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• What's a devout cardio excersize I could do at work where on earth I own no equipment? |
• What equipment is provided for by the marines? |
Thursday, January 29, 2009 |
"Does the world really need another funk band? |
In this modern age of bluetooth-enabled blenders and ginseng toothpaste, the idea of a group of young men dedicating themselves to pursuit of the funk seems quaint, if not quixotic. Is fame and fortune their motivation? Unlikely. For funksters, Fate’s a fickle mistress, and history is littered with her rejected suitors... |
But all is not soured wine and wilted roses. Witnesses to the quartet’s combustible performances report a rather elevated level of joy in the air, a certain carnival quality involving spontaneous finger-popping, palm-slapping and sole-stomping. Could this intoxicating fragrance of fun be the addictive additive that dri... |
Imagine, if you will, a random Ratskeller, canteen or speakeasy bouncing to a syncopated, stuttering sound. Fatback drums shake sweat from the walls, dancers jerk with disregard. Booker-esque organ tangles with sinister guitar, bass dislodges drinks from cabinets. This, reports indicate, is the world of Lefties Soul Co... |
And so they persist. |
And so even a tweedbound muso-journalist such as myself, immersed in the button-down world of retro-future soulsonic scribery, has been forced to straighten my slouch, gaze up from my coffee-stained keyboard and take notice. What hip hop junkie could find fault with Lefties' raw Funk 45 feel, filtered through their hip... |
The collection you hold contains eleven LSC originals (and one Funky Chick from Texas), indicators all that these Amsterdammers are serious in their courtship of the funk muse. “Skimming the Skum”? One gets the impression it’s the scummier the better for Lefties. That rumbling you hear emerging from a dust-encrusted ba... |
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 |
Memphis 70 is a great collection of rare Soul gems released in the wake of the death of Otis Redding in late 1967. This comp shows what happened next as local musicians emerged from Otis' shadow and created new and exhilarating sounds. The earliest cut is the in-demand Funk/ R&B groove of Stacy Lane's 'No Ending' produ... |
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When most people hear the word "popcorn," they probably think of Orville Redenbacher. When record collectors, DJ's, and fans of the backbeat hear that same word, it takes on an entirely new context: it's a sound, a movement, a dance--a FEELING. In much the same way that hundreds of bands cashed in on Chubby Checker's "... |
Popularized by James Brown in the late sixties, the "popcorn" craze is thought to have evolved from Boogaloo music. "Boogaloo" was the sound of Latin teenagers in and around New York during the mid- to late-'60s; It was an Anglicized form of Latin music incorporating R&B, mambo, and rock & roll, among other forms. Ofte... |
As for the popcorn dance, James Brown had been doing the "Mashed Potatoes Popcorn" dance as early as 1966, but the first hint of Popcornitude turned up in January of 1968, with the release of an inconspicuous instrumental single called "Bringing Up The Guitar," credited to the Dapps featuring Alfred Ellis. The Dapps we... |
Brown started doing a little dance to "Bringing Up The Guitar" on stage, and it caught on. He called the dance the Popcorn, and in late August, 1968, the band re-recorded the instrumental as "The Popcorn" (credited to James Brown Plays & Directs). In fact, he wasn't playing, though he can be heard yelping a little; thi... |
When "The Popcorn" clicked, though, the Godfather moved-fast. (This, please note, was in a year when he released 13 singles and 4 albums, and that's just counting the ones under his own name.) On May 13, he hybridized the words of "You Got To Have A Mother For Me" with the basic groove of "The Popcorn," and came up wit... |
Now, James Brown was not a man to linger on his successes; he'd record the same song over and over, a few years apart, but he was too busy making his groove evolve to stick with a formula. But something about the Popcorn was different. A month to the day after he recorded "Mother Popcorn," he was back in the studio, re... |
After that, all bets were off. Brown had a huge revue he traveled with; there was always a woman singer, whose job was to sing backup, warm up the crowd (usually with a short set that ended with "People"), and generally do the diva thing. In the fall of 1969, that was Vicki Anderson (the wife of Brown's longtime right-... |
R&B organist Bill Doggett had had a great big hit in the '50s with "Honky Tonk," which Brown covered a few times in various guises; in September 68, Doggett released a new, Brown-produced version of "Honky Tonk," backed with "Honky Tonk Popcorn"-the latter with a composition credit reading James Brown. |
Once the Godfather opened the popcorn floodgates, funk outfits from all over the country (and Globe) began to record their own interpretations of the popcorn. Some were fiery covers of Brown's originals; others were lo-fi funk vamps that simply gave shout-outs to the dance. And yet there were other obscure little gems,... |
