title: Progressive metal

text: Similarly, bands such as Dream Theater, Planet X, Puya, Liquid Tension Experiment, The Faceless, Between the Buried and Me and Animals as Leaders have a jazz influence, with extended solo sections that often feature "trading solos". Cynic, Atheist, Opeth, Between the Buried and Me and Meshuggah all blended jazz fusion with death metal, but in dramatically different ways. Devin Townsend draws on more ambient influences in the atmosphere of his music. Progressive metal is also often linked with power metal; Fates Warning and Conception, two bands that were originally power metal outfits, later incorporated progressive elements that ended up overshadowing their power metal roots. The ProgPower music festivals showcase this progressive-power metal fusion. Recently, with a popularity in shred guitar, the genre of "technical metal" has become increasingly prevalent and popular. This has led to a resurgence of popularity for more traditional progressive metal bands like Dream Theater and Symphony X; it also has led to the inclusion within the progressive niche of bands that do not necessarily play in its traditional style such as thrash/power metal band Nevermore and technical death metal pioneers Obscura. These bands are often labeled progressive since they play complex and technical music which does not fall under any other genre.


title: Progressive metal

text: In the late 2000s, bands such as Periphery, Tesseract, Animals as Leaders and Vildhjarta popularized the "djent" style of progressive metal in a sound originally developed by Meshuggah. It is characterized by high-attack, palm-muted, syncopated riffs (often incorporating polymeters), as well as use of extended-range guitars. Extended-range guitars also feature in other forms of progressive metal; artists including Dream Theater, Devin Townsend, Dir En Grey, and Ne Obliviscaris have used seven-string guitars without being part of the djent movement, Dream Theater having been one of the earliest progressive metal bands to incorporate seven-stringed guitars into their music.


title: Progressive metal

text: Proyecto Eskhata, a Spanish band, has received much press coverage in Spain for its fusion of progressive rock and rap metal, which journalists have described as "progressive rap metal".


title: Progressive metal

text: Progressive doom is a fusion genre that combines elements of progressive metal and doom metal. Bands include King Goat, Below the Sun, Sierra, and Oceans of Slumber.


title: Accept (band)

text: Accept are a German heavy metal band from the town of Solingen, formed in 1976 by guitarist Wolf Hoffmann and former members Udo Dirkschneider (vocals) and Peter Baltes (bass). Their beginnings can be traced back to the late 1960s, when the band got its start under the name Band X. Accept's lineup has changed over the years, which has included different singers, guitarists, bassists and drummers.


title: Accept (band)

text: Their current lineup consists of Hoffmann, vocalist Mark Tornillo, guitarists Uwe Lulis and Philip Shouse, drummer Christopher Williams and bassist Martin Motnik. Before arriving at their current lineup, Accept has undergone numerous lineup changes, being Hoffmann the last remaining original member since its inception, and he is the only band member to appear on each album.


title: Accept (band)

text: Accept played an important role in the development of speed and thrash metal, and they were part of the German heavy metal scene, which emerged in the early to mid-1980s. They have also been cited as an influence or inspiration by a number of acts, including Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Pantera, Testament, Anthrax, Guns N' Roses, Mötley Crüe, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Overkill, Exodus, and Annihilator, as well as fellow Germans such as Helloween, Blind Guardian, Doro, Sodom, Rage, and Grave Digger. Accept achieved its first commercial success with their fifth studio album "Balls to the Wall" (1983), which is the band's only album to be certified gold in the United States and Canada, and spawned their well-known hit "Balls to the Wall".


title: Accept (band)

text: Accept have broken up and reformed multiple times. They first split up in 1989, several months after the release of "Eat the Heat" (which was their only album with Dirkschneider's initial replacement David Reece), but reformed in 1992 and released three more albums before disbanding again in 1997. After briefly reuniting in 2005, Accept announced their third reunion in 2009, with former T.T. Quick frontman Mark Tornillo replacing Dirkschneider (who declined to participate), and the band has recorded five albums with him: "Blood of the Nations" (2010), "Stalingrad" (2012), "Blind Rage" (2014), "The Rise of Chaos" (2017) and "Too Mean to Die" (2021); each of those albums renewed Accept's popularity in Germany and entered the top ten charts there.


title: Accept (band)

text: Accept's beginnings can be traced back to 1968 when Udo Dirkschneider and Michael Wagener formed a local band called Band X, which eventually changed its name to "Accept", influenced by a record of the same name by Chicken Shack. For many years, Accept went through numerous line-up changes. This instability essentially kept the band on an amateur level, making sporadic appearances in festival concerts. Accept's professional career began in 1976, with Udo Dirkschneider, Wolf Hoffmann, Gerhard Wahl, Peter Baltes, and Frank Friedrich, when they were invited to play at one of the first rock and roll festivals in Germany — Rock am Rhein. Following the festival, the band were offered a recording deal. Their first recording was the self-titled "Accept" album, which was released in 1979, but did not achieve much commercial success.


title: Accept (band)

text: The first stable line-up of Accept was composed of vocalist Udo Dirkschneider, guitarists Wolf Hoffmann and Gerhard Wahl, bassist Peter Baltes and drummer Frank Friedrich. Friedrich and Wahl quit the band after the release of "Accept" and were replaced by Stefan Kaufmann and Jörg Fischer. This line-up recorded "I'm a Rebel" in 1980. The title track originally was written for AC/DC and recorded by the band but never released by them. The album brought some media attention, the band being invited to make a televised appearance.


title: Accept (band)

text: In 1981, their next album, "Breaker", was released, and the band employed manager Gaby Hauke. Accept also joined Judas Priest's World Wide Blitz Tour and obtained attention outside of Europe for the first time.


title: Accept (band)

text: "Restless and Wild" was released in 1982, although Jörg Fischer quit the band a short time before the recording took place. Jan Koemmet was hired as guitarist, but departed from the band before the recording of the album. "Restless and Wild" saw an evolution in the band's sound, which incorporated characteristics defining the genre later dubbed speed metal. Gaby Hauke was credited as "Deaffy" on two of the tracks.


title: Accept (band)

text: Accept's next album, "Balls to the Wall", was released in 1983, now with guitarist Herman Frank (ex-Sinner). The album was more conceptual and included lyrical themes about politics, sexuality and human relationships. For example, "Balls to the Wall" refers to slaves revolting against oppressing masters, while "Fight It Back" is about social misfits fighting against conformity. All songs were credited to Accept and "Deaffy". Deaffy was manager Gaby Hauke's pseudonym as the band's lyricist, although she did not officially claim ownership until the band had broken up for the second time.


title: Accept (band)

text: During a 1983 show in their hometown, the band met Jörg Fischer by chance and on Hauke's insistence, Fischer rejoined the band. A world tour followed through 1984, including the Monsters of Rock festival. By this time, the band was supported by Bad Steve, a band which was led by former Accept and Band X members Dieter Rubach, Jan Koemmet and Frank Friedrich. The band also opened for Iron Maiden on their World Slavery Tour.


title: Accept (band)

text: "Metal Heart" was released in 1985. Produced by Scorpions producer Dieter Dierks, it presented the band's creative peak. Accept toured the world supporting the album, and documented the live shows with the live mini-album "Kaizoku-Ban".


title: Accept (band)

text: The follow up, "Russian Roulette", was released in 1986. In 1987, Udo Dirkschneider was fired from the band, and later decided to embark on a solo career. According to Wolf Hoffmann, Dirkschneider was never fired but it was rather a mutual decision within the band to part ways. Supporting this decision, the songwriting team in Accept wrote his entire solo album, released in 1987 as "Animal House" under the band moniker U.D.O.


title: Accept (band)

text: Parallel to work on "Animal House", Accept started to audition vocalists. The band tried out a few singers, including Michael White, Ken Tamplin, and Baby Tuckoo singer Rob Armitage, whom they even featured in promo photos and metal magazine interviews, and also recorded demos with. Armitage also performed live with the band and one of the shows with him was reviewed by "Metal Hammer" magazine. However, American vocalist David Reece was chosen and this new line-up recorded and released "Eat the Heat" in 1989. Accept toured in support of the album that year with bands like Metal Church, W.A.S.P., Danzig and Armored Saint.


title: Accept (band)

text: Accept's career came to a sudden halt, when Stefan Kaufmann sustained a serious injury to his back during the tour in support of the album. He was briefly replaced by House of Lords drummer Ken Mary for the remainder of the US tour. By the time the tour ended in late 1989, the band decided that without Kaufmann, and with differences surfacing with Reece, it was time to cease their activities for the time being.


title: Accept (band)

text: The live album "Staying a Life", recorded in 1985, was released in 1990 as a souvenir celebrating their career.


title: Accept (band)

text: A few years later the ex-members met with Dirkschneider and decided to relaunch the band with core members Hoffmann, Kaufmann, Dirkschneider and Baltes.


title: Accept (band)

text: Their comeback album, "Objection Overruled", was released in 1993 and was a qualified success in Europe and the United States. A world tour followed, and another album, entitled "Death Row", was released in 1994. Kaufmann became unable to play once again due to his recurring back injury and Stefan Schwarzmann became the temporary replacement.


title: Accept (band)

text: "Predator" was recorded in 1996, in Nashville, with Udo's long time (school) friend and producer Michael Wagener at the helm and with Michael Cartellone (from Damn Yankees) guesting on drums. Accept's tour supporting "Predator" took place in North America, South America, Europe and Asia, with their last concert in Tokyo, Japan.


title: Accept (band)

text: Between 1997 and 2005, all the members continued working on their own projects. In 2005, Accept received an invitation from various European promoters for a short summer European Festival tour with Accept's classic line-up (Hoffmann, Baltes, Dirkschneider, Frank and Schwarzmann). These festivals turned out to be a stunning success, with the last show on 27 August 2005 in Kavarna, Bulgaria, at the Kaliakra Rock Fest.


title: Accept (band)

text: Asked in May 2007 by Lords of Metal if Accept were planning on writing and recording new material in the near future, Dirkschneider replied:


title: Accept (band)

text: On 14 May 2009, Udo Dirkschneider officially announced that he would not be participating in the rumoured Accept reunion.


title: Accept (band)

text: At the end of May 2009, rumours again surfaced of a possible Accept reformation, when bassist Peter Baltes revealed he spent a weekend at his house in Pennsylvania "shredding away" with guitarist Wolf Hoffmann. "Something amazing is in the works", Baltes explained. "As soon as I can, I'll let everybody know. Let's make the 'Metal Heart' beat again."


