title: Canned Heat

text: Taking the place of those who departed were pianist Gene Taylor and guitarist Chris Morgan, who both joined in late 1974. Taylor departed in 1976 in response to an argument during a tour of Germany, and after a brief fill-in by Stan Webb (of Chicken Shack), Mark Skyer came in as the new guitar player. In the meantime the band had worked out a deal with Takoma Records, and this "Human Condition/Takoma" lineup recorded the 1977 album "Human Condition". Despite the appearance of the Chambers Brothers on the album, it was met with very little success, largely because of the growing popularity of disco music in the late 1970s. Before long, more arguments ensued, and Mark Skyer, Chris Morgan and Richard Hite all quit the band in 1977. Hite promptly hired a new bass player, Richard Exley, after befriending him on tour and watching his performance with the band Montana. Becoming fast friends with Hite, Exley toured the remainder of the year with the band and collaborated with Hite on many of the arrangements during their 1976 Texas Bicentennial Comeback Tour. Exley then quit the band after an argument over Hite's excessive drinking and drug use on stage. Frustrated and fed up, Exley joined the Texas Heartbreakers at the end of that year but returned periodically to fill in as a favor to Hite while the band struggled to find permanent members amidst heavy drinking and drug use. Exley remarked about his time with the band, "No one ever remembers the bass player ...". This effectively reduced the band's members to just Hite and de la Parra.


title: Canned Heat

text: The popularity of the blues genre rose in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the release of the musical-comedy film "The Blues Brothers" (1980), starring Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. During this time, de la Parra had bought into the partnership of an East Hollywood recording studio at which he was again working with former bandmate Larry Taylor. Taylor had been associating with guitarist Mike "Hollywood Fats" Mann and pianist Ronnie Barron and before long Taylor, Barron and Hollywood Fats were in the band. This version referred to by Hite and Mann as the "Burger Brothers" lineup, was soon joined by blind piano player Jay Spell, as Ronnie Barron walked out on the band after a blow-up between himself and Taylor.


title: Canned Heat

text: The Burger Brothers played the tenth anniversary of Woodstock at Parr Meadows in 1979. A recording of the performance eventually surfaced through King Biscuit Flower Hour's Barry Ehrmann as, "Canned Heat in Concert", in 1995 (de la Parra considers this to be Canned Heat's best recorded live album). Another recording made around this time was for Cream Records, who desired a more R&B-style sound than what Canned Heat was currently offering. This upset Hollywood Fats and Mike Halby was brought in to finish the project; which would not find commercial release until 1981 when former band member Tony de la Barreda put it out under RCA as a tribute album called, "In Memory of Bob "The Bear" Hite 1943–1981—"Don't Forget To Boogie"". After a falling out with de la Parra and Hite, Taylor and Mann were increasingly unhappy with the musical direction of the band and eventually left to focus more attention on their Hollywood Fats Band. Nevertheless, Jay Spell was still on board and brought in bass player Jon Lamb; Mike Halby was now a full-time member and long-time guitarist Vestine once again made his return to the band, with Hite and de la Parra as its leaders.


title: Canned Heat

text: No longer managed by Howard Wolf, Eddie Haddad set the band up touring military bases across the U.S., Europe and Japan non-stop. Returning with little pay after the difficult tour, Jay Spell quit the band. Jon Lamb stayed on for one more tour in the south and just before Christmas 1980 (and lacking the outlaw roots of the others), he too quit the band; but by then even Hite was starting to lose it. He had attempted to give it another try by hiring a large enthusiastic biker with the moniker "The Push" as their manager; hoping that the band's popularity with the biker community would give them renewed energy. With new bass player Ernie Rodriguez joining the ranks, Canned Heat recorded the 1981 album, "Kings of the Boogie", the last album to feature Hite on a few of the tracks.


title: Canned Heat

text: On April 5, 1981, having collapsed from a heroin overdose during a show at the Palomino in Los Angeles, Bob Hite was later found dead in de la Parra's Mar Vista home at the age of 38.


title: Canned Heat

text: The death of frontman Bob Hite was a devastating blow that most thought would end the career of Canned Heat; however, de la Parra kept the band alive and would lead it back to prosperity over the next few decades. An Australian tour had been set up before Hite's death and harmonica player Rick Kellogg had joined to finish off the "Kings of the Boogie" album. This incarnation of Canned Heat without Bob Hite was nicknamed the "Mouth Band" by Vestine and was a huge hit in Australia, especially with the biker crowd. Under the management of "The Push", the band toured the States playing biker bars and began work on a video known as ""The Boogie Assault"", starring Canned Heat and various members of the San Francisco chapter of the Hells Angels.


title: Canned Heat

text: As production for "The Push's" video dragged on, a drunken Vestine got into a brawl with Ernie Rodriguez and was once again out of the band; this time replaced by guitarist Walter Trout. After a tour with John Mayall, as the production for ""The Boogie Assault"" continued, de la Parra was forced to fire "The Push" as the band's manager; but did eventually finish the video and a live lbum of the same name recorded in Australia in 1982 (also re-released as "Live in Australia" and "Live in Oz"). This version of Canned Heat would also soon dissolve with a dispute between Mike Halby and de la Parra after the recording of the "Heat Brothers '84" EP.


title: Canned Heat

text: During the 1980s the interest in the type of music played by Canned Heat was revived and, despite the past tragedies and permanent instability, the band appeared to be revitalized. In 1985, Trout had left to join John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, so Vestine was once again back in the band and he brought with him new musical talent from Oregon in James Thornbury (slide guitar and lead vocals) and Skip Jones (bass). They were dubbed the "Nuts and Berries" band by de la Parra, due to their love of organic food. It was not long before former members Larry Taylor (replacing Jones) and Ronnie Barron returned to round out the group. Versions of this lineup would record the live album, "Boogie Up The Country", in Kassel, Germany, in 1987 and also appear on the "Blues Festival Live in Bonn '87 Vol 2" compilation. Barron, just as before did not last long in this lineup, nor did Vestine, who was once again ousted from the band due to pressure from Larry Taylor. Replacing Vestine on lead guitar was Junior Watson; his style emulated Hollywood Fats (who died in late 1986) and was perfectly suited for the band as witnessed by the well-regarded album, "Reheated". Unfortunately, the album was released only in Germany in 1988 due to disagreements with the Chameleon Music Group Record label. In 1990, the "Would-Be" lineup of James T, Taylor, Watson and de la Parra also recorded a sequel live album in Australia entitled "Burnin' Live".


title: Canned Heat

text: The lineup dissolved in the early 1990s as Junior Watson went his own way and Mandel came back into the fold, bringing along Ron Shumake on bass to take some of the load off of Larry Taylor. Mandel, however, left the band after a few tours, so female singer and guitarist Becky Barksdale was brought in for a tour of France, Germany and Hawaii; but lasted no longer. Smokey Hormel was also considered, but only played one gig before friction between de la Parra and Larry Taylor caused Taylor to bitterly go his separate way with Hormel in tow.


title: Canned Heat

text: The revolving door that was Canned Heat continued as Vestine and Watson made their returns to the lineup as the "Heavy Artillery" band. Several former members including Mandel, Barron and Taylor joined up in de la Parra's effort for the album, "Internal Combustion", which was released in 1994, but saw only limited release due to the returning manager Skip Taylor's falling out with Red River Records. In 1995, James Thornbury left the band with no hard feelings after ten years of service to live the married life in New South Wales, Australia, and new front-man Robert Lucas came in to take his place. Mandel returned and Shumake left the band in 1996, and after the position of bassist was taken temporarily by Mark "Pocket" Goldberg, Greg Kage took the reins as the bass player, and after a reconciliation with Larry Taylor the band released, "Canned Heat Blues Band", in 1996. On October 20, 1997, a tired and cancer stricken Vestine died in Paris, France following the final gig of a European tour. Taylor and Watson subsequently left the band.


title: Canned Heat

text: Canned Heat's popularity has endured in some European countries and Australia. Their studio albums during this period include "Boogie 2000" (1999), and "Friends in the Can" (2003), which features various guests, including John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal, Trout, Corey Stevens, Roy Rogers, Mandel, Larry Taylor, and Vestine. Eric Clapton and Dr. John made guest appearances on the "Christmas Album" (2007). In July 2007, a documentary, "Boogie with Canned Heat: The Canned Heat Story", was released, as was a biography of Wilson, "Blind Owl Blues", by author Rebecca Davis Winters.


title: Canned Heat

text: By 2000, Robert Lucas had departed and the line-up was completed by Dallas Hodge (vocals, guitar), John Paulus (guitar) and Stanley "Baron" Behrens (harmonica, saxophone, flute). Lucas returned to Canned Heat in late 2005 but left again in the fall of 2008. He died, age 46, on November 23, 2008, at a friend's home in Long Beach, California; the cause was an apparent drug overdose. Other more recent deaths of band members included Hite's brother, bassist Richard Hite, who died at age 50 on September 22, 2001, due to complications from cancer. Also, former bassist Antonio de la Barreda died of a heart attack on February 17, 2009.


title: Canned Heat

text: From late 2008 to the Spring of 2010 the lineup included Dale Spalding (guitar, harmonica and vocals), Barry Levenson (lead guitar), Greg Kage (bass), and classic lineup hold-over and band leader de la Parra on drums. Mandel and Larry Taylor toured with Canned Heat during the summer of 2009 on the Heroes of Woodstock Tour to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. In 2010, Taylor and Mandel officially replaced Kage and Levenson, and as of 2012, this lineup (de la Parra, Taylor, Mandel, and Spalding) continued to tour regularly.


