Rock the Vote is a non-profit organization in the United States. Through registering new young voters, the group aims to “channel the energy among young people around racial, economic, and health justice into one of the most powerful actions they can take: voting.”
The organization was founded in 1990 by Virgin Records America Co-Chairman Jeff Ayeroff to encourage young Americans to vote. It is geared toward increasing voter turnout among voters ages 18 to 24. Rock the Vote is known for its celebrity spokespeople and its partnership with MTV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_the_Vote
John Michael Stipe (/ˈstaɪp/; born January 4, 1960) is an American singer, songwriter and artist, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the alternative rock band R.E.M.
Stipe was born in Metro Atlanta in January 1960. Due to his father’s military commission, his family moved constantly, with Stipe spending part of his childhood in West Germany before finishing high school in suburban St Louis. Stipe attended the University of Georgia in Athens, where he became involved in the local college rock and jangle pop scene. He formed R.E.M. after meeting his bandmates at the university and soon dropped out to pursue music with them. The band issued its debut single, “Radio Free Europe,” and subsequently signed to I.R.S. Records, meeting wide acclaim and soon great commercial success.
Possessing a distinctive voice, Stipe has been noted for the “mumbling” style of his early career. Since the mid-1980s, Stipe has sung in “wailing, keening, arching vocal figures” that R.E.M. biographer David Buckley compared to Celtic folk artists and Muslim muezzin. He was in charge of R.E.M.’s visual aspect, often selecting album artwork and directing many of the band’s music videos. Outside the music industry, he owns and runs two film production studios, C-00 and Single Cell Pictures.
As a member of R.E.M., Stipe was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. As a singer-songwriter, Stipe influenced a wide range of artists, including Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Bono of U2 has described his voice as “extraordinary”, and Yorke told The Guardian that Stipe is his favorite lyricist, saying “I loved the way he would take an emotion and then take a step back from it and in doing so make it so much more powerful”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stipe
Video preservation by DDVF.com for educational purposes. Original airdate was July 1992.
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