WFire Records is a British independent record label, with offices in London, England and New York, USA. The label was founded by music journalist Johnny Waller and Clive Solomon in 1985 and released early records from Pulp, Teenage Fanclub, Spacemen 3, Blue Aeroplanes, Lives of Angels and others. In the early 1990s, the label was home to Neutral Milk Hotel, The Lemonheads, Built to Spill, Urge Overkill and others. The label was taken over in the late 1990s by James Nicholls, and has gone on to release albums by Guided By Voices, Giant Sand, Pere Ubu, Black Lips, Jane Weaver, Josephine Foster and The Lemonheads
W50FOOTWAVE is an American alternative rock band, formed in 2003. The band is fronted by Kristin Hersh, who writes the group's songs with collaborative efforts from the other group members in composing and arranging the music. The group's name is a reference to both an illustration and the term for the 50-foot sound wave of the lowest F tone audible to the human ear. The band sometimes abbreviates its name as L'~, using the Roman numeral for 50.
WBardo Pond are an American psychedelic rock band formed in 1991, and who are currently signed to London-based label Fire Records. The current members are Michael Gibbons (guitar), John Gibbons (guitar), Isobel Sollenberger, Clint Takeda and Jason Kourkounis (drums). Bardo Pond's music is often classified as space rock, acid rock, post-rock, shoegazing, noise or psychedelic rock. Some Bardo Pond album titles have been derived from the names of esoteric psychedelic substances. Their sound has been likened to Pink Floyd, Spacemen 3 and My Bloody Valentine amongst others.
WBark Psychosis are an English post-rock band/musical project from east London formed in 1986. They were one of the bands that Simon Reynolds cited when coining "post-rock" as a musical style in 1994, and are thus considered one of the key bands defining the genre.
WBlack Lips is an American garage rock band from Atlanta, Georgia, United States, formed in 1999.
WThe Blue Aeroplanes are an English rock band from Bristol, the mainstays of which have been Gerard Langley, brother John Langley, and dancer Wojtek Dmochowski. All three had previously been members of the new wave "art band" Art Objects from 1978 to 1981.
WThe Chills are a New Zealand rock band formed in Dunedin in 1980. The band is essentially the continuing project of singer/songwriter Martin Phillipps, who is the group's sole constant member. For a time in the 1990s, the act was billed as Martin Phillipps & The Chills. In the 1980s and 1990s, The Chills had some significant chart success in their homeland, and were a cult band in other parts of the world as one of the earliest proponents of the Dunedin sound.
WEvan Griffith Dando is an American musician and frontman of the Lemonheads. He has also embarked on a solo career and collaborated on songs with various artists. In December 2015 Dando was inducted into the Boston Music Awards Hall of Fame.
WDanielson is an American rock band from Clarksboro, New Jersey, that plays indie pop gospel music. The group consists of frontman Daniel Smith and a number of various artists with whom he collaborates. Smith has also released solo work as Brother Danielson.
WThe Dream Syndicate is an American alternative rock band from Los Angeles, California, originally active from 1981 to 1989, and reunited since 2012. The band is associated with neo-psychedelia and the Paisley Underground music movement; of the bands in that movement, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Dream Syndicate "rocked with the highest degree of unbridled passion and conviction." Though never commercially successful, the band met with considerable acclaim, especially for its songwriting and guitar playing. Bandleader Steve Wynn reformed the band in 2012, and a fifth studio album was released in February 2017.
WESG is an American funk rock band formed in the South Bronx in 1978. Trouser Press called it "one of the most dynamic bands that New York could offer at the top of the '80s." ESG has been influential across a wide range of musical genres, including hip hop, and dance-punk. The band's track "UFO" is one of the most sampled songs in history.
WDuke Garwood is a London-based, English multi-instrumentalist.
WGiant Sand is an American band from Tucson, Arizona. Its most constant member is singer-songwriter Howe Gelb. The group started as Giant Sandworms in the late 1970s post-punk and paisley underground scenes. They later shortened their name and developed an idiosyncratic sound rooted in alternative country but touching on a wide range of other styles and featuring Gelb's beatnik-influenced vocals and songwriting.
WThe Groundhogs are a British rock band founded in late 1963, that toured extensively in the 1960s, achieved prominence in the early 1970s and continued sporadically into the 21st century. Tony McPhee is the sole constant member of the group, which has gone through many personnel changes but usually records and performs as a power trio.
WThe Gun Club were an American post-punk band from Los Angeles, California, United States, which existed from 1979 to 1996. Created and led by singer-songwriter and guitarist Jeffrey Lee Pierce, they were notable as one of the first bands in the punk rock subculture to incorporate influences from blues, rockabilly, and country music. The Gun Club has been called a "tribal psychobilly blues" band, as well as initiators of the punk blues sound cowpunk - "He (Pierce) took Robert Johnson and pre-war acoustic blues and 'punkified' it. Up until then bands were drawing on Iggy + The Stooges and the New York Dolls but he took it back so much further for inspiration."
WPere Ubu is an American rock group formed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1975. Despite a variety of long-term and recurring band members, singer David Thomas is the only constant. They released their debut album The Modern Dance in 1978 and followed with several more LPs before disbanding in 1982. Thomas reformed the group in 1987, continuing to record and tour.