title: Accept (band)

text: A coincidental meeting between Accept and former T.T. Quick singer Mark Tornillo at this informal jam session meant shortly after Tornillo was announced as the new vocalist.


title: Accept (band)

text: A new album was written and recorded with Andy Sneap (of Megadeth, Sabbat, BLAZE, Exodus, Testament, Arch Enemy and Onslaught fame) as producer. Titled "Blood of the Nations", it was the first original Accept album in fourteen years.


title: Accept (band)

text: The new line-up made their live debut on 8 May 2010 at the Gramercy Theatre in New York City, their first American concert in fifteen years.


title: Accept (band)

text: On 21 May 2010, the video for "Teutonic Terror" was number 5 on the worldwide video charts in all genres on MySpace, topping such artists as Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Christina Aguilera. The video also topped the MySpace Global Metal Charts at number 1.


title: Accept (band)

text: On 13 June 2010, Accept opened for AC/DC in Stuttgart, Germany, and on 25 June 2010, they headlined the Sonisphere festival in Romania and Turkey. With a set of over two hours, classics like "Balls to the Wall", "Metal Heart" and "Princess of the Dawn" were played along with the new album material. "Blood of the Nations" was released in Europe on 20 August 2010 and made a chart debut at number 4 in the official German Media Control Charts, the band's second highest chart debut in their career.


title: Accept (band)

text: "Blood of the Nations" was released on 4 September 2010 in Japan, and on 18 September in the United States. Accept spent 80 days on a summer tour traveling over 65,000 km and playing for over 450,000 fans. In October, the band appeared at the prestigious Japanese Festival LOUDPARK outside of Tokyo to 40,000 fans along with Ozzy Osbourne, Motörhead and Stone Sour.


title: Accept (band)

text: Within a month of the release of "Blood of the Nations", Wolf Hoffmann told "Metal Asylum": "We are already thinking about and writing for the next record. We've all missed doing Accept and we realized we missed doing this. Of course we are not 20 years old anymore and not ready to do just anything to be successful, we're not that desperate. [laughs] We are looking to do what makes sense and that's fun."


title: Accept (band)

text: Accept worked with Andy Sneap again to produce their thirteenth studio album, completed in early 2012. Entitled "Stalingrad", it was released in April 2012.


title: Accept (band)

text: On 8 April 2013, Wolf Hoffmann told Chile's Radio Futuro that Accept had begun writing new material for their fourteenth studio album and would "definitely go back to the studio as soon as [they] can." Four months later, on 9 August at the Bloodstock Open Air festival 2013, Wolf told Metal Shock Finland:


title: Accept (band)

text: Accept released their fourteenth studio album "Blind Rage" on 15 August 2014 and on their world tour, they played in Australia for the very first time. "Blind Rage" became Accept's first album to debut at number one on the charts in their home country.


title: Accept (band)

text: On 28 December 2014, guitarist Herman Frank announced that he had left Accept again. Later that day, Accept announced that drummer Stefan Schwarzmann had also left the band.


title: Accept (band)

text: On 12 April 2015, Accept announced new guitarist and drummer, respectively Uwe Lulis and Christopher Williams.


title: Accept (band)

text: On 5 June 2015, prior to the band's performance at the South Park festival in Tampere, Finland, bassist Peter Baltes told Kaaos TV that Accept planned to begin work on a new album after the conclusion of the "Blind Rage" tour. Asked in a July 2015 interview about the band's future, guitarist Wolf Hoffmann replied, "We will continue for a few more weeks, this run of touring, and then we'll take a little break and come back in the fall, but we're pretty much wrapping up the "Blind Rage" tour at this point; it's the very last phase of this whole cycle. And then the next album will have to be written and to be recorded, and how long that's gonna take and when that's all gonna happen, who knows? But it'll happen; that's all I know." Hoffmann stated that the new album would be released around July or August 2017. Like their previous three albums, the album was produced by Andy Sneap, making it Accept's fourth collaboration with him. On 16 April 2017, Accept announced that the album, titled "The Rise of Chaos", would be released on 4 August.


title: Accept (band)

text: On 2 June 2017, the band released the title track single digitally via Nuclear Blast accompanied by new artwork.


title: Accept (band)

text: In a September 2018 interview with The Foundry, guitarist Wolf Hoffmann confirmed that Accept had begun the songwriting process for the follow-up to "The Rise of Chaos". He stated, "We started putting down some riffs here and there, but the majority of the stuff will happen after we stop touring, because it's really hard to do this on the road for me."


title: Accept (band)

text: On 27 November 2018, bassist Peter Baltes announced that he had left Accept after 42 years as a member. According to the band, "Peter needed a change in his life and we wish him all the best. He will always be part of the Accept family and to honor his tribute to music history, we should all wish him well." With Baltes' departure, Hoffmann remains the last member of the original lineup in the band.


title: Accept (band)

text: Baltes was filled in on bass by Danny Silvestri for the band's performance at the 2019 edition of the 70000 Tons of Metal cruise. On 16 April 2019, former Uli Jon Roth sideman Martin Motnik was announced as Baltes' permanent replacement. Three days later, Accept released a special seven-inch single called "Life's a Bitch", which was their first song in two years and first one without Baltes.


title: Accept (band)

text: On 1 November 2019, Accept announced that Philip Shouse, previously a touring member, had joined the band as their third guitarist, thus converting Accept to a sextet.


title: Accept (band)

text: On 2 October 2020, Accept released "The Undertaker" as the first single from their upcoming sixteenth studio album "Too Mean to Die", released on 29 January 2021. Their sixteenth studio album "Too Mean To Die" only narrowly missed the top of the German charts. It was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nashville and produced by Andy Sneap in the UK. About their then-new album, the band said: "We are too mean to die! Weeds don't go away! Accept won't get down!" Touring in support of the album began 2 July 2021 at Penn's Peak in Pennsylvania. The touring cycle of "Too Mean to Die" will last for nearly two years, which will include a headlining U.S. tour in the fall of 2022 with Narcotic Wasteland, followed by a European tour in January and February 2023 with Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons. The latter tour was initially scheduled to take place in January and February 2022, but the COVID-19 pandemic meant that it would be postponed to a year.


title: Accept (band)

text: On 17 February 2022, Accept announced that they had signed a worldwide deal with Napalm Records. In July, Hoffmann announced that the band has begun working on new material for the follow-up to "Too Mean to Die".


title: Accept (band)

text: In the second season of "Justified", the character Coover is frequently seen with an Accept shirt on.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Robert Cabot Sherman Jr. (born July 22, 1943), known professionally as Bobby Sherman, is an American retired paramedic, police officer, singer, actor and occasional songwriter who became a teen idol in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He had a series of successful singles, notably the million-seller "Little Woman" (1969). Sherman retreated from his show business career in the 1970s for a career as an EMT and a deputy sheriff, though he occasionally performed into the 1990s.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: In 1962, Sal Mineo wrote two songs for Sherman as well as arranging for Sherman to record the songs. In 1964, when Mineo asked Sherman to sing with his old band at a Hollywood party (where many actors and agents were in attendance), Sherman was signed with an agent and eventually landed a part on the ABC television show "Shindig!" as a regular cast member/house singer.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman made several records with Decca and another smaller label and was featured in teen magazines. In early 1968, he was selected for the role of a bashful, stammering logger, Jeremy Bolt, in the ABC television series "Here Come the Brides" (1968-1970). As of 1970, Bobby Sherman had received more fan mail than any other performer on the ABC-TV network.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman appeared on an episode of "Honey West" titled "The Princess and the Paupers" as a kidnapped band member and an episode of "The Monkees" titled "Monkees at the Movies", playing a pompous surfer/singer named Frankie Catalina in the vein of Frankie Avalon, performing the song "The New Girl in School" (the flip of Jan & Dean's "Dead Man's Curve").


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman released 107 songs, 23 singles and 10 albums between 1962 and 1976. In his recording career, he earned seven gold singles, one platinum single, and five gold albums. He had a career total of seven top 40 hits. In 1969, he signed with Metromedia Records. In May 1969, he released the single "Little Woman", which peaked at #3 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart (#2 in Canada) and spent nine weeks in the Top 20. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in October 1969.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: His other hits were "Julie, Do Ya Love Me" (US #5/AC #2) (Canada #3) (Australia #3) (written by Tom Bahler), "Easy Come, Easy Go" (US #9/AC #2) (Canada #6), "Jennifer" (US #60/AC #9) (Canada #32), "La La La (If I Had You)" (US #9/AC #14) (Canada #7), and "The Drum" (US #29/AC #2) (Canada #7) (written by Alan O'Day). Some of these songs were produced by Jackie Mills, a Hollywood record producer, who also produced the Brady Bunch Kids. In Canada, "Hey, Mister Sun" reached #19, "Cried Like a Baby" reached #10, and "Waiting At The Bus Stop" reached #31. "La, La, La," "Easy Come, Easy Go," and "Julie, Do Ya Love Me" all sold in excess of a million copies and garnered further gold discs for Sherman. "Julie, Do Ya Love Me" was Sherman's sole excursion in the UK Singles Chart, where it peaked at #28 in November 1970. The song competed there for chart space with White Plains' cover version, which eventually placed higher at #8.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman toured extensively through the United States and the world in support of his records and albums. He gave many concerts to sellout crowds of mostly screaming young women from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. The screaming of the young women was so loud that Sherman experienced hearing loss.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman was a regular star on the weekly ABC television network show "Here Come the Brides" on from September 25, 1968 to April 3, 1970. The series was loosely based upon the Mercer Girls project, Asa Mercer's efforts to bring civilization to old Seattle in the 1860s by importing marriageable women from the east coast cities of the United States, where the ravages of the American Civil War left those towns short of men. Bobby Sherman played the youngest brother, Jeremy Bolt.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman was a frequent guest on "American Bandstand" and "Where the Action Is". A March 1971 episode of "The Partridge Family" featured Sherman, serving as a back-door pilot for the ABC TV series "Getting Together", which aired starting in September 1971. The show was canceled after 14 episodes.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman was a guest star on television series such as "Emergency!", "The F.B.I.", "The Mod Squad", "Ellery Queen", "Murder She Wrote" and "Frasier". He has also been a guest on "The Ed Sullivan Show", "American Bandstand", "The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour", "KTLA Morning News", "Visiting with Huell Howser" on PBS, "Good Day LA", "The Rosie O'Donnell Show", "Good Morning America", and "The Tonight Show" with both Johnny Carson and later Jay Leno. He was featured on "20/20", VH1, "Entertainment Tonight", and "Extra", among other television shows.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: In 1998, after a 25-year absence, fans returned to see Sherman in concert as part of "The Teen Idol Tour" with Peter Noone and Davy Jones. Monkees member Micky Dolenz replaced Davy Jones on the tour in 1999. Sherman performed his last concert to date as a solo performer in Lincoln, Rhode Island on August 25, 2001. Although retired from public life, he still appeared at corporate and charity events. He was ranked #8 in "TV Guide"s list of "TV's 25 Greatest Teen Idols" (January 23, 2005 issue).


