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Johnny Nitro (musician)
Johnny Nitro (born John Lawrence Newton; September 2, 1951 – February 19, 2011) was a blues vocalist, guitarist, and band leader in the San Francisco Bay Area. He served as a longtime entertainer and community figure in the North Beach district. He regularly played at local venues, such as The Saloon and Lou's Pier 47, with his band, Johnny Nitro & the Doorslammers. He also served as a mentor to musicians, such as Tommy Castro. In his lifetime, Nitro played with a range of blues artists, including Albert Collins, Albert King, and Sunny Rhodes. Early history Nitro was born in 1951, and he grew up in Sacramento, California. As a child, he liked to draw illustrations and cartoons. At 13 years old, he bought his first Fender electric guitar at a pawn shop with lunch money that he had saved. He taught himself to play by listening to his friend's B.B. King record. He played lead guitar in some local "basement bands" for several years after purchasing his first guitar. Some of Nitro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guitar Slim
Eddie Jones (December 10, 1926 – February 7, 1959), better known as Guitar Slim, was an American guitarist in the 1940s and 1950s, best known for the million-selling song "The Things That I Used to Do", for Specialty Records. It is listed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Slim had a major impact on rock and roll and experimented with distorted tones on the electric guitar a full decade before Jimi Hendrix. Biography Early life Jones was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. His mother died when he was five, and he was raised by his grandmother. In his teen years he worked in cotton fields and spent his free time at juke joints, where he started sitting in as a singer or dancer; he was good enough as a dancer that he was nicknamed "Limber Leg". Recording career After returning from military service during World War II, he started playing in clubs around New Orleans, Louisiana. Bandleader Willie D. Warren introduced him to the guitar. He was p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drag Racing
Drag racing is a type of motor racing in which automobiles or motorcycles compete, usually two at a time, to be first to cross a set finish line. The race follows a short, straight course from a standing start over a measured distance, most commonly , with a shorter, distance becoming increasingly popular, as it has become the standard for Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars, where some major bracket races and other sanctioning bodies have adopted it as the standard. The is also popular in some circles. Electronic timing and speed sensing systems have been used to record race results since the 1960s. The history of automobiles and motorcycles being used for drag racing is nearly as long as the history of motorized vehicles themselves, and has taken the form of both illegal street racing and as a regulated motorsport. History Drag racing started in the 1940s. World War II veterans were prominently involved, and some early drag races were done at decommissioned aircraft b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auto Mechanic
An auto mechanic (automotive technician in most of North America, light vehicle technician in British English, and motor mechanic in Australian English) is a mechanic who services and repairs automobiles, sometimes specializing in one or more automobile brands or sometimes working with any brand. In fixing cars, their main role is to diagnose and repair the problem accurately and quickly. They often have to quote prices for their customers before commencing work or after partial disassembly for inspection. Their job may involve the repair of a specific part or the replacement of one or more parts as assemblies. Basic vehicle maintenance is a fundamental part of a mechanic's work in modern industrialized countries, while in others they are only consulted when a vehicle is already showing signs of malfunction. Education Automotive repair knowledge can be derived from on-the-job training, an apprenticeship program, vocational school, or university. Apprenticeship * Apprent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panel Truck
A panel truck (also called a panel delivery or pickup truck-based van) in U.S. and Canadian usage is a small delivery truck with a fully enclosed body. It typically is high and has no rear windows in the rear cargo area. The term was first used in the early 1910s. Panel trucks were marketed for contracting, deliveries, and other businesses. Often described as a small van (based on the chassis of a truck or pickup truck) used mostly for delivery rounds, the British equivalent is a "delivery van." History Consumer demand from farmers and businesses for stripped-down Model T versions prompted Henry Ford to market vehicles that independent builders could supply cabs and cargo enclosures according to users' needs. The U.S. Army ordered 20,000 Dodge half-ton chassis sets for use as cargo trucks and ambulances During World War I that were then marketed after the war as the "Screenside Commercial Car" - a pickup with a roof and roll-up side covers or a fully enclosed cargo-bed. Chevr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material, as clay), in stone, metal, ceramic art, ceramics, wood and other materials but, since Modernism, there has been an almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or Molding (process), moulded or Casting, cast. Sculpture in stone survives far better than works of art in perishable materials, and often represents the majority of the surviving works (other than pottery) from ancient cultures, though conversely traditions of sculpture in wood may have vanished almost entirely. However, most ancient sculpture was brightly painted, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used. In art, the term ''painting ''describes both the act and the result of the action (the final work is called "a painting"). The support for paintings includes such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, pottery, leaf, copper and concrete, and the painting may incorporate multiple other materials, including sand, clay, paper, plaster, gold leaf, and even whole objects. Painting is an important form in the visual arts, bringing in elements such as drawing, composition, gesture (as in gestural painting), narration (as in narrative art), and abstraction (as in abstract art). Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in still life and landscape painting), photographic, abstract, nar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Filmmaking
Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, casting, pre-production, shooting, sound recording, post-production, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a film release and an exhibition. Filmmaking occurs in a variety of economic, social, and political contexts around the world. It uses a variety of technologies and cinematic techniques. Although filmmaking originally involved the use of film, most film productions are now digital. Today, filmmaking refers to the process of crafting an audio-visual story commercially for distribution or broadcast. Production stages Film production consists of five major stages: * Development: Ideas for the film are created, rights to existing intellectual properties are purchased, etc., and the screenplay is written ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Kuchar
George Kuchar (August 31, 1942 – September 6, 2011) was an American underground film director and video artist, known for his "low-fi" aesthetic. Early life and career Kuchar trained as a commercial artist at the School of Industrial Art, now known as the High School of Art and Design, a vocational school in New York City. He graduated in 1960 and drew weather maps for a local news show. During this period, he and his twin brother Mike Kuchar were making 8mm movies, which were showcased in the then-burgeoning underground film scene alongside films by Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and Stan Brakhage. Ken Jacobs brought attention of their work to Jonas Mekas, who championed their work in the Village Voice and elsewhere. After being laid off from a commercial art job in New York City, Kuchar was offered a teaching job in the film department of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught from 1971 until early 2011. In San Francisco, Kuchar became involved with underground comics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Experimental Film
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources. While some experimental films have been distributed through mainstream channels or even made within commercial studios, the vast majority have been produced on very low budgets with a minimal crew or a single person and are either self-financed or supported through small grants. Experimental filmmakers generally begin as amateurs, and some use experimental films as a springboard into commercial film-making or transition into academic positions. The aim of experimental filmmaking may be to render the personal vision of an artist, or to promote interest in new technology rather t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carol Szymanski
Carol Szymanski is a sculptor and multimedia artist with a special interest in language. She was a winner of the Rome Prize in the 1988-89 competition. Education Szymanski received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1982. She was also a student of The Whitney Museum Independent Study Studio Program from 1982 to 1983. Grants, awards, and residencies In 1984, Szymanski received a New York State Council for the Arts Grant in Video. In 1988, the American Academy in Rome awarded Szymanski with the Prix de Rome in sculpture. That same year, The National Endowment for the Arts recognized Szymanski with a Fellowship in Sculpture. In 2011, Szymanski was an artist in-residence at Cill Rialaig in County Kerry, Ireland. Szymanski's work at Cill Rialaig culminated in a group show entitled ''A Desert in the Ocean,'' curated by Catherine Howe. Most recently, in 2012, Szyma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Jacobson
Bill Jacobson (b. Norwich, Connecticut, 1955) is an American photographer. He received a BFA from Brown University in 1977 and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1981. Works Jacobson began making out of focus images in 1989. After exhibiting in a number of group exhibitions, in 1993 he had his first New York solo show at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery. Entitled Interim Figures, these shadowy pale photographs are intended to evoke the loss experienced by so many during the height of the AIDS epidemic and the futility of capturing true human likeness in both portraiture and memory. Jacobson’s subsequent Song of Sentient Beings (1994-1995) continues his interest in the defocused figure. In contrast to the bleached luminosity of his prior work, these images depict deep black backgrounds enveloping ghostly figures which bend, sleep, stretch and howl. His next body of work, Thought Series (1996-1998) is a nearly monochromatic deep-black evocation of the flow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