title: Canned Heat

text: In October 2012, during a festival tour in Spain, France and Switzerland, Randy Resnick was called to replace Mandel who had to quit the tour due to health issues. Resnick played two dates, October 4 and 5, but had to return home for prior commitments. De la Parra was able to get Paulus to fly in from Portland to finish the tour. On September 7, 2013, Paulus once again substituted for Mandel at the Southern Maryland Blues Festival. In 2014, he officially replaced Mandel. On August 19, 2019 longtime bass guitarist Taylor died after a twelve-year battle with cancer. Drummer Frank Cook died on July 9, 2021, aged 79.


title: Canned Heat

text: Canned Heat's musical style encompasses blues, country blues, rhythm and blues, boogie-woogie, psychedelic, psychedelic funk, rock and roll, blues rock and boogie rock.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: The Blues Brothers are an American blues and soul revivalist band founded in 1978 by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as part of a musical sketch on "Saturday Night Live". Belushi and Aykroyd fronted the band, in character, respectively, as lead vocalist 'Joliet' Jake Blues and harmonica player/vocalist Elwood Blues, donning black suits with matching fedoras and sunglasses. The band was composed of well-known musicians, and debuted as the musical guest in a 1978 episode of "Saturday Night Live", opening the show performing "Hey Bartender", and later "Soul Man".


title: The Blues Brothers

text: In 1978, the band released their debut album, "Briefcase Full of Blues", and opened for the Grateful Dead at the closing of Winterland Arena in San Francisco. They gained further fame after spawning a Hollywood comedy film in 1980, "The Blues Brothers".


title: The Blues Brothers

text: After Belushi's death in 1982, the Blues Brothers continued to perform with a rotation of guest singers and other band members. The band reformed in 1988 for a world tour and again in 1998 for a sequel film, "Blues Brothers 2000".


title: The Blues Brothers

text: The genesis of the Blues Brothers was a January 17, 1976, "Saturday Night Live" sketch. In it, "Howard Shore and his All-Bee Band" play the Slim Harpo song "I'm a King Bee", with Belushi singing and Aykroyd playing harmonica, dressed in the bee costumes they wore for "The Killer Bees" sketches. In 1978, guitarist Arlen Roth was performing on SNL with Art Garfunkel who was that week's host of the show. Before the actual live show, Belushi and Aykroyd asked Roth and others to join them onstage in the outfits that would later become the Blues Brothers' look. Roth taught Belushi the lyrics to "Rocket 88" so they could perform it that night. This was also discussed on Aykroyd's "Elwood's Bluesmobile" radio show, when Roth was interviewed about his Slide Guitar Summit album, and the song "Rocket 88".


title: The Blues Brothers

text: Following tapings of "SNL", it was popular among cast members and the weekly hosts to attend Aykroyd's Holland Tunnel Blues bar, which he had rented not long after joining the cast. Aykroyd and Belushi filled a jukebox with songs from Sam & Dave, punk band The Viletones and others. Belushi bought an amplifier and they kept some musical instruments there for anyone who wanted to jam. It was at the bar that Aykroyd and Ron Gwynne wrote and developed the story which Aykroyd turned into the draft screenplay for the "Blues Brothers" movie, better known as the "tome", because it contained so many pages.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: It was also at the bar that Aykroyd introduced Belushi to the blues. An interest soon became a fascination, and it was not long before the two began singing with local blues bands. Jokingly, "SNL" band leader Howard Shore suggested they call themselves "The Blues Brothers". In an April 1988, interview he gave to the "Chicago Sun-Times", Aykroyd said the Blues Brothers act borrowed from Sam and Dave and others; the "Sun-Times" quoted him as explaining: "Well, obviously, the duo thing and the dancing, but the hats came from John Lee Hooker. The suits came from the concept that when you were a jazz player in the '40s, '50s '60s, to look straight, you had to wear a suit."


title: The Blues Brothers

text: The band was modeled in part on Aykroyd's experience with the Downchild Blues Band, one of the first professional blues bands in Canada, with whom Aykroyd played on occasion. Aykroyd encountered the band in the early 1970s, around the time of his attendance at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and where his interest in the blues developed through attending and occasionally performing at Ottawa's Le Hibou Coffee House. As Aykroyd described it:


title: The Blues Brothers

text: The Toronto-based Downchild Blues Band, co-founded in 1969 by two brothers, Donnie and Richard "Hock" Walsh, served as an inspiration for the two Blues Brothers characters. Aykroyd modeled Elwood Blues in part on Donnie Walsh, a harmonica player and guitarist, while Belushi's Jake Blues character was modeled after Hock Walsh, Downchild's lead singer. In their first album, "Briefcase Full of Blues" (1978), Aykroyd and Belushi featured three well-known Downchild songs closely associated with Hock Walsh's vocal style: "I've Got Everything I Need (Almost)", written by Donnie Walsh, "Shotgun Blues", co-written by Donnie and Hock Walsh, and "Flip, Flop and Fly", co-written and originally popularized by Big Joe Turner. All three songs were on Downchild's second album, "Straight Up" (1973), with "Flip, Flop and Fly" becoming the band's most successful single, in 1974.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: Belushi's budding interest in the blues solidified in October 1977 when he was in Eugene, Oregon, filming "National Lampoon's Animal House". He went to a local hotel to hear 25-year-old blues singer/harmonica player Curtis Salgado. After the show, Belushi and Salgado talked about the blues for hours. Belushi found Salgado's enthusiasm infectious. In an interview at the time with the "Eugene Register-Guard", he said:


title: The Blues Brothers

text: Salgado lent him some albums by Floyd Dixon, Charles Brown, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and others. Belushi was hooked.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: Belushi began to join Salgado on stage, singing the Floyd Dixon song "Hey, Bartender" on a few occasions, and using Salgado's humorous alternate lyrics to "I Don't Know":


title: The Blues Brothers

text: With the help of pianist-arranger Paul Shaffer, Belushi and Aykroyd started assembling a collection of studio talents to form their own band. These included "SNL" band members saxophonist "Blue" Lou Marini and trombonist-saxophonist Tom Malone, who had previously played in Blood, Sweat & Tears. At Shaffer's suggestion, guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, the powerhouse combo from Booker T. & the M.G.'s and subsequently almost every hit out of Memphis' Stax Records during the 1960s, were signed as well.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: Belushi wanted a powerful trumpet player and a hot blues guitarist, so Juilliard-trained trumpeter Alan Rubin was brought in, as was guitarist Matt "Guitar" Murphy, who had performed with many blues legends.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: For the brothers' look, Belushi borrowed John Lee Hooker's trademark Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses and soul patch.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: Their style was fresh and in many ways, different from prevailing musical trends: A very raw and "live" sound compared to the increasing use of sound synthesis and vocal-dominated music of the late 1970s and 1980s.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: In "Stories Behind the Making of The Blues Brothers", a 1998 documentary included on some DVD editions of the first "Blues Brothers" film, Cropper noted that some of his peers thought that he and the other musicians backing the Blues Brothers were selling out to Hollywood or using a gimmick to make some quick money. Cropper responded by stating that he thought Belushi was as good as (or even better than) many of the singers he had backed; he also noted that Belushi had, early in his career, briefly been a professional drummer, and had an especially keen sense of rhythm.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: The Blues Brothers recorded their first album, "Briefcase Full of Blues", in 1978 while opening for comedian Steve Martin at Los Angeles' Universal Amphitheatre. The album reached #1 on the "Billboard" 200, went double platinum, and featured Top 40 hit recordings of Sam & Dave's "Soul Man" and The Chips' "Rubber Biscuit".


title: The Blues Brothers

text: The album liner notes fleshed out the fictional backstory of Jake and Elwood, having them growing up in a Roman Catholic orphanage in Rock Island, Illinois and learning the blues from a janitor named Curtis. Their blood brotherhood was sealed by cutting their middle fingers with a string said to come from the guitar of Elmore James.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: The band, along with the New Riders of the Purple Sage, opened for the Grateful Dead for the final show at Winterland, New Year's Eve 1978.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: With the film, came the soundtrack album, which was the band's first studio album. "Gimme Some Lovin'" was a Top 40 hit and the band toured to promote the film, The tour began on June 27, 1980 at Poplar Creek Music Theater. The tour also led to a third album (and second live album), "Made in America", recorded at the Universal Amphitheatre in 1980. The track "Who's Making Love" peaked at No 39. It was the last recording the band would make with Belushi's Jake Blues.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: Belushi's wife, Judith Jacklin, and his friend, Tino Insana, wrote a book, "", that further fleshed out the Blues Brothers' universe and gave a back story for the first movie.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: In 1981, "Best of the Blues Brothers" was released, with a previously unreleased track, a version of The Soul Survivors' "Expressway to Your Heart", and alternate live recordings of "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" and "Rubber Biscuit"; this album would be the first of several compilations and hits collections issued over the years. A 1998 British CD compilation, "The Complete Blues Brothers", exclusively featured The Lamont Cranston Band's "Excuse Moi Mon Cheri", from the L.A. "Briefcase" recordings, originally available only as the b-side to the "Soul Man" 45 rpm single.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: After Belushi's death, updated versions of the Blues Brothers have performed on "SNL" and for charitable and political causes. Aykroyd has been accompanied by Jim Belushi and John Goodman in character as "Zee" Blues and "Mighty Mack" McTeer. The copyright owners have also authorized some copycat acts to perform under the Blues Brothers name; one such act performs regularly at the Universal Studios Florida theme park in Orlando, Florida and Universal Studios Hollywood.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: In 1995, the Band collaborated with the Italian singer Zucchero Fornaciari, who had been invited to the event in memory of John Belushi's 46th birthday. After a concert together, they registered the videoclip of the famous Zucchero song "Per Colpa Di Chi?" at the House of Blues.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: In 1997, an animated sitcom with Jake and Elwood was planned, but scrapped after only eight episodes were produced. Peter Aykroyd and Jim Belushi replaced their brothers as the voices of Elwood and Jake.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: To promote "Blues Brothers 2000" (1998), Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi and John Goodman performed at the Super Bowl XXXI halftime show, along with ZZ Top and James Brown. The performance was preceded with a faux news report stating the Blues Brothers had escaped custody and were on their way to the Louisiana Superdome.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: Aykroyd has continued to be an active proponent of blues music and parlayed this avocation into foundation and partial ownership of the House of Blues franchise, a national chain of nightclubs. In Italy the franchise is now owned by Zucchero, who used the brand during the tour promoting his album "Black Cat" of 2016.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: Jim Belushi toured with the band for a short time as "Zee Blues", and recorded the album "" with Dan Aykroyd. Jim would later reunite with Aykroyd to record yet another album, not as the Blues Brothers but as themselves: "Belushi/Aykroyd – Have Love Will Travel" (Big Men-Big Music).