title: Bobby Sherman

text: When Sherman guest-starred on an episode of the Jack Webb television series "Emergency!" ("Fools", season 3, episode 17, aired January 19, 1974), he found a new calling. Eventually, he left the public spotlight and became an emergency medical technician (EMT). He volunteered with the Los Angeles Police Department, working with paramedics and giving CPR and first aid classes. He officially became a technical Reserve Police Officer with the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1990s, a position he still held as of 2017. For more than a decade he served as a medical training officer at the Los Angeles Police Academy, instructing thousands of police officers in first aid and CPR. He was named LAPD's Reserve Officer of the Year in 1999.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman also became a reserve deputy sheriff in 1999 with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, continuing his CPR/emergency training of new deputy hires. Sherman retired from the sheriff's department in 2010.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman and his wife co-founded the Brigitte & Bobby Sherman Children's (BBSC) Foundation. The foundation's mission is to provide motivated students in Ghana with a high quality education and music program, providing tools to pursue higher education.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman was born to Robert Cabot Sherman Sr. and Juanita (née Freeman) Sherman in Santa Monica, California. He grew up in Van Nuys, California, with his sister Darlene.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Published accounts indicate that Sherman's relationship with Sal Mineo was personal as well as professional.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: Sherman married Brigitte Poublon on July 18, 2010, in Las Vegas. Sherman has two sons, Christopher and Tyler, with his first wife, Patti Carnel.


title: Bobby Sherman

text: NOTE: Metromedia released 2 versions of "Christmas Album": one contained "Prologue"; the other replaced it with "Goin' Home (Sing A Song Of Christmas Cheer)"—rest of LP is identical.


title: Saguaro

text: The saguaro (, ) (Carnegiea gigantea) is a tree-like cactus species in the monotypic genus Carnegiea that can grow to be over tall. It is native to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora, and the Whipple Mountains and Imperial County areas of California. The saguaro blossom is the state wildflower of Arizona. Its scientific name is given in honor of Andrew Carnegie. In 1994, Saguaro National Park, near Tucson, Arizona, was designated to help protect this species and its habitat.


title: Saguaro

text: Saguaros have a relatively long lifespan, often exceeding 150 years. They may grow their first side arm around 75–100 years of age, but some never grow any arms. Arms are developed to increase the plant's reproductive capacity, as more apices lead to more flowers and fruit. A saguaro can absorb and store considerable amounts of rainwater, visibly expanding in the process, while slowly using the stored water as needed. This characteristic enables the saguaro to survive during periods of drought. It is a keystone species, and provides food and habitat to a large number of species.


title: Saguaro

text: Saguaros have been a source of food and shelter for humans for thousands of years. Their sweet red fleshed fruits are turned into syrup by native peoples, such as the Tohono Oʼodham and Pima. Their ribs are used as building materials in the wood-poor deserts. The saguaro cactus is a common image in Mexican culture and American Southwest films.


title: Saguaro

text: The saguaro is a columnar cactus that grows notable branches, usually referred to as arms. Over 50 arms may grow on one plant, with one specimen having 78 arms. Saguaros grow from tall, and up to in diameter. They are slow growing, but routinely live 150 to 200 years. They are the largest cactus in the United States.


title: Saguaro

text: The growth rate of this cactus is strongly dependent on precipitation; saguaros in drier western Arizona grow only half as fast as those in and around Tucson. Saguaros grow slowly from seed, and may be only tall after two years. Cuttings rarely root, and when they do, they do not go through the juvenile growth phase, which gives a different appearance. the "National Register of Champion Trees" listed the largest known living saguaro in the United States in Maricopa County, Arizona, measuring high with a girth of ; it has an estimated age of 200 years and survived damage in the 2005 Cave Creek Complex Fire. The tallest saguaro ever measured was an armless specimen found near Cave Creek, Arizona. It was in height before it was toppled in 1986 by a windstorm. Saguaros are stem succulents and can hold large amounts of water; when rain is plentiful and the saguaro is fully hydrated, it can weigh between .


title: Saguaro

text: Saguaros may take between 20 and 50 years to reach a height of . Individual stomatal guard cells and medulla cells can live and function for as long as 150 years, possibly the longest living of all cells, except possibly nerve cells in some tortoises.


title: Saguaro

text: As a cactus, it uses crassulacean acid metabolism photosynthesis, which confers high levels of water-use efficiency. This allows the saguaro to only transpire at night, minimizing daytime water loss.


title: Saguaro

text: Some saguaros grow in rare formations called a cristate, or "crested" saguaro. This growth formation is believed to be found in one in roughly 10,000 saguaros, with 2743 known crested saguaros documented. The crest formation, caused by fasciation, creates a seam of abnormal growth along the top or top of the arm of the saguaro.


title: Saguaro

text: Inside the saguaro, many "ribs" of wood form something like a skeleton, with the individual ribs being as long as the cactus itself and up to a few centimeters in diameter. The rib wood itself is also relatively dense, with dry ribs having a solid density around , which made the ribs useful to indigenous peoples as a building material. While the ribs of dead plants are not protected by the Arizona native plant law, the Arizona Department of Agriculture has released a memo discussing when written permission is needed before harvesting them because of the importance of the decomposition of cactus remains in maintaining desert soil fertility.


title: Saguaro

text: The spines on a saguaro are extremely sharp and can grow to long, and up to per day. When held up to the light or bisected, alternating light and dark bands transverse to the long axis of spines are visible. These bands have been correlated to daily growth. In columnar cacti, spines almost always grow in areoles that originate at the apex of the plant. A spine stops growing in its first season. Areoles are moved to the side and the apex continues to grow upward. Thus, older spines are toward the base of a columnar cactus and newer spines are near the apex. Studies are underway to examine the relationship of carbon and oxygen isotope ratios in the tissues of spines of an individual to its climate and photosynthetic history (acanthochronology).


title: Saguaro

text: The spines may cause significant injury to animals; one paper reported that a bighorn sheep skull had been penetrated by a saguaro spine after the sheep collided with a saguaro. They can also cause severe injury to humans, being as sharp and nearly as strong as steel needles. Their long, unbarbed nature means that partially embedded spines can be easily removed, but their relative length can complicate injuries. The spines can puncture deeply, and if broken off, can leave splinters of spine deep in the tissue that can be difficult to remove. Fully embedded spikes are also difficult to remove. Such injuries do not usually result in infection, though, as the cactus spines are generally aseptic. However, spines that remain embedded may cause inflammatory granuloma.


title: Saguaro

text: The white, waxy flowers appear in April through June, opening well after sunset and closing in midafternoon. They continue to produce nectar after sunrise. Flowers are self-incompatible, thus requiring cross-pollination. Large quantities of pollen are required for complete pollination because many ovules are present. This pollen is produced by the extremely numerous stamens, which in one notable case totaled 3,482 in a single flower. A well-pollinated fruit contains several thousand tiny seeds.


title: Saguaro

text: Pollination is considered relatively generalized in that multiple species can produce effective pollination when some populations are excluded. Main pollinators are honey bees, bats, and white-winged doves. In most, but not all studies, diurnal pollinators contributed more than nocturnal ones. Honey bees were the greatest contributors. Other diurnal pollinators are birds such as Costa's hummingbird, the black-chinned hummingbird, the broad-billed hummingbird, the hooded oriole, Scott's oriole, the Gila woodpecker, the gilded flicker, the verdin, and the house finch according to studies that examined the relative contributions of diurnal pollinators.


title: Saguaro

text: The primary nocturnal pollinator is the lesser long-nosed bat, feeding on the nectar. Several floral characteristics are geared toward bat pollination (chiropterophily): nocturnal opening of the flowers, nocturnal maturation of pollen, very rich nectar, position high above ground, durable blooms that can withstand a bat's weight, and fragrance emitted at night. Claw marks on the flower indicate pollination by a bat.


title: Saguaro

text: Flowers grow long, and are open for less than 24 hours. Since they form only at the top of the plant and the tips of branches, saguaros growing numerous branches is reproductively advantageous. Flowers open sequentially, with plants averaging four open flowers a day over a bloom period lasting a month. In Southern Arizona, saguaros begin flowering around May 3 and peak on June 4. A decline in bat populations causes more daytime flower openings, which favors other pollinators.


title: Saguaro

text: The ruby red fruits are long and ripen in June, each containing around 2,000 seeds, plus sweet, fleshy connective tissue.


title: Saguaro

text: The fruits are often out of reach and are harvested using a pole (made of two or three saguaro ribs) long, to the end of which cross-pieces, which can be made of saguaro rib, catclaw, or creosote bush, are attached. This pole is used to hook the fruits or knock them free.


title: Saguaro

text: Saguaro seeds are small and short-lived. Although they germinate easily, predation and lack of moisture prevent all but about 1% of seeds from successful germination. Seeds must wait 1214 months before germination; lack of water during this period drastically reduces seedling survival. The existence of nurse plants is critical to seedling establishment. Palo verde trees and triangle bursage represent important nurse species. They act by regulating temperature extremes, increasing soil nutrients, and reducing evapotranspiration, among others. While nurse plants reduce summer temperature maxima by as much as , they are more important in raising winter minimum temperatures as extended frosts limit the range of saguaros.


