In a land known for its delectable down home cooking, rousing country music, and the majestic beauty of nature its no wonder that some truly unique individuals were born and bred there, going on to become famous. From the arts of music and movies to sports to politics, there are some people whom hail from Eastern Tennessee that many people would quickly recognize the name of.
1. Quentin Tarantino - This awesomely talented individual is a Hollywood staple now who has his roots in Knoxville, Tennessee where he was born and raised. He has made a name for himself as an Oscar winning screen writer, director, producer, cinematographer and actor. His more notable movies include the Kill Bill series, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and Inglourious Basterds.
2. Usher Raymond - Platinum recording artist who is famous enough to go just by only his first name. Hailing from Chattanooga, TN, this southern boy rose to fame in the 1990s with his albums My Way and 8701 which both went on to be multiple platinum. He then topped himself by releasing the super popular album Confessions which has been certified Diamond and sold 20 million copies worldwide, garnered the highest first week sales for any R&B artist ever, and was noted to be the best selling R&B album of the 2000s. Known for a melodic voice, immense sex appeal, and dance moves that have been compared to his musical idol Michael Jackson, Usher is a product of Tennessee that one should be proud of.
3. Reggie White- Also from Chattanooga, TN, this football great is also known by his nickname as the “Minister of Defense” because he was an Evangelical minister in conjunction with being a football legend. He left his mark on the game as a leader in defensive sacks, picking up 124 sacks in his career with the Philadelphia Eagles and earning himself the title as the greatest player in Eagles’ franchise history by ESPN Sportsnation. After leaving the Eagles and signing with the Greenbay Packers, he helped the Packers go on to two appearances in the Super Bowl and a victory in Super Bowl XXXI.
4. Alvin C. York - A true patriot, this gentleman is lauded as World War Is greatest hero. Highly decorated, he earned the Medal of Honor when he led a charge against the Germans and a machine gun nest that they had set up. Courageously he challenged them and overcame machine gun rounds, advancing enemy soldiers with bayonets, and pistol fire to go on and capture 132 enemy soldiers.
5. Megan Fox - The gorgeous Megan Fox is a sexy actress best known for her role in the blockbusters Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Voted Sexiest Woman in the World by the readers of popular mens magazine FHM, its not hard to see that this Southern beauty works her charms well. The blue eyed beauty is from Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
This is just a small sampling of the talent that had their start in diverse eastern Tennessee. There must be something magical in that water, because history and fame have looked kindly on the areas inhabitants, leading them to greatness.
Learn more about the many things that make Tennessee great at our Gatlinburg cabins website - click through to the blog to read multiple posts on the topic.
There is no doubt that a lot of people have heard of Jimi Hendrix. He truly is one of the most revered guitar players in the music industry. He has developed a following that stretches until today. You will often see shirts and hear his records being played or recommended, favorited even by some music enthusiasts of this generation.
Jimi Hendrix or Johnny Allen Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942 in Seatlle. His father changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix after returning from the war. This name was in honor of his uncle Leon Marshall Hendrix.
His childhood was said to unstable. He was also said to be deprived of the attention. He spent some time in welfare care. He started practicing his guitar skills on an unstringed broomstick and also a one-stringed ukulele. His first guitar cost him five dollars, that was well, a makeshift guitar. But his first real guitar was a Supro Ozark that was white. His father gave it to him when he realized that Jimi had real guitar slashing potential.
But poor Jimi did not have an amp. And he didnt see that as an obstacle. He started learning by watching other guitar players and listening to guitar records. He was influenced by his fathers listening to Muddy Waters and BB King. And that should be the reason why his songs were sprinkled with the blues style of playing. He was very much of an extrovert as a player. And his showing off got him kicked out of his first band.
He jumped from band to band from there. And after he served as a paratrooper, he began working as a session guitar player for Little Richard, Sam Cooke and the Isley Brothers. It was when he got Chas Chandler, formerly of the band, the Animals, as his manager when his career started to go uphill.
Chandler found out about Jimis playing prowess through Linda Keith, Keith Richards (of the Rolling Stones) girl friend. It was Chandler who changed Jimis name to what we know now. And it was also his brainchild to for m the Jimi Hendrix Experience with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell.
The bands first single, Hey Joe, blasted the charts. They also played after The Who during the 1967 pop festival in Monterey. Jimi was slashing his guitar while fire burned on the stage. The crowd went wild. It was also at about the same time they released their first album, Are You Experienced. And Jimi rocketed to stardom.
The most memorable and successful album from the band is Electric Ladyland. It was released in 1968. During this time, Chandler was no longer acting as their manager. This also marked the start of the bands demise. It was then when drugs and hangers on kept crowding the studios. This eventually led to the end of the band. Jimi then formed the Gypsies, Sun and Rainbows for a time. They were only able to play at the Woodstock 1969. This was when he played his final great public performance with an electrifying version of the Star Spangled Banner.