title: The Blues Brothers

text: In 2004, the musical "The Blues Brothers Revival" premiered in Chicago. The story was about Elwood trying to rescue Jake from an eternity in limbo/purgatory. The musical was written and composed with approval and permission from both the John Belushi estate (including his widow, Judith Belushi-Pisano) and Dan Aykroyd.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: The Blues Brothers featuring Elwood and Zee regularly perform at House of Blues venues and various casinos across North America. They are usually backed by Jim Belushi's Sacred Hearts Band. The Original Blues Brothers Band tours the world regularly. The only original members still in the band are Steve Cropper and Lou Marini. The lead singers are Bobby "Sweet Soul" Harden, Rob "The Honeydripper" Papparozi and Tommy "Pipes" McDonnel. They are occasionally joined by Eddie Floyd.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: Aykroyd most recently hosted a radio show as his character Elwood Blues on the weekly "House of Blues Radio Hour", heard nationwide on the Dial Global Radio Network until 2017. It has now been succeeded by "The Sam T. Blues Revue" which airs Wednesday nights on KHBT.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: In 1980, The Blues Brothers, directed by John Landis, was released. It featured epic car chases involving the Bluesmobile and musical performances by Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles and John Lee Hooker. The story is set in and around Chicago, Illinois. It is a tale of redemption for the paroled convict Jake Blues and his brother Elwood, who after a visit to Sister Mary Stigmata (Kathleen Freeman), otherwise known as "The Penguin" at the Catholic orphanage where they grew up, choose to take on a "mission from God" and reform their old blues band in order to raise funds to save the orphanage. Along the way, the brothers are targeted by a "mystery woman" (Carrie Fisher) and chased by the Illinois State Police, a country and western band called the Good Ol' Boys, and "Illinois Nazis". The film grossed $57 million domestically in its theatrical release, making it the 10th highest-grossing movie of 1980, and grossed an additional $58 million in foreign release.


title: The Blues Brothers

text: With Landis again directing, the sequel to "The Blues Brothers" was made in 1998. It fared considerably worse than its predecessor with fans and critics, though it is more ambitious in terms of musical performances by the band and has a more extensive roster of guest artists than the first film. The story picks up 18 years later with Elwood being released from prison, and learning that his brother has died. He is once again prevailed upon to save some orphans, and with a 10-year-old boy named Buster Blues (J. Evan Bonifant) in tow, Elwood again sets about the task of reuniting his band. He recruits some new singers, Mighty Mack (John Goodman) and Cab (Joe Morton), a policeman who was Curtis' son. All the original band members are found, as well as some performers from the first film, including Aretha Franklin and James Brown. There are dozens of other guest performers, including Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Junior Wells, Lonnie Brooks, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes, Sam Moore, Taj Mahal and Jonny Lang, Blues Traveler, as well as an all-star supergroup led by B.B. King called the Louisiana Gator Boys. On the run from the police, Russian mafia and a racist militia, the band eventually ends up in Louisiana, where they enter a Battle of the Bands overseen by a voodoo practitioner named Queen Moussette (Erykah Badu). During a song by the Blues Brothers (a Caribbean number called "Funky Nassau"), a character played by Paul Shaffer asks to cut in on keyboards, which Murph allows. This marks the first time in a film that the Blues Brothers play with their original keyboardist.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: Penthouse is a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione. It combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictures of women that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore pornographic pictures of women.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: Although Guccione was American, the magazine was founded in 1965 in the United Kingdom. Beginning in September 1969, it was sold in the United States as well. "Penthouse" has been owned by Penthouse Global Media Inc. since 2016. The assets of Penthouse Global Media were bought out by WGCZ Ltd. (the owners of XVideos) in June 2018 after winning a bankruptcy auction bid.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: The magazine's centerfold models are known as "Penthouse" Pets, and customarily wear a distinctive necklace in the form of a stylized key which incorporates both the Mars and Venus symbols in its design.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: At the height of its success, Guccione, who died in 2010, was considered one of the richest men in the United States. In 1982 he was listed in the Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people. An April 2002 "New York Times" article reported Guccione as saying that "Penthouse" grossed $3.5 billion to $4 billion over the 30-year life of the company.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: "Penthouse" magazine began publication in 1965, in the UK and in North America in 1969, an attempt to compete with Hugh Hefner's "Playboy". Guccione offered editorial content that was more sensational than that of "Playboy", and the magazine's writing was far more investigative than Hefner's upscale emphasis, with stories about government cover-ups and scandals.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: Writers such as Seymour Hersh, Craig S. Karpel, James Dale Davidson, and Ernest Volkman exposed numerous scandals and corruption at the highest levels of the United States Government. Contributors to the magazine included such writers as Isaac Asimov, James Baldwin, Howard Blum, Victor Bockris, T. C. Boyle, Alexander Cockburn, Harry Crews, Cameron Crowe, Don DeLillo, Alan Dershowitz, Edward Jay Epstein, Joe Flaherty, Chet Flippo, Albert Goldman, Anthony Haden-Guest, John Hawkes, Nat Hentoff, Warren Hinckle, Abbie Hoffman, Nicholas von Hoffman, Michael Korda, Paul Krassner, Michael Ledeen, Anthony Lewis, Peter Manso, Joyce Carol Oates, James Purdy, Philip Roth, Harrison E. Salisbury, Gail Sheehy, Robert Sherrill, Mickey Spillane, Ben Stein, Harry Stein, Tad Szulc, Jerry Tallmer, Studs Terkel, Nick Tosches, Gore Vidal, Irving Wallace, and Ruth Westheimer (Dr. Ruth).


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: The magazine was founded on humble beginnings. Due to Guccione's lack of resources, he personally photographed most of the models for the magazine's early issues. Without professional training, Guccione applied his knowledge of painting to his photography, establishing the diffused, soft focus look that would become one of the trademarks of the magazine's pictorials. Guccione would sometimes take several days to complete a shoot.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: As the magazine grew more successful, Guccione openly embraced a life of luxury; his former mansion is said to be the largest private residence in Manhattan at . However, in contrast to Hugh Hefner, who threw wild parties at his Playboy Mansions, life at Guccione's mansion was remarkably sedate, even during the hedonistic 1970s. He reportedly once had his bodyguards eject a local radio personality who had been hired as a DJ and jumped into the swimming pool naked.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: The magazine's pictorials offered more sexually explicit content than was commonly seen in most openly sold men's magazines of the era; it was the first to show female pubic hair, followed by full-frontal nudity and then the exposed vulva and anus. "Penthouse" has also, over the years, featured a number of authorized and unauthorized photos of celebrities such as Madonna and Vanessa Williams. In both cases, the photos were taken earlier in their careers and sold to "Penthouse" only after Madonna and Williams became famous. In the late 1990s, as poor business decisions were made and publishing control was gradually slipping away from Guccione, in a desperate attempt to boost sales,the magazine began to show more "fetish" content such as urination, bondage and "facials". Thus began the downward spiral of the magazine. Gone was the artistic and unique, soft focus lens erotic photography and the investigative journalism that brought the magazine to success and respect. Prominent companies no longer wanted their products featured in Penthouse and quickly had their advertising removed.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: On January 15, 2016, a press release emanating from then-owner FriendFinder Networks announced that Penthouse would shutter its print operations and move to all digital. However, managing director Kelly Holland quickly disavowed the decision and pledged to keep the print version of the magazine alive.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In 1982, Guccione was listed in the Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people, with a reported $400 million net worth. An April 2002 "New York Times" article quoted Guccione as saying that "Penthouse" grossed $3.5 billion to $4 billion over the 30-year life of the company, with a net income of almost $500 million.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In an effort to raise cash and to reduce debt, "Penthouse" sold its portfolio of several automotive magazine titles in 1999, for $33 million cash to Peterson Automotive, the national automotive-publishing group. While these titles were successful, it is widely reported that the science and health magazines "Omni" and "Longevity" cost "Penthouse" almost $100 million, contributing to its eventual financial troubles.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: On August 12, 2003, General Media, the parent company of the magazine, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Immediately upon filing, Cerberus Capital Management entered into a $5 million debtor-in-possession credit line with General Media to provide General Media working capital. In October 2003, it was announced that "Penthouse" magazine was being put up for sale as part of a deal with its creditors. On November 13, 2004, Guccione resigned as chairman and CEO of Penthouse International, the parent of General Media.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: "Penthouse" filed for bankruptcy protection on September 17, 2013. The magazine's owner FriendFinder's current common stock was wiped out and was no longer traded on the open market. In August 2013, FriendFinder's stock was delisted from Nasdaq because it consistently failed to trade for more than $1.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: As of 2015, General Media Communications, Inc. publishes entertainment magazines and operates as a subsidiary of FriendFinder Networks Inc.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In February 2016, Penthouse Global Media – a new company headed by Penthouse Entertainment managing director Kelly Holland – acquired the "Penthouse" brand from FriendFinder Networks.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: Penthouse Global Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 11, 2018 to address debt-related issues.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: All assets of Penthouse Global Media, Inc. were bought out by WGCZ Ltd., operators of Xvideos, on June 4, 2018 after winning a bankruptcy auction for US$11.2 million; other companies, such as MindGeek, also participated in the auction.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: The magazine's editorial content was praised and recognized by those in the academic field. In 1975, for example, Guccione was honored by Brandeis University for focusing "his editorial attention on such critical issues of our day as the welfare of the Vietnam veteran and problems of criminality in modern society".


