title: Love Live! School Idol Project

text: "Love Live!" was ranked No. 1 in top-selling media franchises in Japan for 2016 and ranked No. 4 in 2015. The franchise earned over ¥8 billion in 2016 and over ¥5 billion in 2015. This includes the raw yen totals of Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, music CDs, novels, and manga, but not video games, film tickets, digital downloads, and other forms of media sales. In 2013, physical media sales generated () in Japan. DVD and Blu-ray sales of the anime's second season in 2014 sold () in Japan. The franchise's physical media sales generated () in Japan between 2015 and 2018.


title: Love Live! School Idol Project

text: In 2016, μ's received the Special Award in the 30th Japan Gold Disc Awards and their second best album "Love Live! μ's Best Album Best Live! collection II" was also chosen as Animation Album of the Year. The group even dominated Tower Records Japan's anime CD ranking of 2015.


title: Love Live! School Idol Project

text: The "Hit or Miss" (2018) Internet meme originates from a TikTok video featuring a cosplay of Nico Yazawa.


title: Trapping

text: Animal trapping, or simply trapping or gin, is the use of a device to remotely catch an animal. Animals may be trapped for a variety of purposes, including food, the fur trade, hunting, pest control, and wildlife management.


title: Trapping

text: Neolithic hunters, including the members of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of Romania and Ukraine (c. 5500–2750 BCE), used traps to capture their prey. An early mention in written form is a passage from the self-titled book by Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi describes Chinese methods used for trapping animals during the 4th century BCE. The Zhuangzi reads, "The sleek-furred fox and the elegantly spotted leopard ... can't seem to escape the disaster of nets and traps." "Modern" steel jaw-traps were first described in western sources as early as the late 16th century. The first mention comes from Leonard Mascall's book on animal trapping. It reads, "a griping trappe made all of yrne, the lowest barre, and the ring or hoope with two clickets." The mousetrap, with a strong spring device mounted on a wooden base, was first patented by William C. Hooker of Abingdon, Illinois, in 1894.


title: Trapping

text: Trapping is carried out for a variety of reasons. Originally, it was for food, fur, and other animal products. Trapping has since been expanded to encompass pest control, wildlife management, the pet trade, and zoological specimens.


title: Trapping

text: In the early days of the colonization settlement of North America, the trading of furs was common between the Dutch, French, or English and the indigenous populations inhabiting their respective colonized territories. Many locations where trading took place were referred to as trading posts. Much trading occurred along the Hudson River area in the early 1600s.


title: Trapping

text: In some locations in the US and in many parts of southern and western Europe, trapping generates much controversy because it is a contributing factor to declining populations in some species, such as the Canadian Lynx. In the 1970s and 1980s, the threat to lynx from trapping reached a new height when the price for hides rose to as much as $600 each. By the early 1990s, the Canada lynx was a clear candidate for Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection. In response to the lynx's plight, more than a dozen environmental groups petitioned FWS in 1991 to list lynx in the lower 48 states. Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) regional offices and field biologists supported the petition, but FWS officials in the Washington, D.C. headquarters turned it down. In March 2000, the FWS listed the lynx as threatened in the lower 48.


title: Trapping

text: The prices of fur pelts have significantly declined. Some trappers have considered forgoing trapping because the cost of trapping exceeds the return on the furs sold at the end of the season.


title: Trapping

text: Beaver castors are used in many perfumes as a sticky substance. Trappers are paid by the government of Ontario to harvest the castor sacs of beavers and are paid from 10–40 dollars per dry pound when sold to the Northern Ontario Fur Trappers Association.


title: Trapping

text: In the early 1900s, muskrat glands were used in making perfume, or women just crushed the glands and rubbed them onto their body.


title: Trapping

text: Trapping is regularly used for pest control of beaver, coyote, raccoon, cougar, bobcat, Virginia opossum, fox, squirrel, rat, mouse and mole in order to limit damage to households, food supplies, farming, ranching, and property.


title: Trapping

text: Traps are used as a method of pest control as an alternative to pesticides. Commonly spring traps which holds the animal are used—mousetraps for mice, or the larger rat traps for larger rodents like rats and squirrel. Specific traps are designed for invertebrates such as cockroaches and spiders. Some mousetraps can also double as an insect or universal trap, like the glue traps which catch any small animal that walks upon them.


title: Trapping

text: Although it is common to state that trapping is an effective means of pest control, a counter-example is found in the work of Jon Way, a biologist in Massachusetts. Way reported that the death or disappearance of a territorial male coyote can lead to double litters, and postulates a possible resultant increase in coyote density. Coexistence programs that take this scientific research into account are being pursued by groups such as the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals.


title: Trapping

text: Animals are frequently trapped in many parts of the world to prevent damage to personal property, including the killing of livestock by predatory animals.


title: Trapping

text: Many wildlife biologists support the use of regulated trapping for the sustained harvest of some species of furbearers. Research shows that trapping can be an effective method of managing or studying furbearers, controlling damage caused by furbearers, and at times reducing the spread of harmful diseases. The research shows that regulated trapping is a safe, efficient, and practical means of capturing individual animals without impairing the survival of furbearer populations or damaging the environment. Wildlife biologists also support regulatory and educational programs, research to evaluate trap performance and the implementation of improvements in trapping technology in order to improve animal welfare.


title: Trapping

text: Trapping is useful to control over population of certain species. Trapping is also used for research and relocation of wildlife. Federal authorities in the United States use trapping as the primary means to control predators that prey on endangered species such as the San Joaquin kit fox ("Vulpes macrotis mutica"), California least tern ("Sterna antillarum browni") and desert tortoise ("Gopherus agassizii").


title: Trapping

text: Animals may be trapped for public display, for natural history displays, or for such purposes as obtaining elements used in the practice of traditional medicine. Trapping may also be done for hobby and conservation purposes.


title: Trapping

text: Most of the traps used for mammals can be divided into six types: foothold traps, body gripping traps, snares, deadfalls, cages, and glue traps. Some of the traditional kinds have changed little since the Stone Age.


title: Trapping

text: Foothold traps were first invented to keep poachers out of European estates in the 1600s (see Mantrap). The device uses a pressure plate between two metal arms, or "jaws", lined with spiked protrusions, or "teeth". Once the plate has been stepped on, the arms close on the ensnared person or animal's foot. Blacksmiths made traps of iron in the early 1700s for trappers. By the 1800s, companies began to manufacture steel foothold traps. Traps are designed in different sizes for different sized animals.


title: Trapping

text: In recent decades, the use of foothold traps in trapping and hunting has become controversial. Anti-fur campaigns have protested foothold traps as inhumane, with some claiming that an animal caught in a foothold trap will frequently chew off its leg to escape the trap. The practice has been banned in 101 countries as well as 10 states in the United States.


title: Trapping

text: Modern variations of the foothold trap have been designed to reduce instances of the animal fighting the trap, possibly injuring itself or getting loose in the process. These include traps with offset jaws and lamination, which decrease pressure on the animals' legs, and padded jaws with rubber inserts, which reduce animal injuries. Manufacturers of traps designed to work only on raccoons are referred to as dog-proof. These traps are small, and rely on the raccoon's grasping nature to trigger the trap.


title: Trapping

text: Body-gripping traps are designed to kill animals quickly. They are often called "Conibear" traps after Canadian inventor Frank Conibear who began their manufacture in the late 1950s as the Victor-Conibear trap. Many trappers consider these traps to be one of the best trapping innovations of the 20th century; when they work as intended, animals that are caught squarely on the neck are killed quickly, and are therefore not left to suffer or given a chance to escape.


title: Trapping

text: The general category of body-gripping traps may include snap-type mouse and rat traps, but the term is more often used to refer to the larger, all-steel traps that are used to catch fur-bearing animals. These larger traps are made from bent round steel bars. These traps come in several sizes including model #110 or #120 at about for muskrat and mink, model #220 at about for raccoon and possum, and model #330 at about for beaver and otter.


title: Trapping

text: An animal may be lured into a body-gripping trap with bait, or the trap may be placed on an animal path to catch the animal as it passes. In any case, it is important that the animal is guided into the correct position before the trap is triggered. The standard trigger is a pair of wires that extend between the jaws of the set trap. The wires may be bent into various shapes, depending on the size and behavior of the target animal. Modified triggers include pans and bait sticks. The trap is designed to close on the neck and/or torso of an animal. When it closes on the neck, it closes the trachea and the blood vessels to the brain, and often fractures the spinal column; the animal loses consciousness within a few seconds and dies soon thereafter. If it closes on the foot, leg, snout, or other part of an animal, the results are less predictable.


title: Trapping

text: Trapping ethics call for precautions to avoid the accidental killing of non-target species (including domestic animals and people) by body-gripping traps.


title: Trapping

text: Note on terminology: the term "body-gripping trap" (and its variations including "body gripping", "body-grip", "body grip", etc.) is often used by animal-protection advocates to describe any trap that restrains an animal by holding onto any part of its body. In this sense, the term is defined to include foothold/foothold traps, Conibear-type traps, snares, and cable restraints; it does not include cage traps or box traps that restrain animals solely by containing them inside the cages or boxes without exerting pressure on the animals; it generally does not include suitcase-type traps that restrain animals by containing them inside the cages under pressure.


title: Trapping

text: A "deadfall" is a heavy rock or log that is tilted at an angle and held up with sections of branches, with one of them serving as a trigger. When the animal moves the trigger, which may have bait on or near it, the rock or log falls, crushing the animal.


title: Trapping

text: The figure-four deadfall is a popular and simple trap constructed from materials found in the bush (three sticks with notches cut into them, plus a heavy rock or other heavy object). Also popular, and easier to set, is the Paiute deadfall, consisting of three long sticks, plus a much shorter stick, along with a cord or fiber material taken from the bush to interconnect the much shorter stick (sometimes called catch stick or trigger stick) with one of the longer sticks, plus a rock or other heavy object.


title: Trapping

text: "Snares" are anchored cable or wire nooses set to catch wild animals such as squirrels and rabbits. In the US, they are most commonly used for capture and control of surplus furbearers and especially for food collection. They are also widely used by subsistence and commercial hunters for bushmeat consumption and trade in African forest regions and in Cambodia.