The guitar legend was hooked into drugs. His last album was Cry of Love which featured Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox of Gypsies. He took some sleeping pills on September 17, 1970. The pills belonged to his then girl friend, Monica Denneman. He apparently had an allergic reaction and started throwing up. He drowned in his vomit. But he was pronounced dead when he reached the hospital. He was 27 when he passed away.
Prince of Persia The Sands of Time is a throwback to the action packed movie serials of the old days. Absolutely gorgeous CGI cinematography and special effects makes this a must see movie on anybodys list.
Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the adopted third son of King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) of Persia. As the movie starts the King gets word that a neighboring Holy City has accumulated powerful weapons of mass destruction that the people plan to use against Persia. As a preemptive move (sound familiar?) the King sends a small attack force, led by Dastan, into the city to capture the city and the weapons.
After the successful capture of the city, the beautiful princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) and the hanging of the Mission Accomplished banner, King Sharaman arrives to lecture and scold the people. As a reward for his heroic behavior, the King also decides to give the captured princess Tamina to Dastan as a wife. But before the King can make it official he is murdered, and his son Dastan is framed for the killing.
Dastan escapes the city with Tamina and a magical dagger that has time-travelling powers. The rest of the movie deals with the 2 outlaws trying to evade capture long enough to clear Dastans name and find the real killer of his father. Not only are they in pursuit by the Kings army, but others who wish to control the power of the dagger are also trying to capture Dastan and Tamina.
Prince of Persia The Sands of Time is based upon a popular computer game created back in 1989. In that game you controlled a character (prince) through a series of increasingly difficult levels until you got to the end. This movie tries to give the same type of feel as playing a video game. Dastan and Tamina travel through a series of frenetic chase scenes where they must elude their followers. At the end of each level they find themselves at the beginning of a new challenge more difficult than before.
This movie is visually stunning, just as you would expect from a Walt Disney movie produced by the now legendary Jerry Bruckheimer. He was the one that adapted that old theme park boat ride to the movies in that blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean.
Now Prince of Persia The Sands of Time is not as good as Pirates of the Caribbean. Its not that the story is lacking or that the movie doesnt look spectacular. The missing ingredient is Johnny Depp. With Depp, Bruckheimer caught lightning in a battle. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies would not have been nearly as good without him and his many memorable quotes.
Jake Gyllenhaal is a very good actor (Brokeback Mountain), but he just doesnt have the charisma of Johnny Depp. But if you dont try to compare the 2 movies then you will have a great time watching Prince of Persia The Sands of Time.
Two performances worth singling out are those of Ben Kingsley as Nizam, Dastan’s uncle and Alfred Molina as Amar, the humorous leader of a band of outlaws. Kingsley is always great in whatever hes in, and he gives the movie a sense of authenticity in every scene in which he appears. Alfred Molina is just damn funny. As the outlaw leader who makes a living racing Ostriches, he easily gets the movies best lines.
Whatever you do, do not leave your seat during the last 30 minutes of this movie. The epic battle that ends this film is a gorgeous-looking action-adventure spectacle that you will not forget anytime soon. Supposedly, Jake Gyllenhaal trained with an expert for months in parkour to get through the finale.
News of Roger Waters tickets going on sale for his latest tour schedule has spread fast. The most exciting part of the story is that he will be playing “The Wall” in its entirety for the first time in America in over 30 years. The last time Waters performed the album throughout a live concert tour was back when he was a member of Pink Floyd. The show will consist of two full sets and followed by encores and expect the usual dazzling light shows, props and sound.
The last time Roger Waters tickets were on sale for a concert tour was back in 2008-2009 and Waters himself was stated as saying it very well maybe his final tour. For fans the news that he has decided to do another full tour along with the material he will be covering could not be more excited. This is set to be the biggest concert for all of 2010 and a show that cannot be missed for any rock music fan. The U.S shows will finish at the Honda Center in Anaheim, CA on December 14, 2010. The tour will then take on its European leg starting in Spain and have a fitting final show in Berlin, Germany.
The Early Years
Of course Roger Waters is well known throughout the music world for being the bass player, songwriter and singer for Pink Floyd. Waters is the main founder of the band alongside fellow childhood friends Syd Barrett and Nick Mason. The band originally was named “Tea Set” until realizing another band on the London scene they were playing had the same name. Barrett quickly thought up the name “The Pink Floyd Sound” which came from a couple old blues musicians in his record collection, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. The band began to get attention from the music industry big wigs during the rise of the psychodelic movement. They signed with EMI and began working on their first album at the legendary Abby Road Studios in London. Their first album “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was released in 1967 and the rest is history.