title: Saguaro

text: The saguaro genome is around 1 billion base pairs long. Sequencing has revealed that the genome of the saguaro's chloroplast is the smallest known among nonparasitic flowering plants. Like several other highly specialized plant taxa, such as the carnivorous "Genlisea" and parasitic "Cuscuta", the saguaro has lost the "ndh" plastid genes, which codes for production of NADPH dehydrogenase pathway, but unlike those taxa, the saguaro remains fully autotrophic; i.e. it does not eat or steal part of its food. The saguaro is remarkable for the scale and completeness of gene loss; essentially no traces of the 11 "ndh" genes remain in the plastid. The genes appear to have been copied to the nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA, but those copies are non-functional. How the saguaro thrives in a high stress environment without working copies of this fairly important gene remains unknown, but it is possible that the functions of the "ndh" genes have been taken on by another pathway.


title: Saguaro

text: "Carnegiea gigantea" is the only species in the monotypic genus "Carnegiea". The first description of the species was made by William H. Emory in 1848, during his surveys along the pre-Gadsden Purchase United States-Mexican border. This description allowed cactus expert George Engelmann to formally name it, during his work on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, published in 1859. The next major taxonomic treatment came from "The Cactaceae", the seminal work on cactus by Nathaniel Lord Britton and Joseph Nelson Rose.


title: Saguaro

text: What tribe "Carnegiea gigantea" belongs to is a matter of taxonomic dispute. A molecular analysis of the cactus family in 2010 placed the saguaro in the Echinocereinae. The ARS Germplasm Resources Information Network places it in the Echinocereeae.


title: Saguaro

text: The generic name honors businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The specific epithet "gigantea" refers to its formidable size.


title: Saguaro

text: Saguaros are endemic to the Sonoran Desert and are found primarily in western Sonora in Mexico, and in southern and portions of western Arizona in the US. There are only 30 known wild plants found in southeastern California. Elevation is a limiting factor to its environment, as the saguaro is sensitive to extended frost or cold temperatures. No confirmed specimens of wild saguaros have been found anywhere in Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Utah, nor in the high deserts of northern Arizona. The northern limits of their range are the Hualapai Mountains in Arizona. They are the northernmost columnar cacti in the Americas.


title: Saguaro

text: The saguaro is a keystone species, and provides food, shelter, and protection to hundreds of other species. Every stage of the saguaro's life sustains a significant number of species, from seedling to after its death.


title: Saguaro

text: The saguaro provides voluminous amounts of pollen, nectar, and fruits. The fruits are eaten by the white-winged dove and ants, so that seeds rarely escape to germinate. White-winged doves are important pollinators, visiting blooms more often than any other bird species. For desert white-winged doves, 60% or more of their diet is saguaro-based. Their breeding cycle coincides with that of the saguaro blooming.


title: Saguaro

text: Gila woodpeckers and gilded flickers create holes in the cactus to make nests, which are later used by other birds, such as elf owls, purple martins, and house finches. Flickers excavate larger holes higher on the stem compared to Gila woodpeckers. The resulting nest cavity is deep, and the parents and young are entirely hidden from view. The saguaro creates callus tissue on the wound. When the saguaro dies and its soft flesh rots, the callus remains as a so-called saguaro boot, which was used by natives for storage.


title: Saguaro

text: Gila woodpeckers ("Melanerpes uropygialis") create new nest holes each season rather than reuse the old ones, leaving convenient nest holes for other birds, such as elf owls, tyrant flycatchers, and wrens. In recent years, early breeding, aggressive, non-native birds have taken over the nests to the detriment of elf owls that breed and nest later. In 2020, a bald eagle was found nesting in a saguaro for the first time since 1937.


title: Saguaro

text: Harming or vandalizing a saguaro in any manner, such as shooting them (sometimes known as "cactus plugging") is illegal by state law in Arizona. When houses or highways are built, special permits must be obtained to move or destroy any saguaro affected. Exceptions to this general understanding exist; for example, a private landowner whose property is or less, where the initial construction has already occurred, may remove a saguaro from the property. This is common when the cactus falls over in a storm, its location interferes with a house addition, or it becomes a potential hazard to humans.


title: Saguaro

text: In 1982, a man was killed after damaging a saguaro. David Grundman was shooting and poking at a saguaro cactus in an effort to make it fall. An arm of the cactus, weighing , fell onto him, crushing him and his car. The trunk of the cactus then also fell on him. The Austin Lounge Lizards wrote the song "Saguaro" about this death.


title: Saguaro

text: Contrary to published statements, no law mandates prison sentences of 25 years for cutting a cactus down; however, it is considered a class-four felony with a possible 3-year, 9-month maximum sentence.


title: Saguaro

text: Invasive species, such as buffelgrass and Sahara mustard, pose significant threats to the Sonoran Desert ecosystem by increasing the rate of fires. Buffelgrass outcompetes saguaros for water, and grows densely. It is also extremely flammable, but survives fire easily due to deep root systems. Saguaros did not evolve in an environment with frequent fires, thus are not adapted to fire survival. Most Sonoran desert ecosystems have a fire return interval greater than 250 years; buffelgrass thrives at fire return intervals of two to three years. This has led to the reshaping of the Sonoran Desert ecosystem and threatens the survival of the saguaro.


title: Saguaro

text: Climate change may threaten saguaros and their ecosystems, as deserts are particularly susceptible to climate effects. Rising daytime and nighttime temperatures will reduce the water use efficiency of saguaros, forcing them to use more water and making them more likely to die during drought periods.


title: Saguaro

text: The utility of the saguaro is well known to Native Americans such as the Tohono Oʼodham, Pima, and Seri peoples, who still use nearly every part of the plant. The fruit and seeds are edible, being consumed fresh and dried, and made it into preserves and drinks. The Tohono O'odham use long sticks to harvest the fruits, which are then made into a variety of products including jams, syrups, and wine. The Tohono O'odham begin their harvest in June. A pair of saguaro ribs, about long, is bundled together to make a harvesting tool called a "kuibit". The Tohono O'odham traditionally reduce the freshly harvested fruit into a thick syrup through several hours of boiling, as the fresh fruit does not keep for long. of fruit will yield about of syrup. Copious volumes of fruit are harvested; an example harvest in 1929 yielded among 600 families. At the end of the harvest, each family would contribute a small amount of syrup to a communal stock that would be fermented by the medicine man. This was cause for rainmaking celebrations. Stories would be told, there was much dancing, and songs would be sung. Each man would drink some of the saguaro wine. The resulting intoxicated state was seen as holy, and any dreams it brought on were considered portentous.


title: Saguaro

text: The seeds are ground into meal or eaten raw, but the raw seeds are mostly indigestible. They are also pressed for their oils. They also have minor use in the tanning of leather. In modern times, these uses have declined, and the seeds are now mainly used as chicken feed.


title: Saguaro

text: The ribs of the dead saguaro were used for construction and other purposes by Native Americans. The Tohono O'odham use it for making fences and furniture. The ribs are also used as livestock fodder.


title: Saguaro

text: A variety of alkaloids, including carnegine, gigantine, and salsolidine, make the stems quite bitter, and an unpalatable way to gain water.


title: Saguaro

text: Reports of saguaro use date back to the Coronado expeditions of 1540–1542, which noted its use in winemaking.


title: Saguaro

text: The old bird nests resist the elements and are gathered by Native Americans for use as storage vessels. Cactus boots, excavated by gilded flickers and taken from dead saguaros, have been used by native peoples as water containers.


title: Saguaro

text: Arizona made the saguaro blossom its territorial flower on March 13, 1901, and on March 16, 1931, it became the state flower.


title: Saguaro

text: The saguaro is often used as an emblem in commercials and logos that attempt to convey a sense of the Southwest. Notably, no naturally occurring saguaros are found within of El Paso, Texas, but the silhouette is found on the label of Old El Paso brand products. Though the geographic anomaly has lessened in recent years, Western films once enthusiastically placed saguaros in the Monument Valley of Arizona, (they only grow naturally in the Sonoran desert of Arizona and Mexico) as well as New Mexico, Utah, and Texas. The Dallas, Texas-based band Reverend Horton Heat pokes fun at this phenomenon in their song "Ain't no Saguaro in Texas."


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: Brian Michael Smith (born January 29, 1983) is an American actor known for ground-breaking performances on television and advocacy for trans representation in media. His role as Toine Wilkins, a transgender police officer, in Ava DuVernay’s "Queen Sugar", (OWN), launched him into a series of high-profile roles including political strategist Pierce Williams in Showtime's "" (2019) cast. Smith became the first out black trans man in a series regular role on network television when he was cast as firefighter Paul Strickland in FOX's "" (2020).


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: Smith was raised on the east side of Ann Arbor, Michigan by his mother, Ingrid Smith, an event planner and Ford Motor Company employee, with the support of a close-knit family. He and his mother spent his early years living with aunts, cousins, and an adopted brother. Although assigned female at birth, he identified and was perceived as male throughout his childhood. He challenged pressures to conform to his assigned gender role through performance and athletics.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: While attending Ann Arbor Pioneer High School, he played defensive end and fullback on the boys football team during the fall, and set records in shot put and pole vaulting on the girls track & field team in the spring. On September 17, 1999, during a game at Traverse City, Smith became the first assigned female at birth athlete to score a varsity touchdown in the State of Michigan.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: Smith studied acting and video production at Kent State University. Upon graduation, he began teaching drama and media literacy to teens until he moved to New York City to pursue a career in acting.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: He began training under Terry Knickerbocker at the William Esper Studio in 2011. While studying, he earned featured roles on a few TV shows and a Toyota commercial opposite Eli Manning.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: He has also explored the stage, performing stand-up, sketch, and improv comedy as a member of numerous troupes including Gotham City Improv, as well as acting in off-Broadway and regional theater in a handful of plays, including "Women Are Crazy Because Men Are A**Holes" and Mitch Albom's "Duck Hunter Shoots Angel".