title: Trapping

text: Snares are one of the simplest traps and are very effective. They are cheap to produce and easy to set in large numbers. A snare traps an animal around the neck or the body; a snare consists of a noose made usually by wire or a strong string. Snares are widely criticised by animal welfare groups for their cruelty. UK users of snares accept that over 40% of animals caught in some environments will be non-target animals, although non-target captures range from 21% to 69% depending on the environment. In the US, non-target catches reported by users of snares in Michigan were 17 +/- 3%.


title: Trapping

text: Snares are regulated in many jurisdictions, but are illegal in other jurisdictions, such as in much of Europe. Different regulations apply to snares in those areas where they are legal. In Iowa, snares have to have a 'deer stop' which stops a snare from closing all the way. In the United Kingdom, snares must be 'free-running' so that they can relax once an animal stops pulling, thereby allowing the trapper to decide whether to kill the animal or release it. Following a consultation on options to ban or regulate the use of snares, the Scottish Executive announced a series of measures on the use of snares, such as the compulsory fitting of safety stops, ID tags and marking areas where snaring takes place with signs. In some jurisdictions, swivels on snares are required, and dragging (non-fixed) anchors are prohibited.


title: Trapping

text: "Trapping pit"s are deep pits dug into the ground, or built from stone, in order to trap animals. Like cage traps they are usually employed for catching animals without harming them.


title: Trapping

text: Cage traps are designed to catch live animals in a cage. They are usually baited, sometimes with food bait and sometimes with a live "lure" animal. Common baits include cat food and fish. Cage traps usually have a trigger located in the back of the cage that causes a door to shut; some traps with two doors have a trigger in the middle of the cage that causes both doors to shut. In either type of cage, the closure of the doors and the falling of a lock mechanism prevents the animal from escaping by locking the door(s) shut.


title: Trapping

text: With two doors open, the squirrel can see through the opening on the opposite end. Peanut butter is placed in the trap as bait to attract the squirrel.


title: Trapping

text: In some locations, the traps can be placed in alignment with a building, wall, or fence (nearly under one edge of a bush). The wall does not present a threat to the squirrel, and the bush reduces the exposure and view of the squirrel. A blind area (by using natural or cardboard materials) surrounding the end of the trap presents a darker, safe hiding space near the trigger and bait of the trap. Where two-door traps are not available, a piece of cardboard held in place with a brick can be put behind the rear of the trap.


title: Trapping

text: Glue traps (also called adhesive or sticky traps) are made using adhesive applied to cardboard or similar material. Bait can be placed in the center or a scent may be added to the adhesive; alternatively, the traps may be placed in animal pathways. Glue board traps are used primarily for rodent and insect control indoors. Glue traps are not effective outdoors because environmental conditions (moisture, dust) quickly make the adhesive ineffective.


title: Trapping

text: Domestic animals accidentally captured in glue traps can be released by carefully applying cooking oil or baby oil to the contact areas and gently worked until the animal is free. Many animal rights groups, such as the Humane Society and In Defense of Animals, oppose the use of glue traps for their cruelty to animals.


title: Trapping

text: The most productive set for foothold traps is a dirt hole, a hole dug in the ground with a trap positioned in front. An attractant is placed inside the hole. The hole for the set is usually made in front of some type of object which is where medium-sized animals such as coyotes, fox or bobcats would use for themselves to store food. This object could be a tuft of taller grass, a stone, a stump, or some other natural object. The dirt from the hole is sifted over the trap and a lure applied around the hole.


title: Trapping

text: A flat set is another common use of the foothold trap. It is very similar to the dirt hole trap set, simply with no hole to dig. The attractant is placed on the object near the trap and a urine scent sprayed to the object.


title: Trapping

text: The cubby set simulates a den in which a small animal would live, but could be adapted for larger game. It could be made from various materials such as rocks, logs or bark, but the back must be closed to control the animals approach. The bait and/or lure is placed in the back of the cubby.


title: Trapping

text: The water set is usually described as a body-gripping trap or snare set so that the trap jaws or snare loop are partially submerged. The conibear is a type of trap used in water trapping and can also be used on land and is heavily regulated. The regulations vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It is normally used without bait and has a wire trigger in the middle of its square-shaped, heavy-gauge wire jaws. It is placed in places that are frequented by the fur bearing animals.


title: Trapping

text: Trappers can employ a variety of devices and strategies to avoid unwanted catches. Ideally, if a non-target animal (such as a domestic cat or dog) is caught in a non-lethal trap, it can be released without harm. A careful choice of set and lure may help to catch target animals while avoiding non-target animals. Although trappers cannot always guarantee that unwanted animals won't be caught, they can take precautions to avoid unwanted catches or release them unharmed.


title: Trapping

text: The snaring of non-target animals can be minimized using methods that exclude animals larger or smaller than the target animal. For example, deer stops are designed to avoid the snaring of deer or cattle by the leg; they are required in some parts of the US. Other precautions include setting snares at specific heights, diameters, and locations. In a study of foxes in the UK, researchers were unintentionally snaring brown hares about as frequently as the intended foxes until they improved their methods, using larger wire with rabbit stops to eliminate the unwanted catch of the brown hares.


title: Trapping

text: Any type of trap—whether it be a foothold/leghold, conibear, or snare/cable restraint—can get an unwanted catch. Both endangered species and domestic pets have been injured or killed by illegally set traps. In December 2012, a Golden Retriever dog was killed when walking with his owner on a trail in the woods of Auburn, New Hampshire. The dog became ensnared in an illegally placed conibear trap and was suffocated, despite his owner's best attempts to free him.


title: Trapping

text: It has been estimated by Wildlife Services, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that between 2003 and 2013 hundreds of pets were killed by body-gripping traps, and that the agency itself has killed thousands of non-target animals in several states, from pet dogs to endangered species. The number of non-target animals killed has caused national and regional animal-protection organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and others to continue to lobby for stricter controls over the use of these traps in the United States.


title: Trapping

text: Trapping might lead to stress, pain, or death for the animal, depending on the type of trap. Traps that work by catching limbs can cause injuries on the limbs, especially if used improperly, and leave the animal unattended until the trapper comes. The animal might die from the injury, starvation, or attacks from other animals. Many states employ the regulation that a trap must be checked at least every 36 hours to minimize risks to the animals.


title: Trapping

text: Trapping requires time, hard work, and money but can be efficient. Trapping has become expensive for the trapper, and in modern times it has become controversial. In part to address these concerns, in 1996, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, an organization made up of U.S. state and federal fish and wildlife agency professionals, began testing traps and compiling recommendations "to improve and modernize the technology of trapping through scientific research" known as Best Management Practices. As of February 2013, twenty best management practice recommendations have been published, covering nineteen species of common furbearers across North America.


title: Trapping

text: Trapping in Manitoba, Canada the average 2019-2020 pelt values for a red squirrel was CAD$0.54 and for a black bear was CAD$153.41


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: "The A Team" is the debut solo single by English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran. It was released as a digital download in the United Kingdom on 10 June 2011, serving as the lead single from his debut album, "+" (2011). "The A Team" is a folk ballad about a sex worker addicted to crack cocaine, a Class A drug. It was written after Sheeran visited a homeless shelter and heard some of the stories of the lives people had been living. He wrote the song following a last-minute performance at an event for the homeless. The chorus of "The A Team" was also used by Sheeran in the track "Little Lady", which features Mikill Pane. "Little Lady" is available on the EP "No. 5 Collaborations Project".


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: It became a top 10 hit in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. It debuted at number three on the UK Singles Chart, with sales of 57,607 copies. The song was serviced to US radio formats in late 2012 and became a sleeper hit there, gradually rising up the "Billboard" Hot 100 to peak at number 16, becoming Sheeran's first single on that chart. On 5 December, the song received a Grammy Award nomination for Song of the Year, Sheeran's first Grammy Award nomination. At the 2012 Brit Awards, it was nominated for Best British Single.


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: Sheeran said the song came from "an experience I had when I did a gig at a homeless shelter". He explained, "I was 18 at the time and kind of quite naive. So, I was a bit taken aback by some of the stories that I heard. [...] I wanted to write it so it sounded kind of upbeat, so you wouldn't really know what it's about, because it's quite a dark subject." In a 2011 video interview with Absolute Radio, Sheeran stated that it was based on the experiences of a particular woman at the shelter, named Angel, hence the 'Angels to fly' line in the song. Talking to "Billboard", he explained the title: "A drug like crack cocaine is called a 'Class A drug'. That's in the same category as heroin. Instead of making it clear and just saying what the problem was, I'd say, 'She's in the 'Class A' team.'" The single was released 1 May 2011, in the UK through Atlantic Records. In US, "The A Team" was serviced to adult album alternative (also triple-A, AAA, or adult alternative) stations on 27 February 2012.


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: According to the sheet music published by EMI Music Publishing, "The A Team" is set in common time with a tempo of 170 beats per minute. Written in the key of A major; Sheeran's vocals range from the note of A to A. Instrumentation is provided by guitar, piano and vocals. "The A Team" is a folk song. Gary Trust from "Billboard" compared the song to "folk/rock hits like Suzanne Vega's 'Luka' (about child abuse), 10,000 Maniacs' 'Like the Weather' (depression) and Tracy Chapman's 'Fast Car' (alcoholism)", songs that "shade their heavy topics under a melodic canopy". Ryan Reed from the publication, considered as a jazz-folk song.


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: Mark Moore of Contactmusic.com awarded the single 7/10, calling it a "beautiful melodic track that is made by its dark lyrical content..." Critics also praised Sheeran's vocals. Robert Copsey of Digital Spy awarded the song 5 stars out of 5, writing that Sheeran's "man-and-his-guitar concept is about as cliché as they come, but it's his intelligent lyrics and softer-than-cream-cheese vocals that set him apart from the pack." He further praised the song, commenting that "Sheeran's frank honesty and lump-in-the-throat-like emotion are weighted by a folky melody and off-kilter acoustics."


