All-female band

An all-female band is a musical group in popular music genres such as rock, blues, jazz and related genres which is exclusively composed of female musicians. This is distinct from a girl group, in which the female members are solely vocalists, though this terminology is not universally followed. While all-male bands are common in many rock and pop bands, all-female bands are less common.

1920s–1950s

In the Jazz Age and during the 1930s, "all-girl" bands such as The Blue Belles, the Parisian Redheads (later the Bricktops), Lil-Hardin's All-Girl Band, The Ingenues, The Harlem Playgirls, Phil Spitalny's Musical Sweethearts and "Helen Lewis and Her All-Girl Jazz Syncopators" were popular. Dozens of early sound films were made of the vaudeville style all-girl groups, especially short subject promotional films for Paramount and Vitaphone. (In 1925, Lee DeForest filmed Lewis and her band in his short-lived Phonofilm process, in a film now in the Maurice Zouary collection at the Library of Congress.) Blanche Calloway, sister of Cab Calloway, led a male band, Blanche Calloway and Her Joy Boys, from 1932 to 1939, and Ina Ray Hutton led an all-girl band, the Melodears, from 1934 to 1939. Eunice Westmoreland, under the name Rita Rio, led an all-girl band appearing on NBC Radio and in short subjects for Vitaphone and RKO before changing her career to acting and her professional name to Dona Drake, appearing in numerous 1940's movies. All-girl bands active in vaudeville, variety and in early sound films during the 1920s to the 1950s are documented by Kristin McGee in Some Liked it Hot: Jazz Women in Film and Television. Sally Placksin, Linda Dahl, D. Antoinette Handy and Frank Driggs along with professor Sherrie Tucker, in her book Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s, have also documented this era. A Polish group Filipinki was established in 1959.

From Hell

From Hell is a graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell, originally published in serial form from 1989 to 1996 and collected in 1999, speculating upon the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper. The title is taken from the first words of the "From Hell" letter, which some authorities believe was an authentic message sent from the killer in 1888. The collected edition is 572 pages long. The 2000 and later editions are the most common prints. The comic was loosely adapted into a film of the same title, released in 2001.

About the book

From Hell was originally serialized as one of several features in Taboo, an anthology comic book published by Steve Bissette's Spiderbaby Grafix. After running in Taboo #2–7 (1989–1992), Moore and Campbell moved the project to its own series, published first by Tundra Publishing, then by Kitchen Sink Press. The series was published in ten volumes between 1991 and 1996, and an appendix, From Hell: The Dance of the Gull-catchers, was published in 1998. The entire series was collected in a trade paperback and published by Eddie Campbell Comics in 1999; trade paperback and hardcover versions are now published by Top Shelf Productions in the USA and Knockabout Comics in the UK.

Rock Band

Rock Band is a series of music video games developed by Harmonix and MTV Games, and distributed by Electronic Arts for the Nintendo DS, iOS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, and Xbox 360 game systems. The series, inspired by Harmonix's previous efforts on the Guitar Hero series, allows up to four players to simulate the performance of popular rock music songs by playing with controllers modeled after musical instruments. Players can play the lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, and drums parts to songs, as well as sing into a USB microphone. Players are scored on their ability to match scrolling musical notes while playing instruments, and by their ability to match the singer's pitch on vocals.

The concept for Rock Band was formed while Harmonix was working on the Guitar Hero series, with the idea to expand the note-matching gameplay into multiple instruments. When their Guitar Hero partner, RedOctane, was acquired by Activision, Harmonix was acquired by MTV Games, a division of Viacom, allowing them to pursue the title. The first game in the series, Rock Band, was released in 2007 and its sequel Rock Band 2 was released in 2008. As the rhythm game market began to flounder in 2009, Viacom put Harmonix up for sale, but investors were able to buy the company, making it an independent studio. Harmonix would go on to expand the series, including obtaining the lucrative licensing needed for The Beatles: Rock Band in 2009. Rock Band 3 was released in 2010 which introduced new "Pro" features and keyboard parts. Following saturation of the rhythm game market, Harmonix opted to wait on releasing another main title for several years. Upon the release of the next generation of consoles, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Harmonix released Rock Band 4 in October 6, 2015; the company does not plan to release further versions of the game for these consoles but instead see Rock Band 4 as a platform they can continue to expand on through game patches.