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In 2013, director Barry Avrich made a film about Guccione's life entitled "". It was produced by Jeremy Frommer and Rick Schwartz, who have since created a premier website inspired by Bob Guccione as an extension of the film called Filthy Gorgeous Media.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: The September 1984 issue of "Penthouse" magazine would eventually become controversial because of its centerfold, Traci Lords. Lords posed nude for this issue at the beginning of her career as an adult film star. It was later revealed that Lords was underage throughout most of her career in pornography and was only 15 when she posed for "Penthouse".


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: The same issue also caused controversy with nude pictures of Vanessa Williams that caused her to be stripped of her Miss America crown.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In 1998, "Penthouse" decided to change its format and began featuring sexually explicit pictures (i.e., actual oral, vaginal, and anal penetration), beginning with photos from the famed "Stolen Honeymoon" sex tape featuring Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. It also began to regularly feature pictorials of female models urinating, which, until then, had been considered a defining limit of illegal obscenity as distinguished from legal pornography.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: A different approach to restoring sales was attempted by the UK version of the magazine in 1997. Under the editorship of Tom Hilditch, the magazine was rebranded as PH.UK and relaunched as middle-shelf "adult magazine for grown-ups". Fashion photographers (such as Corinne Day of "The Face" magazine) were hired to produce images that merged sex and fashion. The magazine's editorial content included celebrity interviews and tackled issues of sexual politics. The experiment attracted a great deal of press interest, but failed to generate a significant increase in sales. PH.UK closed in late 1998.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: The new owners significantly softened the content of the magazine starting with the January 2005 issue. "Penthouse" no longer showed male genitalia, real or simulated male-female sex, or any form of explicit hardcore content (it does still feature female-female simulated sex on occasion, however). While this change allowed the return of a limited number of mainstream advertisers to the magazine, it has not significantly raised the number of subscribers; total circulation is still below 350,000.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: Some of "Penthouse"s secondary publications, such as "Girls of Penthouse", continue to feature occasional images of explicit sex, either classic sets from the 1990s issues or stills of adult video shoots staged by the company's Digital Media division.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In 1976, Guccione used about US $17.5 million of his personal fortune to finance the controversial historical epic pornographic film "Caligula", with Malcolm McDowell in the title role and a supporting cast including Helen Mirren, John Gielgud, Teresa Ann Savoy, and Peter O'Toole. The film, which was eventually released in late 1979, was produced in Italy (made at the Dear Studios in Rome) and was directed by Tinto Brass. In 2001, "Penthouse Presents" began running on Hot Choice.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: Guccione also created the magazines "Omni", "Viva", and "Longevity". Later Guccione started "Penthouse Forum", which predominantly featured erotic writing and stories. In 1993, "Penthouse" published an adult comic book spin-off entitled "Penthouse Comix", featuring sexually explicit stories. After an initial success, "Penthouse Comix" expanded into a line of four illustrated magazines with the addition of "Penthouse Max", "Penthouse Men's Adventure Comix" and "Omni Comix".


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: "Penthouse Variations" is a monthly magazine containing ostensibly reader-generated erotic stories (primarily) and some pictures and reviews. It is a spin-off magazine from "Penthouse Letters". It was initially published in 1978. "Variations" focuses on "kinkier" topics of sexuality, such as bondage, fetish clothing, exhibitionism, voyeurism, foot fetishism, water sports, female dominance, bisexual exploration, transsexualism and sadomasochism, among others.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In 1991, Penthouse Video had signed a deal with A*Vision Entertainment to release videos designed for an adult audience.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In 1970, the Penthouse Club in London, England operated a casino. However, the next year the casino license was revoked by the gaming authorities. In 1972, Penthouse opened the Penthouse Adriatic Club casino on the island of Krk in Yugoslavia (now Croatia) at a cost of $45 million. However, the casino filed for bankruptcy the following year and was closed. In 1978, Penthouse began construction of the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. However, Penthouse was unable to raise additional funding and construction stopped in 1980. The project sat idle until Donald Trump acquired the site in 1993.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: "Penthouse" sponsors the "1X" car of driver Randy Hannagan in the World of Outlaws sprint car series. The magazine previously sponsored cars in the Formula One circuit from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Teams included Hesketh Racing and RAM Racing.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: January 2011, "Penthouse" announced the first 3D HD porn channel, which will be available in second quarter 2011. They shoot using dual lenses, and it will consist of available Penthouse HD Channel lineup covering over 30 platforms in more than 15 countries.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In January 2015, "Penthouse" announced its entry into the wine and spirits industry. The line of products were to debut at the 2015 Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. Called "Libido Libations", the spirits line is distributed by Prestige Imports LLC and produced by The Melchers Group BV. The wine offerings are the result of a partnership with California vintner John Crossland and Randal Tomich of the Australian winery Tomich Wines.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In March 1975, "Penthouse" published an article headlined "La Costa: The Hundred-Million-Dollar Resort with Criminal Clientele", written by Jeff Gerth and Lowell Bergman. The article indicated that the La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California, was developed by Mervyn Adelson and Irwin Molasky using loans from the Teamsters Pension Fund and that the resort was a playground for organized crime figures. The owners, along with two officials of the resort, Morris B. Moe Dalitz and Allard Roen, filed a libel lawsuit for $522 million against the magazine and the writers. In 1982, a jury absolved the magazine of any liability against the lawsuit from the owners. The plaintiffs appealed, but in December 1985, before a new trial could begin, the two sides settled. "Penthouse" issued a statement that they did not mean to imply that Adelson and Molaskey are or were members of organized crime. In turn the plaintiffs issued a statement lauding "Penthouse" publisher Guccione and his magazine for their "personal and professional awards". Total litigation costs were estimated to exceed $20 million.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In 2006, Guccione sued Penthouse Media Group for fraud, breach of contract, and conspiracy, among other charges. Some of the people named in the case included Marc Bell, Jason Galanis, Dr. Fernando Molina, Charles Samel, and Daniel C. Stanton.


title: Penthouse (magazine)

text: In December 1984, a group of radical feminists began a civil disobedience campaign against "Penthouse" which they called a National Rampage. Led by Melissa Farley and Nikki Craft, they went into stores selling copies of the magazine and ripped them up, and they also burned an effigy of Bob Guccione in front of a bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. In late 1985 the group began to focus on the printer of "Penthouse", Meredith Corporation. They bought shares in the company and attended their annual stockholder's meeting. The women were not allowed to speak, but they removed their coats, revealing images from a "Penthouse" shoot about Japanese rope bondage—among which two poses were construed by Farley to evoke dead bodies—ironed onto [their] shirts.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combines biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, information engineering, mathematics and statistics to analyze and interpret the biological data. Bioinformatics has been used for "in silico" analyses of biological queries using computational and statistical techniques.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Bioinformatics includes biological studies that use computer programming as part of their methodology, as well as specific analysis "pipelines" that are repeatedly used, particularly in the field of genomics. Common uses of bioinformatics include the identification of candidates genes and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Often, such identification is made with the aim to better understand the genetic basis of disease, unique adaptations, desirable properties (esp. in agricultural species), or differences between populations. In a less formal way, bioinformatics also tries to understand the organizational principles within nucleic acid and protein sequences, called proteomics.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Image and signal processing allow extraction of useful results from large amounts of raw data. In the field of genetics, it aids in sequencing and annotating genomes and their observed mutations. It plays a role in the text mining of biological literature and the development of biological and gene ontologies to organize and query biological data. It also plays a role in the analysis of gene and protein expression and regulation. Bioinformatics tools aid in comparing, analyzing and interpreting genetic and genomic data and more generally in the understanding of evolutionary aspects of molecular biology. At a more integrative level, it helps analyze and catalogue the biological pathways and networks that are an important part of systems biology. In structural biology, it aids in the simulation and modeling of DNA, RNA, proteins as well as biomolecular interactions.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Historically, the term "bioinformatics" did not mean what it means today. Paulien Hogeweg and Ben Hesper coined it in 1970 to refer to the study of information processes in biotic systems. This definition placed bioinformatics as a field parallel to biochemistry (the study of chemical processes in biological systems).


title: Bioinformatics

text: There has been a tremendous advance in speed and cost reduction since the completion of the Human Genome Project, with some labs able to sequence over 100,000 billion bases each year, and a full genome can be sequenced for a thousand dollars or less. Computers became essential in molecular biology when protein sequences became available after Frederick Sanger determined the sequence of insulin in the early 1950s. Comparing multiple sequences manually turned out to be impractical. A pioneer in the field was Margaret Oakley Dayhoff. She compiled one of the first protein sequence databases, initially published as books and pioneered methods of sequence alignment and molecular evolution. Another early contributor to bioinformatics was Elvin A. Kabat, who pioneered biological sequence analysis in 1970 with his comprehensive volumes of antibody sequences released with Tai Te Wu between 1980 and 1991.