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: The track made its debut on the UK Singles Chart at number three on 19 June 2011 – entering as the second highest new entry behind Calvin Harris and Kelis' "Bounce", which debuted at number two and then it spent four non consecutive weeks at the number three position. "The A Team" also saw chart success elsewhere, peaking at number two on the Scottish Singles. "The A Team" became the best selling debut single and the overall eighth best-selling single of 2011 in the UK, shifting 801,000 copies. As of September 2017, the song has sold 1,119,000 copies, with 46 million streams, making a total of 1,587,000 combined units.


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: The single debuted on the Australian Singles Chart at number thirty-two, 23 October 2011. It peaked at number two for two weeks and has been certified triple platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for sales of 210,000 copies. On the New Zealand Singles Chart the song entered at number thirty-eight, 21 November 2011. It peaked at number three and has been certified platinum by Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) for sales of 15,000 copies. The song also peaked at number three and Irish Singles Chart.


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: After being serviced to radio formats in US, the song made its first American chart entry on "Billboard"s component Adult Pop Songs at number thirty-eight. It also debuted at number 95 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and has since peaked at number 16, becoming Sheeran's first top 20 hit on the chart. It also peaked at 29 on the Canadian Hot 100. As of February 2015, "The A Team" has sold 2.3 million copies in the United States.


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: The music video for the song was shot and edited by Ruskin Kyle (Rivers Rush Video Production Company). Sheeran refers to when he first created the demo for the song during an interview with 96.1 KISS, "Whenever I wrote songs in the past, I never recorded them down because I didn't have a recorder but I had a Mac computer and made a video version of it." The original demos for "The A Team" were originally all recorded in this manner but not released to the public. When asked about his inspiration behind the Grammy nominated hit, Sheeran shared, "The A Team is written about a woman that I met in a homeless shelter."


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: The video was made at and around Angel tube station in Islington, London, and was uploaded to YouTube on 22 April 2010. It depicts the story of a young woman addicted to drugs, portrayed by Selina MacDonald, who's seen trying to earn money selling "The Big Issue" magazine on the streets of London, actually selling one to Sheeran himself. The girl's struggles, both financial and existential, result in her prostituting herself to get money to buy crack. In the end, the girl dies alone in her room from her drug use, the outcome being the preface of the video, where a tearful grieving woman can be seen beside her corpse. An acoustic, unplugged version of the song was also uploaded onto the official Ed Sheeran YouTube page on 10 May 2011.


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: Ed Sheeran performed the song on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" on 30 March 2012 and on the talk show "Conan" on 8 May 2012. Sheeran performed an acoustic version of the song live at the Diamond Jubilee Concert in front of Queen Elizabeth II on 4 June 2012. Sheeran performed the song on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" along with "Grade 8" on 4 October 2012 and on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" along with "You Need Me, I Don't Need You" on 19 December 2012. Sheeran also performed "The A Team" as a duet with Elton John at the 2013 Grammy Awards on 10 February 2013.


title: The A Team (Ed Sheeran song)

text: In July 2011, Birdy covered the song at BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge. Luca Hänni, winner of the ninth season of "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" performed the song in the Top 16 show on 25 February 2012. Kendall Schmidt from Big Time Rush posted a cover of the song on YouTube in June. On 17 June 2012, during One Direction's Up All Night Tour, member Niall Horan covered the song at Anaheim's The Theatre at Honda Center. "The X Factor" contestant Lucy Spraggan has also used the music from the song, rewriting the lyrics from the perspective of the man who uses the services of the girl of the song, with version entitled "The B Team". "X Factor Indonesia" contestant "Mikha Angelo" covered the song in the third gala show. Also, the Jonas Brothers covered the song on their tour during Latin America. In 2013 the French movie "Les Gamins" used a cover version by St John's International School choir for its OST On 19 January 2013, singer Masha, covered the song on her YouTube channel, as of November 2013 Masha's cover has received nearly 50,000 views. In January 2013, YouTube stars, Andy Lange and Chester See, made a cover on Lange's channel. The video currently has over 140,000 views.


title: Mineral wool

text: Mineral wool is any fibrous material formed by spinning or drawing molten mineral or rock materials such as slag and ceramics.


title: Mineral wool

text: Applications of mineral wool include thermal insulation (as both structural insulation and pipe insulation), filtration, soundproofing, and hydroponic growth medium.


title: Mineral wool

text: Mineral wool is also known as "mineral fiber", "mineral cotton", "mineral fibre", "man-made mineral fibre" (MMMF), and "man-made vitreous fiber" (MMVF).


title: Mineral wool

text: Specific mineral wool products are "stone wool" and "slag wool". Europe also includes glass wool which, together with ceramic fiber, are entirely artificial fibers that can be made into different shapes and are spiky to touch.


title: Mineral wool

text: Slag wool was first made in 1840 in Wales by Edward Parry, "but no effort appears to have been made to confine the wool after production; consequently it floated about the works with the slightest breeze, and became so injurious to the men that the process had to be abandoned". A method of making mineral wool was patented in the United States in 1870 by John Player and first produced commercially in 1871 at Georgsmarienhütte in Osnabrück Germany. The process involved blowing a strong stream of air across a falling flow of liquid iron slag which was similar to the natural occurrence of fine strands of volcanic slag from Kilauea called Pele's hair created by strong winds blowing apart the slag during an eruption.


title: Mineral wool

text: American chemical engineer Charles Corydon Hall in 1897 developed a technology to convert molten rock into fibers and initiated the mineral wool insulation industry in America.


title: Mineral wool

text: According to a mineral wool manufacturer, the first mineral wool intended for high-temperature applications was invented in the United States in 1942, but was not commercially viable until approximately 1953. More forms of mineral wool became available in the 1970s and 1980s.


title: Mineral wool

text: High-temperature mineral wool is a type of mineral wool created for use as high-temperature insulation and generally defined as being resistant to temperatures above 1,000 °C. This type of insulation is usually used in industrial furnaces and foundries. Because high-temperature mineral wool is costly to produce and has limited availability, it is almost exclusively used in high-temperature industrial applications and processes.


title: Mineral wool

text: Classification temperature is the temperature at which a certain amount of linear contraction (usually two to four percent) is not exceeded after a 24-hour heat treatment in an electrically heated laboratory oven in a neutral atmosphere. Depending on the type of product, the value may not exceed two percent for boards and shaped products and four percent for mats and papers.


title: Mineral wool

text: The classification temperature is specified in 50 °C steps starting at 850 °C and up to 1600 °C. The classification temperature does not mean that the product can be used continuously at this temperature. In the field, the continuous application temperature of amorphous high-temperature mineral wool (AES and ASW) is typically 100 °C to 150 °C below the classification temperature. Products made of polycrystalline wool can generally be used up to the classification temperature.


title: Mineral wool

text: There are several types of high-temperature mineral wool made from different types of minerals. The mineral chosen results in different material properties and classification temperatures.


title: Mineral wool

text: AES wool consists of amorphous glass fibres that are produced by melting a combination of calcium oxide (CaO−), magnesium oxide (MgO−), and silicon dioxide (SiO). Products made from AES wool are generally used in equipment that continuously operates and in domestic appliances. Some formulations of AES wool are bio-soluble, meaning they dissolve in bodily fluids within a few weeks and are quickly cleared from the lungs.


title: Mineral wool

text: Alumino silicate wool, also known as refractory ceramic fibre (RCF), consists of amorphous fibres produced by melting a combination of aluminum oxide (AlO) and silicon dioxide (SiO), usually in a weight ratio 50:50 (see also VDI 3469 Parts 1 and 5, as well as TRGS 521). Products made of alumino silicate wool are generally used at application temperatures of greater than 900 °C for equipment that operates intermittently and in critical application conditions (see Technical Rules TRGS 619).


title: Mineral wool

text: Polycrystalline wool consists of fibres that contain aluminum oxide (AlO) at greater than 70 percent of the total materials and is produced by sol–gel method from aqueous spinning solutions. The water-soluble green fibres obtained as a precursor are crystallized by means of heat treatment. Polycrystalline wool is generally used at application temperatures greater than 1300 °C and in critical chemical and physical application conditions.


title: Mineral wool

text: Kaowool is a type of high-temperature mineral wool made from the mineral kaolin. It was one of the first types of high-temperature mineral wool invented and has been used into the 21st century. It can withstand temperatures close to .


title: Mineral wool

text: Stone wool is a furnace product of molten rock at a temperature of about 1600 °C through which a stream of air or steam is blown. More advanced production techniques are based on spinning molten rock in high-speed spinning heads somewhat like the process used to produce cotton candy. The final product is a mass of fine, intertwined fibres with a typical diameter of 2 to 6 micrometers. Mineral wool may contain a binder, often a terpolymer, and an oil to reduce dusting.


title: Mineral wool

text: Though the individual fibers conduct heat very well, when pressed into rolls and sheets, their ability to partition air makes them excellent insulators and sound absorbers. Though not immune to the effects of a sufficiently hot fire, the fire resistance of fiberglass, stone wool, and ceramic fibers makes them common building materials when passive fire protection is required, being used as spray fireproofing, in stud cavities in drywall assemblies and as packing materials in firestops.


title: Mineral wool

text: Other uses are in resin bonded panels, as filler in compounds for gaskets, in brake pads, in plastics in the automotive industry, as a filtering medium, and as a growth medium in hydroponics.


title: Mineral wool

text: Mineral fibers are produced in the same way, without binder. The fiber as such is used as a raw material for its reinforcing purposes in various applications, such as friction materials, gaskets, plastics, and coatings.


title: Mineral wool

text: Mineral wool products can be engineered to hold large quantities of water and air that aid root growth and nutrient uptake in hydroponics; their fibrous nature also provides a good mechanical structure to hold the plant stable. The naturally high pH of mineral wool makes them initially unsuitable to plant growth and requires "conditioning" to produce a wool with an appropriate, stable pH. Conditioning methods include pre-soaking mineral wool in a nutrient solution adjusted to pH 5.5 until it stops bubbling.


