The Earth Day flag by John McConnell contains The Blue Marble on a field of blue

Earth Day is an annual day on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth's natural environment. Now Earth Day is coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network,^[1] and is celebrated in more than 175 countries every year.^[2] In 2009, the United Nations designated April 22 International Mother Earth Day.^[3] Earth Day is planned for April 22 in all years at least through 2015.^[4]

The name and concept of Earth Day was allegedly pioneered by John McConnell in 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco. He proposed March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a Proclamation signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. About the same time a separate Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. While this April 22 Earth Day was focused on the United States, an organization launched by Denis Hayes, who was the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations.^[5][6] Numerous communities celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on environmental issues.

Wednesday, April 22, 1970 chosen as Earth Day[link]

Gaylord Nelson

The genesis of Earth Day is credited to Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. After witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, and inspired by the student anti-war movement, he called for an environmental teach-in, or Earth Day, to be held on Wednesday, April 22, 1970. Over 20 million people participated that year, and now Earth Day is observed on April 22 each year by more than 500 million people and several national governments in 175 countries.^{[citation needed]} Numerous communities celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on environmental issues.

Nelson, an environmental and conservationist activist, took a leading role in organizing the celebration, hoping to demonstrate popular political support for an environmental agenda. He modeled it on the highly effective Vietnam War teach-ins of the time.^[7] Earth Day was first proposed in a prospectus to JFK written by Fred Dutton.^[8] However, Nelson decided against much of Dutton's top-down approach, favoring a decentralized, grassroots effort in which each community shaped its action around local concerns.

Nelson had conceived the idea for his environmental teach-in following a trip he took to Santa Barbara right after the horrific oil spill off the coast in 1969.^{[citation needed]} Outraged by the devastation and Washington political inertia, Nelson proposed a national teach-in on the environment to be observed by every university campus in the U.S.^[9]

I am convinced that all we need to do to bring an overwhelming insistence of the new generation that we stem the tide of environmental disaster is to present the facts clearly and dramatically. To marshal such an effort, I am proposing a national teach-in on the crisis of the environment to be held next spring on every university campus across the Nation. The crisis is so imminent, in my opinion, that every university should set aside 1 day in the school year-the same day across the Nation-for the teach-in.^[9]

One of the organizers of the event said:

"We're going to be focusing an enormous amount of public interest on a whole, wide range of environmental events, hopefully in such a manner that it's going to be drawing the interrelationships between them and, getting people to look at the whole thing as one consistent kind of picture, a picture of a society that's rapidly going in the wrong direction that has to be stopped and turned around.

"It's going to be an enormous affair, I think. We have groups operating now in about 12,000 high schools, 2,000 colleges and universities and a couple of thousand other community groups. It's safe to say I think that the number of people who will be participating in one way or another is going to be ranging in the millions."^[10]

Nelson announced his idea for a nationwide teach-in day on the environment in a speech to a fledgling conservation group in Seattle on September 20, 1969, and then again six days later in Atlantic City to a meeting of the United Auto Workers. Nelson hoped that a grassroots outcry about environmental issues might prove to Washington, D.C. just how distressed Americans were in every constituency. Nelson invited Republican Representative Paul N “Pete” McCloskey to serve as his co-chair and they incorporated a new non-profit organization, Environmental Teach-In, Inc., to stimulate participation across the country. Both continued to give speeches plugging the event.^[11][12][13]

On September 29, 1969, in a long, front-page New York Times article, Gladwin Hill wrote:

"Rising concern about the "environmental crisis" is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental problems, analogous to the mass demonstrations on Vietnam, is being planned for next spring, when a nationwide environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned...."^[14]

Denis Hayes, a Harvard graduate student, read the NYT article and traveled to Washington to get involved.^[15] He had been student body president and a campus activist at Stanford University in McCloskey’s district and where Teach-In board member Paul Ehrlich was a professor. He thought he might be asked to organize Boston. Instead, Nelson eventually asked Hayes to drop out of Harvard, assemble a staff, and direct the effort to organize the United States.^[16][17] Hayes would go on to become a widely recognized environmental advocate.^[18]

Hayes recruited a handful of young college graduates to come to Washington, D.C. and began to plan what would become the first April 22 Earth Day.

Nelson's suggestion was difficult to implement, as the Earth Day movement proved to be autonomous with no central governing body.^[19] As Nelson attests, it simply grew on its own:

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.^[19]

Official Earth Week logo that was used as the backdrop for the prime time CBS News Special Report with Walter Cronkite about Earth Day 1970 ^[20]

The April 22, 1970, Earth Day marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Approximately 20 million Americans participated.^[21] Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, Freeway and expressway revolts, the loss of wilderness, and air pollution suddenly realized they shared common values.

Media coverage of the first April 22 Earth Day included a One-Hour Prime-time CBS News Special Report called "Earth Day: A Question of Survival," with correspondents reporting from a dozen major cities across the country, and narrated by Walter Cronkite (whose backdrop was the Earth Week Committee of Philadelphia's logo).^[20]

Pete Seeger was a keynote speaker and performer at the event held in Washington, D.C. Paul Newman and Ali McGraw attended the event held in Manhattan.^[22]

Earth Day 1970 in New York City[link]

In the winter of 1969-1970, a group of students met at Columbia University to hear Denis Hayes talk about his plans for Earth Day. Among the group were Fred Kent, Pete Grannis, and Kristin and William Hubbard. This New York group agreed to head up the New York City part of the national movement. Fred Kent took the lead in renting an office and recruiting volunteers. "The big break came when Mayor Lindsay agreed to shut down Fifth Avenue for the event. A giant cheer went up in the office on that day," according to Kristin Hubbard (now Kristin Alexandre). 'From that time on we used Mayor Lindsay's offices and even his staff. I was Speaker Coordinator but had tremendous help from Lindsay staffer Judith Crichton."

In addition to shutting down Fifth Avenue, Mayor Lindsay made Central Park available for Earth Day. The crowd was estimated as more than one million—by far the largest in the nation. Since New York was also the home of NBC, CBS, ABC, the New York Times, Time, and Newsweek, it provided the best possible anchor for national coverage from their reporters all over the country.^[23]

Earth Day 1970 in Philadelphia[link]

Edward Furia (left) and Austan Librach (right) in a meeting in early 1970 with the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, in which they raised $30,000 to fund Earth Day activities and expose the city's worst polluters ^[24]

U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie speaking to an estimated 40-60,000 at Fairmount Park, Philadelphia on Earth Day, 1970

Earth Day 1970 in Philadelphia gave birth to Earth Week, April 16–22. It was created by a committee of students (mostly from University of Pennsylvania), professionals, leaders of grass roots organizations and businessmen concerned about the environment and inspired by Nelson’s call for a national environmental teach-in. The Earth Week Committee of Philadelphia concluded that devoting only one day to the environment would not provide enough time and space to paint a comprehensive picture of the environmental issues confronting mankind.^[25] While all of their activities would build toward a climactic Earth Day celebration on April 22, there would also be an entire week of events in the week preceding.