title: Bioinformatics

text: In the 1970s, new techniques for sequencing DNA were applied to bacteriophage MS2 and øX174, and the extended nucleotide sequences were then parsed with informational and statistical algorithms. These studies illustrated that well known features, such as the coding segments and the triplet code, are revealed in straightforward statistical analyses and were thus proof of the concept that bioinformatics would be insightful.


title: Bioinformatics

text: To study how normal cellular activities are altered in different disease states, the biological data must be combined to form a comprehensive picture of these activities. Therefore, the field of bioinformatics has evolved such that the most pressing task now involves the analysis and interpretation of various types of data. This also includes nucleotide and amino acid sequences, protein domains, and protein structures. The actual process of analyzing and interpreting data is referred to as computational biology. Important sub-disciplines within bioinformatics and computational biology include:


title: Bioinformatics

text: The primary goal of bioinformatics is to increase the understanding of biological processes. What sets it apart from other approaches, however, is its focus on developing and applying computationally intensive techniques to achieve this goal. Examples include: pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning algorithms, and visualization. Major research efforts in the field include sequence alignment, gene finding, genome assembly, drug design, drug discovery, protein structure alignment, protein structure prediction, prediction of gene expression and protein–protein interactions, genome-wide association studies, the modeling of evolution and cell division/mitosis.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Bioinformatics now entails the creation and advancement of databases, algorithms, computational and statistical techniques, and theory to solve formal and practical problems arising from the management and analysis of biological data.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Over the past few decades, rapid developments in genomic and other molecular research technologies and developments in information technologies have combined to produce a tremendous amount of information related to molecular biology. Bioinformatics is the name given to these mathematical and computing approaches used to glean understanding of biological processes.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Common activities in bioinformatics include mapping and analyzing DNA and protein sequences, aligning DNA and protein sequences to compare them, and creating and viewing 3-D models of protein structures.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Bioinformatics is a science field that is similar to but distinct from biological computation, while it is often considered synonymous to computational biology. Biological computation uses bioengineering and biology to build biological computers, whereas bioinformatics uses computation to better understand biology. Bioinformatics and computational biology involve the analysis of biological data, particularly DNA, RNA, and protein sequences. The field of bioinformatics experienced explosive growth starting in the mid-1990s, driven largely by the Human Genome Project and by rapid advances in DNA sequencing technology.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Analyzing biological data to produce meaningful information involves writing and running software programs that use algorithms from graph theory, artificial intelligence, soft computing, data mining, image processing, and computer simulation. The algorithms in turn depend on theoretical foundations such as discrete mathematics, control theory, system theory, information theory, and statistics.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Since the Phage Φ-X174 was sequenced in 1977, the DNA sequences of thousands of organisms have been decoded and stored in databases. This sequence information is analyzed to determine genes that encode proteins, RNA genes, regulatory sequences, structural motifs, and repetitive sequences. A comparison of genes within a species or between different species can show similarities between protein functions, or relations between species (the use of molecular systematics to construct phylogenetic trees). With the growing amount of data, it long ago became impractical to analyze DNA sequences manually. Computer programs such as BLAST are used routinely to search sequences—as of 2008, from more than 260,000 organisms, containing over 190 billion nucleotides.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Before sequences can be analyzed they have to be obtained from the data storage bank example Genbank. DNA sequencing is still a non-trivial problem as the raw data may be noisy or affected by weak signals. Algorithms have been developed for base calling for the various experimental approaches to DNA sequencing.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Most DNA sequencing techniques produce short fragments of sequence that need to be assembled to obtain complete gene or genome sequences. The so-called shotgun sequencing technique (which was used, for example, by The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) to sequence the first bacterial genome, "Haemophilus influenzae") generates the sequences of many thousands of small DNA fragments (ranging from 35 to 900 nucleotides long, depending on the sequencing technology). The ends of these fragments overlap and, when aligned properly by a genome assembly program, can be used to reconstruct the complete genome. Shotgun sequencing yields sequence data quickly, but the task of assembling the fragments can be quite complicated for larger genomes. For a genome as large as the human genome, it may take many days of CPU time on large-memory, multiprocessor computers to assemble the fragments, and the resulting assembly usually contains numerous gaps that must be filled in later. Shotgun sequencing is the method of choice for virtually all genomes sequenced today, and genome assembly algorithms are a critical area of bioinformatics research.


title: Bioinformatics

text: In the context of genomics, annotation is the process of marking the genes and other biological features in a DNA sequence. This process needs to be automated because most genomes are too large to annotate by hand, not to mention the desire to annotate as many genomes as possible, as the rate of sequencing has ceased to pose a bottleneck. Annotation is made possible by the fact that genes have recognisable start and stop regions, although the exact sequence found in these regions can vary between genes.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Gene finding is a chief aspect of nucleotide-level annotation. For complex genomes, the most successful methods use a combination of ab initio gene prediction and sequence comparison with expressed sequence databases and other organisms. Nucleotide-level annotation also allows the integration of genome sequence with other genetic and physical maps of the genome.


title: Bioinformatics

text: The principal aim of protein-level annotation is to assign function to the products of the genome. Databases of protein sequences and functional domains and motifs are powerful resources for this type of annotation. Nevertheless, half of the predicted proteins in a new genome sequence tend to have no obvious function.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Understanding the function of genes and their products in the context of cellular and organismal physiology is the goal of process-level annotation. One of the obstacles to this level of annotation has been the inconsistency of terms used by different model systems. The Gene Ontology Consortium is helping to solve this problem.


title: Bioinformatics

text: The first description of a comprehensive genome annotation system was published in 1995 by the team at The Institute for Genomic Research that performed the first complete sequencing and analysis of the genome of a free-living organism, the bacterium "Haemophilus influenzae". Owen White designed and built a software system to identify the genes encoding all proteins, transfer RNAs, ribosomal RNAs (and other sites) and to make initial functional assignments. Most current genome annotation systems work similarly, but the programs available for analysis of genomic DNA, such as the GeneMark program trained and used to find protein-coding genes in "Haemophilus influenzae", are constantly changing and improving.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Following the goals that the Human Genome Project left to achieve after its closure in 2003, a new project developed by the National Human Genome Research Institute in the U.S appeared. The so-called ENCODE project is a collaborative data collection of the functional elements of the human genome that uses next-generation DNA-sequencing technologies and genomic tiling arrays, technologies able to automatically generate large amounts of data at a dramatically reduced per-base cost but with the same accuracy (base call error) and fidelity (assembly error).


title: Bioinformatics

text: While genome annotation is primarily based on sequence similarity (and thus homology), other properties of sequences can be used to predict the function of genes. In fact, most "gene" function prediction methods focus on "protein" sequences as they are more informative and more feature-rich. For instance, the distribution of hydrophobic amino acids predicts transmembrane segments in proteins. However, protein function prediction can also use external information such as gene (or protein) expression data, protein structure, or protein-protein interactions.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Evolutionary biology is the study of the origin and descent of species, as well as their change over time. Informatics has assisted evolutionary biologists by enabling researchers to:


title: Bioinformatics

text: The area of research within computer science that uses genetic algorithms is sometimes confused with computational evolutionary biology, but the two areas are not necessarily related.


title: Bioinformatics

text: The core of comparative genome analysis is the establishment of the correspondence between genes (orthology analysis) or other genomic features in different organisms. It is these intergenomic maps that make it possible to trace the evolutionary processes responsible for the divergence of two genomes. A multitude of evolutionary events acting at various organizational levels shape genome evolution. At the lowest level, point mutations affect individual nucleotides. At a higher level, large chromosomal segments undergo duplication, lateral transfer, inversion, transposition, deletion and insertion. Ultimately, whole genomes are involved in processes of hybridization, polyploidization and endosymbiosis, often leading to rapid speciation. The complexity of genome evolution poses many exciting challenges to developers of mathematical models and algorithms, who have recourse to a spectrum of algorithmic, statistical and mathematical techniques, ranging from exact, heuristics, fixed parameter and approximation algorithms for problems based on parsimony models to Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for Bayesian analysis of problems based on probabilistic models.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Many of these studies are based on the detection of sequence homology to assign sequences to protein families.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Pan genomics is a concept introduced in 2005 by Tettelin and Medini which eventually took root in bioinformatics. Pan genome is the complete gene repertoire of a particular taxonomic group: although initially applied to closely related strains of a species, it can be applied to a larger context like genus, phylum, etc. It is divided in two parts- The Core genome: Set of genes common to all the genomes under study (These are often housekeeping genes vital for survival) and The Dispensable/Flexible Genome: Set of genes not present in all but one or some genomes under study. A bioinformatics tool BPGA can be used to characterize the Pan Genome of bacterial species.


title: Bioinformatics

text: With the advent of next-generation sequencing we are obtaining enough sequence data to map the genes of complex diseases including infertility, breast cancer or Alzheimer's disease. Genome-wide association studies are a useful approach to pinpoint the mutations responsible for such complex diseases. Through these studies, thousands of DNA variants have been identified that are associated with similar diseases and traits. Furthermore, the possibility for genes to be used at prognosis, diagnosis or treatment is one of the most essential applications. Many studies are discussing both the promising ways to choose the genes to be used and the problems and pitfalls of using genes to predict disease presence or prognosis.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Genome-wide association studies have successfully identified thousands of common genetic variants for complex diseases and traits; however, these common variants only explain a small fraction of heritability. Rare variants may account for some of the missing heritability. Large-scale whole genome sequencing studies have rapidly sequenced millions of whole genomes, and such studies have identified hundreds of millions of rare variants. Functional annotations predict the effect or function of a genetic variant and help to prioritize rare functional variants, and incorporating these annotations can effectively boost the power of genetic association of rare variants analysis of whole genome sequencing studies. Some tools have been developed to provide all-in-one rare variant association analysis for whole-genome sequencing data, including integration of genotype data and their functional annotations, association analysis, result summary and visualization.