Parting Of Legends
David Gilmour would become the fifth member and second guitar player of the band in 1968. Barrett and Gilmour had been friends from earlier years when they attended Cambridge Tech where they would jam together during lunch. While many looked at Gilmour as an addition to the music the band was beginning to see him as Barrett’s replacement. During the next months Barrett became impossible for the band to deal with from both a personal and business relationship. The band took Barrett off the stage but kept him behind the scenes as their songwriter, eventually those duties would dissolve, and he was officially out of the band all together.
The band would continue to record albums and go on tour with Gilmour as their main guitarist. They would go onto have their greatest success as a band with albums including “The Dark Side Of The Moon” and “The Wall”. The members of Floyd eventually began recording solo material at which time Waters felt that “Floyd” was done altogether as a creative musical force. He went to the High Courts in order to dissolve the band and assure its name would never be used again. When news hit Gilmour and Mason, they had no intentions of letting the band dissolve and fought to hold onto the name, even if Waters was to leave. Eventually, Gilmour and Mason could keep the band’s name and Waters asked EMI to release him from his contractual obligations. The relationship between Waters and Gilmour has been heavily strained throughout the years, but they could reunite one time for a 23 minute set at the Live 8 concerts on July 2, 2005.
Getting Roger Waters tickets for this amazing concert event is not going to be easy. These shows are sure to sell out fast in the U.S. and become quite expensive on the secondary market. Try to call the box office as soon as your venue releases the rickets for sale to assure great seats at a great price. If not be prepared to pay the top dollar for Roger Waters tickets around the date of the show.
Dog movies are an American staple. When listing the five best movies of all time you may think that it would be the ones that made the most at the box office, but this leave out many classic dog movies. The five best dog movies of all time are: Old Yeller, Homeward Bound, Marley and Me, Best in Show, and Benji.
Old Yeller, perhaps one of the biggest tear jerker movies of all time, is a well loved classic adapted from the 1956 novel. This is the story about a family in the antebellum south. The father is away trying to earn money. Old Yeller is a stray dog who befriends the family and even defends them from a rabid wolf. This movie is popular among adults and children alike. This is the first movie that focused on the love between a boy and his dog, and it spurned many other films and books with a similar theme.
Homeward Bound: the Incredible Journey is a great family movie. This 1993 film is a remake of the lesser known 1963 film The Incredible Journey. Homeward Bound is about the journey of two dogs and a cat as they make their way home. The animal personalities rule the film. Chance, the American Bulldog, is a scrappy wanderer who tries to put out an air of not needing anyone. Shadow, the loyal and older Golden Retriever is a caring soul who watches out for the other two animals. Sassy, the long haired cat, is a prissy, pampered pet who longs to return to the comforts of home. Together these three have funny adventures as well as heart rending ones in their journey to find their loved ones. This movie helped to establish the idea of animals having individual personalities as many pet owners will attest to.
Marley and Me, the newest film on this list, is guaranteed to be a classic. Based upon the book by John Grogan, this film depicts the lovable but worst dog ever, Marley. Marley gets into disaster after disaster from tearing his home apart to shaking in his boots at every thunderstorm that rolls across Florida. Marely and Me depicts the life of Marely from puppyhood up to old age and the journey he has with his family along the way. The love for a dog that never seems to do the right thing is one that many pet owners will connect with.
Best in Show, the 2000 mockumentary about contestants in a dog show, is a hilarious look into the world of dogs and their owners. This movie is more about the people who love their dogs than about the dogs, but dog owners everywhere will love it anyway. There are five dogs featured in the film: a Norwich terrier, a Bloodhound, a Weimaraner, a Shih-Tzu, and a Poodle. These dogs represent pretty common entrants into dog shows. Their owners back stories, however, are what really brings personality to the film from the over-obsessive yuppy pet parents to the Weimaraner to the quirky owners of the Norwich terrier.
Benji, a classic dog movie from the 1970s, is a great one for anyone who has ever adopted a stray, mixed dog. This movie includes as a great mystery as Benji works to save two children who have been kidnapped. This film is guaranteed to be loved by the whole family as much as Benji, the stray dog, is loved by so many people in his town. Benji was such a popular dog character that his character was reprised for additional films all the way up to 2004, thirty years after the first Benji film debuted.
If you’re online most of the time and you love music, you probably know some drum loops download archives.
Drum loops download site helps musicians use one of the most important elements of making great beats.
One option is to create your own drum loops, but you can just download them and create music quickly. There are various ways to utilize your drum loops download.
Many musicians start by downloading drum loops, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Use drum loops download sites to create your original music, that’s what really matters. Doing this is a lot easier so you can really put your creativity into practice.
Browse drum loops download sites to get a feel of what’s offered. Because of the many alternatives, you can be picky.