Austan Librach, a regional planning graduate student, assumed the role of committee chairman and hired Edward Furia, who had just received his City Planning and Law Degrees from University of Pennsylvania, to be Project Director. The core group from Penn was joined in 1970 by students from other area colleges which, working together, organized scores of educational activities, scientific symposia and major mass media events in the Delaware Valley Region in and around Philadelphia. The Earth Week Committee of 33 members settled on a common objective—to raise public awareness of environmental problems and their potential solutions.^[25][26]

U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie was the keynote speaker on Earth Day in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia.^[25][27] Other notable attendees included consumer protection activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader; Landscape Architect Ian McHarg; Nobel prize-winning Harvard Biochemist, George Wald; U.S. Senate Minority Leader, Hugh Scott; and poet, Allen Ginsberg. Convicted murderer Ira Einhorn claimed to act as the master of ceremonies,^[28] but this was not the case. The real event organizers dispute this account in a sworn statement saying “Ira Einhorn’s claims that he was a founder or organizer of Earth Day are false. He is a fraud. His lies do a real disservice to those of us who were and are deeply concerned about our planet’s environmental problems and who have worked hard to solve them.”^[29]. In that sworn statement, the organizers indicated that "Einhorn, given a small role on the stage at Earth Day, grabbed the microphone and refused to give up the podium for thirty minutes"^[29] During Einhorn’s murder trial, one of the Earth Day organizing committee members, psychiatrist Donald Nathanson, took the stand and under oath testified that the committee had barred Einhorn from their discussions, considering him a nuisance.^[30]. Again, under oath and penalty of perjury, Dr. Nathanson said there was no master of ceremonies and Einhorn’s only role at the event had been as a liaison with poet and featured speaker Allen Ginsberg. But, Nathanson said, Einhorn didn’t merely introduce Ginsberg — he "commandeered the stage" speaking "incoherently" for half an hour and refusing repeated requests to leave and let the program continue.^[30]

Forty years later, the Earth Week Committee decided to make rare photos, video, and other previously unpublished information about the history of Earth Week 1970 available to the public at EarthWeek1970.org.

Many cities now extend the observance of Earth Day events to an entire week, usually starting on April 16 and ending on Earth Day, April 22.^[31] These events are designed to encourage environmentally aware behaviors, such as recycling, using energy efficiently, and reducing or reusing disposable items.^[32]

Results of Earth Day 1970[link]

Earth Day proved popular in the United States and around the world. The first April 22 Earth Day had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States. More importantly, it "brought 20 million Americans out into the spring sunshine for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform."^[33]

Nelson stated that Earth Day "worked" because of the response at the grassroots level. Twenty-million demonstrators and thousands of schools and local communities participated.^[34] He directly credited the first Earth Day with persuading U.S. politicians that environmental legislation had a substantial, lasting constituency.

It now is observed in 175 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, according to whom Earth Day is now "the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a half billion people every year."^[35] Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action which changes human behavior and provokes policy changes.^[36]

Earth Day 20 and Earth Day 1990[link]

Mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting the status of environmental issues onto the world stage, Earth Day activities in 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Unlike the first Earth Day in 1970, this 20th Anniversary was waged with stronger marketing tools, greater access to television and radio, and multimillion-dollar budgets.^[37]

Two separate groups formed to sponsor Earth Day events in 1990: The Earth Day 20 Foundation, assembled by Edward Furia (Project Director of Earth Week in 1970), and Earth Day 1990, assembled by Denis Hayes (National Coordinator for Earth Day 1970). Senator Gaylord Nelson, the original founder of Earth Day, was honorary chairman for both groups. The two did not combine forces over disagreements about leadership of combined organization and incompatible structures and strategies.^[37] Among the disagreements, key Earth Day 20 Foundation organizers were critical of Earth Day 1990 for including on their board Hewlett Packard, a company that at the time was the second-biggest emitter of chlorofluorocarbons in Silicon Valley and refused to switch to alternative solvents.^[37] In terms of marketing, Earth Day 20 had a grassroots approach to organizing and relied largely on locally based groups like the National Toxics Campaign, a Boston-based coalition of 1,000 local groups concerned with industrial pollution. Earth Day 1990 employed strategies including focus group testing, direct mail fund raising, and email marketing.^[37]

The Earth Day 20 Foundation highlighted its April 22 activities in George, Washington, near the Columbia River with a live satellite phone call with members of the historic Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb who called from their base camp on Mount Everest to pledge their support for world peace and attention to environmental issues.^[38] The Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb was led by Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mt. Everest (many years earlier), and marked the first time in history that mountaineers from the United States, Soviet Union, and China had roped together to climb a mountain, let alone Mt. Everest.^[38] The group also collected over two tons of trash (transported down the mountain by support groups along the way) that was left behind on Mount Everest from previous climbing expeditions. The master of ceremonies for the Columbia Gorge event was the TV star, John Ratzenberger, from "Cheers", and the headlining musician was the "Father of Rock and Roll," Chuck Berry.^[38]

Warner Bros. Records released a single in 1990 titled "Tomorrow's World", written by Kix Brooks (who would later become one-half of Brooks & Dunn) and Pam Tillis.^[39] The song featured vocals from Lynn Anderson, Butch Baker, Shane Barmby, Billy Hill, Suzy Bogguss, Kix Brooks, T. Graham Brown, the Burch Sisters, Holly Dunn, Foster & Lloyd, Vince Gill, William Lee Golden, Highway 101, Shelby Lynne, Johnny Rodriguez, Dan Seals, Les Taylor, Pam Tillis, Mac Wiseman, and Kevin Welch. It charted at number 74 on the Hot Country Songs chart dated May 5, 1990.^[40]

Earth Day 2000[link]

Earth Day 2000 combined the ambitious spirit of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. This was the first year that Earth Day used the Internet as its principal organizing tool, and it proved invaluable domestically and internationally. Kelly Evans, a professional political organizer, served as executive director of the 2000 campaign. The event ultimately enlisted more than 5,000 environmental groups outside the United States, reaching hundreds of millions of people in a record 183 countries.^[41] Leonardo DiCaprio was the official host for the event,^[41] and about 400,000 participants stood in the cold rain during the course of the day.

Subsequent Earth Day events[link]

Earth Day 2007 at San Diego City College in San Diego, California

To turn Earth Day into a sustainable annual event rather than one that occurred every 10 years, Nelson and Bruce Anderson, New Hampshire's lead organizer in 1990, formed Earth Day USA. Building on the momentum created by thousands of community organizers around the world, Earth Day USA coordinated the next five Earth Day celebrations through 1995, including the launch of EarthDay.org. Following the 25th Anniversary in 1995, the coordination baton was handed to Earth Day Network.

As the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focusing on global warming and pushing for clean energy. The April 22 Earth Day in 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. For 2000, Earth Day had the Internet to help link activists around the world. By the time April 22 came around, 5,000 environmental groups around the world were on board, reaching out to hundreds of millions of people in a record 184 countries. Events varied: A talking drum chain traveled from village to village in Gabon, Africa, for example, while hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., USA.

Earth Day 2007 was one of the largest Earth Days to date, with an estimated billion people participating in the activities in thousands of places like Kiev, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; Tuvalu; Manila, Philippines; Togo; Madrid, Spain; London; and New York.^{[citation needed]}

The Earth Day name[link]

According to Nelson, the moniker "Earth Day" was "an obvious and logical name" suggested by "a number of people" in the fall of 1969, including, he writes, both "a friend of mine who had been in the field of public relations" and "a New York advertising executive," Julian Koenig.^[42] Koenig, who had been on Nelson's organizing committee in 1969, has said that the idea came to him by the coincidence of his birthday with the day selected, April 22; "Earth Day" rhyming with "birthday," the connection seemed natural.^[43][44] Other names circulated during preparations—Nelson himself continued to call it the National Environment Teach-In, but press coverage of the event was "practically unanimous" in its use of "Earth Day," so the name stuck.^[42]

Earth Day Network[link]

Denis Hayes

Earth Day Network was founded by Denis Hayes and the organizers of the first Earth Day in 1970 and by other national organizers, including Pam Lippe, to promote environmental activism and year-round progressive action, domestically and internationally. Earth Day Network members include NGOs, quasi-governmental agencies, local governments, activists, and others. Earth Day Network members focus on environmental education; local, national, and global policies; public environmental campaigns; and organizing national and local earth day events to promote activism and environmental protection. The international network reaches over 19,000 organizations in 192 countries, while the domestic program engages 10,000 groups and over 100,000 educators coordinating millions of community development and environmental-protection activities throughout the year.^[45]

In observance of the 40th anniversary of the April 22 Earth Day, Earth Day Network created multiple global initiatives, ranging from a Global Day of Conversation with mayors worldwide, focusing on bringing green investment and building a green economy; Athletes for the Earth Campaign that brings Olympic, professional, and every day athletes' voices to help promote a solution to climate change; a Billion Acts of Green Campaign which will aggregate the millions of environmental service commitments that individuals and organizations around the world make each year;^[46] to Artist for the Earth, a campaign the involves hundreds of arts institutions and artists worldwide to create environmental awareness. EDN mobilized 1.5 billion people in 170 countries to participate in these global events and programs, and helped create Earth Day organizations worldwide.