title: Mineral wool

text: High-temperature mineral wool is used primarily for insulation and lining of industrial furnaces and foundries to improve efficiency and safety. It is also used to prevent the spread of fire.


title: Mineral wool

text: The use of high-temperature mineral wool enables a more lightweight construction of industrial furnaces and other technical equipment as compared to other methods such as fire bricks, due to its high heat resistance capabilities per weight, but has the disadvantage of being more expensive than other methods.


title: Mineral wool

text: The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reviewed the carcinogenicity of man-made mineral fibres in October 2002. The IARC Monograph's working group concluded only the more biopersistent materials remain classified by IARC as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" (Group 2B). These include refractory ceramic fibres, which are used industrially as insulation in high-temperature environments such as blast furnaces, and certain special-purpose glass wools not used as insulating materials. In contrast, the more commonly used vitreous fibre wools produced since 2000, including insulation glass wool, stone wool, and slag wool, are considered "not classifiable as to carcinogenicity in humans" (Group 3).


title: Mineral wool

text: High biosoluble fibres are produced that do not cause damage to the human cell. These newer materials have been tested for carcinogenicity and most are found to be noncarcinogenic. IARC elected not to make an overall evaluation of the newly developed fibres designed to be less biopersistent such as the alkaline earth silicate or high-alumina, low-silica wools. This decision was made in part because no human data were available, although such fibres that have been tested appear to have low carcinogenic potential in experimental animals, and because the Working Group had difficulty in categorizing these fibres into meaningful groups based on chemical composition."


title: Mineral wool

text: The European Regulation (CE) n° 1272/2008 on classification, labelling and packaging of substances and mixtures updated by the Regulation (CE) n°790/2009 does not classify mineral wool fibres as a dangerous substance if they fulfil criteria defined in its Note Q.


title: Mineral wool

text: The European Certification Board for mineral wool products, EUCEB, certify mineral wool products made of fibres fulfilling Note Q ensuring that they have a low biopersistence and so that they are quickly removed from the lung. The certification is based on independent experts' advice and regular control of the chemical composition.


title: Mineral wool

text: Due to the mechanical effect of fibres, mineral wool products may cause temporary skin itching. To diminish this and to avoid unnecessary exposure to mineral wool dust, information on good practices is available on the packaging of mineral wool products with pictograms or sentences. Safe Use Instruction Sheets similar to Safety data sheet are also available from each producer.


title: Mineral wool

text: People can be exposed to mineral wool fibers in the workplace by breathing them in, skin contact, and eye contact. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the legal limit (permissible exposure limit) for mineral wool fiber exposure in the workplace as 15 mg/m total exposure and 5 mg/m respiratory exposure over an 8-hour workday. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) of 5 mg/m total exposure and 3 fibers per cm over an 8-hour workday.


title: Mineral wool

text: Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) is a European Union regulation of 18 December 2006. REACH addresses the production and use of chemical substances, and their potential impacts on both human health and the environment. A Substance Information Exchange Forum (SIEF) has been set up for several types of mineral wool. AES, ASW and PCW have been registered before the first deadline of 1 December 2010 and can, therefore, be used on the European market.


title: Mineral wool

text: On 13 January 2010, some of the aluminosilicate refractory ceramic fibres and zirconia aluminosilicate refractory ceramic fibres have been included in the candidate list of Substances of Very High Concern. In response to concerns raised with the definition and the dossier two additional dossiers were posted on the ECHA website for consultation and resulted in two additional entries on the candidate list. This actual (having four entries for one substance/group of substances) situation is contrary to the REACH procedure intended. Aside from this situation, concerns raised during the two consultation periods remain valid.


title: Mineral wool

text: Regardless of the concerns raised, the inclusion of a substance in the candidate list triggers immediately the following legal obligations of manufacturers, importers and suppliers of articles containing that substance in a concentration above 0.1% (w/w):


title: Mineral wool

text: Amorphous high-temperature mineral wool (AES and ASW) are produced from a molten glass stream which is aerosolized by a jet of high-pressure air or by letting the stream impinge onto spinning wheels. The droplets are drawn into fibers; the mass of both fibers and remaining droplets cool very rapidly so that no crystalline phases may form.


title: Mineral wool

text: When amorphous high-temperature mineral wool are installed and used in high-temperature applications such as industrial furnaces, at least one face may be exposed to conditions causing the fibres to partially devitrify. Depending on the chemical composition of the glassy fibre and the time and temperature to which the materials are exposed, different stable crystalline phases may form.


title: Mineral wool

text: In after-use high-temperature mineral wool crystalline silica crystals are embedded in a matrix composed of other crystals and glasses. Experimental results on the biological activity of after-use high-temperature mineral wool have not demonstrated any hazardous activity that could be related to any form of silica they may contain.


title: Mineral wool

text: Due to the mineral wool non-degradability and potential health risks, substitute materials are being developed: hemp, flax, wool, wood, and cork insulations are the most prominent. Biodegradability and health profile are the main advantages of those materials. Their drawbacks when compared to mineral wool are their substantially lower mold resistance, higher combustibility, and slightly higher thermal conductivity (hemp insulation: 0.040 Wmk, mineral wool insulation: 0.030-0.045 Wmk).


title: General of the Air Force

text: General of the Air Force (GAF) is a five-star general officer rank and is the highest possible rank in the United States Air Force. General of the Air Force ranks immediately above a general and is equivalent to General of the Army in the United States Army and fleet admiral in the United States Navy. The rank has been held only once, by General Henry H. Arnold, who had served as head of the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.


title: General of the Air Force

text: General Henry H. Arnold, commanding general of the United States Army Air Forces, became the first airman to be promoted to the five-star rank of general of the Army on 21 December 1944. The four other individuals promoted to the rank of General of the Army, all from the Army Ground Forces, were chief of staff of the United States Army George C. Marshall, supreme commander of the South West Pacific Area Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force Dwight D. Eisenhower and commander of the Twelfth United States Army Group Omar Bradley. Four Navy admirals were also promoted to the five-star rank of fleet admiral, including William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations and commander-in-chief, United States Fleet, Chester W. Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Ocean Areas and United States Pacific Fleet, and William Halsey Jr., commander of the South Pacific Area.


title: General of the Air Force

text: General of the Army Arnold retained the rank after the U.S. Air Force gained its independence from the U.S. Army on 18 September 1947. On 7 May 1949, under , Henry Arnold's official U.S. rank was redesignated from General of the Army to General of the Air Force. General of the Air Force Arnold is the only individual in the U.S. Armed Forces to possess two five-star ranks and is the only airman to have a five-star rank.


title: General of the Air Force

text: The Air Force currently declares that General of the Air Force is an active rank and it could again be bestowed at the discretion of the United States Congress. However, the President, with consent from the Senate, may award a fifth star at any time he sees fit.


title: General of the Air Force

text: In the 1990s, there were proposals in Department of Defense academic circles to bestow a five-star rank on the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.


title: General of the Air Force

text: In 2007 there was a proposal that the military leader in the Global War on Terrorism be promoted to a five-star rank.


title: General of the Air Force

text: The only United States Armed Forces rank senior to General of the Air Force is General of the Armies. The rank of General of the Armies has only been granted to Generals John J. Pershing and George Washington. No Air Force officer has ever been promoted to a rank senior to General of the Air Force.


title: Freed from Desire

text: "Freed from Desire" is a eurodance song written and recorded by Italian singer and songwriter Gala. It was released in 1996 as the first single from her debut album, "Come into My Life" (1997). It was a hit in many European countries, reaching number-one in France and Belgium. The track was released in the UK in July 1997, peaking at number two and spending eight weeks inside the top 10 and 14 weeks in total in the top 75. Gala achieved a diamond recording certification in France, a double-platinum certification in Belgium and the United Kingdom, and a gold certification in Italy.


title: Freed from Desire

text: The song was written and composed by Gala, and produced by Filippo Andrea Carmeni and Maurizio Molella, two Italian producers.


title: Freed from Desire

text: In a list of "The Top 10 Dance Tunes of the '90s" for "Attitude" in 2016, "Freed from Desire" was ranked at number three. A reviewer from "Music Week" rated the song four out of five, writing, "A chart topper across Europe, this has similar appeal to Crystal Waters' Gypsy Woman. That reached number two and, with the right exposure, this could, too." "Pop Rescue" called it a "great" song, noting "the handclaps, the beats, drum fills, whirling synths and that bassline, and of course that catchy 'ner ner ner ner-ner ner her' section." They added it as "a fine specimen" of "90s dance". Dave Fawbert from "ShortList" described it as an "absolute, total banger", adding it as "a song that the Beatles would have been proud to have written."


title: Freed from Desire

text: "Freed from Desire" went on to become a huge hit all over Europe, becoming the singer's most successful single to date. It peaked at number-one in Belgium (in both Flanders and Wallonia) and France, and made it to the top 10 in Denmark, Iceland, Ireland (number two), Italy (number two), the Netherlands, Scotland and the United Kingdom. In the latter, the song reached number two on the UK Singles Chart on August 3, 1997. It spent 8 weeks inside the top 10 and 14 weeks in total in the top 75. On the Eurochart Hot 100, "Freed from Desire" also peaked within the top 10, reaching its best position as number four. Additionally, it was a top 20 hit in Austria, Finland, Germany and Switzerland. The single was awarded a diamond recording certification in France, a double-platinum certification in Belgium and the United Kingdom, and a gold certification in Italy.


title: Freed from Desire

text: The song has been used as a football chant by fans of Bohemian FC as far back as April 2011, where at a game away to Sligo Rovers it was sung with the lyrics amended to "The Bohs have got no money, we've got a bag of E's." (Ecstasy) Reference was made to the chant in the Irish Independent at the time, who wrote "For 45 minutes the visiting fans -- who clearly planned around dry Good Friday -- roared out 1990s dance classic 'Freed From Desire' seemingly oblivious to their team being dismantled on the park" and was recorded by Sligo Rovers fans in the opposite stand.