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: In 2015, he earned his first speaking credit in Season 4 of HBO's "Girls" opposite Jemima Kirke and Adam Driver. This followed with similar roles on TV shows including "Blue Bloods", "Person of Interest", and "". In 2019, it was revealed that Michael Smith would appear in the second season of "" after its renewal.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: In 2017, Smith was cast in the role of Officer Antoine "Toine" Wilkins on OWN's series "Queen Sugar". Toine is a trans man. Executive-produced by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, the Louisiana-set drama focuses on the lives and loves of the estranged Bordelon siblings. The show is based on the novel Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: The role was one of Smith's first opportunities to play a transgender character and explore his own life experiences in his acting. As he has put it:


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: Toine and Ralph's relationship is much more reflective of the experiences I've had with long-time friends and I hadn't seen that on screen yet. I was excited at the thought of sharing this with people who may not know that they know trans people in their personal life.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: In 2018, Ava Duvernay won a GLAAD Excellence in Media Award for her advocacy for inclusion of LGBT people in front of and behind the camera on her projects, particularly for creating Toine Wilkins and casting a transgender actor for the role.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: Upon graduating from Kent State, Michael returned to Michigan and began teaching and mentoring youth through filmmaking through the Gear Up Program at the University of Michigan.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: In New York, he continued his media literacy and mentoring programs with Wingspan Arts, Maysles Documentary Center and the Tribeca Film Institute's Tribeca Teaches Program. He discovered the importance of community and visibility while he worked with LGBT youth at the Manhattan LGBT Center


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: On NBC News, Smith said: "I worked with young people and I just saw how important it was for young LGBT people, no matter where they were in their experience, to see what is down the road for them."


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: Since Queen Sugar, Michael has used his visibility and platforms to advocate for better trans representation in television and film and to encourage LGBTQ youth to create their own media.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: In February 2018, he was a special guest and panelist at the University of Michigan's 4th Annual Trotter House Lecture Series, My Life, My Story! Centering the Lives of Trans Voices event alongside Janet Mock and Amiyah Scott.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: During NYC Pride he participated in the GLAAD Game Changers Panel in 2018 with Jamie Clayton and Amiyah Scott to discuss the changing landscape of transgender representation in television.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: In August 2018, Smith joined Laverne Cox, Trace Lysette, Jen Richards, Alexandra Billings and Chaz Bono in a "Variety" magazine's first Transgender in Hollywood Roundtable. The hour-long roundtable was released in conjunction with the August 7 print issue dedicated to trans representation and discrimination within Hollywood. During the discussion, Smith said: "We are artists and we want to create things and we want to have choice and our visibility should not cost us that choice."


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: In addition to public speaking, he continues to advocate through his art and to support trans narratives in television and film by participating in projects such as Sam Feder's documentary, "" released on June 19, 2020, by Netflix.


title: Brian Michael Smith

text: In June 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride parade, "Queerty" named him among the fifty heroes “leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people”.


title: Pat Metheny

text: He is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works, and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, latin jazz, and jazz fusion. Metheny has three gold albums and 20 Grammy Awards and is the only person to win Grammys in 10 categories. He is the younger brother of jazz flugelhornist Mike Metheny.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Metheny was born in Lee's Summit, Missouri. His father Dave played trumpet, his mother Lois sang, and his maternal grandfather Delmar was a professional trumpeter. Metheny's first instrument was trumpet, which he was taught by his brother, Mike. His brother, father, and grandfather played trios together at home. His parents were fans of Glenn Miller and swing music. They took Metheny to concerts to hear Clark Terry and Doc Severinsen, but they had little respect for guitar. Metheny's interest in guitar increased around 1964 when he saw The Beatles perform on TV. For his 12th birthday, his parents allowed him to buy a guitar, which was a Gibson ES-140 3/4.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Metheny's life changed after hearing the album "Four & More" by Miles Davis. Soon after, he was captivated by Wes Montgomery's album "Smokin' at the Half Note" which was released in 1965. He cites the Beatles, Miles Davis, and Wes Montgomery as having the biggest impact on his music.


title: Pat Metheny

text: When he was 15, he won a scholarship from "Down Beat" magazine to a one-week jazz camp where he was mentored by guitarist Attila Zoller, who then invited Metheny to New York City to see guitarist Jim Hall and bassist Ron Carter.


title: Pat Metheny

text: While playing at a club in Kansas City, he was approached by Bill Lee, a dean at the University of Miami, and offered a scholarship. After less than a week at college, Metheny realized that playing guitar all day during his teens had left him unprepared for classes. He admitted this to Lee, who offered him a job to teach instead with the rank of Professor, as the school had recently introduced electric guitar as a course of study.


title: Pat Metheny

text: He moved to Boston to teach at the Berklee College of Music with jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton and established a reputation as a prodigy.


title: Pat Metheny

text: In 1974 he appeared on an album unofficially titled "Jaco" with pianist Paul Bley, bassist Jaco Pastorius, and drummer Bruce Ditmas for Carol Goss's Improvising Artists label. But he was unaware that he was being recorded. During the next year, he joined Gary Burton's band with guitarist Mick Goodrick.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Metheny released his debut album, "Bright Size Life" (ECM, 1976) with Jaco Pastorius on bass guitar and Bob Moses on drums. His next album, "Watercolors" (ECM, 1977), was the first time he recorded with pianist Lyle Mays, who became his most frequent collaborator. The album also featured Danny Gottlieb, who became the drummer for the first version of the Pat Metheny Group. With Metheny, Mays, and Gottlieb, the fourth member was bassist Mark Egan when the album "Pat Metheny Group" (ECM, 1978) was released.


title: Pat Metheny

text: When "Pat Metheny Group" (ECM, 1978) was released, the Group was a quartet comprising, besides Metheny, Danny Gottlieb on drums, Mark Egan on bass, and Lyle Mays on piano, autoharp and synthesizer. All but Egan had played on Metheny's album Watercolors (ECM, 1977), recorded a year before the first Group album.


title: Pat Metheny

text: The second Group album, "American Garage" (ECM, 1979), reached number 1 on the "Billboard" Jazz chart and crossed over onto the pop charts. From 1982 to 1985, the Pat Metheny Group released "Offramp" (ECM, 1982), a live album, "Travels" (ECM, 1983), "First Circle" (ECM, 1984), and "The Falcon and the Snowman" (EMI, 1985), a soundtrack album for the movie of the same name in which they collaborated on the single "This Is Not America" with David Bowie. The song reached number 14 in the British Top 40 in 1985 and number 32 in the U.S.


title: Pat Metheny

text: "Offramp" marked the first appearance of bassist Steve Rodby (replacing Egan) and a Brazilian guest artist, Nana Vasconcelos, on percussion and wordless vocals. On "First Circle", Argentinian singer and multi-instrumentalist Pedro Aznar joined the group as drummer Paul Wertico replaced Gottlieb. Both Rodby and Wertico were members of the Simon and Bard Group at the time and had played in Simon-Bard in Chicago before joining Metheny.


title: Pat Metheny

text: "First Circle" was Metheny's last album with ECM; he had been a key artist for the label but left following disagreements with the label's founder, Manfred Eicher.


title: Pat Metheny

text: "Still Life (Talking)" (Geffen, 1987) featured new Group members trumpeter Mark Ledford, vocalist David Blamires, and percussionist Armando Marçal. Aznar returned for vocals and guitar on "Letter from Home" (Geffen, 1989).


title: Pat Metheny

text: During this period the Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago featured compositions by Metheny and Mays for their production of Lyle Kessler's play "Orphans", where it has remained special optional music for all productions of the play around the world since.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Metheny then again delved into solo and band projects, and four years went by before the release of the next Group record, a live album titled "The Road to You" (Geffen, 1993), which featured tracks from the two Geffen studio albums among new tunes. The group integrated new instrumentation and technologies into its work, notably Mays' use of synthesizers.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Metheny and Mays themselves refer to the next three Pat Metheny Group releases as a triptych: "We Live Here" (Geffen, 1995), "Quartet" (Geffen, 1996), and "Imaginary Day" (Warner Bros., 1997). Moving away from the Latin style which had dominated the releases of the previous ten years, these albums included experiments with sequenced synthetic drums on one track, free-form improvisation on acoustic instruments, and symphonic signatures, blues, and sonata schemes.


title: Pat Metheny

text: With "Speaking of Now" (Warner Bros., 2002), new Group members were added: drummer Antonio Sánchez from Mexico City, trumpeter Cuong Vu from Vietnam, and bassist, vocalist, guitarist, and percussionist Richard Bona from Cameroon.


title: Pat Metheny

text: "The Way Up" (Nonesuch, 2005) consists of one 68-minute-long piece (split into four sections for CD navigation) based on a pair of three-note kernels: The opening B, A#, F# and the derived B, A, F#. On "The Way Up", harmonica player Grégoire Maret from Switzerland was introduced as a new group member, while Bona contributed as a guest musician.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Outside the Group, Metheny has shown different sides of his musical personality. He made the album "Orchestrion" (Nonesuch, 2010) with elaborate, custom mechanical instruments, allowing one person to compose and perform as a one-person orchestra. By contrast, his album "Secret Story" (Geffen, 1992) used orchestral arrangements found more often in movie soundtracks, such as his own "The Falcon and the Snowman" (EMI, 1985) and "A Map of the World" (Warner Bros., 1999). His solo acoustic guitar albums include "New Chautauqua" (ECM, 1979), "One Quiet Night" (Warner Bros., 2003), and "What's It All About" (Nonesuch, 2011). He explored the fringes of the avant-garde on "Zero Tolerance for Silence" (Geffen, 1994). This, too, was an album of solo guitar, but it was electric guitar, and to many fans and critics it was simply noise. Metheny had ventured into the avant-garde before on "80/81" (ECM, 1980), "Song X" (Geffen, 1986) with Ornette Coleman, and "The Sign of Four" with Derek Bailey (Knitting Factory Works, 1997).


title: Pat Metheny

text: In 1997, Metheny recorded with bassist Marc Johnson on Johnson's release "The Sound of Summer Running" (Verve, 1998). The next year, he recorded a guitar duet with Jim Hall (Telarc, 1999), whose work has strongly influenced Metheny's. He collaborated with Polish jazz and folk singer Anna Maria Jopek on "Upojenie" (Warner Poland, 2002) and Bruce Hornsby on "Hot House" (RCA, 2005).


title: Pat Metheny

text: He recorded on albums by his older brother, Mike Metheny, a jazz trumpeter, among them "Day In – Night Out" (1986) and "Close Enough for Love" (2001).


title: Pat Metheny

text: The long list of his collaborators includes Lyle Mays, Bill Frisell, Billy Higgins, Brad Mehldau, Charlie Haden, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Dewey Redman, Eberhard Weber, Herbie Hancock, Jack DeJohnette, Jaco Pastorius, Jim Hall, John Scofield, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Joshua Redman, Marc Johnson, Michael Brecker, Mick Goodrick, Roy Haynes, Steve Swallow, and Tony Williams.