Earth Day Canada[link]

The first Canadian Earth Day was held on Thursday, September 11, 1980, and was organized by Paul D. Tinari, then a graduate student in Engineering Physics/Solar Engineering at Queen's University. Flora MacDonald, then MP for Kingston and the Islands and Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, officially opened Earth Day Week on September 6, 1980 with a ceremonial tree planting and encouraged MPs and MPPs across the country to declare a cross-Canada annual Earth Day. The principal activities taking place on the first Earth Day included educational lectures given by experts in various environmental fields, garbage and litter pick-up by students along city roads and highways as well as tree plantings to replace the trees killed by Dutch Elm Disease.^[47][48]

Paul Tinari officially launching the first Canadian Earth Day on September 11, 1980 - waiting to speak are Flora MacDonald MP, secretary of state for external affairs, Ken Keyes, mayor of Kingston, and Dr. Ronald Watts, principal of Queen's University

Earth Day Canada (EDC), a national environmental charity founded in 1990, provides Canadians with the practical knowledge and tools they need to lessen their impact on the environment. In 2004, it was recognized as the top environmental education organization in North America, for its innovative year-round programs and educational resources, by the Washington-based North American Association for Environmental Education, the world's largest association of environmental educators. In 2008, it was chosen as Canada's "Outstanding Non-profit Organization" by the Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication. EDC regularly partners with thousands of organizations in all parts of Canada. EDC hosts a suite of six environmental programs: Ecokids, EcoMentors, EcoAction Teams, Community Environment Fund, Hometown Heroes and the Toyota Earth Day Scholarship Program.

History of the Equinox Earth Day[link]

The equinoctial Earth Day is celebrated on the March equinox (around March 20) to mark the precise moment of astronomical mid-spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and of astronomical mid-autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. An equinox in astronomy is that moment in time (not a whole day) when the center of the Sun can be observed to be directly "above" the Earth's equator, occurring around March 20 and September 23 each year. In most cultures, the equinoxes and solstices are considered to start or separate the seasons.

John McConnell^[49] first introduced the idea of a global holiday called "Earth Day" at the 1969 UNESCO Conference on the Environment. The first Earth Day proclamation was issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto on March 21, 1970. Celebrations were held in various cities, such as San Francisco and in Davis, California with a multi-day street party. UN Secretary-General U Thant supported McConnell's global initiative to celebrate this annual event; and on February 26, 1971, he signed a proclamation to that effect, saying:

May there be only peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life.^[50]

United Nations secretary-general Kurt Waldheim observed Earth Day with similar ceremonies on the March equinox in 1972, and the United Nations Earth Day ceremony has continued each year since on the day of the March equinox (the United Nations also works with organizers of the April 22 global event). Margaret Mead added her support for the equinox Earth Day, and in 1978 declared:

"Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
Earth Day draws on astronomical phenomena in a new way – which is also the most ancient way – by using the vernal Equinox, the time when the Sun crosses the equator making the length of night and day equal in all parts of the Earth. To this point in the annual calendar, EARTH DAY attaches no local or divisive set of symbols, no statement of the truth or superiority of one way of life over another. But the selection of the March Equinox makes planetary observance of a shared event possible, and a flag which shows the Earth, as seen from space, appropriate."^[51]

At the moment of the equinox, it is traditional to observe Earth Day by ringing the Japanese Peace Bell, which was donated by Japan to the United Nations.^[52] Over the years, celebrations have occurred in various places worldwide at the same time as the UN celebration. On March 20, 2008, in addition to the ceremony at the United Nations, ceremonies were held in New Zealand, and bells were sounded in California, Vienna, Paris, Lithuania, Tokyo, and many other locations. The equinox Earth Day at the UN is organized by the Earth Society Foundation.^[53]

April 22 observances[link]

Growing eco-activism before Earth Day 1970[link]

In 1968, Morton Hilbert and the U.S. Public Health Service organized the Human Ecology Symposium, an environmental conference for students to hear from scientists about the effects of environmental degradation on human health.^[54] This was the beginning of Earth Day. For the next two years, Hilbert and students worked to plan the first Earth Day.^[55] In April 1970—along with a federal proclamation from U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson—the first Earth Day was held.^[56]

Project Survival, an early environmentalism-awareness education event, was held at Northwestern University on January 23, 1970. This was the first of several events held at university campuses across the United States in the lead-up to the first Earth Day. Also, Ralph Nader began talking about the importance of ecology in 1970.

The 1960s had been a very dynamic period for ecology in the US. Pre-1960 grassroots activism against DDT in Nassau County, New York, had inspired Rachel Carson to write her bestseller, Silent Spring (1962).

Significance of April 22[link]

Nelson chose the date in order to maximize participation on college campuses for what he conceived as an "environmental teach-in". He determined the week of April 19–25 was the best bet as it did not fall during exams or spring breaks.^[57] Moreover, it did not conflict with religious holidays such as Easter or Passover, and was late enough in spring to have decent weather. More students were likely to be in class, and there would be less competition with other mid-week events—so he chose Wednesday, April 22.

Unbeknownst to Nelson,^[58] April 22, 1970, was coincidentally the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin. Time reported that some suspected the date was not a coincidence, but a clue that the event was "a Communist trick", and quoted a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution as saying, "subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them."^[59] J. Edgar Hoover, director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, may have found the Lenin connection intriguing; it was alleged the FBI conducted surveillance at the 1970 demonstrations.^[60] The idea that the date was chosen to celebrate Lenin's centenary still persists in some quarters,^[61][62] an idea borne out by the similarity with the subbotnik instituted by Lenin in 1920 as days on which people would have to do community service, which typically consisted in removing rubbish from public property and collecting recyclable material. Subbotniks were also imposed on other countries within the compass of Soviet power, including Eastern Europe, and at the height of its power the Soviet Union established a nation-wide subbotnik to be celebrated on Lenin's birthday, April 22, which had been proclaimed a national holiday celebrating communism by Nikita Kruschev in 1955.

In Nebraska, Arbor Day falls on April 22, that being the birthday of Julius Sterling Morton, the founder of the national tree-planting holiday that started in 1872, which has been a legal holiday in the state since 1885. According to the National Arbor Day Foundation "the most common day for the state observances is the last Friday in April ... but a number of state Arbor Days are at other times in order to coincide with the best tree-planting weather."^[63] It has since been largely eclipsed by the more widely observed Earth Day, except in Nebraska, where it originated.

Earth Day ecology flag[link]

1969 Ecology Symbol by Ron Cobb

1969 Ecology Flag by Ron Cobb

According to Flags of the World, the Ecology Flag was created by cartoonist Ron Cobb, published on November 7, 1969, in the Los Angeles Free Press, and then placed in the public domain. The symbol, resembling the Greek letter theta, is a combination of the letters "E" and "O" taken from the words "Environment" and "Organism," respectively. The flag is patterned after thhat of the United States, with thirteen alternating-green-and-whites stripes. Its canton is green with a yellow theta. Later flags used either the ecology symbol or the peace symbol.

