Vs. (Pearl Jam album)

Vs. is the second studio album by the American rock band Pearl Jam, released on October 19, 1993 through Epic Records. After a relentless touring schedule in support of their 1991 debut album Ten, Pearl Jam headed into the studio in early 1993 facing the challenge of following up the commercial success of its debut. The resulting album, Vs., featured a rawer and more aggressive sound compared with the band's previous release. It was the band's first collaboration with producer Brendan O'Brien.

Pearl Jam decided to scale back its commercial efforts for Vs., including declining to produce music videos for any of the album’s singles. Upon its release, Vs. set the record for most copies of an album sold in its first week, a record it held for five years. Vs. occupied the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart for five weeks, the longest duration for a Pearl Jam album. The album has been certified seven times platinum by the RIAA in the United States.

Recording

For its second album, Pearl Jam felt the pressures of trying to match the success of its debut album, Ten. In a 2002 interview, guitarist Mike McCready said, "The band was blown up pretty big and everything was pretty crazy."Vs. was the first Pearl Jam album to have production duties handled by producer Brendan O'Brien. It was also the band's first album with drummer Dave Abbruzzese, who had joined the band in August 1991 and toured for the album Ten. Rehearsals for Vs. began in February 1993 at Potatohead Studio in Seattle, Washington. The band then moved to The Site in Nicasio, California in March 1993 to begin recording. Abbruzzese called the tranquil recording site "paradise" while lead vocalist Eddie Vedder said, "I fucking hate it here...I've had a hard time...How do you make a rock record here?"

Blood (TV series)

Blood (Hangul: 블러드; RR: Beulleodeu) is a 2015 South Korean television series starring Ahn Jae-hyun, Ji Jin-hee, Ku Hye-sun and Son Soo-hyun. It aired on KBS2 from February 16 to April 21, 2015 on Mondays and Tuesdays at 22:00 for 20 episodes.

Plot

Park Ji-sang is a doctor specializing in hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery at Taemin Cancer Hospital, the best hospital in the country. He is also a vampire. Despite seeming cold and unfeeling, Ji-sang masks his soft heart and inner pain and yearns for closeness with people. He believes very strongly in the sanctity of human life, and suppresses his thirst for blood to treat terminally ill patients and save lives.

Among his colleagues is Yoo Ri-ta, a hotshot physician who entered medical school at the age of 17 and is also the niece of the chaebol group chairman who owns the hospital. Ri-ta is highly capable but snooty and prideful, yet Ji-sang finds himself falling for her. He also gets drawn into a conflict between good and evil as he encounters Lee Jae-wook, a two-faced hospital chief who gains everyone's trust with his gentle demeanor, but inwardly harbors a dangerous ambition for power and a talent for cruelty.

Blood (This Mortal Coil album)

Blood is the third and final album released by 4AD collective This Mortal Coil, an umbrella title for a loose grouping of guest musicians and vocalists brought together by label boss Ivo Watts-Russell. The supergroup consists primarily of artists attached to the 4AD label, of which Watts-Russell was co-founder and (at the time) boss and president. The double album was released in April 1991, and was the second release on 4AD to utilize the double album-identifier "DAD" prefix in its catalog number.

Blood was the final LP in the project's history, although Watts-Russell used two TMC performers on his next project, The Hope Blister, in 1998. A remastered and repackaged CD edition of Blood was issued with the complete This Mortal Coil recordings in a self-titled box set, released in late November 2011. The CD was released individually shortly thereafter.

In 2013, NME ranked the album at number 492 in its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Track listing

Credits

Snail

Snail is a common name that is applied most often to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs.

However, the common name "snail" is also applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a coiled shell that is large enough for the animal to retract completely into. When the word "snail" is used in this most general sense, it includes not just land snails but also thousands of species of sea snails and freshwater snails. Occasionally a few other molluscs that are not actually gastropods, such as the Monoplacophora, which superficially resemble small limpets, may also informally be referred to as "snails".

Snail-like animals that naturally lack a shell, or have only an internal shell, are mostly called slugs, and land snails that have only a very small shell (that they cannot retract into) are often called semi-slugs.

Overview

Snails that respire using a lung belong to the group Pulmonata, while those with gills form a polyphyletic group; in other words, snails with gills form a number of taxonomic groups that are not necessarily more closely related to each other than they are related to some other groups. Both snails that have lungs and snails that have gills have diversified so widely over geological time that a few species with gills can be found on land and numerous species with lungs can be found in freshwater. Even a few marine species have lungs.

Bet on Black

Bet on Black, occasionally referred to as "Snail Race", is an advertising campaign run in 2000 by Diageo to promote Guinness-brand stout in the United Kingdom. The piece, directed by Frank Budgen, follows a snail race taking place in a town of Latin American appearance. It is the third piece of the Good things come to those who wait campaign launched by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO in 1996, following on from Swimblack (1998) and Surfer (1999). The music in the advertisement is "Barbarabateri" by Beny More with Pérez Prado and his orchestra. Prado's music has also been in used in previous Guinness advertisements such as the successful Anticipation and Swimblack.

Whilst the previous advertisement in the campaign, Surfer, was a success, Bet on Black saw a return to the style of the campaign's inaugural advertisement, Swimblack, featuring a championed sports race and music by Pérez Prado. Conversely, the following advertisement in the campaign, Dreamer, was a return to Surfer's black and white filmography. The four advertisements formed the first part of the campaign which was put on hold for several years afterwards.

Snail (company)

Snail (Chinese: 蜗牛; pinyin: Wōniú), or Suzhou Snail Digital Technology Co Ltd, is a video game company and a Virtual Network Operator headquartered in Suzhou, China, which has branches Snail Games and Snail Mobile. Its division, Snail USA, is responsible for bringing Snail Games products to audiences in North America and South America. With a focus on free-to-play online games, Snail Games acts as a developer and publisher of original IP across multiple genres and distribution channels, including massively multiplayer online (MMOs), real-time strategy (RTS), and casual games. Its global registered user base has reached over 70 million accounts, largely driven by its independent games portal Woniu.com. The U.S. operation anticipates the launch of its portal for Western audiences in Q2 2011, PlaySnail.com, to further drive its efforts abroad.

History

Snail was founded by Shi Hai in Suzhou, China, and became established as Suzhou Electronic Co., Ltd. in October 2000. The company is one of the first online game developers in China. With over 1,500 employees, Snail has a global presence, with offices in China (Suzhou and Shanghai), Taiwan, Russia and the US, and has localized its games into more than 20 languages.