Village People

Village People is an American disco group well known for their on-stage costumes depicting American masculine cultural stereotypes as well as their catchy tunes and suggestive lyrics. Originally created by Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo to target disco's gay audience by featuring popular gay fantasy personae, the band quickly became popular and moved into the mainstream. The group scored several disco and dance hits, including "Macho Man", "Go West", the classic club medley of "San Francisco (You've Got Me) / In Hollywood", "In the Navy", and their greatest hit, "Y.M.C.A."

The group was the creation of Jacques Morali, a French musical composer. He had written a few dance tunes when he was given a demo tape recorded by singer/actor Victor Willis. Morali approached Willis and told him, "I had a dream that you sang lead on my album and it went very, very big". Willis agreed to sing on the eponymous debut album, Village People.

It became a hit, and demand for live appearances soon followed. Under the collaboration Can't Stop Productions, Morali and his business partner Henri Belolo hastily built a group of dancers around Willis to perform in clubs and on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. The band's name refers to New York City's Greenwich Village, at the time known for its large gay population. Morali and Belolo created a group of stereotypes based on the fantasy attire often worn by gay men of Greenwich Village when socializing. As the Village People's popularity grew, Morali, Belolo, and Willis saw the need for a permanent "group". They took out an ad in a music trade magazine which read: "Macho Types Wanted: Must Dance and Have A Moustache."

Morali met the first recruit, Felipe Rose (who dressed as a Native American), on the streets of Greenwich Village. Rose was a bartender who wore jingle bells on his boots, and was invited to take part in the sessions for the first album. Alex Briley (who started portraying an athlete but eventually took on the soldier persona) was hand-picked by Willis to be in the group. The others were Mark Mussler (construction worker), Dave Forrest (cowboy), Glenn Hughes (leatherman), and Peter Whitehead (one of the group's early songwriters), who appeared on American Bandstand and in the video for the group's first hit, "San Francisco (You Got Me)". Later replacements were David Hodo (construction worker) and Randy Jones (cowboy). Victor Willis himself portrayed a police officer.

Songwriters Phil Hurtt and Peter Whitehead were brought in to write lyrics for the first group album. Willis took over writing duties for the group's biggest albums (Macho Man, Cruisin' and Go West), scoring their biggest hits, including "Y.M.C.A.", "Macho Man", "Go West", and "In the Navy". He also wrote for other Can't Stop Productions acts, such as The Ritchie Family and Patrick Juvet. Gypsy Lane (Village People band), and their conductor Horace Ott provided much of the musical arrangements for Morali, who did not play any instruments.

The 1978 single "Macho Man" brought them mainstream attention, and their follow-up single "Y.M.C.A." became one of the most popular hits of the 1970s.

In 1979, the United States Navy considered using "In the Navy" in a television and radio recruiting campaign. Belolo offered them permission if the Navy would help film a music video for it. The Navy provided them access to the San Diego Navy base, where the USS Reasoner (FF-1063), several aircraft, and the crew of the ship would be used. This song was also performed on the TV series The Love Boat, and in the 1995 Navy comedy movie Down Periscope.

The group's fame peaked in 1979, when they made several appearances on The Merv Griffin Show and traveled with Bob Hope to entertain U.S. troops. They were also featured on the cover of Rolling Stone, Vol. 289, April 19, 1979. Willis left the group at the end of an international tour in 1979, and a decline in popularity followed.

Ray Simpson, the brother of Valerie Simpson (of Ashford & Simpson), replaced Willis for the group's highly anticipated 1980 feature film Can't Stop the Music. The film was directed by Nancy Walker, written by Allan Carr and Bronte Woodard, music and lyrics by Jacques Morali (except Willis penned the lyrics to "Milkshake" and "Magic Night") and starring Steve Guttenberg, Valerie Perrine, Jean-Claude Billmaer, and then-Bruce Jenner. By the time it was released, however, disco's popularity had waned, and at the March 1981 Golden Raspberry Awards, the movie was named Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay, and was nominated in almost all the other categories. Although the title song became a club play chart success and moderate radio hit, it was nominated for Worst Original Song "Razzy" and did not live up to sales expectations, never obtaining gold status as a single or album. The soundtrack also featured the talents of David London, who under his real name Dennis "Fergie" Frederiksen became the future lead singer of Toto and one of the main contributors to Village People's next album. The movie itself has since become a cult favorite.