Earth Day anthem[link]

There are many songs that are performed on Earth Day, that generally fall into two categories. Popular songs by contemporary artists not specific to Earth Day that are under copyright or new lyrics adapted to children's songs. Creating new lyrics that are easily translated into multiple languages, and set to a universally recognized melody in the public domain, does not appear to have been attempted.

The "Earth Day Anthem" below satisfies these requirements for a universal song associated with Earth Day. Ludwig van Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" melody is already the official anthem of the European Union (in that case purely instrumental without lyrics), the melody is widely recognized and easily performed, in the public domain, and originally composed for voice. Lyrics for the Earth Day Anthem set to "Ode to Joy"^[64] are provided below:

Joyful joyful we adore our Earth in all its wonderment
Simple gifts of nature that all join into a paradise
Now we must resolve to protect her
Show her our love throughout all time
With our gentle hand and touch
We make our home a newborn world
Now we must resolve to protect her
Show her our love throughout all time
With our gentle hand and touch
We make our home a newborn world

Criticism[link]

Writer Alex Steffen, proponent of bright green environmentalism, charges that Earth Day has come to symbolize the marginalization of environmental protection, and the celebration has outlived its usefulness.^[65]

A May 5, 2009 editorial in The Washington Times contrasted Arbor Day with Earth Day, claiming that Arbor Day was a happy, non-political celebration of trees, whereas Earth Day was a pessimistic, political ideology that portrayed humans in a negative light.^[66]

The questionable nature of companies and products involved in Earth Day related promotions has led to accusations of greenwashing.^[67]

Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) group brings back Earth Day to human overpopulation as the main concern.^[68]

See also[link]

Environment portal

• Earth Charter
• Earth Hour

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Earth Day

Look up Earth Day in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Environment

Wikinews has related news: Earth Day 2008 marked in various ways

Wikinews has related news: Earth Day 2009 celebrated around the globe

Earth Day

• Earth Day Network – Coordinating worldwide events for Earth Day.
• Earth Day Quotes
• Earth Day Event Calendar at the EnviroLink Network
• Celebrate Earth Day How to Celebrate Earth Day from WikiHow
• Earth Day 2009 Special Coverage on China Development Gateway.
• United States Earth Day – The U.S. government's Earth Day site.
• Earth Day Canada – The Canadian Official Site for Earth Day
• Earth Day at The Nature Conservancy
• Earth Day at The History Channel
• How the First Earth Day Came About by Senator Gaylord Nelson
• EPA Journal: Earth Day – an entire journal dedicated to Earth Day, written in early 1990
• Keep America Beautiful holds Earth Day cleanup activities in communities nationwide. The organization launched the famous Crying Indian campaign on Earth Day, 1971.
• "Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise," by Gaylord Nelson, with Susan Campbell and Paul Wozniak, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002
• Earth Week 1970 | The First Earth Day and the Earth Week Committee of Philadelphia – The history of the First Earth Day in 1970, the founding of Earth Week, and the historic events of the first Earth Week in Philadelphia
• Gaylord Nelson and Earth Day: The Making of the Modern Environmental Movement narrative account of the origins of Earth Day, Nelson's political career, as well as online access to documents from the Wisconsin Historical Society's Nelson Papers collection
• Gaylord Nelson letter outlines the origins Earth Day April 1971 to CBS President Stanton to correct TV news reporting about Earth Day's origins

Equinoctial Earth Day

• Earth Society Foundation – Official organization arranging annual equinox Earth Day celebration at the United Nations
• Who Started Earth Day – The Origins of the equinox Earth Day.

Earth Day 2010

• Billion Acts of Green (Beta) – Official Earth Day Network's "Billion Acts of Green" website for students and young adults

Earth Day 2011

• A Billion Acts of Green (®) - A "people-powered campaign to generate a billion acts of environmental service and advocacy before Rio +20" (as well as a registered trademark).

Earth Day 2012

• Earth Day 2012 - Mobilize the Earth

Water, Rabbit, and Deer: three of the 20 day symbols in the Aztec calendar, from the Aztec calendar stone.

A day is a unit of time, commonly defined as an interval equal to 24 hours.^[1] It also can mean that portion of the full day during which a location is illuminated by the light of the sun, also known as daytime. The period of time measured from local noon to the following local noon is called a solar day.^[2][3]

Several definitions of this universal human concept are used according to context, need and convenience. In 1967, the second was redefined in terms of the wavelength of light, and it became the SI base unit of time. The unit of measurement for time called "day", redefined in 1967 as 86,400 SI seconds and symbolized d, is not an SI unit, but it is accepted for use with SI.^[1] A civil day is usually also 86,400 seconds, plus or minus a possible leap second in Coordinated Universal Time UTC, and, in some locations, occasionally plus or minus an hour when changing from or to daylight saving time. The word day may also refer to a day of the week or to a calendar date, as in answer to the question "On which day?" Day also refers to the part of the day that is not night — also known as 'daytime'. The life patterns of humans and many other species are related to Earth's solar day and the cycle of day and night (see circadian rhythms).

The average length of a solar day on Earth is about 86,400 seconds (24 hours) and there are about 365.2422 solar days in one mean tropical year. Because celestial orbits are not perfectly circular, and thus objects travel at different speeds at various positions in their orbit, a solar day is not the same length of time throughout the orbital year. A day, understood as the span of time it takes for the Earth to make one entire rotation^[4] with respect to the celestial background or a distant star (assumed to be fixed), is called stellar day. This period of rotation is about 4 minutes less than 24 hours and there are about 366.2422 in one mean tropical year (one more stellar day than the number of solar days). Mainly due to tidal effects, the Earth's rotational period is not constant, resulting in further minor variations for both solar days and stellar 'days'. Other planets and moons also have stellar and solar days.

Introduction[link]

Dagr, the Norse god of the day, rides his horse in this 19th-century painting by Peter Nicolai Arbo.

Besides the day of 24 hours (86,400 seconds), the word day is used for several different spans of time based on the rotation of the Earth around its axis. An important one is the solar day, defined as the time it takes for the sun to return to the zenith (its highest point in the sky). Because the Earth orbits the Sun elliptically as the Earth spins on an inclined axis, this period can be up to 7.9 seconds more than (or less than) 24 hours. On average over the year this day is equivalent to 24 hours (86,400 seconds).

A day, in the sense of daytime that is distinguished from night-time, is commonly defined as the period during which sunlight directly reaches the ground, assuming that there are no local obstacles. The length of daytime averages slightly more than half of the 24-hour day. Two effects make daytime on average longer than nights. The Sun is not a point, but has an apparent size of about 32 minutes of arc. Additionally, the atmosphere refracts sunlight in such a way that some of it reaches the ground even when the Sun is below the horizon by about 34 minutes of arc. So the first light reaches the ground when the centre of the Sun is still below the horizon by about 50 minutes of arc. The difference in time depends on the angle at which the Sun rises and sets (itself a function of latitude), but can amount to around seven minutes.

Ancient custom has a new day start at either the rising or setting of the Sun on the local horizon (Italian reckoning, for example) The exact moment of, and the interval between, two sunrises or two sunsets depends on the geographical position (longitude as well as latitude), and the time of year. This is the time as indicated by ancient hemispherical sundials.

A more constant day can be defined by the Sun passing through the local meridian, which happens at local noon (upper culmination) or midnight (lower culmination). The exact moment is dependent on the geographical longitude, and to a lesser extent on the time of the year. The length of such a day is nearly constant (24 hours ± 30 seconds). This is the time as indicated by modern sundials.

