Blink and Blink 182

Blink is a pop/rock band from Ireland known for their mixture of humour and melancholy. They have released three albums:  A Map Of the Universe by Blink (1994), The End Is High (1998) and Deep Inside The Sound Of Sadness (2004).
A Map of the Universe by Blink was an Irish top ten album and The End is High was a Billboard magazine album of the week. Deep inside the Sound of Sadness was nominated as Best Irish Album of the Year in the 2005 Meteor Music Awards.

Blink was formed in the early 1990s by Dermot Lambert (vocals/guitars), Robbie Sexton (keyboards), Brian McLoughlin (bass) and Barry Campbell (drums).

http://blink.garageland.ie/

The San Diego, California based pop punk band now known as Blink-182 was originally also called Blink, but changed their name after being notified by the Irish Blink. They say that they appended "182" but that it has no special meaning.

Blink-182 is an American rock band formed in Poway, a suburb of San Diego, California in 1992. The trio consists of bassist and vocalist Mark Hoppus, guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker.

The band is considered a key group in the development of pop punk music; their combination of pop melodies with fast-paced punk rock featured a more radio-friendly accessibility than prior bands. The group, with original drummer Scott Raynor, emerged from the Southern California punk scene of the early 1990s and first gained notoriety for high-energy live shows and irreverent lyrical toilet humor.

Crossing the Rubicon

The Rubicon River formed the border between Gaul and the Roman Republic. According to legend, when Caesar got to the river with his army, he still was not sure if he should cross and invade - something that would start a civil war.

In Suetonius' history of the emperors (written more than 100 years after Caesar crossed the Rubicon), he wrote: "Overtaking his cohorts at the river Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province, he paused for a while, and realizing what a step he was taking, he turned to those about him and said: 'Even yet we may draw back; but once cross yon little bridge, and the whole issue is with the sword.' As he stood in doubt, this sign was given him. On a sudden there appeared hard by a being of wondrous stature and beauty, who sat and played upon a reed; and when not only the shepherds flocked to hear him, but many of the soldiers left their posts, and among them some of the trumpeters, the apparition snatched a trumpet from one of them, rushed to the river, and sounding the war-note with mighty blast, strode to the opposite bank."

Then Caesar cried: 'Take we the course which the signs of the gods and the false dealing of our foes point out. Alea iacta est, ("the die is cast").

And so, the Roman Republic was thrown into a civil war that was eventually won by Caesar defeating Pompey and his allies.

The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" entered popular culture to mean "past the point of no return." A Google search on "crossing the Rubicon" will turn up everything from shopping sites to Vie-President Joe Biden saying "I crossed the Rubicon about not being president and being vice president when I decided to take this office" and Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy saying, "Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line."

Jiffy

"I'll be back in a jiffy"

Jiffy is an informal term we use for a short unspecified period of time. But it has taken on more precise applications for short, very short, and extremely short periods of time.

Though the word goes back to 1785, the word's origin is unclear. One possibility is that it was a "thieves' cant" for "lightning." Thieves' cant (AKA Rogues' cant and peddler's French) was a secret language (a cant or cryptolect) which was used by thieves, beggars and hustlers of various kinds in Great Britain and to a lesser extent in other English-speaking countries. It is now mostly obsolete, though still used in literature and fantasy role-playing.

One technical usage for jiffy was defined by Gilbert Newton Lewis (1875–1946) who proposed a unit of time called the "jiffy" which was equal to the time it takes light to travel one centimeter (approximately 33.3564 picoseconds).

In electronics, a jiffy is the time between alternating current power cycles - 1/60 or 1/50 of a second in most mains power supplies.

In physics, (particularly in quantum physics) and often in chemistry, a jiffy is defined as the time taken for light to travel some specified distance.

In computing, a jiffy was originally the time between two ticks of the system timer interrupt - which is not an absolute time interval unit, since its duration depends on the clock interrupt frequency of the particular hardware platform. The term "jiffy" is sometimes used in computer animation as a method of defining playback rate, with the delay interval between individual frames specified in 1/100th-of-a-second (10 ms) jiffies.

Wikipedia.org

Muse

Muse is an English rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994. They are known for their energetic and extravagant live performances. They blend many music genres, including space rock, progressive rock, alternative rock, symphonic rock and electronica.

The band consists of Matthew Bellamy (lead vocals, lead guitar, piano, keyboards, keytar), Christopher Wolstenholme (bass, vocals, keyboards, Misa Kitara, harmonica) and Dominic Howard (drums, percussion, synthesisers) and since 2006, keyboardist and percussionist Morgan Nicholls has performed live with the band.

Bellamy and Howard's first band name was Gothic Plague, later changed to Fixed Penalty and then to Rocket Baby Dolls. They decided to quit university and their jobs and go full time with music.



The name "Muse" was chosen for the new musical effort. According to the Muse Wiki, the band liked that it was short and thought that it looked good on a poster.

In classical mythology, the muses were goddesses with the power to inspire poets, artists.

Most Greek and Roman epics begin with an "invocation to the muse."   "Sing oh muse of the rage of Achilles..." is the opening of Homer's Iliad. "Muse" comes from the Greek mousa, the word entered Middle English in the 1300s. In modern usage, "to muse" on a subject is "to meditate" or think on it deeply.

Muse have released six studio albums and four live albums.

Three Dog Night

From left: Chuck Negron, Cory Wells, Danny Hutton, 1969

Three Dog Night is an American rock band, best known for their music recorded between 1968 and 1975.

They formed in 1968 with a line-up of three lead singer consisting of Danny Hutton, Cory Wells and Chuck Negron.

The band registered 21 Billboard Top 40 hits (with three hitting number one) between 1969 and 1975. The hits helped introduce mainstream audiences to the work of many songwriters, including Paul Williams, Hoyt Axton, Laura Nyro, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, and Leo Sayer.

According to their official site, from 1969-1974, nobody had more Top 10 hits, moved more records, or sold more concert tickets.

As of 2013, they are still recording and making live appearances.

The band's name was explained in the commentary included in the CD set Celebrate: The Three Dog Night Story, 1965-1975.  Danny Hutton's girlfriend suggested the name after reading a magazine article about indigenous Australians, in which it was explained that on cold nights they would customarily sleep in a hole in the ground using a dingo (a native species of wild dog) to stay warm. On colder nights they would sleep with two dogs and if the night were freezing, it was a "three dog night." They wanted to include the "3" in the band's name to play off the idea that the band had 3 lead singers.

Some of their hit singles include: Joy To The World, One, Easy To Be Hard, Old Fashion Love Song, Mama Told Me (Not To Come), Out In The Country, Eli's Coming, and Celebrate.