The group were among the weekly guest stars on the November 22, 1980, episode of Love Boat (season four, episode seven: "Secretary to the Stars/Julie's Decision/The Horse Lover/Gopher and Isaac Buy a Horse"). At the end of 1980, Jeff Olson joined the group as the cowboy.

In 1981, with new wave music becoming more popular than disco, Village People took off their on-stage costumes, where they put on a new look inspired by the New Romantic movement, and released the album Renaissance. It only attracted minor – mostly negative – attention and produced no hits.

Victor Willis rejoined the group briefly in late 1981 for the album Fox on the Box, which was released in 1982 in Europe and Japan, and in 1983 in the United States under the title In the Street. Ray Simpson left the group in 1983 and was replaced by Miles Jaye. Jaye contributed an extra track to In the Street and performed numerous live shows and television appearances. Mark Lee replaced David Hodo in 1982.

Their last album containing new material, the 1985 dance/Hi-NRG release Sex Over the Phone, was not a huge commercial success, but it fared better in sales and club play than Renaissance. The title track, when released as a single, was banned by the BBC because of its subject matter: credit-card phone sex. The album featured yet another new lead singer, Ray Stephens (of The Great Space Coaster fame). Py Douglas came in to sub for Stephens for some of the group's live appearances in 1985.

In 1985 the group took a hiatus, but reunited in 1987 with the line-up of Randy Jones, David Hodo, Felipe Rose, Glenn Hughes, Alex Briley, and Ray Simpson. Since 1988, the group has managed itself under the name Sixuvus Ltd.

Due to their easily recognizable characters, the group have frequently been imitated or parodied in movies, television series, video games and music. Numerous covers and homages of their songs have been recorded. The stereotypical masculine characters, particularly the leather-clad biker character with a horseshoe mustache, have also become a widespread pop culture icons associated with male gay culture and Y.M.C.A. has become something of an anthem of the LGBT community.

To Rez or not to Rez: that is the question

In my view I was laying in Tim's arms. This was Gandalle's view.

It seems, when sitting on a pose, and not closing an AO gives strange effects to other people. 

Snapshot is made by Gandalle

Blue and Scotty

Snapshots made by Tim.

Blue and Scotty with Jenna's pug.
The Pug is a breed of dog with a wrinkly, short-muzzled face, and curled tail.
The breed has a fine, glossy coat that comes in a variety of colours, most often fawn or black,
and a compact square body with well-developed muscles.

NATIVE AMERICAN PARTY

NATIVE AMERICAN PARTY at T.R.A.C.S

T.R.A.C.S at Timothy Street on River Island

Land Mark: http://slurl.com/secondlife/River%20Island/221/249/22

We Were All Wounded At Wounded Knee

Wounded Knee (Lakota: Čaŋkpé Opí) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 382 at the 2010 census.

The town is named for the Wounded Knee Creek which runs through the region. The bones and heart of the Sioux chief Crazy Horse were reputedly buried along this creek by his family following his death in 1877. The town lies within the Pine Ridge Reservation, territory of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux).

History

On December 29, 1890, in the same area, in an incident known as the Wounded Knee Massacre, the United States 7th Cavalry killed more than 300 men, women and children who were being relocated to the Sioux reservation at Pine Ridge.

In 1973, during the Wounded Knee incident, the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the Pine Ridge Reservation near Wounded Knee in protest against the federal government and its policies related to Native Americans. They began the occupation on February 27. A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and the AIM ensued. The group members surrendered on May 8.

In 1973, Redbone released the politically oriented "We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee", recalling the massacre of Lakota Sioux Indians by the 7th Cavalry Regiment in 1890. The song ends with the subtly altered sentence "We were all wounded 'by' Wounded Knee". It charted in several European countries and reached the No. 1 position in The Netherlands but did not chart in the U.S. where it was initially withheld from release due to lyrical controversy and then banned by several radio stations due to its confrontation of a sore subject.