A further improvement defines a fictitious mean Sun that moves with constant speed along the celestial equator; the speed is the same as the average speed of the real Sun, but this removes the variation over a year as the Earth moves along its orbit around the Sun (due to both its velocity and its axial tilt).

The Earth's day has increased in length over time. This phenomenon is due to tides raised by the Moon which slow Earth's rotation. Because of the way the second is defined, the mean length of a day is now about 86,400.002 seconds, and is increasing by about 1.7 milliseconds per day every century ( an average over the last 2,700 years. See tidal acceleration for details. The length of one day has been estimated as 21.9 hours 620 million years ago from rhythmites (alternating layers in sandstone). The length of day for the Earth or Proto-Earth before the event which created our moon by an impact is yet unknown.

Etymology[link]

The term comes from the Old English dæg, with its cognates such as Tag in German, and dag in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Dutch. "Day" is the 98th most common word in English according to AskOxford.com.^{[citation needed]}

International System of Units (SI)[link]

A day, symbol d, is defined as 86,400 seconds. The second is the unit of time in SI units.

A day on the UTC time scale can include a negative or positive leap second, and can therefore have a length of 86,399 or 86,401 seconds.

The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) currently defines a second as

… the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.^[5]

This makes the SI-based day last exactly 794,243,384,928,000 of those periods.

Decimal and metric time[link]

In the 19th century it had also been suggested to make a decimal fraction (¹⁄_10,000 or ¹⁄_100,000) of an astronomic day the base unit of time. This was an afterglow of decimal time and calendar, which had been given up already for its difficulty to comply with familiar units. The still most successful candidate is the centiday = 14.4 minutes, as a shorter quarter of an hour and also close to the SI target kilosecond and old Chinese ke.

Astronomy[link]

A day of exactly 86,400 SI seconds is the astronomical unit of time (the second is not preferred in astronomy).^[6]

For a given planet, there are three types of day defined in astronomy:

• stellar day - an entire rotation of a planet with respect to the distant stars
• sidereal day - a single rotation of a planet with respect to the vernal equinox
• mean solar day - average time of a single rotation of a planet with respect to the sun as the central star

For Earth, the stellar day and the sidereal day are nearly of the same length and about 3 minutes 56 seconds shorter than the solar day. Relative to the fixed stars, the Earth spins just over 366 times upon its axis during one complete orbit. The Earth's orbit around the Sun reduces (by one) the number of transits the Sun makes across the Earth's sky in a sidereal year.

Colloquial[link]

The word refers to various relatedly defined ideas, including the following:

• 24 hours (exactly)
• the period of light when the Sun is above the local horizon (that is, the time period from sunrise to sunset);
• the full day covering a dark and a light period, beginning from the beginning of the dark period or from a point near the middle of the dark period;
• a full dark and light period, sometimes called a nychthemeron in English, from the Greek for night-day;
• the time period from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM or 9:00 PM or some other fixed clock period overlapping or set off from other time periods such as "morning", "evening", or "night".

Civil day[link]

For civil purposes a common clock time has been defined for an entire region based on the mean local solar time at some central meridian. Such time zones began to be adopted about the middle of the 19th century when railroads with regular schedules came into use, with most major countries having adopted them by 1929. For the whole world, 40 such time zones are now in use. The main one is "world time" or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

The present common convention has the civil day starting at midnight, which is near the time of the lower culmination of the mean Sun on the central meridian of the time zone. A day is commonly divided into 24 hours of 60 minutes of 60 seconds each.

Leap seconds[link]

To keep the civil day aligned with the apparent movement of the Sun, positive or negative leap seconds may be inserted.

A civil clock day is typically 86,400 SI seconds long, but will be 86,401 s or 86,399 s long in the event of a leap second.

Leap seconds are announced in advance by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service which measures the Earth's rotation and determines whether a leap second is necessary. Leap seconds occur only at the end of a UTC month, and have only ever been inserted at the end of June 30 or December 31.

Boundaries of the day[link]

Sun and Moon, Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

For most diurnal animals, the day naturally begins at dawn and ends at sunset. Humans, with our cultural norms and scientific knowledge, have supplanted Nature with several different conceptions of the day's boundaries. The Jewish day begins at either sunset or at nightfall (when three second-magnitude stars appear). Medieval Europe followed this tradition, known as Florentine reckoning: in this system, a reference like "two hours into the day" meant two hours after sunset and thus times during the evening need to be shifted back one calendar day in modern reckoning. Days such as Christmas Eve, Halloween, and the Eve of Saint Agnes are the remnants of the older pattern when holidays began the evening before. Present common convention is for the civil day to begin at midnight, that is 00:00 (inclusive), and last a full 24 hours until 24:00 (exclusive).

In ancient Egypt, the day was reckoned from sunrise to sunrise. Muslims fast from daybreak to sunset each day of the month of Ramadan. The "Damascus Document", copies of which were also found among the Dead Sea scrolls, states regarding Sabbath observance that "No one is to do any work on Friday from the moment that the sun's disk stands distant from the horizon by the length of its own diameter," presumably indicating that the monastic community responsible for producing this work counted the day as ending shortly before the sun had begun to set.

In the United States, nights are named after the previous day, e.g. "Friday night" usually means the entire night between Friday and Saturday. This is the opposite of the Jewish pattern. This difference from the civil day often leads to confusion. Events starting at midnight are often announced as occurring the day before. TV-guides tend to list nightly programs at the previous day, although programming a VCR requires the strict logic of starting the new day at 00:00 (to further confuse the issue, VCRs set to the 12-hour clock notation will label this "12:00 AM"). Expressions like "today", "yesterday" and "tomorrow" become ambiguous during the night.

Validity of tickets, passes, etc., for a day or a number of days may end at midnight, or closing time, when that is earlier. However, if a service (e.g. public transport) operates from for example, 6:00 to 1:00 the next day (which may be noted as 25:00), the last hour may well count as being part of the previous day (also for the arrangement of the timetable). For services depending on the day ("closed on Sundays", "does not run on Fridays", and so on) there is a risk of ambiguity. As an example, for the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railways), a day ticket is valid 28 hours, from 0:00 to 28:00 (that is, 4:00 the next day). To give another example, the validity of a pass on London Regional Transport services is until the end of the "transport day" -- that is to say, until 4:30 am on the day after the "expiry" date stamped on the pass.

24 hours vs daytime[link]

To distinguish between a full day and daytime, the word nychthemeron (from Greek for a night and a day) may be used in English for the former, or more colloquially the term 24 hours. In other languages, the latter is also often used. Other languages also have a separate word for a full day, such as vuorokausi in Finnish, ööpäev in Estonian, dygn in Swedish, døgn in Danish, døgn in Norwegian, sólarhringur in Icelandic, etmaal in Dutch, doba in Polish, сутки (sutki) in Russian, суткі (sutki) in Belarusian, доба́ (doba) in Ukrainian, денонощие in Bulgarian and יממה in Hebrew. In Italian, giorno is used to indicate a full day, while dì means daytime. In Spanish, singladura is used, but only as a marine unit of length, being the distance covered in 24 hours.^{[7][not relevant]}

See also[link]

• 10⁴ s, times from 10 kiloseconds to 100 kiloseconds
• Calculating the day of the week
• Daylight
• Daylight saving time
• Meteorological day
• Season, for a discussion of daylight and darkness at various latitudes
• Synodic day