The RDM Band's "Butter Your Popcorn" provides the opening track and title for the set. Deep funk legends Billy Ball & The Upsetters turn in a scorching track called "Popcorn 69", while, from the same year, German composer Franz Auffray brings a dark psychedelic number called "Son of Popcorn." (Admittedly, Auffray's tra... |
Dillard Crume, the long-time guitarist and songwriter for the legendary gospel group the Soul Stirrers (once featuring a young Sam Cooke), delivers a wicked take on Brown's "Mother Popcorn", along with his backup band, the Soul Rockets. Indiana's Big Daddy Graham Trio checks in with "Tightening Your Popcorn," while fel... |
Needless to say, the "popcorn" was more than merely a sound, a dance, a movement, or even a feeling. It was a code word amongst singers, musicians, and bands (and, eventually, record collectors) alike that evidenced a seismic shift in Western rhythm and redefined what we thought of as "dance music." In turn, the "popco... |
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Download Here |
Thursday, January 22, 2009 |
David "Fathead" Newman, a jazz saxophonist who was a key member of Ray Charles' band for a dozen years and later became a high-profile session player, has died. He was 75. |
Newman died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at a hospital in Kingston, N.Y., according to his wife and manager, Karen Newman. |
Newman's saxophone can be heard on many of Charles' landmark hits, including "I Got a Woman," "What'd I Say" and "Lonely Avenue." And it was Charles who helped Newman get his first album as a leader with the 1958 Atlantic Records release "Fathead: Ray Charles Presents David Newman." |
Newman was born in Corsicana, Texas, on Feb. 24, 1933, but grew up in Dallas, where he studied first the piano and then the saxophone. He earned the nickname "Fathead" from his high school band teacher because he stubbornly refused to learn to read music, preferring instead to take it in by ear. |
He went off to Jarvis Christian College on a music and theology scholarship but quit school after three years and began playing professionally, mostly jazz and blues, with a number of musicians including Buster Smith, Lloyd Glenn, Lowell Fulson and T-Bone Walker. |
"I was brought up a bebop musician but it wasn't so acceptable, especially in Dallas," Newman told the Dallas Morning News some years ago. "You couldn't make a living doing that, so I had to play rhythm and blues. I adapted to it easily, being from an area where blues was prevalent." |
He was playing in Smith's band in the early 1950s when he met Charles, who was then a piano-playing sideman for Fulson. The two hit it off immediately. Charles loved Newman's sound for its lyricism and sweetness and vowed to bring him aboard when he started his own band, which he did in 1954. The multifaceted Newman fi... |
"He really extended my music because he was into so many different types of music," Newman told the Canadian newspaper Ottawa Citizen in 2007. "I didn't really appreciate anything except bebop before I met Ray." |
"In 1960 he started having a big band, an orchestra," Newman told the Tennessean newspaper some years ago. "Ray did all the arranging. He wouldn't even touch the piano, and he never wrote anything in Braille. He had perfect pitch. He would dictate a part and all you had to do was take notation and you'd have the arrang... |
After leaving Charles' band, Newman moved on to play with Herbie Mann's band in 1970-71 and recorded several more albums for Atlantic as well as Warner Bros., Fantasy Records and Muse. |
Newman's versatility on reed instruments made him a first-call session player, and he worked with a wide variety of A-list players including Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, Joe Cocker, and Dr. John, and with Natalie Cole on her "Unforgettable" album. |
He orchestrated music for scores of films and played and appeared in the Robert Altman film "Kansas City." He later did a national tour with the band from that 1996 film for Verve records. |
Newman himself became a character in "Ray," the 2004 biopic of Charles' life that starred Jamie Foxx. And while Newman thought that Foxx did a remarkable job capturing the life of a legend, he wasn't pleased with the way he was portrayed in the Taylor Hackford film. |
In the movie, the character called Fathead is depicted as a brash young musician who turned Charles on to hard drugs. The soft-spoken Newman had said Charles had been using drugs for several years before they met. |
"Drug use was prevalent at the time, even fashionable," Newman told the Columbia Daily Tribune. The movie, he added, "didn't really say that." |
He is survived by his wife, four sons, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. |
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 |
Another great release from the Truth & Soul label: this time bringing you The Bronx River Parkway. Based out of NY, this band was initially formed during an impromptu jam session at the Soul Fire studios in early 2002. In 2004, Pablo Rodriguez, of Candela Records, and visual artist, Rostarr, had the vision of melding t... |