title: Freed from Desire

text: The chorus was used for a football chant in 2012 by Stevenage F.C. fans for winger Luke Freeman as: "Freeman's on fire, your right back is terrified!" Following that, in early 2016, Newcastle United supporters adapted the song for their striker Aleksandar Mitrović, the refrain being: "Mitro's on fire, your defence is terrified", which has also been used by fans of Fulham FC after his transfer there. However, Mitrović suffered poor form; the chant went viral in May of that year, as Wigan Athletic supporter Sean Kennedy uploaded on YouTube his version of "Freed from Desire" titled "Will Grigg's on Fire", in recognition of the recent goal-scoring feats of Will Grigg, a Wigan player. This version was recorded by dance producers Blonde under the alias DJ Kenno, and it reached No. 76 on the UK single chart. The version kept the exciting music and introduced exciting words:


title: Freed from Desire

text: Fans from Northern Ireland also sang "Will Grigg's on Fire", notably during UEFA Euro 2016, as he played for Northern Ireland. Fans of Ireland, Wales, England, and France made their own versions of the song for their players, such as "Vardy's on Fire" and "Grizi's on Fire". It was later seen as the unofficial song of UEFA Euro 2016. "Freed from Desire" itself was used as the unofficial anthem for the Belgian team during the 2018 FIFA World Cup.


title: Freed from Desire

text: From January 2022, "Freed from Desire" was chosen via a fan poll as the post-match victory song of Melbourne Victory FC; the song will be played over AAMI Park's loudspeakers after every Melbourne Victory home win.


title: Freed from Desire

text: England, Switzerland and Poland's national football associations chose Freed from Desire to be played as their goal music at the 2022 FIFA World Cup.


title: Freed from Desire

text: The song has also been adapted by A.C. Milan fans into the chant "Pioli Is On Fire", in tribute to current manager Stefano Pioli.


title: Freed from Desire

text: Gala herself has expressed support for the use of the song as a sports anthem, stating that "it’s such a beautiful thing that a song has an energy by itself":


title: Freed from Desire

text: In 2016, Gala recorded an acoustic version of "Freed from Desire" at Les Studios Saint Germain in Paris, for the movie "Un homme à la hauteur" directed by Laurent Tirard with Jean Dujardin.


title: Freed from Desire

text: The music video for "Freed from Desire" was filmed in Hamburg at the Speicherstadt under the direction of German director and photographer Nina Bittel. It was shot in a sepia tone filter while Gala is chased around by several different men.


title: Freed from Desire

text: In 2018, Drenchill released a cover of "Freed from Desire". It reached number 1 in Poland and number 4 in the Commonwealth of Independent States.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Walter Richard Sickert (31 May 1860 – 22 January 1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the mid- and late 20th century.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert was a cosmopolitan and eccentric who often favoured ordinary people and urban scenes as his subjects. His work includes portraits of well-known personalities and images derived from press photographs. He is considered a prominent figure in the transition from Impressionism to Modernism. Decades after his death, several researchers and theorists suspected Sickert to have been the London-based serial killer Jack the Ripper, but the theory has largely been dismissed.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert was born in Munich, Germany, on 31 May 1860, the eldest son of Oswald Sickert, a Danish artist, and his English wife, Eleanor Louisa Henry, who was the illegitimate daughter of the astronomer Richard Sheepshanks. In 1868, following the German annexation of Schleswig-Holstein, the family settled in England, where Oswald's work had been recommended by Freiherrin Rebecca von Kreusser to Ralph Nicholson Wornum, who was Keeper of the National Gallery at the time. The family eventually settled in London and obtained British nationality. The young Sickert was sent to University College School from 1870 to 1871, before transferring to King's College School, where he studied until the age of 18. Though he was the son and grandson of painters, he first sought a career as an actor; he appeared in small parts in Sir Henry Irving's company, before taking up the study of art in 1881. After less than a year's attendance at the Slade School, Sickert left to become a pupil of and etching assistant to James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Sickert's earliest paintings were small tonal studies painted alla prima from nature after Whistler's example.


title: Walter Sickert

text: In 1883 he travelled to Paris and met Edgar Degas, whose use of pictorial space and emphasis on drawing would have a powerful effect on Sickert's work. "Degas provided the counterweight to Whistler, and one which was eventually to prove the more significant for Sickert's development." He developed a personal version of Impressionism, favouring sombre colouration. Following Degas' advice, Sickert painted in the studio, working from drawings and memory as an escape from "the tyranny of nature". In 1888 Sickert joined the New English Art Club, a group of French-influenced realist artists. Sickert's first major works, dating from the late 1880s, were portrayals of scenes in London music halls. One of the two paintings he exhibited at the NEAC in April 1888, "Katie Lawrence at Gatti's", which portrayed a well known music hall singer of the era, incited controversy "more heated than any other surrounding an English painting in the late 19th century". Sickert's rendering was denounced as ugly and vulgar, and his choice of subject matter was deplored as too tawdry for art, as female performers were popularly viewed as morally akin to prostitutes. The painting announced what would be Sickert's recurring interest in sexually provocative themes.


title: Walter Sickert

text: In the late 1880s he spent much of his time in France, especially in Dieppe, which he first visited in mid-1885, and where his mistress, and possibly his illegitimate son, lived. During this period Sickert began writing art criticism for various publications, including Herbert Vivian and Stuart Richard Erskine's "The Whirlwind". Between 1894 and 1904 Sickert made a series of visits to Venice, initially focusing on the city's topography; it was during his last painting trip in 1903–04 that, forced indoors by inclement weather, he developed a distinctive approach to the multiple-figure tableau that he further explored on his return to Britain. The models for many of the Venetian paintings are believed to have been prostitutes, whom Sickert might have known through being a client.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert's fascination with urban culture accounted for his acquisition of studios in working-class sections of London, first in Cumberland Market in the 1890s, then in Camden Town in 1905. The latter location provided an event that would secure Sickert's prominence in the realist movement in Britain. On 11 September 1907, Emily Dimmock, a prostitute cheating on her partner, was murdered in her home at Agar Grove (then St Paul's Road), Camden. After sexual intercourse the man had slit her throat open while she was asleep, then left in the morning. The Camden Town murder became an ongoing source of prurient sensationalism in the press. For several years Sickert had already been painting lugubrious female nudes on beds, and continued to do so, deliberately challenging the conventional approach to life painting—"The modern flood of representations of vacuous images dignified by the name of 'the nude' represents an artistic and intellectual bankruptcy"—giving four of them, which included a male figure, the title "The Camden Town Murder", and causing a controversy which ensured attention for his work. These paintings do not show violence, however, but a sad thoughtfulness, explained by the fact that three of them were originally exhibited with completely different titles, one more appropriately being "What Shall We Do for the Rent?", and the first in the series, "Summer Afternoon".


title: Walter Sickert

text: While the painterly handling of the works inspired comparison to Impressionism, and the emotional tone suggested a narrative more akin to genre painting, specifically Degas's "Interior", the documentary realism of the "Camden Town" paintings was without precedent in British art. These and other works were painted in heavy impasto and narrow tonal range. Sickert's best-known work, "Ennui" (c. 1913), reveals his interest in Victorian narrative genres. The composition, which exists in at least five painted versions and was also made into an etching, depicts a couple in a dingy interior gazing abstractedly into empty space, as though they can no longer communicate with each other.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Just before the First World War he championed the avant-garde artists Lucien Pissarro, Jacob Epstein, Augustus John and Wyndham Lewis. At the same time Sickert founded, with other artists, the Camden Town Group of British painters, named from the district of London in which he lived. This group had been meeting informally since 1905, but was officially established in 1911. It was influenced by Post-Impressionism and Expressionism, but concentrated on scenes of often drab suburban life; Sickert himself said he preferred the kitchen to the drawing room as a scene for paintings.


title: Walter Sickert

text: From 1908 to 1912, and again from 1915 to 1918, he was an influential teacher at Westminster School of Art, where David Bomberg, Wendela Boreel, Mary Godwin and John Doman Turner were among his students. He founded a private art school, Rowlandson House, in the Hampstead Road in 1910. It lasted until 1914; for most of that period its co-principal and chief financial supporter was the painter Sylvia Gosse, a former student of Sickert. He also briefly set up an art school in Manchester where his students included Harry Rutherford.


title: Walter Sickert

text: After the death of his second wife in 1920, Sickert relocated to Dieppe, where he painted scenes of casinos and café life until his return to London in 1922. In 1924, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA).


title: Walter Sickert

text: In 1926 he suffered an illness, thought to have been a minor stroke. In 1927, he abandoned his first name in favour of his middle name, and thereafter chose to be known as Richard Sickert. His style and subject matter also changed: Sickert stopped drawing, and instead painted from snapshots usually taken by his third wife, Thérèse Lessore, or from news photographs. The photographs were squared up for enlargement and transferred to canvas, with their pencil grids plainly visible in the finished paintings.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Seen by many of his contemporaries as evidence of the artist's decline, Sickert's late works are also his most forward-looking, and prefigure the practices of Chuck Close and Gerhard Richter. Other paintings from Sickert's late period were adapted from illustrations by Victorian artists such as Georgie Bowers and John Gilbert. Sickert, separating these illustrations from their original context and painting them in poster-like colours so that the narrative and spatial intelligibility partly dissolved, called the resulting works his "English Echoes".


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert painted an informal portrait of Winston Churchill in about 1927. Churchill's wife Clementine introduced him to Sickert, who had been a friend of her family. The two men got along so well that Churchill, whose hobby was painting, wrote to his wife that "He is really giving me a new lease of life as a painter."