Notes and references[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Day

Look up day in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Definitions of day, night, twilight (USA navy site)
• Formulas to calculate the length of day and night
• Sunrise and sunset, all year long, anywhere
• Show where it is daytime at the moment

v t e Time Major concepts Time Eternity Arguments for eternity Immortality History Past Present Future Futures studies Deep time Time Portal Measurement and standards Chronometry UTC UT TAI Second Minute Hour Sidereal time Solar time Time zone Metric time Decimal time Hexadecimal time Clock Astrarium History of timekeeping devices Horology Marine chronometer Sundial Water clock Calendar Day Week Month Year Tropical year Gregorian Islamic Julian Intercalation Leap second Leap year Chronology Astronomical chronology Calendar era Chronicle Dating methodologies Geochronology Geologic Time Geological history Periodization Regnal year Timeline Religion and mythology Dreamtime Kāla Kalachakra Prophecy Time and fate deities Wheel of time Philosophy A-series and B-series B-Theory of time Causality Endurantism Eternal return Eternalism Event Perdurantism Presentism Temporal finitism Temporal parts The Unreality of Time Physical sciences Time in physics Absolute time and space Arrow of time Chronon Coordinate time Planck epoch Planck time Proper time Spacetime Theory of relativity Time dilation Gravitational time dilation Time domain T-symmetry Biology Chronobiology Circadian rhythms Psychology Mental chronometry Sense of time Specious present Sociology and anthropology Long Now Foundation Time discipline Time use research Economics Time value of money Time-based currency Time Banking Related topics Carpe diem Duration Space System time Tempus fugit Time capsule Time signature Time travel

v t e Parts of a day Dawn · Twilight–Sunrise · Morning · Daylight · Evening · Sunset–Twilight–Dusk · Night Related articles: Blue hour · Golden hour · Terminator · Forenoon · Noon · Afternoon · Midnight · Daytime · Midnight sun

v t e SI units Base units Ampere · Candela · Kelvin · Kilogram · Metre · Mole · Second Derived units Becquerel · Coulomb · Degree Celsius · Farad · Gray · Henry · Hertz · Joule · Katal · Lumen · Lux · Newton · Ohm · Pascal · Radian · Siemens · Sievert · Steradian · Tesla · Volt · Watt · Weber Accepted for use with SI Dalton (Atomic mass unit) · Astronomical unit · Day · Decibel · Degree Celsius · Degree of arc · Electronvolt · Hectare · Hour · Litre · Minute · Minute of arc · Neper · Second of arc · Tonne Atomic units · Natural units See also SI prefixes · Systems of measurement · Conversion of units · New SI definitions · History of the metric system Book:International System of Units  · Category:SI base units

Devin Townsend
Devin Townsend performing at Tuska Metal Festival, Finland (July 2010).
Background information
Birth name	Devin Garret Townsend[1]
Born	(1972-05-05) May 5, 1972 (age 40) New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Genres	Extreme metal, thrash metal, industrial metal, death metal, grindcore, progressive metal, progressive rock, ambient
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician, producer
Instruments	Vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards, drum machine, sampler, banjo
Years active	1993–present
Associated acts	The Devin Townsend Band, The Devin Townsend Project, Strapping Young Lad, Steve Vai, Punky Brüster, IR8, Front Line Assembly, Grey Skies, Caustic Thought, Noisescapes, Ayreon, The Wildhearts, Bent Sea
Website	www.hevydevy.com
Notable instruments
Peavey, ESP, Fender, and Gibson

Devin Garret Townsend (born May 5, 1972) is a Canadian musician and record producer. He was the founder, songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist in extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad from 1994 to 2007 and has had an extensive career as a solo artist.

After performing in a number of metal bands in high school, Townsend was discovered by a record label in 1993 and was asked to perform lead vocals on Steve Vai's album Sex & Religion. After recording and touring with Vai, Townsend was discouraged by what he found in the music industry, and vented his anger on a solo album released under the pseudonym Strapping Young Lad. He soon assembled a band under the name, and released the critically acclaimed City in 1997. Since then, he has released three more studio albums with Strapping Young Lad, along with solo material released under his own independent record label, HevyDevy Records. Townsend's solo albums, a diverse mix of hard rock and progressive metal, have featured a varying lineup of supporting musicians. In 2002 he formed The Devin Townsend Band, a dedicated lineup which recorded and toured for two of his solo releases.

In 2007, Townsend disbanded both Strapping Young Lad and The Devin Townsend Band, taking a break from touring to spend more time with his family. After a two-year hiatus, he began work on a four-album series called The Devin Townsend Project, with each album written in a different style. The first two entries in the series, Ki and Addicted, were released in 2009. Townsend scheduled tours throughout Australia and North America in 2010 in support of the albums, and released the next two, Deconstruction and Ghost, in 2011.

Townsend's trademark production style, featuring a heavily multitracked wall of sound, has been compared to the styles of Phil Spector and Frank Zappa. His versatile vocal delivery ranges from screaming to an opera-esque singing, and his songwriting is similarly diverse. Townsend's musical style is rooted in metal, and his albums are written to express different aspects of his personality.

Biography[link]

Early musical career (1972–1994)[link]

Devin Townsend was born in New Westminster, British Columbia, on May 5, 1972.^[2] Townsend picked up the banjo when he was five, and began playing guitar when he was 12.^[3] He participated in several metal bands while he was in high school, and founded Grey Skies at the age of 19. Around the same time he joined a popular local group called Caustic Thought, replacing Jed Simon on guitar and playing alongside bassist Byron Stroud, both of whom would later become members of Townsend's flagship band, Strapping Young Lad.^[4] In 1993, Townsend began writing material under the name Noisescapes, a project he later described as "just as violent as Strapping Young Lad".^[5]

Townsend recorded a Noisescapes demo and sent copies to various record labels. Relativity Records responded to Townsend with a record deal and Townsend began work on what was to be the first Noisescapes album, Promise.^[6] Shortly afterward, the label introduced him to musician Steve Vai. Impressed with Townsend's vocal work, Vai offered him the role of the lead vocalist on his new album Sex and Religion. Townsend took the offer, unfamiliar with Vai's work and unaware of his acclaim in the music world. After recording Sex and Religion, Townsend accompanied Vai on a world tour in support of the album.^[6] Townsend soon landed a second touring gig, this time with the opening band of Vai's tour, The Wildhearts.^[7] He played live with the band throughout half of 1994 in Europe, and appeared as a guest musician on their single Urge. Ginger, the band's frontman, remained close friends with Townsend,^[8] later co-writing several songs on Infinity and the Christeen + 4 Demos EP.

While on tour with The Wildhearts, Townsend formed a short-lived thrash metal project with Metallica's then-bassist Jason Newsted. The band, known as IR8, featured Newsted on vocals and bass, Townsend on guitar, and Tom Hunting of Exodus on drums. The group recorded a few songs together, although Townsend says that they never intended to go further than that. "People heard about it and thought we wanted to put out a CD, which is absolutely not true," he explains. "People took this project way too seriously."^[5] A demo tape was put together, but the material was not released until 2002, when Newsted published the IR8 vs. Sexoturica compilation.

Though Townsend was proud of what he had accomplished so early in his career, he was discouraged by his experience with the music industry. "I was becoming a product of somebody else's imagination, and it was mixing with my own personality," he later reflected. "This combination was appalling."^[9] He pushed to get his own projects off the ground. Despite getting notable touring gigs with other musicians, however, Townsend continued to face rejection of his own music. Relativity Records dropped Noisescapes from their label shortly after Townsend accepted Vai's offer, seeing no commercial appeal in Townsend's music.^[10] "I have a hunch they only offered me a deal to get me to sing with Steve," he mused.^[5] While touring with The Wildhearts, Townsend received a phone call from an A&R representative for Roadrunner Records, expressing an interest in his demos and an intention to sign him. The offer was ultimately rescinded by the head of Roadrunner, who regarded Townsend's recordings as "just noise".^[11]

[edit] Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing through Infinity (1994–1998)

In 1994, Century Media Records offered Townsend a contract to make "some extreme albums".^[11] He agreed to a five-album deal with the record label^[12], and also provided much of the guitar work on the 1994 album Millennium and the 1995 album Hard Wired by Vancouver industrial band Front Line Assembly. Townsend began to record material under the pseudonym Strapping Young Lad. He avoided using his real name at this point in career, looking for a fresh start after his high-profile Vai gig. "At the beginning, I wanted to avoid at all cost to use my name because I was known as the singer for Steve Vai and it wasn't the best publicity to have," he later explained. "I was playing somebody else's music and I was judged in respect to that music."^[9] Townsend produced and performed nearly all the instruments on the debut studio album, Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing, which was released in April 1995.