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 |
With a title like "Are You Really Ready for Black Power" and an inauguration of a new president soon, what better time to revisit Gary Byrd's 1972 political jazz/funk classic? |
Gary Byrd has been a controversial figure as a radio talk-show host in the '80s and '90s, appearing weekdays on radio station WLIB in New York City, one of several outlets owned by African-American businessman Percy Sutton's Inner City Broadcasting corporation. Byrd's musical roots extend to the '60s, when he met Stevi... |
The song comes from the B-side of a 45 (the other side being "Every Brother Ain't A Brother"). It was produced by Buddy Scott and arranged by Chico O'Farrill. |
Tell me more × |
Possible Duplicate: |
How to combine images with the same dimensions in a grid? |
I would like to arrange images without any space between their edges as each piece is made to connect with others. |
The images should not necessarily be merged but simply tiled. |
My ultimate purpose is to use a Manipulate to generate different arrangements. |
So, how can I place those images in a coordinate system so I can define 9 positions and assign those locations to the images without any space between them ? |
Below my attempt using Grid and 2 example of the desired Output once I figure this out. Those composition were generated using Java Scripts. |
The problem with Grid or ImageAssemble is they would not allow for "empty slots", which is an option I would like to have as shown in the last image for example. |
enter image description here |
enter image description here |
enter image description here |
share|improve this question |
Do the results you want differ in any way from this question? – rcollyer Jan 26 '12 at 14:13 |
@rcollyer, I am having trouble to express it, but what I need is to be able to assign positions from 1 to 9 as I will implement some rules about the "neighborhood". I would group the elements by their attributes : Color or B&White for example and say for example that no B&W should be close to a color one. So i am looki... |
So what you need is code to organize the images, not necessarily merge them together, correct? – rcollyer Jan 26 '12 at 14:47 |
@rcollyer, Yes. The underlying subject is I tried to create sets of elements that can be re arranged in many way. I want to use mathematica to generate and select a lot of combination. While now they are all tiled together I might want to have empty locations at some point. – 500 Jan 26 '12 at 14:52 |
@rcollyer, maybe this will help – 500 Jan 26 '12 at 14:53 |
show 2 more comments |
marked as duplicate by rcollyer, Ｊ. Ｍ., Mr.Wizard, Szabolcs, rm -rf Jan 26 '12 at 15:41 |
3 Answers |
One can in fact use the (once documented) third argument of Rectangle[] to tile images. Here's an example I cooked up: |
imgs = {ExampleData[{"TestImage", "Clock"}], |
ExampleData[{"TestImage", "Elaine"}], |
ExampleData[{"TestImage", "JellyBeans"}], |
ExampleData[{"TestImage", "Peppers"}], |
ExampleData[{"TestImage", "Splash"}], |
ExampleData[{"TestImage", "Tiffany"}], |
ExampleData[{"TestImage", "U2"}]}; |
mat = Partition[RandomSample[Range[9]], 3]; |
Graphics[Table[Rectangle[{j, k}, {j + 1, k + 1}, imgs[[mat[[j + 1, k + 1]]]]], |
{j, 0, 2}, {k, 0, 2}]] |
random images |
The idea is that, you have nine images to distribute on a 3×3 grid; you thus partition some permutation of the numbers $1$ to $9$ in groups of three (that is, mat), have the indices of Table[] map to a corresponding entry of mat, and then that entry of mat has a corresponding index in the list imgs. The extension to an... |
share|improve this answer |
Does this allow for empty slots in the array? – rcollyer Jan 26 '12 at 15:32 |
Just use a conditional as needed: If[j == 2 && k == 1, (* then *) {White, Rectangle[{j, k}, {j + 1, k + 1}]}, (* else *) Rectangle[{j, k}, {j + 1, k + 1}, imgs[[mat[[j + 1, k + 1]]]]]] – Ｊ. Ｍ. Jan 26 '12 at 15:39 |
@J.M., Thank you very much ! – 500 Jan 26 '12 at 15:45 |
add comment |
If your images are the same size, a quick and dirty hack is using ImageAssemble in place of Grid. (I used that before several times.) |
You can generate "empty slots" for use with ImageAssemble like this: Rasterize[Graphics[{}, ImageSize -> ImageDimensions[existingImage]], "Image"]. Adjust the required image size as needed. |
Otherwise the Grid option to use should be Spacings, but I always have some trouble with that: |
Mathematica graphics |
Regarding importing images, you can consider building on the following simpler code: |
ImageResize[#, 256] & /@ Import /@ FileNames["B*.png"] |
share|improve this answer |
beat me to it by 2 seconds – Heike Jan 26 '12 at 14:11 |
@Heike There's still the question of doing this properly (no gaps) with Grid though ... – Szabolcs Jan 26 '12 at 14:17 |
Setting Spacings->{0,0} works on my system. – Heike Jan 26 '12 at 14:19 |
@Szabolcs, Thank You ! Could you explain me the use of "*" in the importing function ? – 500 Jan 26 '12 at 14:47 |
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