Ozone biography

70s funk band

This article is about the 70s funk band. For the Moldovan pop group, see O-Zone.

For other uses, see Ozone (disambiguation).

Ozone was a funk and R&B group during the late 1970s and early 1980s, signed to Motown Records.

History

When the Nashville funk band The Endeavors broke up in 1977, three of its members, Benny Wallace, Jimmy Stewart and Charles Glenn, formed a new group of their own. They called it ‘Ozone’. The trio later recruited trumpeter Thomas Bumpass, saxophonist and vocalist William "Billy" White, saxophonist and vocalist Ray Woodward, guitarist Greg Hargrove and drummer Paul Hines. In 1981 guitarist Herman Brown replaced Greg Hargrove.

During their first two years, Ozone performed as backup singers for Billy Preston and Syreeta, who were with Motown Records at the time. This relationship led to them receiving a deal of their own in 1979. They released their debut LP, Walk On, in 1980. It was mostly instrumental funk and jazz-funk. For the group's next album, Motown appointed Michael Lovesmith on vocals.

Over the next two years, they released 3 full-length albums on Motown: Jump On It (which failed to chart), Lil' Suzy (#45 R&B, #152 Hot 200), and Send It (#61 R&B). Their final album to be released, the LP Glasses, came also out on Motown in 1983, and which was reissued around 2008 on CD by PTG Records in the Netherlands. The song "(Our Hearts) Will Always Shine" from that album had minor success in the UK.

Although Ozone served as backup to Billy Preston and Syreeta, they are best remembered for their work with Teena Mar

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Moldovan pop music trio

For other uses, see O-Zone (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Ozone (American band).

O-Zone is a Moldovan Eurodance group and boy band produced by Dan Bălan; originating in 1999 as a duo, which consisted of Bălan, and Petru Jelihovschi before the latter's departure. Their official trio lineup in 1999 consisted of Bălan, Radu Sîrbu, and Arsenie Todiraș.

The group gained global popularity with their song "Dragostea din Tei" and their subsequent album DiscO-Zone, which was released in 2003, before disbanding the following year.

The group members have since focused on their solo careers. The band occasionally reunited for concerts in 2017 (Chișinău, Moldova; Bucharest, Romania) and 2019 (Bucharest, Romania). In 2024, it was announced that O-Zone are going to do a summer tour, but this time as a tribute band, consisting of Arsenie as only singer and two dancers. Worldwide, O-Zone have sold over 12 million copies of "Dragostea din tei" and over 2.5 million copies of its parent album DiscO-Zone.

History

1998–2001: Formation and Early Years

O-Zone first formed as a duo of Dan Bălan and Petru Jelihovschi in 1999. They released their first album, Dar, Unde Ești..., in 1999. However, Jelihovschi had not intended to make music his career, so he split from Bălan. Undaunted, Bălan held open auditions for new band members. At one such audition, he met Arsenie "Arsenium" Todiraș, who eventually won over the initially skeptical Bălan with his version of Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender". Bălan and Todiraș would have proceeded as a duo act until Bălan received a call from Radu Sîrbu, who wanted a chance to audition for the group. Despite Sîrbu having missed the initial auditions, Bălan agreed, and after a successful audition, Sîrbu joined O-Zone, officially making the group a trio.

2002–2004: Rise to success

In 20

Mario Molina (1943–2020) was the first to realize that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) could destroy ozone. In the two decades following his discovery, he and his mentor became voices alerting the world to the danger of CFCs and ozone depletion. Their warnings often fell on deaf ears. Once confirmed, however, their findings earned them a Nobel Prize.

In 1973 Molina, a postdoctoral researcher working in the laboratory of F. Sherwood Rowland at the University of California, Irvine, made an unsettling discovery. He had been investigating a class of compounds called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. CFCs were used as refrigerants, aerosol sprays, and in making plastic foams. Molina wondered what happened to them once they were released into the atmosphere.

How CFCs Destroy Ozone

Molina’s study was a hypothetical one based on computer modeling, but his results suggested that CFCs could, in theory, destroy an oxygen compound called ozone under the conditions that exist in the upper atmosphere. Far above the earth’s surface, in the stratosphere, a thin layer of ozone floats, protecting us from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Molina, just a young scientist at the time he did the study, was nervous about talking to Rowland about his theory of how CFCs might destroy ozone. But if CFCs really could reduce ozone at a predicted rate of 7 percent after 60 years, the world would be in trouble.

According to Molina’s theory, the same photons from ultraviolet light that break oxygen molecules apart to produce oxygen atoms can also break CFCs apart to release chlorine atoms, among other products. Since the chlorine atom has an unpaired electron, it is a radical. Radicals are very reactive; so chlorine atoms react easily with molecules of ozone.

When a chlorine atom encounters an ozone molecule (O₃), it takes one of the oxygen atoms away, leaving O₂ and chlorine oxide (ClO). ClO is also a reactive radical and reacts quickly with another ozone molecule, converting it to two O₂ mo