John Mellencamp

Republic Records was a record label and subsidiary of Universal Motown Republic Group. They originally went by the name Cheese Factory Records. The label has been reincarnated into the current Universal Republic Records. According to Avery Lipman, he and his brother Monte Lipman first conceived of... Cheese Factory Records at the kitchen table of their apartment: "My brother and I had been working at record companies. He was in between jobs and we started putting records out as a hobby. We had a grassroots approach to the business. The first record we put out happened to work really well. That was the Bloodhound Gang." Frustrated by the limitations of being an independent with a very small staff, the Lipman brothers accepted an offer from Universal. One of several labels that comprise Universal Motown Republic Group, the newly named Republic Records was formed in 1995 as a sub-label of MCA's Geffen Records. Avery Lipman told HitQuarters that the pairing was a "complete disaster", saying: "Our ideas and vision didn’t fit with the label. We didn’t trust our own instincts. We let others decide what was right for the project.
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Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company—successor to the Volta Graphophone Company.... Columbia is the oldest brand name in pre-recorded sound, being the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers, instrumentalists, and bands. From 1961 to 1990, its recordings were released outside the U.S. and Canada on the CBS Records label before adopting the Columbia name in most of the world. Until 1989, Columbia Records had no connection to Columbia Pictures, which used various other names for record labels they owned, including Colpix and later Arista; rather, it was connected to the original owner, CBS, which stood for Columbia Broadcasting System.
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MCA Records was an American-based record company owned by MCA Inc., which later gave way to the larger MCA Music Entertainment Group , of which MCA Records was still part. MCA Records was absorbed by Geffen Records in 2003. MCA's country division, MCA Nashville Records, is a still active imprint of... Universal Music Group Nashville. MCA entered the recorded music business in 1962 with the purchase of the New York-based US Decca Records , including Coral Records and Brunswick Records. As American Decca owned Universal Pictures, MCA assumed full ownership of Universal and made it into the top film studio in town, producing hit after hit. In 1966, MCA formed Uni Records and in 1967 purchased Kapp Records which was placed under Uni Records management. The U.S. and U.K. Decca companies were forced to sever their ties because of World War II. MCA's U.S. based Decca Records had the rights to the Decca name in North and South America and parts of Asia including Japan. U.K. Decca owned the rights to the Decca name in the rest of the world. After the war, British Decca formed a new U.S. subsidiary, London Records. During this time U.S.
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Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th... century but is often applied to music that is older than that. Certain types of folk music are also called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. One meaning often given is that of old songs, with no known composers; another is music that has been transmitted and evolved by a process of oral transmission or performed by custom over a long period of time. Starting in the mid-20th century a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. The most common name for this new form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "contemporary folk music" or "folk revival music" to make the distinction. This type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, folk metal, electric folk, and others.
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