title: Pat Metheny

text: In 2012, he formed the Unity Band with Antonio Sánchez on drums, Ben Williams on bass and Chris Potter on saxophone. This ensemble toured Europe and the U.S. during the latter half of the year. In 2013, as an extension of the Unity Band project, Metheny announced the formation of the Pat Metheny Unity Group, with the addition of the Italian multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi.


title: Pat Metheny

text: As a young guitarist, Metheny tried to sound like Wes Montgomery, but when he was 14 or 15, he decided it was disrespectful to imitate him. In the liner notes on the 2-disc Montgomery compilation "Impressions: The Verve Jazz Sides", Metheny is quoted as saying, ""Smokin' at the Half Note" is the absolute greatest jazz-guitar album ever made. It is also the record that taught me how to play."


title: Pat Metheny

text: Ornette Coleman's 1968 album "New York Is Now!" inspired Metheny to find his own direction. He has recorded Coleman's compositions on a number of albums, starting with a medley of "Round Trip" and "Broadway Blues" on his debut album, "Bright Size Life" (1976). He worked extensively with Coleman's collaborators, such as Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman, and Billy Higgins, and he recorded the album "Song X" (1986) with Coleman and toured with him.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Metheny made three albums on ECM with Brazilian vocalist and percussionist Naná Vasconcelos. He lived in Brazil from the late 1980s to the early 1990s and performed with several local musicians, such as Milton Nascimento and Toninho Horta. He played with Antônio Carlos Jobim as a tribute, in a live performance in "Carnegie Hall Salutes The Jazz Masters: Verve 50th Anniversary".


title: Pat Metheny

text: He is also a fan of several pop music artists, especially singer/songwriters including James Taylor (after whom he named the song "James" on "Offramp"); Bruce Hornsby, Cheap Trick, and Joni Mitchell, with whom he performed on her "Shadows and Light" (Asylum/Elektra, 1980) live tour. Metheny is also fond of Buckethead's music. He also worked with, sponsored or helped to make recordings of singer/songwriters from all over the world, such as Pedro Aznar (Argentina), Akiko Yano (Japan), David Bowie (UK), Silje Nergaard (Norway), Noa (Israel), and Anna Maria Jopek (Poland).


title: Pat Metheny

text: Two of Metheny's albums, "The Way Up" (2005) and "Orchestrion" (2010), show the influence of American minimalist composer Steve Reich and use similar rhythmic figures structured around pulse. Metheny recorded Reich's composition "Electric Counterpoint" on Reich's album "Different Trains" (Nonesuch, 1987).


title: Pat Metheny

text: Metheny plays a custom-made 42-string Pikasso I created by Canadian luthier Linda Manzer. He plays it on "Into the Dream" and on the albums "Quartet" (1996), "Imaginary Day" (1997), "Jim Hall & Pat Metheny" (1999), "Trio → Live" (Warner Bros., 2000), and the "Speaking of Now Live" and "Imaginary Day Live" DVDs. Metheny has used the guitar in his guest appearances on other artists' albums. He used the Pikasso on "Metheny/Mehldau Quartet" (Nonesuch, 2007), his second collaboration with pianist Brad Mehldau and his trio sidemen Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard; the Pikasso is featured on Metheny's composition "The Sound of Water". Manzer has made many acoustic guitars for Metheny, including a mini guitar, an acoustic sitar guitar, and the baritone guitar, which Metheny used for the recording of "One Quiet Night" (2003).


title: Pat Metheny

text: Metheny was one of the first jazz guitarists to use the Roland GR-300 Guitar Synthesizer. He commented, "you have to stop thinking about it as a guitar, because it no longer is a guitar." He approaches it as if he were a horn player, and he prefers the "high trumpet" sound of the instrument. One of the "patches" that he has often used is on Roland's JV-80 "Vintage Synth" expansion card, titled "Pat's GR-300".. In addition to the Roland, he uses a Synclavier controller.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Metheny was an early proponent of the twelve-string guitar in jazz. During his 1975 tour with the Gary Burton "Quartet" (five people, including Metheny), he primarily played electric twelve-string guitar against the six-string work of resident guitarist Mick Goodrick.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Prior to Metheny, Pat Martino had used the electric twelve-string guitar on a studio album, "Desperado", and John McLaughlin had used a double-neck electric guitar with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Ralph Towner was perhaps the first to use acoustic twelve-string guitar extensively in jazz ("The Moors", from Weather Report's "I Sing the Body Electric", Columbia, 1972), and Larry Coryell and Philip Catherine made extensive use of acoustic twelve string in alternate tunings at the 1975 Montreux Jazz Festival, later releasing some of the material on their 1976 "Twin House" album.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Metheny used a twelve-string guitar on his debut album, "Bright Size Life" (1976), including alternate tuning on "Sirabhorn", and on later albums ("San Lorenzo", from "Pat Metheny Group" and "Travels").


title: Pat Metheny

text: At the age of 12, Metheny bought a natural finish Gibson ES-175 that he played throughout his early career, until it was retired in 1995. After his first tour of Japan in 1978, he began an association with Ibanez guitars, who have since produced a range of PM signature models.


title: Pat Metheny

text: Pat Metheny lives in New York City with his wife, Latifa (née Azhar) and three children. Latifa has been credited for album photography. Metheny was in a relationship with Sônia Braga.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Sleepaway Camp (released as Nightmare Vacation in the United Kingdom) is a 1983 American slasher film written and directed by Robert Hiltzik, who also served as executive producer. It is the first film in the "Sleepaway Camp" film series, and tells the story of a young girl sent to a summer camp that becomes the site of a series of murders shortly after her arrival. It stars Felissa Rose, Katherine Kamhi, Paul DeAngelo, Mike Kellin (in his last screen appearance), and Christopher Collet (in his first).


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Released during the heyday of slasher movies, the film is known for its infamous twist ending, considered to be one of the genre's most shocking. Since its release, the film received a positive critical response and a cult following. It was followed by four sequels, "" (1988), "" (1989), "Return to Sleepaway Camp" (2008), and "" (2012).