Native Americans

In the United States, Native Americans (also known as American Indians, Amerindians, Indigenous Americans or simply Indians) are people descended from the Pre-Columbian indigenous population of the land within the country's modern boundaries. These peoples were composed of numerous distinct tribes, bands, and ethnic groups, and many of these groups survive intact today as partially sovereign nations.

Since the end of the 15th century, the migration of Europeans to the Americas has led to centuries of population, cultural, and agricultural transfer and adjustment between Old and New World societies, a process known as the Columbian exchange. Most Native American groups had historically preserved their histories by oral traditions and artwork, which has resulted in the first written sources on the conflict being authored by Europeans.

At the time of first contact, the indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the proto-industrial and mostly Christian immigrants. Some of the Northeastern and Southwestern cultures in particular were matrilineal and operated on a more collective basis than the Europeans were familiar with. The majority of Indigenous American tribes maintained their hunting grounds and agricultural lands for use of the entire tribe. Europeans at that time had patriarchal cultures and had developed concepts of individual property rights with respect to land that were extremely different. The differences in cultures between the established Native Americans and immigrant Europeans, as well as shifting alliances among different nations in times of war, caused extensive political tension, ethnic violence, and social disruption. Even before the European settlement of what is now the United States, Native Americans suffered high fatalities from contact with European diseases spread throughout the Americas by the Spanish to which they had yet not acquired immunity. Smallpox epidemics are thought to have caused the greatest loss of life for indigenous populations, although estimates of the pre-Columbian population of what today constitutes the U.S. vary significantly, from one million to eighteen million.

After the thirteen colonies revolted against Great Britain and established the United States, President George Washington and Henry Knox conceived of the idea of "civilizing" Native Americans in preparation for assimilation as U.S. citizens. Assimilation (whether voluntary, as with the Choctaw, or forced) became a consistent policy through American administrations. During the 19th century, the ideology of manifest destiny became integral to the American nationalist movement. Expansion of European-American populations to the west after the American Revolution resulted in increasing pressure on Native American lands, warfare between the groups, and rising tensions. In 1830, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the government to relocate Native Americans from their homelands within established states to lands west of the Mississippi River, accommodating European-American expansion. This resulted in the ethnic cleansing of many tribes, with the brutal, forced marches coming to be known as The Trail of Tears.

As American expansion reached into the West, settler and miner migrants came into increasing conflict with the Great Basin, Great Plains, and other Western tribes. These were complex nomadic cultures based on (introduced) horse culture and seasonal bison hunting. They carried out resistance against United States incursion in the decades after the completion of the Civil War and the Transcontinental Railroad in a series of Indian Wars, which were frequent up until the 1890s but continued into the 20th century. Over time, the United States forced a series of treaties and land cessions by the tribes and established reservations for them in many western states. U.S. agents encouraged Native Americans to adopt European-style farming and similar pursuits, but European-American agricultural technology of the time was inadequate for often dry reservation lands, leading to mass starvation. In 1924, Native Americans who were not already U.S. citizens were granted citizenship by Congress.

Contemporary Native Americans have a unique relationship with the United States because they may be members of nations, tribes, or bands with sovereignty and treaty rights. Cultural activism since the late 1960s has increased political participation and led to an expansion of efforts to teach and preserve indigenous languages for younger generations and to establish a greater cultural infrastructure: Native Americans have founded independent newspapers and online media, recently including First Nations Experience, the first Native American television channel; established Native American studies programs, tribal schools and universities, and museums and language programs; and have increasingly been published as authors.

The terms used to refer to Native Americans have at times been controversial. The ways Native Americans refer to themselves vary by region and generation, with many older Native Americans self-identifying as "Indians" or "American Indians", while younger Native Americans often identify as "Indigenous" or "Aboriginal". The term "Native American" has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups, but has not traditionally included Native Hawaiians or certain Alaskan Natives, such as Aleut, Yup'ik, or Inuit peoples. By comparison, the indigenous peoples of Canada are generally known as First Nations.

POLICE PARTY

Not whit DJ Anj but with DJ Tim. Tim not even had time to make a set but he played lots of songs in theme. Thank you, love. DJ Anj will be our deejay on April 1. And that is not a fools day joke. 

POLICE PARTY at T.R.A.C.S

T.R.A.C.S at Timothy Street on River Island

Land Mark: http://slurl.com/secondlife/River%20Island/221/249/22