title: Bioinformatics

text: In cancer, the genomes of affected cells are rearranged in complex or even unpredictable ways. Massive sequencing efforts are used to identify previously unknown point mutations in a variety of genes in cancer. Bioinformaticians continue to produce specialized automated systems to manage the sheer volume of sequence data produced, and they create new algorithms and software to compare the sequencing results to the growing collection of human genome sequences and germline polymorphisms. New physical detection technologies are employed, such as oligonucleotide microarrays to identify chromosomal gains and losses (called comparative genomic hybridization), and single-nucleotide polymorphism arrays to detect known "point mutations". These detection methods simultaneously measure several hundred thousand sites throughout the genome, and when used in high-throughput to measure thousands of samples, generate terabytes of data per experiment. Again the massive amounts and new types of data generate new opportunities for bioinformaticians. The data is often found to contain considerable variability, or noise, and thus Hidden Markov model and change-point analysis methods are being developed to infer real copy number changes.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Two important principles can be used in the analysis of cancer genomes bioinformatically pertaining to the identification of mutations in the exome. First, cancer is a disease of accumulated somatic mutations in genes. Second cancer contains driver mutations which need to be distinguished from passengers.


title: Bioinformatics

text: With the breakthroughs that this next-generation sequencing technology is providing to the field of Bioinformatics, cancer genomics could drastically change. These new methods and software allow bioinformaticians to sequence many cancer genomes quickly and affordably. This could create a more flexible process for classifying types of cancer by analysis of cancer driven mutations in the genome. Furthermore, tracking of patients while the disease progresses may be possible in the future with the sequence of cancer samples.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Another type of data that requires novel informatics development is the analysis of lesions found to be recurrent among many tumors.


title: Bioinformatics

text: The expression of many genes can be determined by measuring mRNA levels with multiple techniques including microarrays, expressed cDNA sequence tag (EST) sequencing, serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) tag sequencing, massively parallel signature sequencing (MPSS), RNA-Seq, also known as "Whole Transcriptome Shotgun Sequencing" (WTSS), or various applications of multiplexed in-situ hybridization. All of these techniques are extremely noise-prone and/or subject to bias in the biological measurement, and a major research area in computational biology involves developing statistical tools to separate signal from noise in high-throughput gene expression studies. Such studies are often used to determine the genes implicated in a disorder: one might compare microarray data from cancerous epithelial cells to data from non-cancerous cells to determine the transcripts that are up-regulated and down-regulated in a particular population of cancer cells.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Protein microarrays and high throughput (HT) mass spectrometry (MS) can provide a snapshot of the proteins present in a biological sample. Bioinformatics is very much involved in making sense of protein microarray and HT MS data; the former approach faces similar problems as with microarrays targeted at mRNA, the latter involves the problem of matching large amounts of mass data against predicted masses from protein sequence databases, and the complicated statistical analysis of samples where multiple, but incomplete peptides from each protein are detected. Cellular protein localization in a tissue context can be achieved through affinity proteomics displayed as spatial data based on immunohistochemistry and tissue microarrays.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Gene regulation is the complex orchestration of events by which a signal, potentially an extracellular signal such as a hormone, eventually leads to an increase or decrease in the activity of one or more proteins. Bioinformatics techniques have been applied to explore various steps in this process.


title: Bioinformatics

text: For example, gene expression can be regulated by nearby elements in the genome. Promoter analysis involves the identification and study of sequence motifs in the DNA surrounding the coding region of a gene. These motifs influence the extent to which that region is transcribed into mRNA. Enhancer elements far away from the promoter can also regulate gene expression, through three-dimensional looping interactions. These interactions can be determined by bioinformatic analysis of chromosome conformation capture experiments.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Expression data can be used to infer gene regulation: one might compare microarray data from a wide variety of states of an organism to form hypotheses about the genes involved in each state. In a single-cell organism, one might compare stages of the cell cycle, along with various stress conditions (heat shock, starvation, etc.). One can then apply clustering algorithms to that expression data to determine which genes are co-expressed. For example, the upstream regions (promoters) of co-expressed genes can be searched for over-represented regulatory elements. Examples of clustering algorithms applied in gene clustering are k-means clustering, self-organizing maps (SOMs), hierarchical clustering, and consensus clustering methods.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Several approaches have been developed to analyze the location of organelles, genes, proteins, and other components within cells. This is relevant as the location of these components affects the events within a cell and thus helps us to predict the behavior of biological systems. A gene ontology category, "cellular component", has been devised to capture subcellular localization in many biological databases.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Microscopic pictures allow us to locate both organelles as well as molecules. It may also help us to distinguish between normal and abnormal cells, e.g. in cancer.


title: Bioinformatics

text: The localization of proteins helps us to evaluate the role of a protein. For instance, if a protein is found in the nucleus it may be involved in gene regulation or splicing. By contrast, if a protein is found in mitochondria, it may be involved in respiration or other metabolic processes. Protein localization is thus an important component of protein function prediction. There are well developed protein subcellular localization prediction resources available, including protein subcellular location databases, and prediction tools.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Data from high-throughput chromosome conformation capture experiments, such as Hi-C (experiment) and ChIA-PET, can provide information on the spatial proximity of DNA loci. Analysis of these experiments can determine the three-dimensional structure and nuclear organization of chromatin. Bioinformatic challenges in this field include partitioning the genome into domains, such as Topologically Associating Domains (TADs), that are organised together in three-dimensional space.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Protein structure prediction is another important application of bioinformatics. The amino acid sequence of a protein, the so-called primary structure, can be easily determined from the sequence on the gene that codes for it. In the vast majority of cases, this primary structure uniquely determines a structure in its native environment. (Of course, there are exceptions, such as the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) prion.) Knowledge of this structure is vital in understanding the function of the protein. Structural information is usually classified as one of "secondary", "tertiary" and "quaternary" structure. A viable general solution to such predictions remains an open problem. Most efforts have so far been directed towards heuristics that work most of the time.


title: Bioinformatics

text: One of the key ideas in bioinformatics is the notion of homology. In the genomic branch of bioinformatics, homology is used to predict the function of a gene: if the sequence of gene "A", whose function is known, is homologous to the sequence of gene "B," whose function is unknown, one could infer that B may share A's function. In the structural branch of bioinformatics, homology is used to determine which parts of a protein are important in structure formation and interaction with other proteins. In a technique called homology modeling, this information is used to predict the structure of a protein once the structure of a homologous protein is known. Until recently, this remained the only way to predict protein structures reliably. However, a game-changing breakthrough occurred with the release of new deep-learning algorithms-based software called AlphaFold, developed by a bioinformatics team within Google's A.I. research department DeepMind. AlphaFold, during the 14th Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction (CASP14) computational protein structure prediction software competition, became the first contender ever to deliver prediction submissions with accuracy competitive with experimental structures in a majority of cases and greatly outperforming all other prediction software methods up to that point. AlphaFold has since released the predicted structures for hundreds of millions of proteins.


title: Bioinformatics

text: One example of this is hemoglobin in humans and the hemoglobin in legumes (leghemoglobin), which are distant relatives from the same protein superfamily. Both serve the same purpose of transporting oxygen in the organism. Although both of these proteins have completely different amino acid sequences, their protein structures are virtually identical, which reflects their near identical purposes and shared ancestor.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Other techniques for predicting protein structure include protein threading and "de novo" (from scratch) physics-based modeling.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Another aspect of structural bioinformatics include the use of protein structures for Virtual Screening models such as Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship models and proteochemometric models (PCM). Furthermore, a protein's crystal structure can be used in simulation of for example ligand-binding studies and "in silico" mutagenesis studies.


title: Bioinformatics

text: "Network analysis" seeks to understand the relationships within biological networks such as metabolic or protein–protein interaction networks. Although biological networks can be constructed from a single type of molecule or entity (such as genes), network biology often attempts to integrate many different data types, such as proteins, small molecules, gene expression data, and others, which are all connected physically, functionally, or both.


title: Bioinformatics

text: "Systems biology" involves the use of computer simulations of cellular subsystems (such as the networks of metabolites and enzymes that comprise metabolism, signal transduction pathways and gene regulatory networks) to both analyze and visualize the complex connections of these cellular processes. Artificial life or virtual evolution attempts to understand evolutionary processes via the computer simulation of simple (artificial) life forms.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Tens of thousands of three-dimensional protein structures have been determined by X-ray crystallography and protein nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (protein NMR) and a central question in structural bioinformatics is whether it is practical to predict possible protein–protein interactions only based on these 3D shapes, without performing protein–protein interaction experiments. A variety of methods have been developed to tackle the protein–protein docking problem, though it seems that there is still much work to be done in this field.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Other interactions encountered in the field include Protein–ligand (including drug) and protein–peptide. Molecular dynamic simulation of movement of atoms about rotatable bonds is the fundamental principle behind computational algorithms, termed docking algorithms, for studying molecular interactions.


title: Bioinformatics

text: The growth in the number of published literature makes it virtually impossible to read every paper, resulting in disjointed sub-fields of research. Literature analysis aims to employ computational and statistical linguistics to mine this growing library of text resources. For example:


title: Bioinformatics

text: Computational technologies are used to accelerate or fully automate the processing, quantification and analysis of large amounts of high-information-content biomedical imagery. Modern image analysis systems augment an observer's ability to make measurements from a large or complex set of images, by improving accuracy, objectivity, or speed. A fully developed analysis system may completely replace the observer. Although these systems are not unique to biomedical imagery, biomedical imaging is becoming more important for both diagnostics and research. Some examples are:


title: Bioinformatics

text: Computational techniques are used to analyse high-throughput, low-measurement single cell data, such as that obtained from flow cytometry. These methods typically involve finding populations of cells that are relevant to a particular disease state or experimental condition.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Biodiversity informatics deals with the collection and analysis of biodiversity data, such as taxonomic databases, or microbiome data. Examples of such analyses include phylogenetics, niche modelling, species richness mapping, DNA barcoding, or species identification tools.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Biological ontologies are directed acyclic graphs of controlled vocabularies. They are designed to capture biological concepts and descriptions in a way that can be easily categorised and analysed with computers. When categorised in this way, it is possible to gain added value from holistic and integrated analysis.


