Klinik

Klinik, (sometimes called The Klinik), is an industrial music band from Belgium, originally formed around 1982 by electro-synthpop practitioner Marc Verhaeghen, who is the only constant member.

History

Marc Verhaeghen originally formed Klinik in the early-to-mid 1980s; the exact date varies depending on the source. The group is normally described as one of the most influential Belgian industrial bands in history.

In 1985, Verhaeghen joined forces with two other bands, Absolute Body Control (with Dirk Ivens and Eric van Wonterghem), and "The Maniacs" (Sandy Nys) to form one "super group" "Absolute Controlled Clinical Maniacs". This rather unwieldy name was soon dropped in favour of the shorter name "The Klinik". Nys soon left the band to form "Hybryds", followed in 1987 by van Wonterghem, leaving The Klinik as the "classic" duo of Dirk Ivens and Marc Verhaeghen.

The Klinik soon made a name for themselves with their cold and harsh EBM sound and their live shows, where both Ivens and Verhaeghen performed with their heads wrapped in gauze, wearing long black leather coats. Ivens' hissing vocals and minimalist lyrics were complemented by Verhaeghen's synthesizer skills and distorted trombone playing. This however, did not last forever; after Time, an album neither member was fully pleased with, musical differences became too great, and they decided to go their separate ways. In a 2013 interview, Ivens said the due were moving in different directions musically, and that compromise between only two members was challenging.

Touch football (rugby league)

Touch Football was developed from rugby league, with the tackling of opposing players replaced by a touch. Touch is therefore not a contact sport but a limited-contact sport. The basic rules of Touch were established in the 1960s by the South Sydney Junior Rugby League Club.

Distinctive features of Touch include the ease of learning it, minimal equipment requirements and the ability to play it without fear of major injury. While it is generally played with two teams of six on-field players, some social competitions allow different number of players per team on the field. It is played by both sexes, and in age divisions from primary school children to over-50s. The mixed version of the game (where both male and female players are on the field at the same time) is particularly popular with social players, and it is widely played in schools.

History

Touch started in Australia in 1963 as a social or "park" game and as a training technique for rugby league. It was not then viewed as a sport in its own right. It was formalised into a sport proper by the "Founders of Touch", Bob Dyke and Ray Vawdon of the South Sydney Junior Rugby League Club. On 13 July 1968 the "South Sydney Touch Football Club" was formed and the sport of Touch Football was born. The first actual official game of Touch was played in late 1968 and the first official competition, organised by Dyke & Vawdon, was held at Rowland Park Sydney in 1968. From these humble beginnings the game quickly became a fully regulated and codified sport. It was first played in Brisbane in 1972 and by 1973 there were representative games. It had spread to New Zealand by 1975.

Spice Girls

The Spice Girls are an English pop girl group formed in 1994. The group consists of Melanie Brown ("Scary Spice"), Melanie Chisholm ("Sporty Spice"), Emma Bunton ("Baby Spice"), Geri Halliwell ("Ginger Spice"), and Victoria Beckham, née Adams ("Posh Spice"). They were signed to Virgin Records and released their debut single "Wannabe" in 1996, which hit number one in 37 countries and established them as a global phenomenon. Their debut album Spice sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling album by a female group in history. Their follow up album Spiceworld sold over 20 million copies worldwide. The Spice Girls have sold over 80 million records worldwide, making them the best-selling female group of all time, one of the best-selling pop groups of all time, and the biggest British pop phenomenon since Beatlemania.

Measures of their success include international record sales, a 2007–2008 reunion tour, merchandising, record-breaking achievements, iconic symbolism such as Halliwell's Union Jack dress representing "girl power", and a film, Spice World. The group became one of the most successful marketing engines ever, earning up to $75 million per year, with their global grosses estimated at $500–800 million between 1996 and 1998. Under the guidance of their mentor and manager Simon Fuller, the Spice Girls embraced merchandising and became a regular feature of the British and global press. In 1996, Top of the Pops magazine gave each member of the group aliases, which were adopted by the group and media. According to Rolling Stone journalist and biographer David Sinclair, "Scary, Baby, Ginger, Posh and Sporty were the most widely recognised group of individuals since John, Paul, George, and Ringo". With the "girl power" phenomenon, the Spice Girls were popular cultural icons of the 1990s. They are cited as part of the 'second wave' 1990s British Invasion of the US.

Smile (The Beach Boys album)

Smile (occasionally typeset as SMiLE) was a projected album by American rock band the Beach Boys intended to follow their 11th studio album Pet Sounds. After the group's songwriting leader Brian Wilson abandoned large portions of music recorded between 1966 and 1967, the band recorded and released the dramatically scaled-down Smiley Smile album in its place. Some of the original Smile tracks eventually found their way onto subsequent Beach Boys studio and compilation albums. As more fans learned of the project's origins, details of its recordings acquired considerable mystique, and it was later acknowledged as the most legendary unreleased album in the history of popular music.

Working with lyricist Van Dyke Parks, Smile was composed as a multi-thematic concept album, existing today in its unfinished and fragmented state as an unordered series of abstract musical vignettes. Its genesis came during the recording of Pet Sounds, when Wilson began recording a new single: "Good Vibrations". The track was created by an unprecedented recording technique: over 90 hours of tape was recorded, spliced, and reduced into a three-minute pop song. It quickly became the band's biggest international hit yet; Smile was to be produced in a similar fashion. Wilson touted the album "a teenage symphony to God," incorporating a diverse range of music styles including psychedelic, doo-wop, barbershop singing, ragtime, yodeling, early American folk, classical music, and avant-garde explorations into noise and musical acoustics. Its projected singles were "Heroes and Villains", a Western musical comedy, and "Vega-Tables", a satire of physical fitness.

Smile (software)

Smile is a free Macintosh computer programming and working environment based on AppleScript. It features a number of production technologies and a natural fashion of having them work together. Smile is primarily designed for scientists, engineers, desktop publishers, and web applications developers, to help them produce faster and better work, automate frequent tasks, and control complex operations.

History

The name of the first version of Smile, released in 1995, was SMILE (upper case), and some users still name it so. The acronym stood for SMI, Limited Edition, where SMI itself stands for Scriptable Measurements on Images. SMI is the name of the software that Satimage, a French company engaged in Machine vision technology, develops and uses to power the systems that they supply, automated real-time measurement and inspection systems for industrial plants.

SMI is really a core engine, written in C/C++, which alone does nothing: it requires an interface, and that interface's behavior is programmed in AppleScript, in scripts. SMI's core implements the key features of the software, and publishes them to AppleScript. SMI is designed to make development costs lower while maintaining a wide range of applications. Basically, Smile is just SMI, sans the real-time video processing features.

Smile (Vitamin C song)

"Smile" is the debut single by Vitamin C released in 1999. It was the first single released from her eponymous debut solo album. The song features vocals from reggae singer Lady Saw.

Critical reception

"Smile" became Vitamin C's highest charting single to date, peaking at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Sales chart, #21 on the Top 40 Mainstream chart and #18 on the Hot 100, becoming her only single to reach the Top 20 and her first single to reach the Top 40. "Smile" peaked at #13 in New Zealand on the RIANZ Charts.

The single went Gold in the U.S., as certified by the RIAA for sales in excess of 500,000. The song became her first hit off her platinum-selling debut album.

The song was also frequently used in advertising for Hershey's chocolate.

Music video

The music video takes place in a multi-colored Sam Goody CD store which has several motifs from the album art. Lady Saw plays a DJ in the video, while Vitamin C dances with a few backup dancers to the song ("Smile") that Lady Saw is playing. The video was directed by Christopher Erskine.