Following the release of the record, Townsend and several other musician friends he knew in Vancouver recorded his first solo album in 1996 entitled Punky Brüster – Cooked on Phonics. Written and recorded in under a month, the album was produced as a parody of punk rock bands and documents the act of selling out for mainstream success. Townsend founded his own independent record label, HevyDevy Records, to release the album. Townsend assembled a permanent lineup of Strapping Young Lad to record City, including prolific metal drummer Gene Hoglan, along with Townsend's former bandmates Jed Simon on guitar and Byron Stroud on bass. The industrial-influenced^[13] album was released in 1997. To this day, the album is widely considered Strapping Young Lad's best work,^[14][15] with Metal Maniacs calling it "groundbreaking"^[16] and Revolver naming it "one of the greatest metal albums of all time".^[17] Townsend himself considers it the band's "ultimate" album.^[18] Later that year, Townsend released his second solo album, Ocean Machine: Biomech. The album featured a mix of hard rock, ambient, and progressive rock.^[16]

After the completion of City and Ocean Machine: Biomech, Townsend began to approach a mental breakdown. "I started to see human beings as little lonesome, water based, pink meat," he explained, "life forms pushing air through themselves and making noises that the other little pieces of meat seemed to understand." In 1997, he checked himself into a mental-health hospital, where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The diagnosis helped him understand where the two sides of his music were coming from; he felt his disorder "gave birth to the two extremes that are Strapping's City record and Ocean Machine: Biomech."^[19] After being discharged from the hospital, Townsend found that "everything just clicked" and he was able to write his third solo album, Infinity, which he described as "the parent project" of City and Ocean Machine: Biomech,^[19] with music influenced by Broadway.^[16] Townsend returned to the studio, accompanied by Hoglan, to work on the album, on which Townsend played most of the instruments. Infinity was released in October 1998. Later in his career, Townsend has cited Infinity as his favorite solo record.^[13]

With Infinity, Townsend began to label all albums outside of Strapping Young Lad under his own name, dropping the Ocean Machine moniker, to reduce confusion. He wanted to show that despite the highly varied nature of his projects, they are all simply aspects of his identity.^[9] The album Biomech was relabeled and redistributed as Ocean Machine: Biomech, under Townsend's name, to reflect the new arrangement. Townsend's bandmates began to play two sets at their shows, one as Strapping Young Lad, and one as The Devin Townsend Band, playing songs from Townsend's solo albums.^[2]

[edit] Physicist and Terria (1999–2001)

Townsend performing at the Wâldrock Festival, Netherlands (June 30, 2001).

Townsend's next project took several years to come to fruition. After the creation of the IR8 demo tape, Townsend and Jason Newsted had begun work on a new project called Fizzicist, which they described as "heavier than Strapping Young Lad". When the IR8 tape was leaked, Newsted's Metallica bandmates James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich learned of the project. Hetfield was "fucking pissed" that Newsted was playing outside the band, and Newsted was prevented by his bandmates from working on any more side projects.^[20] With the project stalled, Townsend instead wrote the album himself, entitling it Physicist. Townsend assembled his Strapping Young Lad bandmates to record it, the only time this lineup was featured on a Devin Townsend album.^[2] The thrash-influenced^[16] Physicist was released in June 2000, and is generally considered a low point in Townsend's career. Hoglan and the rest of the band were dissatisfied with the way the sound was mixed,^[21] and Townsend considers it his worst album to date.^[22]

Feeling he had "ostracized a bunch of fans" with Physicist, Townsend felt he had the chance to make a more personal and honest record.^[13] Townsend was inspired one morning while driving across Canada with his band, and looked to write an "introspective" album dedicated to his homeland.^[23] He produced and recorded Terria, a "highly illustrated stream-of-consciousness" album,^[13] with Gene Hoglan on drums, Craig McFarland on bass and Jamie Meyer on keyboards. Townsend cited Ween's White Pepper as an inspiration for the album.^[13] Terria was released in November 2001.

[edit] Strapping Young Lad through Synchestra (2003–2006)

Townsend's solo run lasted until 2002. After a five-year break from recording, Strapping Young Lad reunited to record a new album. Townsend credits the album, Strapping Young Lad, as an emotional response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States. "If the world's about to blow up," said Townsend, "let's write the soundtrack for it."^[21] The album's lyrics were based more around fear and insecurity than the "hostile" lyrics of City.^[13] Musically, Strapping Young Lad was less industrial than City,^[24] and more reminiscent of death metal,^[25] with a "larger-than-life" rock production style.^[13] Townsend cited Front Line Assembly, Grotus, and Samael's Passage as influences.^[13] The self-titled album was released in February 2003. It received lukewarm reviews, with critics finding it inferior to City,^[26][27] but it was the band's first charting album, entering at 97th place on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart.^[28]

Townsend filming the music video for "Zen" with Strapping Young Lad (2005).

While Strapping Young Lad was being reunited, Townsend formed a new, permanent band "on par with Strapping" to record and tour for his solo releases.^[13] The Devin Townsend Band consisted of Brian Waddell on guitar, Mike Young on bass, Ryan Van Poederooyen on drums, and Dave Young on keyboards. Townsend performed guitar, vocals, and production, as he did in Strapping Young Lad. Townsend worked on the band's first album, Accelerated Evolution, at the same time he was working on Strapping Young Lad, spending half the week on one and half on the other.^[29] Accelerated Evolution, named for the pace of putting a new band together in under a year,^[13] was released a month after Strapping Young Lad. Mike G. of Metal Maniacs called it "the album of the year", praising it for "the hard-to-accomplish trick of being extreme yet accessible, simultaneously heavy 'n' rockin' yet majestic and beautiful."^[16] Prior to the formation of The Devin Townsend Band, Townsend had represented his solo releases live with the Strapping Young Lad lineup; the band would play one set of Strapping Young Lad songs and one set of Devin Townsend songs.^[30] After the release of Accelerated Evolution, Townsend's two bands toured separately for their separate albums.^[2]

Strapping Young Lad began working on their next album, Alien, in March 2004.^[31] Feeling that the band's previous album did not live up to expectations, Townsend decided to take his music to a new extreme.^[32] To prepare for the new album, Townsend stopped taking the medication prescribed to treat his bipolar disorder.^[33] "I think that as an artist, in order for me to get to the next plateau, I kind of feel the need to explore things and sometimes that exploration leads you to places that are a little crazy," he explains. "And Alien was no exception with that."^[34] Although Townsend considered the album an "impenetrable mass of technicality",^[35] it was well received on its release, selling 3,697 copies in its first week^[36] and appearing on several Billboard charts.^[37]

Shortly thereafter Townsend began putting together the next Devin Townsend Band record, with the working title Human.^[38] Townsend intended the album as the more "pleasant" counterpart to Alien. "It's basically a record about coming back down to earth after being in space with Alien for a while."^[34] The album ended up being renamed Synchestra and was released in January 2006. Townsend showcased a wide variety of musical styles in Synchestra, blending his trademark "pop metal" with influences from folk, polka, and Middle Eastern music.^[39]

[edit] Ziltoid the Omniscient and hiatus (2006–2008)

Townsend's wife, Tracy Turner, gave birth to their first son, Reyner Liam Johnstan Townsend, on October 4, 2006.^[40] Around this time, Townsend withdrew from touring to spend time with his family. From home, Townsend completed his second solo ambient album, The Hummer, releasing it exclusively on his website in November 2006.

