight million copies. The band began to tour larger venues and spent much of 2004 performing on TV. In the summer of 2004, hip-hop producer/rapper Kanye West got together with the band to put a fresh hip-hop spin on "This Love." While the band continued to release singles from their now two-year old album, fans wanted something new so the group released the acoustic EP 1.22.03. Acoustic in June. Unplugged versions of their now hit singles were included with a cover of the Beatles' "If I Fell," recorded at new York's Hit Factory studio, and a live version AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" from a show in Hamburg, Germany.
             In February of 2005, Maroon 5 performed in an opening number for the annual Grammy Awards alongside Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, the Black Eyed Peas, and more. They were nominated for two awards that evening and walked home with one for Best New Artist.
InfluencesBee Gees
Hall & Oates
Michael Jackson
The Police
Stevie Wonder
Justin Timberlake
Al Green
Jane's Addiction
Counting Crows
Wyclef Jean
Lauryn Hill
Prince
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Bill Withers
Spin Doctors
Jamiroqua
Semisonic
Matchbox Twenty
Dave Matthews Band
Tonic
2004-Billboard Music Award — Digital Artist of the Year[38]
-MTV Europe Music Award — Best New Act
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MTV Video Music Awards Latin America — Best Rock Artist, International
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MTV Video Music Awards Latin America — Best New Artist, International
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MTV Video Music Awards — Best New Artist
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New Music Weekly Award — AC40 Group/Duo of the Year
-Teen Choice Award — Choice Breakout Artist
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World Music Award — World's Best New Group[39]

2005

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Grammy Award  Best New Artist
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Grammy Award  Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal for "This Love" (Live - Friday the 13th version)-Groovevolt Music and Fashion Award — Best Collaboration, Duo or Group for "She Will Be Loved"-NRJ Radio Awards — International Breakout Act & Best International Song for "This Love"2007
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Billboard Music Award — Top Digital Album for "It Won't Be Soon Before Long"
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Grammy Award — Best Pop Performance by A Duo or Group With Vocals "Makes Me Wonder"

2009

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Grammy Award — Best Pop Performance by A Duo or Group With Vocals "Won't Go Home Without You" (Nominated)
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Grammy Award — Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals"If I Never See Your Face Again" (with Rihanna) (Nominated)

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