Top 100 Artists of All Time 100 – 91
The Top 100 Artists of All Time, Artists 100 – 91. For further information as to how the list was created, please click here.
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Top 100 Artists of All Time
Each year VH1, MTV, Radio Stations, Magazines and anyone with internet access produces some configuration of a Top 100 list. Ranging anywhere from Top 100 Worst Songs of All Time to Top 100 Celebrity Gaffs, even Top 100 Places to get Coffee on the Eastern Seaboard.
This year was particularly irritating to me. VH1 created a Top 100 Artists of All Time list. Sounds good initially. I love their Top 100 lists, and their series I Love The 80′s is a real treat! Top 100 one hit wonders of the 80s, Top 100 artists of the 80′s, 90′s or even 00′s. However, they struck a major chord with me when they created the Top 100 Artists of All Time. Key words: ALL TIME!
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Music Madness 2011
This was my first year at the Experiment, and I had a blast! I was invited out for one week, starting in the middle of the first week and ending the middle of the second week. David Rehm had asked me to present on a few topics: music history and DJing, as well as being a staff DJ for the evening festivities. Aside from the gnarly flu-like thing that I got my last few days at the Experiment, I had a wonderful time.
The students, staff, instructors and food were outstanding. The evening dancing was top notch, and the music was incredible (even excluding my own personal music). David puts on a top notch camp!
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The History Of The Lindy Hop
Just when you thought you have heard the complete history of the lindy hop, you find out that there is some undiscovered stories. The Onion did some great research into the history of the lindy hop and found a few gems that I never knew were true. Check out the video below for the recently discovered history.
EBC 2010 Competition Music
Another great year at EBC. Awesome competitions, great bands and always kick ass dancing. Following the great response to my ABW competition list, I am excited to post the complete competition list for EBC 2010. This time around, I decided to make it even easier for everyone to buy this great music by including Amazon links for every song (when available). Enjoy the list!
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EBC 2010: This Music Sucks
No, not the music at EBC. “This Music Sucks” is the title of my Saturday lunchtime talk at EBC 2010. An hour of fantasy and intrigue talking about music.
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DJs and Dancing – The Role of the DJ in an Evening of Dance
DJs tend to play the part of the band at the majority of dance events, and DJ’s music selection really can affect how a dance community flourishes. The song selection, variety and tempo of music each DJ chooses shapes a dance evening. Fortunately, in the swing community most often the DJ is also a dancer, giving them the advantage of knowing which kind of songs are ‘danceable.’ But being a good DJ and creating an enjoyable dance evening is about more than just playing songs the dancers enjoy.
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ABW 2010 Contest Music
So after several years of being the Head DJ at ABW, I thought I would finally release the song names and artists for the competition music. Have fun, enjoy, and if you hear that song next year, which you probably will, don’t suck.
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Three exciting lectures, this year at All Balboa Weekend 2010.
Give those weary feet a rest and come hang out with me and my friends throughout the day on Sunday. History, expression, and the joy of music at All Balboa Weekend 2010.
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10 Favorite Benny Goodman Tracks
In 1938, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America. The concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City that year is described by critic Bruce Eder as “the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz’s ‘coming out’ party to the world of ‘respectable’ music”. It crowned Benny Goodman as the ‘King of Swing,’ and solidified his position in the annuls of history as one of the most important and influential musicians in history.
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Amore
This print (17in x 28in) was a wedding gift to my brother, and his wife. Honoring both the nuptials, and passion for Italy. The campanile was drawn straight from the grounds in which they were married. My inspiration came from the vintage travel posters that dot the inside of their home.
MidtownStomp
Sample home page for Midtown Stomp, a swing dance venue in Sacramento, CA. My goal was to improve the initial look of the site by adding more color and dramatic photos. The current site is successful at delivering content to the user, however, I was looking to advance the site by increasing the aesthetic appeal and readability. Here is a shot of the entire home page.
Top 5 Balboa Songs For Beginners
Learning Balboa can be a challenging task. Trying to learn Balboa while dancing to a complicated song can make things even more difficult. And it’s more than just the tempo of a song. Easy rhythms, simple song structure, and repetition can all make dancing that much simpler. It doesn’t mean that the music is completely void of interest, rather the song assists you in your learning process, rather than confuse you. Below are 5 of my favorite beginner balboa tunes.
Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho – Sidney Bechet
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Central Avenue Shuffle – Ozzie Nelson and His Orchestra
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At The Clambake Carnival – Cab Calloway
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A Viper’s Moan – Mora’s Modern Rhythmists
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Community Swing – Glenn Miller
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Learning balboa? What songs do you like to dance to?
Saturday Night Hop
Unfortunately, this great swing dancing venue had to close its doors recently. But, before it closed, I was asked to design a Brand, Website and postcard for the dance event. Below are the Logo, website sample, postcard and free pass.
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My Blog Guest
Do you have a blog, but struggle to write original content? Are you a writer who is looking for freelance work? MyBlogGuest.com has the solution. MyBlogGuest.com uses a forum to connect blog owners with writers. Started by Ann Smarty as a way to build relations and powerful links through guest blogs to promote web resources, the website is a simple solution to a common problem.
MyBlogGuest is a unique community that is based on one simple principle: if you provide quality, you don’t need to pay to be heard. It unites bloggers who are interested in connecting to other bloggers, journalists and other content creators in any niche and publish their high-quality articles on their blogs.
After a short registration, you will find two simple forum sections, one for bloggers looking for guest posters, and the other section providing writers a forum to find blogs to post their content on.
Started at the end of last year, the community is still young, but definitely growing.
launch linkATOMIC Ballroom
ATOMIC Ballroom has been my full time side project for the better part of a year now, and it is with great pride that I announce: the site is finally live! Creating a custom front end, with a custom CMS proved to be challenging because of the level of complexity of all the moving parts–integrating the instructors, classes, dance styles and the schedule into a dynamic whole. The new site contains more content, increased usability, and helps to attain the client goal of an improved community feel by including detailed information about the classes, evening dances, dance styles and instructors; all editable within the CMS. Work on the site will be ongoing, future upgrades include: an improved blog, ATOMIC Achievements, and enhanced calendar and scheduling system, as well as several other organic improvements yet to be discovered.
I am very excited about this project finally coming online. I am a huge fan of the ballroom, and consider it my Friday night home.
Discover Tennessee
With the increased excitement surrounding AJAX and all the associated frameworks, jQuery, mootools etc.., the web has become a great place to live. Just discovered over at CSSRemix, Discover Tennessee Trails showcases one of the newer applications of jQuery, Parallax Effect. This allows a background image, or anything else for that matter, to move at a different pace than the web page . The differences in tempo of motion creates a wonderful illusion of depth to the site.
Here are some other examples of this Parallax Effect in action:
http://www.thebeatlesrockband.com/videos/cinematic
http://webdev.stephband.info/parallax_demos.html
Logo Of The Day
Perusing the web for inspiration, I came across logooftheday.com. It’s a simple site dedicated to providing logo samples from around the web. Not only do they showcase the trendy, new-media designs that push design boundaries, but they also highlight some of the most successful traditional brands. The site is a place to discover new logo trends as well as to learn about the foundational work need to create new brands or updating existing logos. Overall, a great find!
launch link