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Over the opening credits, the camera pans over a deserted campsite in autumn, as sounds of camp activities during the summer are heard. Eventually, it comes to a stop on a sign outside the campsite: "CAMP ARAWAK—FOR SALE".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: In summer 1975, John Baker and his partner Lenny take John's children Angela and Peter on a boating trip near Camp Arawak, where the two siblings prank their father by capsizing their boat. They attempt to swim ashore where Lenny is waiting for them, but camp counselor Mary Ann, driving a speedboat and not paying attention, runs into them. John is killed, and only one of the children survives.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Eight years later, in 1983, the now 14 year old Angela lives with her eccentric aunt, Dr. Martha Thomas, and Martha's son Ricky. Aunt Martha sends Angela to Camp Arawak for the first time, along with Ricky, who had attended the camp before. Upon arriving at Camp Arawak, the shy, meek and introverted Angela quickly becomes a target for ridicule and bullying, mostly from her bunkmate Judy and their counselor Meg, while Angela's other counselor Susie and the camp's head counselor Ronnie do what they can to help her fit in. The pedophile head cook Artie takes Angela into the kitchen pantry, where he attempts to molest her, but is caught by Ricky, who runs out with Angela. Later, an unseen figure causes Artie to tip a pot of boiling water onto himself, leaving him with severe burns and in extreme agony. Camp owner Mel Kostic decides to cover up the event, in order not to frighten the campers.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: When campers Kenny and Mike mock Angela, Ricky and his best friend Paul fight them until their counselor Gene intervenes. After the brawl, Paul stops to befriend Angela and, when he tells her goodnight, she tells him goodnight as well, speaking for the first time. That night, after pranking a girl named Leslie by tipping her boat, Kenny is drowned by an unseen assailant. When lifeguard Hal finds his corpse the next day, Mel insists his death was accidental, but Ronnie and police officer Frank are skeptical. Meanwhile, Paul continues bonding with Angela and asks her to attend the mandatory movie night with him, which she accepts. After the movie, Paul walks Angela to her cabin and gives her two goodnight kisses, taking her by surprise.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: After campers Billy and Mike throw water balloons at Angela, Billy is stung to death when a mysterious figure traps him in a bathroom stall and drops a hive of bees into it. Mel suspects a killer is in the camp.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: That night, Paul and Angela playfully run around the lakeshore, but when Paul begins making out with Angela, she has a flashback to when she and her sibling witnessed their father in bed with Lenny; she rejects his advances and runs off, leaving him confused. The next day, during a flag game, Judy takes her chance to seduce Paul and Angela finds the two of them kissing. Paul attempts to explain himself to Angela after a swimming session, but Judy and Meg shoo him away and throw Angela into the water. After Ricky rescues her, children fling sand at them. Ricky comforts Angela and swears revenge on her aggressors.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Meg is stabbed to death in the shower while getting ready to meet Mel. At that night’s social, Paul apologizes to Angela for what happened earlier with Judy, and she tells him to meet her at the waterfront later. Meanwhile, the children who threw sand at Angela and Ricky are camping in the woods with their counselor Eddie when two of them ask him to take them back to the main camp. When he returns, he discovers the four remaining children have been hacked to death with his hatchet. Back at the camp, the killer enters Judy's cabin and murders her, raping her with a hot curling iron while smothering her with a pillow. Meanwhile, Mel finds Meg's dead body and, convinced that the killer is Ricky after hearing him swear vengeance against Angela's tormentors, severely beats him before escaping into the woods. However, he is confronted by the killer, whom he is shocked to recognize, and is killed with an arrow through the throat.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Frank, having been informed of the situation, searches the campsite with the counselors for other victims and the killer; they discover Ricky unconscious and injured, but alive. Meanwhile, Paul is at the waterfront with Angela, who suggests they go skinny dipping, so they undress. Ronnie and Susie, while perlustrating the campsite, find Angela sitting on the lakeshore with Paul, who appears to be resting in her lap as she tenderly strokes his hair, humming quietly.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Another flashback shows Aunt Martha welcoming the survivor of the boat accident into her home, who is revealed to be Peter, not Angela; the real Angela was killed in the accident, and Aunt Martha, after taking custody of Peter, chose to raise him as his dead sister, since she did not want to raise another boy. Back in the present, "Angela" (who is actually Peter) drops Paul's severed head on the ground and stands up fully nude, holding a knife, covered in blood and with a penis in plain view before the horrified Susie and Ronnie, growling with a frozen and deranged expression as the film ends.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Film critic and transgender woman Willow Maclay, in an essay about "Sleepaway Camp" for the magazine "Cléo", characterizes the film's ending, in which Angela is revealed to have a penis, as both a unique element that sets it apart from other slasher films of the era and "deeply transmisogynistic". Maclay criticized the film for its "equation of mental instability with having grown up in a gender role not concurrent with your identity. Nearly every single transgender person grows up being raised in a gender role that does not fit, and that doesn't mean that they are mentally ill or seriously violent".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: BJ Colangelo, in an editorial for "Dread Central", wrote that "the ending of "Sleepaway Camp" offers two reveals that are wildly offensive to the LGBTQ+ community", referring to the reveal of Angela's penis as transphobic, and the reveal that their deceased father was homosexual as homophobic. However, Colangelo adds that the film "is terrible transgender representation, yes, but it's an incredible metaphor about how forcing gender roles onto someone that doesn't align with who they are is fucking dangerous. If Peter had not been forced to live his life as 'Angela', the events of "Sleepaway Camp" would have been avoided". Colangelo clarifies that she is not arguing that gender dysphoria causes those experiencing it to become murderers, but rather that "children experiencing gender dysphoria and living in non-affirming homes are prone to depression, thoughts of suicide, and yes, sometimes violent outbursts".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Transgender writer Alice Collins of "Bloody Disgusting" stated that "Sleepaway Camp" "is steeped in queerness, especially when compared to its contemporaries. In its day it took a deeper look into the subject matter than that of other films. Angela and Peter's dad is a closeted gay man, there's forced gender bending (which is abuse rather than queer but people will see it as such), and the majority of the scantily clad people in the film are men with all those very short shorts that leave little to the imagination while there is little skin shown of the feminine variety". Collins argues that Angela is a transgender girl, noting that, in the film's sequels, Angela is presented as a woman who uses feminine pronouns: "So despite Aunt Martha being insane, she just happened to stumble upon a person who was already a girl; and it was an accident that her brainwashing worked".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: The filming of "Sleepaway Camp" took place in Argyle, New York near Summit Lake at a camp formerly known as Camp Algonquin. In interviews, screenwriter and director, Robert Hiltzik, has said that he attended that camp as a child. The movie was filmed in five weeks starting in September 1982 and ending in October of that year on a budget of $350,000. The film had been storyboarded but after the first day of filming, the movie was already behind schedule. The storyboards could not be used and were thrown out. The trees, with their leaves turning, belie the summer setting of the film.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Unlike many of its contemporaries, which had adults portraying youth, the cast of "Sleepaway Camp" was primarily made up of adolescent actors.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: "Sleepaway Camp" opened in 85 theatres in New York City on November 18, 1983. According to the American Film Institute, it had its premiere in Los Angeles the following spring on May 25, 1984. The August 1984 Box review reported that the first week box-office gross at fifteen Los Angeles, California theaters was $90,000.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Anchor Bay Entertainment released "Sleepaway Camp" on DVD on August 8, 2000. Anchor Bay reissued this disc as part of a four-disc set titled the "Sleepaway Camp Survival Kit" on August 20, 2002, which also contained the film's two sequels, as well as a bonus disc featuring footage from the unfinished third sequel. This boxed set, which featured a medical red cross on the front cover, was discontinued in late 2002 after the Red Cross filed a complaint against Anchor Bay, which subsequently redesigned the box art to remove the cross logo. In 2005, the Canadian-based Legacy Entertainment released a region-free budget DVD release of the film. Unlike the original VHS release, this release contains numerous edits to the film to either shorten violence or certain moments like dialogue.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Scream Factory released the film in a collector's edition Blu-ray set on May 27, 2014. This release contains a 2K scan of the original camera negative, and this release also has the film in its original uncut version, unlike the DVD released by Anchor Bay.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: On release, the film was frequently compared to "Friday the 13th" due to their shared settings and whodunit plot structure.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: A review in "The Courier-Journal" characterized the film as a "low-budget slasher in the "Friday the 13th" mold, with teen-age mayhem at a summer camp". In the "Chula Vista Star-News", the film was deemed "a tasteless picture about mysterious murders at a summer youth camp that obscenely blends beheadings, stabbings, pubescent impulses, homosexuality, and transvestism with a cast of junior-high-school actors". "The News-Press" called it "a shockingly good slasher film, if you use the relatively fine, first "Friday the 13th" as a measuring stick... it's just another crazed killer stalking nubile summer campers. But, this time, there are some truly creative killings and interesting plot twists".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "Sleepaway Camp" holds an 81% approval rating based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of . The consensus reads: ""Sleepaway Camp" is a standard teen slasher elevated by occasional moments of John Waters-esque weirdness and a twisted ending". On Metacritic, the film was reviewed by 4 critics and got a rank of 58 out of a 100, which indicates "mixed or average reviews".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: The website "Bloody Disgusting" gave the film a positive review, praising Felissa Rose's performance and the film's twist ending calling it "one of the most shocking seen since, possibly, Hitchcock's "Psycho"". AllMovie wrote in its review on the film: "While most of the gender-bending story's sexual confusion is ultimately half-baked... "Sleepaway Camp" is distinctive enough to warrant required viewing for genre enthusiasts".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Over the years, the film has gained a cult following from fans of the slasher genre and garnered critical reappraisal. Film scholar Bartłomiej Paszylk called the film "an exceptionally bad movie but a very good slasher". Commenting on the performances in the film, film scholar Thomas Sipos wrote "[the film] feels odd due to its contrasting acting styles. Most of the cast performs in a naturalistic manner, whereas Desiree Gould's performance as Aunt Martha is strikingly stylistic: broadly overplayed to the point of caricature".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: In his book "The Pleasure and Pain of Cult Horror Films: A Historical Survey" (2009), Paszylk characterized "Sleepaway Camp" as "elevat[ing] the kids to the position of the movie's mass protagonist and becomes a tricky metaphor of the unspeakable pains and anxieties of growing up". He further commented on the film's conclusion: "The epiphanous ending brings "Sleepaway Camp" further away from the likes of "Friday the 13th" and closer to such 1980s 'slashers with a twist' as "Happy Birthday to Me" (1981) and "April Fool's Day" (1986), but Hiltzik's movie goes even further than that: in this case the denouement doesn't just add a new dimension to everything we saw up to this point, but it pushes its way deep into our minds and stays with us forever".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: The film was featured on episode 48 of the podcast "How Did This Get Made?" where hosts Paul Scheer, Jason Mantzoukas, June Diane Raphael, and guest host Zack Pearlman struggled to decipher the film's opening moments, due to the ambiguous relationships established at the beginning of the film. Scheer later recalled that it had been the most fan-requested film "by a landslide".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: In the late 1980s, Hiltzik sold the rights to the successive "Sleepaway Camp" films, after which Michael A. Simpson directed two sequels, "" (1988) and "" (1989). In them, Angela (now played by Bruce Springsteen's younger sister, Pamela Springsteen) resurfaces at a nearby summer camp, but this time masquerading as a counselor after a sex reassignment surgery. Much like at the previous camp, she gleefully tortures and kills anyone who misbehaves or annoys her. These films had more of a satirical comic tone than the original.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Another sequel, "", directed by Jim Markovic, was partially filmed in the early 1990s but left incomplete. In 2002, the unfinished footage was released and made available as an exclusive fourth disc in Anchor Bay/Starz Entertainment's "Sleepaway Camp" DVD boxed set. In 2012, the film was completed using archival footage from the first three films and released on DVD and Amazon Video on Demand.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: A fifth film, "Return to Sleepaway Camp", was completed in 2003 and initially struggled to have its visual effects completed. It was directed by Robert Hiltzik, the director of the original 1983 film. According to "Fangoria", the digital effects were redone from 2006 to 2008. The film was released in 2008.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: The purportedly final film in the "Sleepaway Camp" series, titled "Sleepaway Camp Reunion", was also announced to be in the works. Distribution had been arranged via Magnolia Pictures. Creator Robert Hiltzik, who recovered the rights to the franchise, has stated that he would make the film if his budget was met. However, Hiltzik and "Return To Sleepaway Camp" producer Jeff Hayes later announced themselves as having started work on a reboot that would retain the key characters and elements of the original film with additional storyline elements and a dose of modernizing. As of Summer 2014, Hiltzik was reportedly tweaking the script. In addition, Michael Simpson, the director of "Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers" and "Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland", wrote a script for an additional film called "Sleepaway Camp: Berserk".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: Karen Fields reprised her role from "Sleepaway Camp" in the 2014 short film "Judy", although it wasn't technically a sequel. The Jeff Hayes-directed film was included in the collector's edition Blu-ray release of the original "Sleepaway Camp".


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: According to horror-movie fansite Bloody Disgusting, a reboot of "Sleepaway Camp" is in the works, starring Felissa Rose.


title: Sleepaway Camp

text: A documentary film on the series, titled "Angela: The Official Sleepaway Camp Documentary", is currently in pre-production, with Felissa Rose as executive producer.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: The CAMM (Common Anti-Air Modular Missile) is a family of surface-to-air missiles developed by MBDA UK for the United Kingdom. CAMM shares some common features and components with the ASRAAM air-to-air missile, but with updated electronics and an active radar homing seeker.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: As Sea Ceptor, CAMM is replacing the Sea Wolf missile on Type 23 frigates of the Royal Navy since 2018. As Land Ceptor, it is the missile part of the Sky Sabre air defence system, which since 2021 has been replacing the Rapier missile in British Army service. The system is also contributing to the updating of MBDA's ASRAAM in service with the Royal Air Force.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: The Common Anti-Air Modular Missile has its roots in a Technology Demonstration Programme (TDP), jointly funded by MBDA and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as part of the United Kingdom's Future Local Area Air Defence System (FLAADS). FLAADS is part of a wider UK 'Team Complex Weapons' programme to deliver a variety of weapons and maintain UK sovereign capability in this area. FLAADS is intended to deliver a common weapons platform, the Common Anti-Air Modular Missile (CAMM), to equip forces in the air, land and maritime environments. During the early stages of the FLAADS programme, requirements were identified for the new missile to meet both current and anticipated threats, namely "airborne targets which are typified by high speed, rapid evasive manoeuvres, low signatures and advanced countermeasure[s]."