title: Bioinformatics

text: The OBO Foundry was an effort to standardise certain ontologies. One of the most widespread is the Gene ontology which describes gene function. There are also ontologies which describe phenotypes.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Databases are essential for bioinformatics research and applications. Many databases exist, covering various information types: for example, DNA and protein sequences, molecular structures, phenotypes and biodiversity. Databases may contain empirical data (obtained directly from experiments), predicted data (obtained from analysis), or, most commonly, both. They may be specific to a particular organism, pathway or molecule of interest. Alternatively, they can incorporate data compiled from multiple other databases. These databases vary in their format, access mechanism, and whether they are public or not.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Some of the most commonly used databases are listed below. For a more comprehensive list, please check the link at the beginning of the subsection.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Software tools for bioinformatics range from simple command-line tools, to more complex graphical programs and standalone web-services available from various bioinformatics companies or public institutions.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Many free and open-source software tools have existed and continued to grow since the 1980s. The combination of a continued need for new algorithms for the analysis of emerging types of biological readouts, the potential for innovative "in silico" experiments, and freely available open code bases have helped to create opportunities for all research groups to contribute to both bioinformatics and the range of open-source software available, regardless of their funding arrangements. The open source tools often act as incubators of ideas, or community-supported plug-ins in commercial applications. They may also provide "de facto" standards and shared object models for assisting with the challenge of bioinformation integration.


title: Bioinformatics

text: The range of open-source software packages includes titles such as Bioconductor, BioPerl, Biopython, BioJava, BioJS, BioRuby, Bioclipse, EMBOSS, .NET Bio, Orange with its bioinformatics add-on, Apache Taverna, UGENE and GenoCAD. To maintain this tradition and create further opportunities, the non-profit Open Bioinformatics Foundation have supported the annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) since 2000.


title: Bioinformatics

text: SOAP- and REST-based interfaces have been developed for a wide variety of bioinformatics applications allowing an application running on one computer in one part of the world to use algorithms, data and computing resources on servers in other parts of the world. The main advantages derive from the fact that end users do not have to deal with software and database maintenance overheads.


title: Bioinformatics

text: Basic bioinformatics services are classified by the EBI into three categories: SSS (Sequence Search Services), MSA (Multiple Sequence Alignment), and BSA (Biological Sequence Analysis). The availability of these service-oriented bioinformatics resources demonstrate the applicability of web-based bioinformatics solutions, and range from a collection of standalone tools with a common data format under a single, standalone or web-based interface, to integrative, distributed and extensible bioinformatics workflow management systems.


title: Bioinformatics

text: A bioinformatics workflow management system is a specialized form of a workflow management system designed specifically to compose and execute a series of computational or data manipulation steps, or a workflow, in a Bioinformatics application. Such systems are designed to


title: Bioinformatics

text: In 2014, the US Food and Drug Administration sponsored a conference held at the National Institutes of Health Bethesda Campus to discuss reproducibility in bioinformatics. Over the next three years, a consortium of stakeholders met regularly to discuss what would become BioCompute paradigm. These stakeholders included representatives from government, industry, and academic entities. Session leaders represented numerous branches of the FDA and NIH Institutes and Centers, non-profit entities including the Human Variome Project and the European Federation for Medical Informatics, and research institutions including Stanford, the New York Genome Center, and the George Washington University.


title: Bioinformatics

text: It was decided that the BioCompute paradigm would be in the form of digital 'lab notebooks' which allow for the reproducibility, replication, review, and reuse, of bioinformatics protocols. This was proposed to enable greater continuity within a research group over the course of normal personnel flux while furthering the exchange of ideas between groups. The US FDA funded this work so that information on pipelines would be more transparent and accessible to their regulatory staff.


title: Bioinformatics

text: In 2016, the group reconvened at the NIH in Bethesda and discussed the potential for a BioCompute Object, an instance of the BioCompute paradigm. This work was copied as both a "standard trial use" document and a preprint paper uploaded to bioRxiv. The BioCompute object allows for the JSON-ized record to be shared among employees, collaborators, and regulators.


title: Bioinformatics

text: As well as in-person Masters degree courses being taught at many universities, the computational nature of bioinformtics lends it to computer-aided and online learning. Software platforms designed to teach bioinformatics concepts and methods include Rosalind and online courses offered through the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics Training Portal. The Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops provides videos and slides from training workshops on their website under a Creative Commons license. The 4273π project or 4273pi project also offers open source educational materials for free. The course runs on low cost Raspberry Pi computers and has been used to teach adults and school pupils. 4273π is actively developed by a consortium of academics and research staff who have run research level bioinformatics using Raspberry Pi computers and the 4273π operating system.


title: Bioinformatics

text: MOOC platforms also provide online certifications in bioinformatics and related disciplines, including Coursera's Bioinformatics Specialization (UC San Diego) and Genomic Data Science Specialization (Johns Hopkins) as well as EdX's Data Analysis for Life Sciences XSeries (Harvard).


title: Bioinformatics

text: There are several large conferences that are concerned with bioinformatics. Some of the most notable examples are Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB), and Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB).


title: Emeritus

text: Emeritus (; female: emerita) is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title the rank of the last office held".


title: Emeritus

text: In some cases, the term is conferred automatically upon all persons who retire at a given rank, but in others, it remains a mark of distinguished service awarded selectively on retirement. It is also used when a person of distinction in a profession retires or hands over the position, enabling their former rank to be retained in their title, e.g., "professor emeritus". The term "emeritus" does not necessarily signify that a person has relinquished all the duties of their former position, and they may continue to exercise some of them.


title: Emeritus

text: In the description of deceased professors emeritus listed at U.S. universities, the title "emeritus" is replaced by indicating the years of their appointments except in obituaries, where it may indicate their status at the time of death.


title: Emeritus

text: "Emeritus" (past participle of Latin , meaning "complete one's service") is a compound of the Latin prefix (variant of ) meaning "out of, from" and (source of "merit") meaning "to serve, earn". The word is attested since the early 17th century with the meaning "having served out one's time, having done sufficient service." The Latin feminine equivalent, "emerita" (), is also sometimes used, although in English the word "emeritus" is often unmarked for gender.


title: Emeritus

text: In the United States and other countries, a tenured full professor who retires from an educational institution in good standing may be given the title "professor emeritus". The title "professor emerita" is sometimes used for women. In most systems and institutions, the rank is bestowed on all professors who have retired in good standing, while at others, it needs a special act or vote. Professors emeriti may, depending on local circumstances, retain office space or other privileges. The adjective may be placed before or after the title, "e.g.", "professor emeritus" or "emeritus professor".


title: Emeritus

text: When a diocesan bishop or auxiliary bishop retires, the word "emeritus" is added to their former title, i.e., "Archbishop Emeritus of ...". The term "Bishop Emeritus" of a particular see can apply to several people, if the first lives long enough. The title was applied to the Bishop of Rome, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, on his retirement. In Community of Christ, the status of emeritus is occasionally granted to senior officials upon retirement.


title: Emeritus

text: In Judaism, "emeritus" is often a title granted to long-serving rabbis of synagogues or other Jewish institutions. In some cases, the title is also granted to chazzans. Rabbi "Emeritus" or Cantor "Emeritus" is largely an honorific title.


title: Emeritus

text: Since 2001, the honorary title of president pro tempore emeritus has been given to a senator of the minority party who has previously served as president pro tempore of the United States Senate.


title: Emeritus

text: It is also used in business and nonprofit organizations to denote perpetual status of the founder of an organization or individuals who made significant contributions to the institution.


title: Emeritus

text: Following her retirement, the House Steering and Policy Committee voted to grant Nancy Pelosi with the title of "speaker emerita" in recognition of her service as Speaker of the House.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Rising to prominence with James Brown in the early 1970s, and later with Parliament-Funkadelic, Collins established himself as one of the leading names and innovators in funk with his driving basslines and humorous vocals. He later formed his own P-Funk side project known as Bootsy's Rubber Band. He was a frequent collaborator with other musicians from a variety of genres, including dance music (Deee-Lite's "Groove Is in the Heart"), electronic big beat (Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice"), and alternative metal (Praxis), among others. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. In 2020, "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked Collins number 4 in its list of the 50 greatest bassists of all time.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Collins was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 26, 1951. He said that his mother nicknamed him "Bootsy". "I asked her why," he explained to a journalist, "and she just said, 'Because you looked like a Bootsy.' I left it at that."


title: Bootsy Collins

text: His brother Phelps "Catfish" Collins (1943–2010) was also a musician. He and Bootsy were once part of James Brown's backing band, The Pacemakers.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: With his elder brother Phelps "Catfish" Collins, Frankie "Kash" Waddy, and Philippé Wynne, Collins formed a funk band, The Pacemakers, in 1968. In March 1970, after most of the members of James Brown's band quit over a pay dispute, The Pacemakers were hired as Brown's backing band and they became known as The J.B.'s. (They are often referred to as the "original" J.B.'s to distinguish them from later line-ups that went by the same name.) Although they worked for Brown for only 11 months, the original J.B.'s played on some of Brown's most intense funk recordings, including "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine", "Bewildered (1970)", "Super Bad", "Soul Power", "Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing", and two instrumental singles, the much-sampled "The Grunt" and "These Are the J.B.'s". In regards to his tenure working for James Brown, Collins stated:


title: Bootsy Collins

text: After parting ways with James Brown, Collins returned to Cincinnati and formed House Guests with his brother Phelps Collins, Rufus Allen, Clayton "Chicken" Gunnels, Frankie Waddy, Ronnie Greenaway and Robert McCullough. The House Guests released "What So Never the Dance" and another single on the House Guests label, as well as a third as The Sound of Vision on the House Guests label.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Next Collins moved to Detroit, Michigan, after Philippé Wynne suggested joining The Spinners, for whom Wynne had been singing. However, following the advice of singer and future Parliament member Mallia Franklin, Collins made another choice. Franklin introduced both Collins brothers to George Clinton, and in 1972, both of the Collins brothers, along with Waddy, joined Funkadelic. Collins played bass on most of Funkadelic and Parliament albums through the early 1980s, garnering several songwriting credits as well.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In 1976 Collins, Catfish, Waddy, Joel Johnson (1953–2018), Gary "Mudbone" Cooper, Robert Johnson and The Horny Horns formed Bootsy's Rubber Band, a separate touring unit of Clinton's P-Funk collective. The group recorded five albums together, the first three of which are often considered to be among the quintessential P-Funk recordings. The group's 1978 album "Bootsy? Player of the Year" reached the top of the R&B album chart and spawned the #1 R&B single "Bootzilla".