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert tutored and mentored students of the East London Group, and exhibited alongside them at The Lefevre Gallery in November 1929.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert was President of the Royal Society of British Artists from 1928 to 1930. He became a Royal Academician (RA) in March 1934 but resigned from the Academy on 9 May 1935 in protest against the president's refusal to support the preservation of Jacob Epstein's sculptural reliefs on the British Medical Association building in the Strand. In the last decade of his life, he depended increasingly on assistants, especially his wife, for the execution of his paintings.


title: Walter Sickert

text: One of Sickert's closest friends and supporters was newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook, who accumulated the largest single collection of Sickert paintings in the world. This collection, with a private correspondence between Sickert and Beaverbook, is in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. In addition to having painted Beaverbrook, Sickert painted portraits of notables including Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Hugh Walpole, Valentine Browne, 6th Earl of Kenmare, and less formal depictions of Aubrey Beardsley, King George V, and Peggy Ashcroft.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert died in Bath, Somerset in 1942, at the age of 81. He had spent much time in the city in his later years, and many of his paintings depict Bath's varied street scenes. He had been married three times: from 1885 until their divorce in 1899 to Ellen Cobden, a daughter of Richard Cobden; from 1911 until her death in 1920 to Christine Angus; and from 1926 until his death to the painter Thérèse Lessore. He is buried in the churchyard of the Church of St Nicholas, Bathampton.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert's sister was Helena Swanwick, a feminist and pacifist active in the women's suffrage movement.


title: Walter Sickert

text: For his earliest paintings, Sickert followed Whistler's practice of rapid, wet-in-wet execution using very fluid paint. He subsequently adopted a more deliberate procedure of painting pictures in multiple stages, and "attached a great deal of importance to what he called the 'cooking' side of painting". He preferred to paint not from nature but from drawings or, after the mid-1920s, from photographs or from popular prints by Victorian illustrators. After transferring the design to canvas by the use of a grid, Sickert made a rapid underpainting using two colours, which was allowed to dry thoroughly before the final colours were applied. He experimented tirelessly with the details of his method, always with the goal, according to his biographer Wendy Baron, of "paint[ing] quickly, in about two sittings, with the maximum economy and minimum of fuss".


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert tended to paint his subjects in series. He is identified particularly with domestic interior scenes, scenes of Venice, music hall and theatre scenes, and portraits. He painted very few still lifes. For his music hall subjects, Sickert often chose complex and ambiguous points of view, so that the spatial relationship between the audience, performer and orchestra becomes confused, as figures gesture into space and others are reflected in mirrors. The isolated rhetorical gestures of singers and actors seem to reach out to no-one in particular, and audience members are portrayed stretching and peering to see things that lie beyond the visible space. This theme of confused or failed communication between people appears frequently in his art. By emphasising the patterns of wallpaper and architectural decorations, Sickert created abstract decorative arabesques and flattened the three-dimensional space. His music hall pictures, like Degas' paintings of dancers and café-concert entertainers, connect the artificiality of art itself to the conventions of theatrical performance and painted backdrops.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert often professed his distaste for what he termed the "beastly" character of thickly textured paint. In an article he wrote for "The Fortnightly Review" in 1911, he described his reaction to the paintings of Van Gogh: "I execrate his treatment of the instrument I love, these strips of metallic paint that catch the light like so many dyed straws ... my teeth are set on edge". In response to Alfred Wolmark's work he declared that "thick oil-paint is the most undecorative matter in the world".


title: Walter Sickert

text: Nonetheless, Sickert's paintings of the "Camden Town Murder" series of c. 1906–1909 were painted in heavy impasto and narrow tonal range, as were numerous other obese nudes in the pre-World War I period in which the fleshiness of the figures is connected to the thickness of the paint—a device that was later adapted by Lucian Freud. The influence of these paintings on successive generations of British artists has been noted in the works of Freud, David Bomberg, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Howard Hodgkin, and Leon Kossoff.


title: Walter Sickert

text: In the 1910s and 1920s, the dark, gloomy tones of his early paintings gradually brightened, and Sickert juxtaposed unexpected tones with a new boldness in works such as "Brighton Pierrots" (1915) and "Portrait of Victor Lecourt" (1921–24). His several self-portraits usually displayed an element of role-playing consistent with his early career as an actor: "Lazarus Breaks his Fast" (c. 1927) and "The Domestic Bully" (c. 1935–38) are examples. Sickert's late works display his preference for thinly scrubbed veils of paint, described by Helen Lessore as "a cool colour rapidly brushed over a warm underpainting (or vice versa) on a coarse canvas and in a restricted range allow[ing] the undercoat to 'grin through'".


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert insisted on the importance of subject matter in art, saying that "all the greater draughtsmen tell a story", but treated his subjects in a detached manner. Max Kozloff wrote: "How not to say too much seems to have become a matter of utmost laborious concern for Sickert", as evidenced by his paintings' studied lack of finish and "neurasthenic sobriety" of color. According to the painter Frank Auerbach, "Sickert's detachment became increasingly evident in his uninhibited procedures. He made obvious his frequent reliance on snapshots and press photographs, he copied, used and took over the work of other, dead, artists and made extensive use, also, of the services of his assistants who played a large and increasing part in the production of his work."


title: Walter Sickert

text: Sickert took a keen interest in the crimes of Jack the Ripper and believed he had lodged in a room used by the notorious serial killer. He had been told this by his landlady, who suspected a previous lodger who stayed there in 1881. Sickert did a painting of the room in 1905–1907 and titled it "Jack the Ripper's Bedroom" (Manchester Art Gallery). It shows a dark, melancholy room with most details obscured. It suggests his morbid interest in the subject. There is good evidence he spent most of 1888, the time of the murders, outside the UK.


title: Walter Sickert

text: Although for over 80 years there was no mention of Sickert being a suspect in the Ripper crimes, in the 1970s authors began to explore the idea that Sickert was Jack the Ripper or his accomplice.


title: Walter Sickert

text: In 1976 Stephen Knight, in his book "", maintained that Sickert had been forced to become an accomplice in the Ripper murders. Knight's information came from Joseph Gorman, who claimed to be Sickert's illegitimate son. Gorman later admitted that his story was a hoax. From 1989 to 1998 Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell published the graphic novel "From Hell", which was based on Stephen Knight's theory. In 1990 Jean Overton Fuller, in her book "Sickert and the Ripper Crimes", maintained that Sickert was the killer.


title: Walter Sickert

text: In 2002 crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, in "", maintained that Sickert was Jack the Ripper.<ref name="TimesOnline.co.uk / Portrait"></ref> Cornwell purchased 31 of Sickert's paintings, and some in the art world have said that she destroyed one of them in searching for Sickert's DNA, but Cornwell denies having done this. Cornwell claimed that mitochondrial DNA from one of more than 600 Ripper letters sent to Scotland Yard and mitochondrial DNA from a letter written by Sickert belong to only one percent of the population. In 2017, Cornwell published another book on the subject, "Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert", in which she uncovers what she believes to be further evidence of Sickert's guilt.<ref name="TimesOnline.co.uk / Ripper"></ref> In 2004 the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", in its article on Sickert, dismissed any claim that he was Jack the Ripper as "fantasy". In 2005, Matthew Sturgis included a lengthy "Postscript" in his substantial biography of the artist, exploring Cornwell's and others' claims: it begins, "Walter Sickert was not Jack the Ripper".


title: Walter Sickert

text: In 2019, an article in "Science", the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, stated that Cornwell's allegation that Sickert was the Ripper was based on a DNA analysis of letters that "many experts believe ... to be fake" and that "another genetic analysis of the letters claimed the murderer could have been a woman".


title: Walter Sickert

text: Walter Sickert's personal papers are held at Islington Local History Centre. Additional papers are held at several other archives, particularly the Tate Gallery Archive. The Walker Art Gallery holds the largest collection of his drawings, a total of 348.


title: Walter Sickert

text: In 2021–2022, a retrospective exhibition "Sickert: A Life in Art" at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, displayed around 100 of Sickert's paintings and 200 drawings, claiming to be the largest retrospective of the artist’s work to have been held in the UK for more than 30 years. The art critic Jonathan Jones noted: "This baffling man who was born in Munich in 1860, emigrated to Britain as a child and became one of our greatest and weirdest artists, emerges in this excellent show as even odder than I thought. In that unsettling way of seeing lies his modernity."


title: Walter Sickert

text: In 2022, Tate Britain staged the first major Sickert retrospective at Tate in over 60 years, featuring over 150 of his works from over 70 public and private collections, and claiming to be the most extensive retrospective in almost 30 years. The exhibition was organised in collaboration with the Petit Palais, Paris, where it is expected to be displayed between late 2022 and 2023. Jonathan Jones observed, "This hellishly brilliant exhibition takes you to a place beyond simple moral or political truth. Whatever Sickert was, he was the only British artist of his time who can be as powerful as Munch, Van Gogh or Otto Dix."


title: Alan Brazil

text: Alan Bernard Brazil (born 15 June 1959) is a Scottish broadcaster and former football player, most notably for Ipswich Town, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and internationally for Scotland. He played as a forward before being forced to retire due to a recurring back injury. He moved into media presentation, initially on television, before moving over to radio where he has for many years now been a presenter on Talksport.


title: Alan Brazil

text: Born in 1959 in the Govan district of Glasgow, Brazil started his career in England with Ipswich Town in 1977, where he stayed until 1983, appearing a total of 210 times and scoring 80 goals. In 1978, he was loaned to the Detroit Express in the North American Soccer League, appearing in 21 regular season games and 3 playoff games, scoring 10 goals in total. He made his Ipswich debut in a league match against Manchester United on 14 January 1978, and also contributed to their victorious 1977–78 FA Cup run when he played against Bristol Rovers in the fifth round replay. However, he was left out of the squad for the final itself.


title: Alan Brazil

text: Brazil was a key player by the 1980–81 season, when they won the UEFA Cup and finished runners-up in the league. Ipswich finished runners-up once more the following season, when Brazil scored 22 goals, making him the second-highest scorer in the First Division after Kevin Keegan, who scored 26 for Southampton. One of his finest games in an Ipswich shirt came on 16 February 1982, when he scored all of their goals in a 5–2 league win over Southampton.