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: Phase 1 of the TDP worked on technologies for soft vertical launch, the low-cost active radar seeker, a dual-band two-way datalink and a programmable open systems architecture. Phase 2 began in 2008 and covered the manufacture of flight-worthy subsystems, mid-course guidance firings and captive airborne seeker trials on a Qinetiq Andover experimental aircraft. The Soft Vertical Launch was proven over a series of trials, culminating in a successful truck launch in May 2011. In January 2012 the MoD awarded MBDA a £483 million contract to develop FLAADS (Maritime) to replace Sea Wolf missiles on Type 23 frigates.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: Sea Ceptor entered operational service with the Royal Navy in May 2018, with being the first Type 23 frigate to deploy with the system.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: Land Ceptor was delivered to the British Army as part of the Sky Sabre air defence system in December 2021, before being declared operational in January 2022. During the same month, its first deployment was announced to the Falkland Islands to replace the existing Rapier missile batteries. In March 2022, the UK announced it would be deploying the Sky Sabre missile system to Poland to bolster NATO's Eastern flank following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: CAMM is a point defence and local area defence missile designed to respond to sophisticated missile and aircraft attacks. MBDA states that CAMM has a "high rate of fire against multiple simultaneous targets", providing capabilities comparable to the Aster 15 missile.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: Development costs were reduced by a using modular design and minimised complexity. Additionally, the command and control software reuses over 75% of that developed for the PAAMS system.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: CAMM has a minimum operational range of less than 1 km and a maximum range greater than 25 km, although IHS Jane's reports that trials have a shown a capability of up to 60 km. These ranges are significantly greater than the 1–10 km range of Sea Wolf and other systems that CAMM will replace. CAMM weighs 99 kilograms (218 lb), is in length, 166 millimetres (6.5 in) diameter and reaches generous supersonic speeds of Mach 3 (or 1,020 meters per second).


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: CAMM's Extended Range application is known as CAMM-ER and has been under development with MBDA and Avio for the Italian MoD since 2013. The CAMM-ER (extended range variant) shares the same characteristics of the original CAMM with the exception of a new Avio rocket engine which significantly increases the missile's engagement range, out to 45 km and a slightly adapted missile structure. The missile is 160 kilograms (350 lb) in weight, 4.2 metres (14 ft) in length, 190 millimetres (7.5 in) diameter.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: MBDA states that by purchasing the same missile to meet the air defence needs of both armies and navies, both services are able to utilise a common stockpile that reduces procurement and support costs.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: MBDA claims that CAMM has a "wide target set", including the capability to engage small naval vessels, which would give the missile a limited surface-to-surface role. The Anti-Air-Warfare Officer of the Type 23 Frigate HMS "Westminster" said after test firings “"Westminster" managed to explore the real potential of the system during her training and to say it is a real game changer is an understatement. Unlike its predecessor, the system is capable of defending ships other than "Westminster" herself. Whether it’s engaging multiple air threats or fast incoming attack craft, Sea Ceptor represents a massive capability upgrade for the Type 23 frigate.”


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: On land, CAMM is known as Land Ceptor by the British Army and the whole land-based air defence system is known as Sky Sabre. Deliveries to the Royal Artillery began in December 2021.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: The system has over three times the range of its predecessor Rapier. This system consists of Land Ceptor missiles, SAAB Giraffe AMB radars and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Modular Integrated C4I Air & Missile Defense System (MIC4AD), all mounted on MAN trucks.


title: CAMM (missile family)

text: Originally, the CAMM program aspired to provide Land, Sea and Air launched capabilities, but it was deemed more effective to instead develop CAMM for use for land and sea only, while using the well established ASRAAM short range air-to-air missile to cover the air launched role. However, technologies and components developed for CAMM have been used as part of an upgrade to ASRAAM.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: Nightmare Alley is a 1947 American film noir directed by Edmund Goulding from a screenplay by Jules Furthman. Based on William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel of the same name, it stars Tyrone Power, with Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, and Helen Walker in supporting roles. Power, wishing to expand beyond the romantic and swashbuckler roles that brought him to fame, requested 20th Century Fox's studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck to buy the rights to the novel so he could star as the unsavory lead "The Great Stanton", a scheming carnival barker.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: The film premiered in the United States on October 9, 1947, then went into wide release on October 28, 1947, later having six more European releases between November 1947 to May 1954.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: As noted on the DVD commentary track by Alain Silver and James Ursini, "Nightmare Alley" was somewhat unusual among film noir in having top stars, production staff and a relatively large budget. The film was not a financial success upon its original release but has since found acclaim and is regarded as a classic.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: A seedy traveling carnival's barker, Stanton "Stan" Carlisle, is fascinated by everything there, including a grotesque geek, who prompts an observation from Stanton that he "can't understand how anybody could get so low." Stanton works with "Mademoiselle Zeena" and her alcoholic husband, Pete. Once a top-billed vaudeville act, Zeena and Pete used an ingenious code to make it appear that she had extraordinary mental powers, until her attentions to other men drove Pete to drink and reduced them to working in carnivals. Stanton learns that many people want to buy the code from Zeena for a lot of money but she refuses to sell; she is saving it as a nest egg.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: Stanton tries to romance Zeena into teaching it to him but she remains faithful to Pete, feeling guilty over the role she played in his downfall and effectively nursemaiding him in the hope of some day sending him to a detox clinic for alcoholics. But one night in Texas, Stanton accidentally gives Pete the wrong bottle: the old man dies from drinking wood alcohol instead of moonshine. To keep her act going, Zeena is forced to teach Stanton the mind-reading code so that he can serve as her assistant.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: Stanton prefers the company of the younger Molly. When their romance is found out, the remainder of the carnies including strongman Bruno force the pair into a shotgun marriage. No longer welcome in the carnival, Stanton realizes this is actually a golden opportunity for him. He and his wife leave the carnival. He becomes "The Great Stanton," performing to enraptured audiences in expensive nightclubs in Chicago. As well as things seem to be going, however, Stanton remains emotionally troubled by Pete's death and by his own part in it. He eventually seeks counseling from psychologist Lilith Ritter, to whom he confesses all that has occurred.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: Since Ritter makes a point of recording all of her sessions with her patients, she has accumulated sensitive information about various members of Chicago's social elite. Recognizing themselves as kindred spirits to a degree, she and Stanton conspire together to manipulate her patients, with Ritter secretly providing private information about them and Stanton using that information to convince them that he can communicate with the dead. The plan almost works, until Stanton tries to swindle skeptical Ezra Grindle by having Molly pose as the ghost of Grindle's long-lost love. When the heartbroken Grindle breaks down, Molly refuses to play out the charade and reveals her true self to Grindle, thereby exposing Stanton as a fake. As he prepares to flee, Stanton discovers he has been scammed by Ritter, who gives him only $150 of Grindle's money rather than the promised $150,000 they had conned him out of to that point. With her recordings of Stanton's confessions to her available for use against him, Ritter threatens to testify that he is mentally disturbed should he accuse her of complicity in his crimes. Defeated, Stanton gives the $150 to Molly and urges her return to the carnival world where people care for her. Meanwhile, he gradually sinks into alcoholism.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: With nowhere else to go, Stanton tries to get a job at another carnival, only to suffer the ultimate degradation: the only job he can get is playing the geek, eating live chickens in a sideshow and replying to the offer with his recurring catchphrase, "Mister, I was made for it." Unable to stand his life any further, he goes berserk. However, Molly happens to work in the same carnival. She manages to calm him down and give him hope, bringing things full circle between Stanton and Molly, to Pete and Zeena's doomed relationship.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: Tyrone Power, wishing to expand beyond the romantic and swashbuckler roles that brought him to fame, requested 20th Century Fox's studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck to buy the rights to the novel so he could star in it. Fox paid $50,000 in September 1946 for the rights to Gresham's novel, and Gresham was hired as consultant to help screenwriter Jules Furthman, although the extent of his contribution to the script is not clear.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: In November 1946, it was reported that Mark Stevens and Anne Baxter were to star in the film, and that William Keighley would be the director. By January 1947, Lloyd Bacon was the reported director.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: To make the film more believable, the producers built a full working carnival on ten acres (40,000 m) of the 20th Century Fox back lot. They also hired over 100 sideshow attractions and carnival people to add further authenticity. Filming also took place at the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar, California.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: The slightly upbeat but somewhat dark and ambiguous ending of the film was added by screenwriter Furthman at Zanuck's direction, softening the harsh ending of Gresham's novel for commercial purposes. The novel's ending implies that Stanton is doomed to work as a geek until he drinks himself to death.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: Author William Lindsay Gresham died by suicide by sleeping pills on September 14, 1962, in the same room in the Hotel Carter where he wrote the first draft of "Nightmare Alley".


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: If one can take any moral value out of "Nightmare Alley" it would seem to be that a terrible retribution is the inevitable consequence for he who would mockingly attempt to play God. Otherwise, the experience would not be very rewarding for, despite some fine and intense acting by Mr. Power and others, this film traverses distasteful dramatic ground and only rarely does it achieve any substance as entertainment.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: "Nightmare Alley" is a harsh, brutal story told with the sharp clarity of an etching ... Most vivid of these is Joan Blondell as the girl he works for the secrets of the mind-reading act. Coleen Gray is sympathetic and convincing as his steadfast wife and partner in his act and Helen Walker comes through successfully as the calculating femme who topples Power from the heights of fortune back to degradation as the geek in the carney. Ian Keith is outstanding as Blondell's drunken husband.


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: "Nightmare Alley" would be unbearably brutal for general audiences if it were played for all the humour, cynicism and malign social observation that are implicit in it. It would be unbearably mawkish if it were played too solemnly. Scripter Jules Furthman and Director Edmund Goulding have steered a middle course, now and then crudely but on the whole with tact, skill and power. They have seldom forgotten that the original novel they were adapting is essentially intelligent trash, and they have never forgotten that on the screen pretty exciting things can be made of trash. From top to bottom of the cast, the playing is good. Joan Blondell, as the fading carnival queen, is excellent and Tyrone Power – who asked to be cast in the picture – steps into a new class as an actor".


title: Nightmare Alley (1947 film)

text: The film is now regarded as "one of the gems of film noir" and as one of Power's finest performances. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 60 reviews and gave the film an 87% approval rating, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The consensus summarizes: "Playing against type with "Nightmare Alley", Tyrone Power and Edmund Goulding deliver some of their best work in a carnival-set noir unafraid to showcase true despair."