There are so many sites where drum loops download files are easily accessible, and the membership fees are not too high. Look into the features, not always the price! Various drum loops download online websites allow you to download only a limited number of tracks.
You can find drum loops download files that are royalty free but there are some that require a small fee. This is because some are done with a special beat making software using stretching algorithms.
The drum loops download beats are not always perfect, and so the premium ones will probably cost you a little something to download.
Tempos are important for invoking particular emotions from the audience. This means you need to be careful to choose the drum loop to download that really suits you and your style of music.
Spend more time using you creativity to develop your song by simply downloading the basic beat that you’re going to use.
Simply put, a fake book is a book of lead sheets. Lead-sheets are a basic musical skeleton of a tune with the melody and chords and lyrics (if any).
Musicians called it a fake book so that they can fake a tune as if they really knew the music and practiced it before.
Back in the early days, musicians mostly earned their money from a tip jar. People would request songs and if the musicians could play it, they got a tip. If the musicians would be able to play the requests especially if the song request was more sentimental in nature the evening tips grew larger as the clientele got more and more sauced. If the band couldn’t play a song request people would start grumbling about how the bar shouldn’t hire these musicians and consequently, if there was too much grumbling to the bartender, then the band would not get hired back. So if you have a couple of fake books and are able to read lead sheets you will stand a better chance of filling requests from the audience and get hired back.
Some enterprising musicians would buy piano-vocal books, which was the only way to obtain music then, and cut out the melody line, chords and lyrics and paste them onto a single page often taking a 5 page score and compressing it down to a page. So if you had a book of 500 or so of the most requested tunes, you will be better able to fill the requests by the audience. Then other musicians would ask if they could buy a copy of the compiled tunes and the persons would photocopy their book and sell it for whatever they could get for it. This was a violation of copyright laws since no royalties were paid the the composers.
These days publishers have created their own fake books for specific styles such as Jazz, Rock, Latin R&B or Broadway show tunes.
Back in the 1960’s or so students from Berklee College of Music started to compile the Real Book which was a mix of modern jazz and standards. Eventually it grew to 3 volumes but the first version was the most popular among jazz players. Sher publications came out with their correct version of the Real Book. And now publishers like Hal Leonard, Warner Brothers and Columbia came out with legal fake books with permissions and royalties paid to the composers.
Back in the day, musicians would purchase fake books from the trunk of a car in an alley somewhere or walking into a music store and asking for this special book you have for sale. Then you would hand over $35 and get your illicit Real Book. Many music stores got hauled into court for selling them.
Rock music, in one form or another, has been around for years. Many pin point the 1950s as the advent of rock with the emergence of Elvis Presley. Though not performing rock as we know it, Presley is credited as being a pioneer as rock and roll.
Presleys new music caused a stir amongst the music industry and outrage amongst some parents as his risqué dance moves left many in shock.
In the 60s rock music evolved further when four lads form Liverpool came to the fore. The Beatles are one of the most successful bands of all time and in the 1960s Beatlemania gripped the world!
The 1970s saw the advent of two subgenres of rock - glam rock and punk rock. Both had their roots firmly in rock music but they were very different form each other. Punk rock was about rebellion and anarchy with bands like the Sex Pistols at the fore front of the movement.
Glam rock was more experimental and saw the like of David Bowie lead the way. Make up, glitter and platforms were the style of choice.
By the 1980s rock had evolved even further. One of the main forms of rock in the 1980s was soft rock. Power ballads were en vogue and big hair was the order of the day. Bands like Chicago and Mr Mister were setting the tone.
There was also a darker, more aggressive rock on the scene with bands like Black Sabbath gaining coverage.
Towards the end of the decade we saw more American rock bands - particularly shoe-gaze rock bands - come into the scene. The term shoe-gaze was coined from the way the lead singer of such bands would perform on stage, usually staring at his feet!
The 1990s saw indie rock take the spotlight. While pop was dominating much of the charts, Brit pop - a form of indie rock emerged and fierce chart battles ensued.
Grunge rock was also big in the 1990s with bands like Nirvana reaching the top of the charts.
2000s saw indie rock back on top as Arctic Monkeys from the UK and Kings of Leon from the US continue to dominate the music industry.
A rock band usually includes one or more guitarists, a drummer and a bassist along with a lead singer. This can change though for example the rock band Keane originally had no guitarists but for the most part this format is followed.
Rock music is one of the biggest and most successful genres of music in the history of the music industry and if recent record sales are anything to go by it shows little sign of giving up that claim.
Ok, so the observant amongst you may have noticed that April has been and gone and no comedian was uploaded. Well I had some technical issues that prevented me from uploading a new comedian, but that is all sorted now. So heres Micky Flannagan! Mays comedian will be uploaded shortly, and to make up for the delay, ill upload a bonus update of Glenn Wool. Cant say fairer than that now can I?