title: Alan Brazil

text: Brazil moved to Tottenham Hotspur in March 1983 for £425,000, scoring six times in 10 appearances. In his only full season at White Hart Lane he scored three goals in 19 games, while his fellow Scot Steve Archibald scored 21 times. Tottenham won the UEFA Cup and Brazil scored four goals during their cup run, however he was not part of the squad for the final. In June 1984 Brazil joined Manchester United for a fee of £625,000. He stayed with United for two seasons, but a recurring back injury restricted him to a total of 41 appearances in the league, the League Cup, the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup. Competition for places at Old Trafford was very fierce, with Irish International Frank Stapleton, Mark Hughes and Peter Davenport all in contention. Brazil scored 16 goals during his 18 months with Manchester United, but by the time his second season got underway, he was no longer a regular member of the first team, with most his final appearances for the club coming as a substitute.


title: Alan Brazil

text: In January 1986, he was transferred to Coventry City as part of the deal that sent Terry Gibson to Old Trafford. He made 15 league appearances, scoring twice, and was given a free transfer at the end of the season, with his back problems becoming more evident. Joining Queens Park Rangers, he made a total of four appearances, scoring once (the winner against Blackburn in the FA Cup), and went on to play for Bury Town, Chelmsford City and Stambridge United. Brazil left British football in 1988 to join Wollongong City (now the South Coast Wolves), a New South Wales-based club in Australia's National Soccer League. He returned to Europe to spend the 1988–89 season with FC Baden of the Swiss Challenge League in the country's second division.


title: Alan Brazil

text: Suffering from a back injury, Brazil's career wound down with stints at Felixstowe Town, Ipswich-based side Achilles and Wivenhoe Town, where Brazil scored on his only appearance for the club in a 2–1 loss against Bromley on 15 October 1991, before rejoining Chelmsford City to play for their reserves. Brazil later played under Garry Hill at Chelmsford Sunday League side Priory Sports, alongside Micky Droy and Paul Parker.


title: Alan Brazil

text: Brazil made 13 appearances for Scotland, the most notable of which saw him playing in the 1982 FIFA World Cup finals in Spain. He was the youngest member of the Scotland squad at the finals. His debut came against Poland in a friendly in Warsaw on 28 May 1980, which Scotland lost 1–0. His last full international came on 1 June 1983 in a 2–0 Home Championship defeat to England. He scored once for the Scottish national side, in his penultimate appearance on 28 May 1983 in a 2–0 Home Championship win over Wales.


title: Alan Brazil

text: His international appearances were limited as Scotland had a number of other strikers at this time such as Kenny Dalglish, Charlie Nicholas, Mo Johnston, Steve Archibald, Paul Sturrock, Joe Jordan, Frank McAvennie, Davie Dodds, Frank McGarvey and Andy Gray who were preferred to Brazil.


title: Alan Brazil

text: Brazil was a sports analyst for breakfast TV station GMTV in its early days. Soon afterwards, he was invited to join Andy Gray in The Boot Room on Sky Sports. When Sky Sports gained rights to the Football League and the Football League Cup, Brazil worked as a studio analyst and, occasionally, as a co-commentator.


title: Alan Brazil

text: In the late 1990s, Brazil joined radio station Talk Radio to present evening sports programming, titled "It's Just Like Watching Brazil". When the station became Talk Sport in early 2000, he became co-presenter on the weekday 610am programme. The show has since been renamed the 'Alan Brazil Sports Breakfast'. He has had various co-presenters over the years, including Mike Parry, Graham Beecroft and Ronnie Irani. Since Irani left the show in 2013, there has been a variety of co-presenters including Matt Holland, Ray Parlour, David Ginola, Dominic Cork, Neil Warnock and Brian Moore.


title: Alan Brazil

text: Brazil missed a show in March 2004 and was dismissed by the station, but he was reinstated three weeks later.


title: Alan Brazil

text: While reacting to the death of actor Robin Williams in August 2014, Brazil said on his talkSPORT show that he did not have a lot of sympathy for people who commit suicide as it leaves their families in a "diabolical" situation. Many listeners criticised Brazil for not showing any regard for Williams having suffered from depression. The station apologised for offence caused and said it did not agree with his opinion.


title: Alan Brazil

text: From April 2020 Brazil's role at Talksport was altered with him hosting Talksport Breakfast two days a week on Thursdays and Fridays with Laura Woods becoming host of the show from Monday to Wednesday with a statement from station stressing that Brazil's role at Talksport would be 'expanded'.


title: Alan Brazil

text: In the early 1970s, Brazil was subject to abuse at Celtic Boys Club, by Jim Torbett. When Torbett was charged and tried in 1996, Brazil was a witness for the prosecution. Torbett was found guilty on child abuse charges and sentenced to two years in prison.


title: Alan Brazil

text: Having retired from English league football aged 27 due to injury, for several years in the 1990s Brazil ran the Black Adder pub in Ipswich. This business venture failed and Brazil was declared bankrupt.


title: Alan Brazil

text: A fan of horse racing, in 2003 he formed the Alan Brazil Racing Club based at Newmarket near to his home in Suffolk. In 2006 Brazil published a book co-written with Mike Parry called "There's an Awful Lot of Bubbly in Brazil". This was followed in 2007 by "Both Barrels from Brazil: My War Against the Numpties", again co-written with Parry.


title: Alan Brazil

text: In September 2007, Brazil was arrested near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk on suspicion of drink-driving. He was convicted, banned from driving for 20 months, and given a £750 fine, as well as being ordered to pay £450 compensation to the court.


title: Alan Brazil

text: In 2011, Brazil brought out a range of bar nuts named 'Alan Brazil's Nuts', a play on Brazil nuts. The packages have barcodes readable by smartphones for accessing Talksport-related media. The nuts are produced at an Intersnack factory in Haverhill, Suffolk, with profits going to the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation. Robson, who died from cancer in 2009, was Brazil's manager at Ipswich. The range of salted and dry roasted peanuts were due to be extended to cashews and chilli nuts in 2012.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: The Afghan Whigs are an American rock band from Cincinnati, Ohio. They were active from 1986 to 2001 and have since reformed as a band. The group – with core members Greg Dulli (vocals, rhythm guitar), Rick McCollum (lead guitar), and John Curley (bass) – rose up around the grunge movement, evolving from a garage band in the vein of the Replacements to incorporate more R&B and soul influences into their sound and image. After releasing their first album independently in 1988, the band signed to the Seattle-based label Sub Pop. They released their major-label debut and fourth album, "Gentlemen", in 1993. "Pitchfork" described them as "one of the few alt-bands to flourish on a major label" in the 1990s.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Dulli frequently claimed in interviews that the band would never get back together following their dissolution in 2001; however the group reunited in 2012.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Greg Dulli (vocals, rhythm guitar), Rick McCollum (lead guitar), John Curley (bass), and Steve Earle (drums) formed the band in Cincinnati late in 1986. The Afghan Whigs had evolved out of Dulli's previous band, The Black Republicans, a band that Curley later joined. Curley would introduce Dulli to McCollum, a frequent jam partner who was famed on the local Cincinnati scene for his innovative use of effects pedals. McCollum and Dulli would bond over their shared love of R&B, in fact the first song The Afghan Whigs ever rehearsed was a cover of The Temptations' "Psychedelic Shack." Dulli later described the intent behind The Afghan Whigs was to exist as "a cross between the Band, the Temptations, and Neil Young playing with Crazy Horse."


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: In the wake of The Black Republicans' breakup Dulli had decamped to Arizona, where he composed half the material for what would become The Afghan Whigs' debut album "Big Top Halloween" (1988), self-released on the band's own Ultrasuede label. "We were running through what were the first songs I'd ever written to do some demos, so we were playing really loose," Dulli recalls. "And then all of a sudden, I found out John was having covers made." While only a thousand copies of "Big Top Halloween" would be pressed initially, one of them managed to capture the attention of Jonathan Poneman, the co-founder of influential Seattle-based indie label Sub Pop, which signed The Afghan Whigs in 1989. Initially Sub Pop planned for the Whigs to release only a one-off single, but that soon led to a full-blown record contract with the label.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Upon signing to Sub Pop, The Afghan Whigs became the second non-Pacific-Northwestern United States band to record for the Sub Pop label. In 1990, Sub Pop put out The Afghan Whigs' second album "Up in It." Largely recorded by Nirvana producer Jack Endino and featuring the college-radio hit "Retarded," "Up in It" received a favorable reception with music critics upon release.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: To support the album's release, The Afghan Whigs went on a package tour with grunge originators Mudhoney and Boston underground band Bullet LaVolta. "Up in It" was followed by a limited edition single released by No.6 Records under the name "Ornament," which included vocals by Scrawl singer Marcy Mays (who would later contribute lead vocals to the band's song "My Curse" off the album "Gentlemen").


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: With the 1992 album "Congregation" and covers EP, "Uptown Avondale", the band developed what would become their signature sound, blending soul with psychedelic sprawl and punk abandon. Critics noted the combination of Stax and Motown influences with indie-rock sonics on the band's material. "Uptown Avondale" featured covers of hits by soul acts such as The Supremes.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Videos for notable "Congregation" songs like "Conjure Me" and "Turn on the Water" would receive airplay on MTV, which began to regularly cover The Afghan Whigs as a new band to watch. The Afghan Whigs would also tour extensively during this period, including a U.S. jaunt with Scottish indie rockers Teenage Fanclub.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Building on the buzz that welcomed "Congregation", The Afghan Whigs soon signed to a major label, Elektra Records, following a bidding war that resulted in a contract so lucrative, it featured a clause that allowed for the funding of a Dulli-scripted feature film that ultimately was never made. For their major label debut, The Afghan Whigs ensconced themselves in Ardent Studios in Memphis, where Big Star, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and ZZ Top had recorded. The result of those sessions was the 1993 album "Gentlemen".


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: "Gentlemen" received a positive review from "Rolling Stone". Critics would go on to praise it for its unflinching, self-flagellating lyrics, and a decisive stylistic break with the grunge-style epitomized by Nirvana and Mudhoney. "Gentlemen" would place at No. 17 on The "Village Voice"'s "Pazz & Jop" critic's poll for 1993.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: "Gentlemen" proved to be The Afghan Whigs' most commercially successful release, and by 1996 it had sold 130,000 copies in the United States. The singles "Debonair" (a Modern Rock Top 20 hit) and "Gentlemen" received regular airplay on MTV and college radio. Another album track, "Fountain and Fairfax" appeared on the television series "My So-Called Life" in 1994. The lead vocals on "My Curse" were sung not by Dulli, but by singer Marcy Mays of Scrawl – allegedly because the lyrics documenting the violent dissolution of a relationship were so personal, Dulli couldn't sing it.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Following the promotion of "Gentlemen", The Afghan Whigs further expanded into the public eye. In 1996, Dulli served as executive producer for the soundtrack for the Ted Demme film "Beautiful Girls". The Afghan Whigs appeared in the film as a bar band and contributed two songs to the soundtrack: Frederick Knight's "Be For Real" and Barry White's "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe." Dulli also was the only musician other than Dave Grohl to appear on the debut album from Foo Fighters.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Eventually, work began on The Afghan Whigs' fifth full-length album, which would be called "Black Love" upon its release in 1996. The band started writing demos in March 1995; the recording took place in both Seattle and Memphis-based studios featuring new drummer Paul Buchignani, who had replaced Steve Earle.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Although previous releases explored liquor-drenched obsession, secrets and misery, "Black Love" stepped into a darker, seedier and complex side of Dulli's persona, passionately taking his obsession with murder and paranoia to their logical ends. Dulli himself noted that the songs had a conceptual framework that reflected the structure of a film, influenced by noir-influenced writer James Ellroy and violent neo-noir films like "Blood Simple." Other influences included pulp fiction novels, Kenneth Anger's "Hollywood Babylon" and the crime photographs of Weegee. Other lyrical inspirations included the troubled life of Temptations singer David Ruffin for the song "Blame, Etc." The album opener, "Crime Scene Part One", was allegedly influenced by the story of then-unproduced screenplay for the film "The Million Dollar Hotel".


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Commercially, "Black Love" peaked at No. 79 on the "Billboard" Top 200 chart. The album also received critical praise for capturing the power of the Whigs' live show in a studio recording; its lush yet funky musicality garnered comparisons to the Rolling Stones in their 1970s-era prime and standing out once again from the day's more conventional alternative rock in its distinctive embrace of black-music idioms. The Whigs promoted "Black Love" with extensive touring, including a jaunt of large venues opening for a Neil Young tour that also featured Jewel.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: In the wake of "Black Love"'s commercial disappointment, The Afghan Whigs said they suffered neglect and dishonest business dealings with their label, Elektra. Eventually, the two parted ways and the Whigs signed to Columbia Records for their next album, "1965". The unamicable parting resulted in Dulli being treated for depression, providing subject matter for songs like "Neglekted" which was featured on the band's next full-length effort.The song had originally been named "Sylvia" as a swipe against then-Elektra head, Sylvia Rhone.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: After a year's hiatus during which Dulli began another project known as The Twilight Singers, The Afghan Whig's went to Daniel Lanois' famed studio in New Orleans to record "1965," named after the year both Dulli and Curley were born. Influenced again by film noir, as well as the urban wordplay of rappers like Nas, "1965" received positive reviews in the press, praising, in particular, the band's continued flair for blending soul styles with rock. In addition to their headlining dates, The Afghan Whigs went on tour with Aerosmith as the classic-rock group's opening act. During the live dates for "1965," Dulli got in an altercation with a stagehand following an Austin, Texas concert date and suffered a head injury that left him in a coma. Two months after Dulli's recovery, however, the group returned to the road.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: In 2001, The Afghan Whigs broke up by circulating a press release announcement which was picked up by the major music press. In it, the band claimed their geographic disparity and family obligations of its core members made it impossible for them to create new material together. In further interviews, Dulli clarified that theirs was an amicable split, and did not necessarily represent an "official breakup."


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: In 2006, The Afghan Whigs temporarily reunited. The lineup recorded two new tracks ("I'm A Soldier" and "Magazine") featured on their retrospective titled "", released on June 5, 2007, through Rhino Records, which critics noted rated on a par with the band's material released during its prime.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: The band would not perform again until a December 7, 2011, press release from the promoters of All Tomorrow's Parties announced that The Afghan Whigs would reunite and play at their I'll Be Your Mirror events on May 27, 2012, in London, followed by an appearance at Asbury Park, New Jersey on September 22, 2012. A week later it was announced that the band would also be performing at both Primavera Sound festivals in 2012. In April of that year, it was revealed that the revitalized The Afghan Whigs would be playing the 2012 edition of Lollapalooza. Dulli clarified in interviews that playing The Afghan Whigs with Curley on a 2010 solo tour and meeting with McCollum anew during that period directly led to plans of reforming for live performance.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: On May 22, 2012, the reunited The Afghan Whigs (minus drummer Steve Earle) made their debut performance on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon", playing one new song, the soul cover "See and Don't See," and old favorite "I'm Her Slave" from "Congregation". The reunited Whigs played their first full concert the next night at Manhattan venue The Bowery Ballroom, receiving critical accolades from the major media. "Regardless of how the surprising reunion of The Afghan Whigs turns out, their show last night at the Bowery Ballroom will go down as the '90s alt-rock heroes' greatest concert ever," Glenn Gamboa wrote in Newsday; meanwhile, Steve Kandell noted in a "SPIN" review that "their first show together since then, at New York's Bowery Ballroom last night, felt less like an easy nostalgia trip than a reminder of problems we, perhaps selectively, forgot we ever had. …Leader Greg Dulli was leaner, meaner, fitter, and in better voice at 47 than even during the band's heyday… From the opening strains of "Crime Scene, Part One," all the old drama and menace and hurt feelings and failings were right there, palpable and visceral, all couched in the equally palpable sense of relief that none of us are that fucked up anymore." The Afghan Whigs' first new recording released during the 2012 reformation, "See and Don't See," also received considerable airplay on influential stations such as Sirius XMU, KEXP, XPN, and KCRW. On July 16, the band released their second new recording, a cover of Frank Ocean's "Lovecrimes." Like the previous release, the song was made available as a free download from the band's website.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: In 2013 at South by Southwest (SXSW), The Afghan Whigs headlined The FADER FORT and played a collaborative set with surprise guest Usher. John Curly claims that moment solidified the probability that the band would record together again and that following their SXSW performance they began compiling ideas for new material.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: On January 27, 2014, the band's official mailing list announced an April release date for the first album of new The Afghan Whigs material in 16 years, a return to the Sub Pop roster titled "Do to the Beast".


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: On February 18, 2014, the band announced that Rick McCollum was no longer a member of the group. Guitar parts on "Do to the Beast" were performed by numerous musicians including Dave Rosser, Jon Skibic, and Mark McGuire among others. The band added drummer Patrick Keeler of The Raconteurs and The Greenhornes in 2014.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Guitarist Dave Rosser, a band member since 2014 who played on both of their reunion albums, died on June 28, 2017, following a long battle with colon cancer.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: In February 2022, the band released their first single in five years, "'I'll Make You See God," which was featured on the "Gran Turismo 7" soundtrack. How Do You Burn? their ninth studio album, was released Sept. 9, 2022, through BMG Rights Management, their first album since 1998's "1965" to not be released under Sub Pop.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: The influence of The Afghan Whigs has been acknowledged by a number of musicians spanning genres and formats, including The National, The Gaslight Anthem, The Horrible Crowes, Interpol, The Hold Steady, My Chemical Romance and Jimmy Eat World.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Also, Italian indie rock band Afterhours, who extensively toured the US between 2006 and 2011, under the auspice of Greg Dulli cites The Afghan Whigs as their influence.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: On June 23, 2009, an The Afghan Whigs tribute album was released, featuring contributions from Mark Lanegan, Joseph Arthur, and 11 other artists influenced by the band.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Since the band's formation, certain themes have been noted as developing Dulli's songwriting for The Afghan Whigs and beyond – in particular, his mixing of black humor with topics such as drug addiction, sexual deviancy and suicidal thoughts, which often seem more personal and provocative due to their frequent embrace of the first person. Many notable The Afghan Whigs' songs are rooted in exploring power battles in romantic relationships. "Gentlemen" in particular has been cited for its frank and uncomfortable exploration of masculine tropes and expectations, including elements of sadomasochism and alienation. "Black Love" meanwhile, contains lyrics about revenge and honesty.


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: Dulli's songs with The Afghan Whigs also betray a fascination with and sympathy for the anti-hero, which he attributed to an influential conversation with his grandfather during childhood: "I remember as a kid watching a cowboys-and-Indians movie and I was rooting for the cowboys… My grandfather asked me why, and I said, `Because they're the good guys.' And my grandfather explained to me that the Indians were fighting for their land and that the cowboys were trying to steal it from them. Then he said something to me that I never forgot, which was, `Good people aren't good all the time and bad people aren't bad all the time.' I've been exploring that gray area ever since the idea that saints can fall and sinners can transcend."


title: The Afghan Whigs

text: The Afghan Whigs are known for their cover songs as well as their original material – in particular, freely reinterpreted songs from the soul music and R&B canon that they were exposed to in their youth. However, The Afghan Whigs have never restricted their choices in covers by genre; even from their earliest concerts they have been known to cover songs like The Rolling Stones' "Cocksucker Blues" and Neil Young's "Like A Hurricane," as well as tracks made famous by The Supremes, Prince, PJ Harvey, The Fugees, and TLC. "Congregation" includes a version of "The Temple" from the soundtrack of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and they were also known to perform Pink Floyd's album "The Wall" in its entirety. The Afghan Whigs' most recent recording was a cover of a rare 1970 soul song by Marie "Queenie" Lyons, "See and Don't See," although the band continues to explore contemporary material as well, such as "Love Crimes" by current R&B iconoclast Frank Ocean, which was debuted on the band's 2012 reunion tour.


title: Salt poisoning

text: Salt poisoning is an intoxication resulting from the excessive intake of sodium (usually as sodium chloride) in either solid form or in solution (saline water, including brine, brackish water, eating salt, or seawater). Salt poisoning sufficient to produce severe symptoms is rare, and lethal salt poisoning is possible but even rarer. The lethal dose of table salt is roughly 0.5-1g per kg of body weight.