Snuff may refer to:
In music:
Snuff were an American country rock/rockabilly band based in Southern Virginia and active during the 1970s and early 1980s. They released a pair of albums and scored a minor hit on the pop charts with "Bad, Bad Billy" in 1983.
Snuff initially formed in the 1970s and began as an acoustic trio featuring guitarist James Gray "Jimbo" Bowling, guitarist Bill Wampler, and vocalist Mike Jones. However, the group gradually incorporated more of an electric sound into their repertoire, and by the 1980s, they had evolved into a six-member outfit, including Bowling, guitarist Robbie House, lead vocalist/acoustic guitarist Chuck "Coyote" Larson, bassist C. Scott Trabue, violinist Cecil Hooker, and drummer/percussionist Michael A. Johnson.
The group released their eponymous debut album in 1982. Featuring a country sound infused with elements of rock, Snuff featured a minor country hit, "(So This is) Happy Hour," which peaked at number 71 on the Country music charts.
The following year, the band released their follow-up album, an EP titled NightFighter. This release featured six tracks, including what would become the band's biggest hit, "Bad, Bad Billy." The tune would be the group's only hit to crack the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #88 in August 1983. Penned by House, Larson, and Bowling, "Bad, Bad Billy" was also the only original tune on the EP, as the remaining tracks were covers of country and rockabilly songs. Another track from NightFighter, "United or Divided" was later featured in the 1985 film Tomboy.
"Snuff" is a power ballad by American heavy metal band Slipknot. Released as the fifth single from their fourth album All Hope Is Gone on September 28, 2009, the song charted at number two on the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, their highest charted single to date, surpassing "Dead Memories". It was not included in the All Hope Is Gone World Tour setlist but the band performed the song live at the October 11, 2009 performance in Kennewick, Washington. The song is also available for free on www.roadrunnerrecords.com.
Roadrunner Records placed "Snuff" at No. 6 for its greatest music videos of all time. The song was also nominated for Best Single at the Kerrang! Awards 2010, but lost to "Liquid Confidence" by You Me at Six.
It is the final single released from the band before the death of their bassist, Paul Gray who died just eight months after its release, and also the final single release before Joey Jordison left the band four years later. During recent solo acoustic shows, Corey Taylor has performed an acoustic version of Snuff as a tribute to Paul Gray.
Trace may refer to:
Trace is the first album by Son Volt, released in 1995. The band was formed the previous year by Jay Farrar after the breakup of the influential alt-country band Uncle Tupelo. The album reached #166 on the Billboard 200 album chart and received extremely favorable reviews. According to Allmusic, "Throughout Son Volt's debut, Trace, the group reworks classic honky tonk and rock & roll, adding a desperate, determined edge to their performances. Even when they rock out, there is a palpable sense of melancholy to Farrar's voice, which lends a poignancy to the music." The album was in the top 10 of Rolling Stone's 1995 critics' list.
"Drown" was a minor college and rock radio hit. It charted at #10 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and #25 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. It remains their only single to chart on either of the charts.
All of the songs were written by Farrar except "Mystifies Me", written by Ronnie Wood.
In transformational grammar, a trace is an empty (phonologically null) category that occupies a position in the syntactic structure. In some theories of syntax, traces are used in the account of constructions such as wh-movement and passive. Traces are important theoretical devices in some approaches to syntax.
A trace is usually what occupies the empty (null) position in the syntactic structure that is left behind when some element undergoes movement. For example, in a case involving wh-movement, a structure like
is transformed into
the wh-word what being moved to the front of the sentence. In theories that posit traces, the position from which the wh-word was moved (in this case, the position of the direct object of eating), is considered to be occupied by a trace. In relevant linguistic texts, the trace may be denoted by a letter t; so the second sentence above may be written:
Traces are considered primarily in Chomskyan transformational grammar and its various developments. They are distinguished from other empty syntactic categories, commonly denoted PRO and pro. More details and examples can be found in the article on empty categories.