Grass (Animal Collective song)

"Grass" is the first single from Animal Collective's 2005 album, Feels. Upon its release, it was showered with critical praise for its delicate balance of melodic pop sensibilities and discordant yelping. Pitchfork Media listed the song at #31 on its list of Top 50 Singles of 2005, claiming it is "as infectious as anything on the pop charts this year, and lots more fun to scream along with". The song was subsequently placed at #73 in the same publication's list of "Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s". Stylus also placed it in its Top 50 Singles of 2005 (this time at #44), praising the band's ability to "play tug of war between typical pop dynamics and the skewed perspective of experimental music". The title track was included in the 2008 book The Pitchfork 500.

The single was released in the United Kingdom on both CD and 7" vinyl. On March 21, 2006, it was released in the U.S. and Canada (July 3, 2006 worldwide) with a bonus DVD; the DVD contains music videos for "Grass", "Who Could Win a Rabbit" and "Fickle Cycle", as well as a video and sound collage, "Lake Damage", made by Brian DeGaw of Gang Gang Dance.

Grass (1999 film)

Grass: History of Marijuana is a 1999 Canadian documentary film directed by Ron Mann, premiered in Toronto Film Festival, about the history of the United States government's war on marijuana in the 20th century. The film was narrated by actor Woody Harrelson.

Overview

The film follows the history of US federal policies and social attitudes towards marijuana, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century. The history presented is broken up into parts, approximately the length of a decade, each of which is introduced by paraphrasing the official attitude towards marijuana at the time (e.g. "Marijuana will make you insane" or "Marijuana will make you addicted to heroin"), and closed by providing a figure for the amount of money spent during that period on the "war on marijuana."

The film places much of the blame for marijuana criminalization on Harry Anslinger (the first American drug czar) who promoted false information about marijuana to the American public as a means towards abolition. It later shows how the federal approach to criminalization became more firmly entrenched after Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs" and created the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973, and even more so a decade later and on, as First Lady Nancy Reagan introduced the "Just Say No" campaign and President George H.W. Bush accelerated the War on Drugs. The film ends during the Bill Clinton administration, which had accelerated spending even further on the War on Drugs.

Nothing Can Stop Us (album)

Nothing Can Stop Us is a compilation album by Robert Wyatt released in 1982.

Concept

Consisting primarily of tracks released as singles and B-sides during the late 1970s and early '80s, it only contains one Wyatt composition (the opening track "Born Again Cretin"). The rest of the songs are cover versions, a selection of musically and thematically disparate songs by a very varied collection of original artists, including Ivor Cutler, 1940s protest songs, Billie Holiday, "The Red Flag", and Spanish-language numbers (including a version of "Caimanera/Guantanamera"). There is a rendition of Chic's "At Last I Am Free". The two songs not issued as singles are "Born Again Cretin" (taken from an NME compilation cassette) and "The Red Flag" (which was previously unreleased.) This was the only full-length LP released by Wyatt in the ten years between 1975's Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard and his fourth solo studio album Old Rottenhat.

Release

In America, Nothing Can Stop Us was released on CD paired with Old Rottenhat under the title Compilation.

Bird

Birds (class Aves) are a group of endothermic vertebrates, characterised by feathers, a beak with no teeth, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a lightweight but strong skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m (9 ft) ostrich. They rank as the class of tetrapods with the most living species, at approximately ten thousand, with more than half of these being passerines, sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds.

The fossil record indicates that birds are the last surviving dinosaurs, having evolved from feathered ancestors within the theropod group of saurischian dinosaurs. True birds first appeared during the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years ago, and the last common ancestor is estimated to have lived about 95 million years ago. DNA-based evidence finds that birds radiated extensively around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs. Birds in South America survived this event and then migrated to other parts of the world via multiple land bridges while diversifying during periods of global cooling. Primitive bird-like "stem-birds" that lie outside class Aves proper, in the group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period. Many of these early stem-birds, such as Archaeopteryx, were not yet capable of fully powered flight, and many retained primitive characteristics like toothy jaws in place of beaks and long bony tails.

Birds (Coldplay song)

"Birds" is a song by British alternative rock band Coldplay. It was produced by the band's long time producer Rik Simpson along with Norwegian production duo Stargate. It appears as the second track on their seventh studio album A Head Full of Dreams (2015).

Music video

An official music video was also released by the band. The video was directed by Marcus Haney. It was set to the back drop of Colorado Desert's famous Salvation Mountain. The entire video was shot on a Super 8mm camera. The director wrote on Instagram: "It's a tribute of thanks to the late artist Leonard Knight for creating Salvation Mountain and bringing so much joy to everyone who's come across it."

Critical reception

Stuart Berman of Pitchfork Media called the song "a shot of taut, Phoenix-styled motorik pop that provides a rare moment of intensity on an album that’s all about arm-swaying, Super Bowl-crashing bombast".

Charts

References

External links

Birds (Marius Neset album)

Birds (released March 25, 2013 in Oslo, Norway by the label Edition Records – EDN1040) is the 4'th album of the Norwegian saxophonist Marius Neset.

Critical reception

The review by Neil Spencer of the British newspaper The Guardian awarded the album 5 stars, the review by Terje Mosnes of the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet awarded the album dice 6, the review by Carl Petter Opsahk of the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang awarded the album dice 5, and the reviewer Ian Mann of the Jazz Mann awarded the album 4.5 stars

According to Mosnes, with this album, Neset takes further steps on his way to the Jazz sky. The brilliant compositions and the musical skills of this band are extraordinary. It is only to look forward to the next move of this great jazz musician and composer.

NRK Jazz critique Erling Wicklund, in his review of Neset's album Birds states:

BBC Music critique Peter Marsh, in his review of Neset's album Birds states:

Track listing

Personnel