About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Damien Rice

Encyclopedia : D : DA : DAM : Damien Rice

 

Damien Rice
Enlarge
Damien Rice

Damien Rice (born December 7, 1970) is an Irish musician, born in Celbridge, County Kildare, some 22 kilometres from Dublin, whose album O was an enormous success, quickly adding him to the roster of notable Irish musicians.

Contents

Biography

Rice was originally the singer for Juniper, a rock band with a notable stage show, which released the singles "The World Is Dead" and "Weatherman". On the eve of recording their first full album for Polygram in 1999, Rice became disenchanted with the commercial direction he felt pushed into by the label, and quit. His Juniper bandmates became Bell X1.

Moving to rural Italy, he lived quietly, until deciding to return to the music business on his own terms. Turning to acoustic guitar and intensely personal songwriting, he busked penniless around Europe until he was able to attract a band and coffeeshop gigs in the Dublin area. Exploiting a lucky connection to David Arnold, his second cousin, Rice was able to record O, for which he won the Shortlist Music Prize in 2003.

The other members of the band are: Lisa Hannigan who sings and occasionally plays guitar and bass; cellist Vyvienne Long; percussionist Tom Osander (aka: Tomo) who was also a member of the band God Street Wine; and bassist Shane Fitzsimons.

"The Blower's Daughter" and "Cold Water" were featured on the 2004 Mike Nichols film Closer. "Cold Water" was also featured on the TV drama ER ,in the movie Stay, and in the movie "I Am David". "Delicate" was featured on the movie Dear Frankie as well as on the TV dramas Lost, House, Alias and and "Cannonball" was featured in the movie In Good Company, on the TV series The L Word and the dramedy The O.C.

Damien Rice is also involved in a human rights campaign to free Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is presently being subjected to her third house arrest in Rangoon by the Burmese military - this time having been confined to her home since September 2003. Damien and Lisa recorded a charity song, campaigning for her being set free, called "Unplayed Piano". [link]

In 2004, 'Cannonball' was re-mixed for UK radio to make it more radio-friendly. Rice later was reported to be very unhappy with it, saying to Tom Dunne on PetSounds (Today FM) "look, I don't really like it". He then went on to report that he had allowed the remix to go through only if he signed a contract that forbid anyone from ever remixing one of his songs ever again.

Damien spent 2004 and 2005 reportedly recording the follow-up to O, a process which is still on-going. There is no expected release date. He also took some time to record an old Juniper track, "Cross-eyed Bear" (originally titled "Jewellery Box"), for the new Warchild album. When the song was first available for download, there was an error in the mastering of the track, in that Damien's and Lisa's voices were much lower than usual. The error was fixed a few days later, to the dismay of some fans (who thought that the low voice was intentional, and subsequently some people prefer the erroneous version.)

An intensely intimate and dark musician, Rice has often become annoyed with audience members who speak through his set. At an Australian gig, he allegedly said to an audience member that he'd give them their money back if they left the area. Again, at a Hollywood party, he said that none less than Britney Spears, who had turned up with date Colin Farrell, talked all the way through his set: "She was a pain in the arse," he reported in The Guardian.

Discography

Albums

Singles

TV appearances

Collaborations

See also

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: