Demis Roussos

Alexandria, Egypt

Biography

Artemios "Demis" Ventouris-Roussos (15 June 1946 – 25 January 2015) was a Greek singer, songwriter and musician. As a band member he is best remembered for his work in the progressive rock music act Aphrodite's Child, but as a vocal soloist, his repertoire included hit songs like "Goodbye, My Love, Goodbye", "From Souvenirs to Souvenirs" and "Forever and Ever". Roussos sold over 60 million albums worldwide and became "an unlikely kaftan-wearing sex symbol". Roussos was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, in a Greek family. His father, George (Yorgos) Roussos, was a classical guitarist and an engineer, and his mother, Olga (1923–2019), participated with her husband in an amateur theatrical Greek group in Alexandria (there were three such groups in the Greek community); her family originally came from Greece. His maternal grandparents were from Chios and immigrated to Alexandria after the Asia Minor Catastrophe. His paternal grandparents were from Chania. His grandfather moved to Egypt in the early 1900s along with his future wife who was underaged. He changed his surname from Ventouris to Roussos to hide from her family. As a child, Roussos studied music and joined the Greek Church Byzantine choir in Alexandria. His formative years in the ancient port city's cosmopolitan atmosphere were influenced by jazz, but also traditional Arabic and Greek Orthodox music. His parents lost their possessions during the Suez Crisis in 1956 and consequently decided to move to Greece. After settling in Greece, Roussos participated in a series of musical groups beginning with the Idols when he was 17, where he met Evángelos Papathanassíou (later known as Vangelis) and Loukas Sideras, his future bandmates in Aphrodite's Child. After this, he joined the Athens-based band We Five, another cover band which had limited success in Greece. Roussos's operatic vocal style helped propel the band to international success, notably on their final album 666, based on passages from the Book of Revelation, which became a progressive rock cult classic. After Aphrodite's Child disbanded, Roussos continued to record sporadically with his former bandmate Vangelis. In 1970, the two released the film score album Sex Power (the album has also been credited to Aphrodite's Child), and later recorded the 1977 album Magic together. Their most successful collaboration was "Race to the End" (also sung in Spanish as "Tu Libertad"), a vocal adaptation of the musical theme from the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire (scored by Vangelis). Roussos also guested on Vangelis' soundtrack to Blade Runner (1982), on the tracks "Tales of the Future", "Damask Rose", "Taffey's Snake Pit Bar", and "On the Trail of Nexus 6" (several only available in non-bootleg form on the 29th Anniversary Limited Edition CD set released in 2011). ... Source: Article "Demis Roussos" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.

Movies

The Dame Edna Experience is a British television comedy talk-show hosted by Dame Edna Everage. It ran for twelve regular episodes on ITV, plus two Christmas specials. The first seven aired for the first time in 1987, the next seven in 1989. It was directed by Ian Hamilton and Alasdair MacMillan and produced by London Weekend Television. Regulars on the program, besides Dame Edna, were her "bridesmaid" Madge Allsop and Robin Houston who was the announcer, with orchestra conducted and arranged by Laurie Holloway. Each program featured several celebrity guests, usually three, but some programs included up to eight guests. There would also be other invited "guests" like Kurt Waldheim and Imelda Marcos who once introduced at stage right would fall victim to a trap door or something similar and fail to make it to their chair. The entire series was released on DVD by BBC Video in June 2004, and can now also be purchased as a complete set including the Christmas specials and the three An Audience with Dame Edna specials, plus other material. The series was released for Region 2 by Network DVD in the UK in 2007, as a 4-disc set. For reasons unknown, the Region 2 release does not include the 1989 Christmas special "The Dame Edna Satellite Experience" that ended the second series and featured Ursula Andress, Yehudi Menuhin, and Robert Kilroy-Silk. It does, however, include the one-off 1990 Christmas special A Night On Mount Edna with guests Mel Gibson, Charlton Heston, Gina Lollobrigida and Julio Iglesias.

More info
The Dame Edna Experience
1987