Category: History

The .Gif Friday Post No.235 – 3 Polaroid LOLS & The First .GIF



16 June was the 25th Birthday of GIFs, according to Fast Company. We missed it, but we’re going to make up for the oversight.

“Choosy programmers choose GIF,” quipped Steve Wilhite of CompuServe, after he created the GIF image compression file format in 1987. It allowed for sequenced upload delays necessary for embedded animations. There’s a nice history of the now ubiquitous .gif on Daily Dot.

Animations above via Cari Vander Yacht. Tip o’ the tarboosh to OddMan for the GIF Birthday link, and here’s the Tacky Raccoons GIF Archive that includes Bunk’s Originals.

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UPDATE: In the interview with Daily Dot (linked above) Steve Wilhite said that he thought the first .GIF animation was of an airplane. This is one of the first that I ever captured, several computers ago:

Here it is, all blowed up, in 5 frames of pixellated glory:

Is this the first .gif animation Wilhite was referring to? I don’t know, but it’s a contender.

[Update 2: Fixed broken link to Daily Dot.]

Page 93 – How a Woman Should Walk

“Should” is the operative word here. How a woman “does” walk shall be left for a future discussion. [Found here.]

Bibendum

[via]

Happy Father’s Day

After his wife died giving birth to their sixth child, Civil War vet Henry Jackson Smart was left to raise the litter all by himself. Imagine, if you will, what the average day was like for Henry: six kids of varying age screaming, kicking the crap out of each other, wetting the bed, refusing to eat their vegetables. It was hard on the single father until he found himself a worthy partner to alleviate the stresses of child-rearing: beer, and lots of it.

Fueled by the saintly patience only good ale can provide, Henry did such a good job with the kids that he inspired his daughter, Sonora Smart Dodd, to organize the first Father’s Day on June 19th, 1910. Fourteen years later, President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day, and Nixon, established it as a permanent day of national observance in 1972.

[Image and story found here.]

Saturday Matinee – The Channels, Little Isidore, The Hooters, Aswad & SRV

Earl Lewis & The Channels in 1997. “The Closer You Are” was a regional hit in New York in 1956. (It was covered by Frank Zappa in 1984 who made it sound kinda creepy.)

Little Isadore & The Inquistors’ early R&B style is spot on. Can’t find much about LI, and maybe that’s a good thing. A googoyle search provides little, except that it lead me to Rob Hyman and a band I’d forgotten about.

Hyman was a founding member of The Hooters. I have one of their CDs, but I don’t remember what caught my ear aside from the eclectic sound. “Karla With a K” would have fit my playlist in the late 80’s.

Lessee, what else was I listening to back then? A wide variety, including these guys:

Aswad live at Sunsplash 1984. No, I was never a stoner, but I liked de riddims.

Before anyone thinks I was some kind of pre-hipster indie weenoid back then, this was what I cranked after the sun went down.

Have a great weekend folks (and remember that real dads hate Fathers Day).

Memorial Day – Remember The Fallen

Queen of Soul

© Art Kane, 1967, Aretha Franklin, “Halos”, Esquire Magazine

Wanting to highlight her strong Gospel roots, Art Kane tried waving the camera in a circular motion to try to make halo shapes from the light in Aretha’s eyes. This photo is also a rare, Art Kane crop, as virtually all his images are composed in full frame.

[Found here.]

Saturday Matinee & Cinco de Mayo – Tijuana Brass, Snacktime, Tim Armstrong & HorrorPops

Cinco de Mayo has its roots in the French occupation of Mexico, which took place in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, the Mexican Civil War of 1858, and the 1860 Reform Wars. These wars left the Mexican Treasury in ruins and nearly bankrupt. On July 17, 1861, Mexican President Benito Juárez issued a moratorium in which all foreign debt payments would be suspended for two years. In response, France, Britain, and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew, but France, at the time ruled by Napoleon III, decided to use the opportunity to establish a Latin empire in Mexico that would favor French interests, the Second Mexican Empire. [Wiki]

So in other words, a nearly bankrupt country stopped paying bills until three big debt collectors showed up. Two of them settled, but the third took it a step further. Mr. Françoise (aka Lucky Pierre) knocked on the door and said, “Nice place you got here. Shame if anything should happen to it.” The rest is history.

In celebration of Cinco de Mayo, here’s Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass with some very embarrassing people of European heritage dancing. (No one in Alpert’s band was actually Hispanic.)

Jonco finds stuff on the internest that nobody else can see, and here’s proof.

Tim Armstrong Ska. [via]

Any band named HorrorPops gets my vote (and we’ve posted about them here before). There’s something inherently cool about a mashup between punk, psychobilly, hotrods and Denmark. Besides, they got a curvy girl with tatts on stand up bass singing lead.

With that, have a great weekend, folks.

Saturday Matinee – Froggy Chillin’, Leon Redbone, Lonnie Johnson, Bob Brozman, Bonnie Raitt & Roy Rogers

Froggy be chillin’.

“I’m just an entertainer, and I use music as a medium for entertaining. But I’m not really an entertainer either, because to be an entertainer it implies you have a great desire to want to entertain.”
Leon Redbone

Leon Redbone‘s take on Lonnie Johnson’s “Mr. Jelly Roll Baker” in 2009. (BTW, “jelly roll” was slang for something other than a pastry.)

On growing up in New Orleans Parish: “There was music all around us, and in my family you’d better play something, even if you just banged on a tin can.”
Lonnie Johnson

Lonnie Johnson created the single-note guitar solo in the 1920s, and decades passed before the guitar was regarded as more than a background rhythm instrument. I don’t know who’s on drums or piano, but that’s Willie Dixon on bass, and the vid is likely from the mid to late 1960s.

My first impression of “ethnomusicologist” Bob Brozman was that he’s a pretentious jerk. On the other hand, he’s crammed some great country/Delta blues licks into his American Steel.

Let’s wrap this baboso up with two of the greatest modern day slide guitar players, on stage together in Austin: Bonnie Raitt & Roy Rogers jamming “Gnawin’ On It.”

So gnaw on that, folks, and have a great weekend.

Chand Baouri

Nope. That’s not a charcoal study by MC Escher. That’s a photograph. Eyeball it for a bit – story and more photos below the break.

Continue reading “Chand Baouri”