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Like Clinton, Collins took on several alter egos, from Casper the Funky Ghost to Bootzilla, "the world's only rhinestone rockstar monster of a doll", all as parts of the evolving character of an alien rock star who grew gradually more bizarre as time went on (see P-Funk mythology). He also adopted his trademark "space bass" around this time.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Collins released two 1980 albums, his first "solo" album "Ultra Wave", and "Sweat Band", on George Clinton's Uncle Jam label with a group billed as Bootsy's Sweat Band. He also was credited for co-producing the debut of P-Funk spinoff Zapp.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In 1984, he collaborated with Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads to produce "Five Minutes", a dance record sampled and edited from Ronald Reagan's infamous "We begin bombing in five minutes" speech. The record was credited to "Bonzo goes to Washington" (also referenced in the 1985 Ramones song "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg", derived from Reagan's starring role as Professor Peter Boyd in the 1951 comedy film "Bedtime for Bonzo").


title: Bootsy Collins

text: After a nearly five-year hiatus, he had a comeback in 1988 (with some help from producer Bill Laswell). "What's Bootsy Doin'?" flaunted a new sound that foreshadowed the 1990s, such as the dance floor smash "Party on Plastic". Laswell introduced Collins to Herbie Hancock, resulting in "Perfect Machine" (1988). The techno-funk they recorded featured turntables for scratch appeal, and the smoothly-stylized vocals of Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner of chart-topping Ohio Players. These were the first of many collaborations between Laswell and Collins on many albums and projects, with the prolific producer using Bootsy mainly as a bassist but sometimes as a rhythm guitarist.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In 1988, Collins appeared as a guest artist to play bass on Keith Richards and The X-Pensive Winos album "Talk is Cheap".


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In 1989, Collins played bass on and produced several tracks of Malcolm McLaren's album "Waltz Darling", credited to Malcolm McLaren and the Bootzilla Orchestra.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In 1990, Collins collaborated with Deee-Lite on their biggest hit "Groove Is in the Heart", and he contributed additional vocals. Although he also appeared in the music video playing the bass, the bassline in the song is actually a sample of a Herbie Hancock song called "Bring Down the Birds". Bootsy's Rubber Band became the de facto backing musicians for Deee-Lite during a world tour. The Rubber Band also recorded the EP "Jungle Bass", their first recording in 11 years.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In 1992, he joined with guitarist Stevie Salas and drummer Buddy Miles to form the funk-metal fusion group Hardware. The trio released one album, "Third Eye Open", before disbanding. In the same year, Collins played bass guitar on the first Praxis album (produced by Laswell): "Transmutation", alongside fellow Parliament-Funkadelic member Bernie Worrell, Bryan Mantia and Buckethead.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Bootsy's New Rubber Band formed in 1994, releasing "Blasters of the Universe" and also put forth the following live release "Keepin' dah Funk Alive 4-1995", recorded over two nights in Tokyo.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In 1995, Collins played in the remake of Jimi Hendrix's "If 6 Was 9," for Axiom Funk, a Funkadelic-like one-off supergroup produced by Bill Laswell and featuring (Funkadelic members) George Clinton, Bernie Worrell, Collins, (the guitar of the late) Eddie Hazel, Gary Shider and Laswell. The group released only one album ("Funkcronomicon"), and the song also appeared in the soundtrack of the movie "Stealing Beauty".


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Collins collaborated with Del McCoury, Doc Watson and Mac Wiseman to form the GrooveGrass Boyz. They produced a fusion of bluegrass and funk.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Collins provided lead vocals for the Fatboy Slim song "Weapon of Choice" from his 2000 album "Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars". Collins vocals quote the book "Dune" ("Walk without rhythm and you won't attract the worm"). The song won multiple MTV Video Music Awards and a Grammy Award for Best Music Video.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In October 2005, Collins co-wrote a song celebrating the resurgence of his hometown team, the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League called "Fear Da Tiger" which features "raps" written and performed by several Bengals players, including defensive end Duane Clemons, offensive tackle Stacy Andrews, and center Ben Wilkerson. An edited version of the song was made into a music video which features cameos by many other Bengals players. Collins appeared with Little Richard, Bernie Worrell, and other notable musicians as the band playing with Hank Williams, Jr. for the "Monday Night Football" opening during for the 2006 season. Collins was the only all star to return with Williams for the 2007 season.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: He also sings "Marshal Law", the theme song of the Cincinnati Marshals indoor football team and debuted the song in 2006 at half time of the April 29 Marshals home game against the West Palm Beach Phantoms.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In 2006, ABC Entertainment/A Charly Films Release released a DVD and CD from Collins and the New Rubber Band's concert at the 1998 North Sea Jazz Festival. Soon after the release, Collins split from long-time friend and guitarist Odhran "The Bodhran" Rameriz, citing creative differences as the reason.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Later that same year, Collins released the holiday album "Christmas Is 4 Ever". This represents the first Christmas-themed album made by a member of the P-Funk musical collective. The album features re-workings of Christmas standards as well as original compositions.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In April 2007, Collins announced plans to open Bootsy's, a restaurant/club with Cincinnati area restaurateur Jeff Ruby. The venue operated from 2008 to 2010. It featured live musical acts, a museum dedicated to Collins's musical career and Spanish, Central and South American cuisine.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In June 2007, Collins, along with Catfish Collins, Clyde Stubblefield, John "Jabo" Starks, and Bernie Worrell, participated in the recording of the soundtrack for the movie "Superbad". In December of that year they (without Worrell) went on to perform the first tribute concert remembering James Brown.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In July 2007, Collins also told "Billboard" magazine that he was working on a project named Science Faxtion and an album called "Living on Another Frequency" in which he serves as bassist and co-producer along with his lead vocalist Greg Hampton. The band also features guitarist Buckethead and drummer Brain. The album was released in November 2008.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Collins portrayed a radio DJ in the 2013 video game, "Grand Theft Auto V", in which several of his own songs were featured.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Collins has also collaborated extensively with Bill Laswell, Buckethead, and also frequently collaborated with fellow bassist Victor Wooten.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: On December 14, 2018, Collins played a show with Detroit-based funk artist GRiZ, and also collaborated on a new song with GRiZ.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In January 2019, Collins announced on Facebook that he would be retiring from live performances for health reasons:


title: Bootsy Collins

text: He wrote that he would be releasing a new album this year, and that he would continue to work in the studio and mentor young musicians.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: On February 25, 2021, it was announced that Collins would be making an appearance as the "special guest host" of "An Evening With Silk Sonic", the first studio album from Silk Sonic, a collaboration between Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak. He was the one who came up with the band's name (much like he did with Babyface), and acts as the album's narrator, "threading" the songs together.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: On July 7, 2022, Collins served as emcee for the opening ceremony for the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Alabama.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Collins has owned many basses, several of which are custom made. His original Space Bass and its first replacement were made in Warren, Michigan by Larry Pless of Gus Zoppi's music store. The first Space Bass had a mahogany body and maple neck, white finish, and mirror pick guard. This is the Space Bass on the cover of 1976 album " Stretchin' Out in Bootsy's Rubber Band". Collins's original Space Bass guitar was stolen, but it was later recovered at a Cincinnati pawn shop and returned to Collins.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: Another Collins signature instrument is a custom-built star-shaped bass guitar he also calls the Space Bass, built for him by Manuel "Manny" Salvador of GuitarCraft in 1998. In 2006 Collins made an agreement with Traben to make a signature Collins model bass, the Bootzilla. During the 2010 NAMM Show, Collins's new signature bass was released by Warwick, a customized Infinity Bass called "Bootsy Collins Black Star Signature Bass" or "Bootsy Collins Orange Star Signature Bass", depending on the color of the stars on it.


title: Bootsy Collins

text: In July 2010, Collins, in partnership with former child actor Cory Danziger, launched Funk University ("Funk U"), an online-only bass guitar school in which he also serves as curator and lead professor. Funk University offers an intense curriculum tailored for intermediate to advanced bass players as well as anyone interested in a deeper understanding of funk. The curriculum is based on bass theory, history of funk, and Collins's own musical history given by Collins himself, augmented by lessons and exercises in bass and rhythm from guest bassist professors such as Les Claypool, Meshell Ndegeocello, John B (Williams) and Victor Wooten. As of 2021, Funk University is now defunct.