Swan (disambiguation)

A swan is a bird of the genus Cygnus.

Swan or swans may also refer to the following:

Sport

Music and dance

Ships and boats

Swans (EP)

Swans is an EP by the experimental rock band Swans. Their first album, it was released in 1982 on Labor.

Background

Although rooted in the no wave scene and different from Swans' forthcoming releases in its prominent use of the saxophone and relative absence of brutality, the EP remains an intense listen, demonstrating the early stages in the evolution of the violent, repetitious and noisy style that Swans' earlier releases would become known for.

The EP was re-EQ'd by M. Gira and S. McAllister, remastered, and appended to the 1990 reissue of the follow-up album Filth LP on Gira's own Young God label. On the reissue CD the tracks are in a different order; the tracks on each side of the EP are reversed. The 1990 Filth CD on which the EP was reissued is long out of print. Although Filth was reissued again by Young God in 1999 and 2014, Swans did not appear on any subsequent Young God Records reissue until Spring 2015, as a Record Store Day Exclusive Release.

The 2015 12" reissue and versions appearing on the Filth Deluxe Edition 3-CD set are the original 1982 mixes faithfully restored.

Swans (band)

Swans (/swɒnz/) is an American experimental rock band originally active from 1982 to 1997, led by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Michael Gira. The band was one of the few groups to emerge from the early 1980s New York no wave scene and stay intact into the next decade. Formed by Gira in 1982, Swans employed a shifting lineup of musicians until their dissolution in 1997. Besides Gira, the only other constant members were keyboardist/vocalist/songwriter Jarboe from 1984 to 1997, and semi-constant guitarist Norman Westberg. The band became known for its experimental instrumentation and repetitive song structures. In 2010, Gira reformed Swans without Jarboe.

Biography

Early years (1982–1985)

Initial influences

Gira always states he took the moniker Swans as it described the sound he wanted best. Gira's summation of the name follows along the lines of: "Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments."

The earliest known lineup of Swans comprised Gira on bass guitar and vocals, Jonathan Kane on drums, Sue Hanel on guitar, Mojo on percussion and tape loops and either Thurston Moore, Dan Braun or Jon Tessler on the second bass guitar. Jon Tessler also played percussion and tape loops. Hanel's only recordings with the group are on the compilation Body to Body, Job to Job, but the ambiguous personnel credits do not make it clear on which songs she performed. Kane stated that "Sue was the most fearsome guitarist we'd ever heard in New York. She was unbelievable."

Jim

Jim is a diminutive form of the forename "James". For individuals named Jim, see articles related to the name Jim.

See also

Jim (comics)

Jim is a comic book series by Jim Woodring. It began in 1980 as a self-published zine and was picked up by Fantagraphics Books in 1986 after cartoonist Gil Kane introduced Woodring to Fantagraphics co-owner Gary Groth. The publisher released four magazine-sized black-and-white issues starting in September 1987. A comic book-sized continuation, Jim Volume II, with some color, began in 1993 and ran for six issues until 1996.

Jim, which Woodring described as an "autojournal", contained comics on a variety of subjects, many based on dreams, as well as surreal drawings and free-form text which resembled Jimantha automatic writing. Besides dreams, the work drew on Woodring's childhood experiences, hallucinations, past alcoholism, and Hindu beliefs. It also included stories of recurring Woodring characters such as Pulque (the embodiment of drunkenness), boyhood friends Chip and Monk, and, in Volume II, his signature creation Frank.

Content

Jim is made up of a variety of short comics, text pieces, and artwork. Most of the works are short comics based on Woodring's dreams. Some of the pieces are surreal parodies of advertisements in the Mad tradition.

Gimel

Gimel is the third letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Gīml , Hebrew ˈGimel ג, Aramaic Gāmal , Syriac Gāmal ܓ, and Arabic ǧīm ج (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order). Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, save Arabic, is a voiced velar plosive [ɡ]; in Modern Standard Arabic, it represents has many standards including [ɡ], see below.

In its unattested Proto-Canaanite form, the letter may have been named after a weapon that was either a staff sling or a throwing stick, ultimately deriving from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on the hieroglyph below:

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek gamma (Γ), the Latin C and G, and the Cyrillic Г.

Hebrew gimel

Variations

Hebrew spelling: גִּימֵל

Bertrand Russell posits that the letter's form is a conventionalized image of a camel. The letter may be the shape of the walking animal's head, neck, and forelegs. Barry B. Powell, a specialist in the history of writing, states "It is hard to imagine how gimel = "camel" can be derived from the picture of a camel (it may show his hump, or his head and neck!)".