In May 2007, Townsend released Ziltoid the Omniscient, a tongue-in-cheek rock opera about the eponymous fictional alien. This was truly a solo album; he programmed the drums using Drumkit from Hell,^[41] a software drum machine that uses MIDI samples recorded by Tomas Haake of Meshuggah^[42] and played all other instruments himself. Shortly after the album's release, Townsend announced that he no longer planned to tour or make albums with Strapping Young Lad or The Devin Townsend Band. He explained that he was "burnt out on travelling, touring, and self promotion" and wished to do production work, write albums, and spend time with his family without the stress of interviews or touring.^[43]

In 2008, Townsend lent his voice to characters in several episodes of the Adult Swim cartoon Metalocalypse (see Musician cameos in Metalocalypse for more). The original character design for Pickles the Drummer, one of the series' main characters, bore a striking resemblance to Townsend. The series' co-creator Brendon Small acknowledged the similarity, and altered the design before the series began. "We made sure he didn't look like Devin Townsend. We gave him the goatee and the dreadover so he wouldn't look like that."^[44]

The Devin Townsend Project (2008–present)[link]

Devin Townsend performing with the Devin Townsend Project in Cleveland, Ohio (January 25th, 2010).

After removing himself from the music industry, Townsend cut his trademark hair off^[45] and gave up drinking and smoking.^[46] Townsend found it "disconcerting" that he had difficulty writing music without drugs, and that he had trouble identifying his purpose as a musician. He spent a year producing albums in absence of writing, but found it unrewarding and decided to "pick up the guitar and just write".^[45] This began a period of "self discovery"^[46] where he learned "how to create without drugs".^[47]

Over two years, Townsend wrote over 60 songs, and found that they fit into "four distinct styles".^[45] In March 2009, Townsend announced his plans for a four-album series called The Devin Townsend Project,^[47] with the goal of clarifying his musical identity and being "accountable" for the persona he projects to the public.^[45] The project's concept includes a different "theme" and a different group of musicians on each album.^[47]

Ki, the first album of The Devin Townsend Project, was written to "set the stage" for the subsequent albums.^[47] Townsend channeled his newfound control and sobriety into Ki, a "tense, quiet" album that contrasts with much of the music he had been known for.^[45] Ki was released in May 2009.^[48] The second entry, a "commercial, yet heavy" album called Addicted, was released in November 2009.

Townsend returned to the stage in January 2010, touring North America with headliner Between the Buried and Me as well as Cynic and Scale the Summit. This was followed by a headlining tour in Australia and a series of high-profile shows in Europe (for example co-headlining the Brutal Assault festival in Czech Republic). He headlined a North American tour with UK label mates TesseracT supporting, which began in October 2010, and toured in Europe with support from Aeon Zen and Anneke van Giersbergen.^[49]

The final albums in The Devin Townsend Project series, Deconstruction and Ghost, were released on June 21, 2011. Townsend performed all four of The Devin Townsend Project albums in the UK and recorded them for a DVD called By a Thread – Live in London 2011 that will be released in 2012. The first three shows were held at the University of London Union, November 10–12, 2011. Ki, Addicted, and Deconstruction were each performed on one night, respectively. The show for Ghost was held at the Union Chapel, Islington on November 13, 2011.^[50] These four shows were each entitled "An Evening with the Devin Townsend Project".^[51]

Since 2009, Townsend has discussed plans to expand the Ziltoid the Omniscient franchise. His ideas included a sequel album, a "full blown musical" with the title Z²,^[52] but the album appeared to have been scrapped, as Townsend stated in mid-June 2011, "I’m very rapidly realizing that humor and metal… it doesn’t really work." However, as of July 2011, he has stated on his Twitter account that the album was still in the works, but was "vying for pole-position" as he works on other projects.^[53] He has expressed possible plans to begin a series of online videos, a series titled ZTV, instead, in which a Ziltoid hand puppet conducts interviews with various bands.^[54] A graphic novel based on the Ziltoid character, and possibly performing the Ziltoid album as a staged musical, at least as a one-off, have also been considered.^[55]

Townsend has stated on his Twitter that he is working on a new album, entitled Epicloud. He described the album as "Big, heavy, romantic kind of melodic stuff. Pretty, ethereal and simple."^[56] Anneke Van Giersbergen will take part in the album. Townsend also announced on his Facebook that the album would be released under The Devin Townsend Project name. Townsend recently played bass on the debut Bent Sea album Noistalgia. He also produced the record.^[57]

As part of Australia's Soundwave Festival Devin announced on Soundwave TV that he will begin recording Epicloud in Perth Australia after the festival.^[58][59]

Musical style[link]

Projects[link]

Townsend (right) performing with Strapping Young Lad in Bologna, Italy (2006).

Townsend designed his two main projects, the aggressive Strapping Young Lad and his more melodic solo material, as counterparts.^[60] Strapping Young Lad's music was a diverse mix of extreme metal genres; death metal, thrash metal, black metal^[61] and industrial metal. Townsend's solo material blends many genres and influences,^[62] with elements of atmospheric ambient music,^[63] hard rock and progressive rock,^[16] along with pop metal and arena rock.^[62] Despite Strapping Young Lad's greater mainstream acceptance, Townsend identifies more with his solo material, and has never intended Strapping Young Lad to be the focus of his music.^[64]

Production style[link]

As a self-proclaimed "fan of multitracking",^[34] Townsend has developed a trademark production style featuring an atmospheric, layered "wall of sound".^[39] Townsend has drawn critical praise for his productions, which "are always marked by a sense of adventure, intrigue, chaotic atmospherics and overall aural pyrotechnics", according to Mike G. of Metal Maniacs.^[16] Townsend mainly uses Pro Tools to produce his music, alongside other software suites such as Steinberg Cubase, Ableton Live, and Logic Pro.^[34] Townsend's musical ideas and production style have drawn comparisons to Phil Spector^[39] and Frank Zappa.^[65] Townsend has carried out the mixing and mastering for most of his solo work himself. He has also mixed and remixed work for other artists such as Rammstein, August Burns Red and Misery Signals.

Playing style[link]

Townsend mainly uses Open C tuning for both six and seven string guitar. He now also uses Open B tuning and Open B flat tuning (Open C tuning tuned a half and a whole step down respectively) on his six string guitars. Townsend's technique varies from fingerpicking, power chords and polychords to sweep-picked arpeggios and tapping techniques. He is also known for his heavy use of reverb and delay effects. He has expressed that he has no taste for shred guitar, saying that "Musically it doesn't do anything for me" and that he only solos when he thinks that he can within the context of the song.^[66] Townsend himself has stated, "Yeah it's played on the...Fourth fret, E string, Eighth fret, A string...", and has remarked, "I have no idea what notes they are, I have people who do that".^{[citation needed]}

Townsend used ESP guitars from 1994 to 2009, when he switched to Peavey guitars. In 2011, Peavey introduced a Devin Townsend signature 7-string baritone guitar with an EMG 81-7 in the bridge position and a 7-string EMG SA in the neck position. Townsend is also known for his usage of the Fractal Audio AxeFX system.

Influences[link]

Townsend draws influence from a wide range of music genres, most prominently heavy metal. Townsend has cited, among others, Judas Priest, W.A.S.P., Frank Zappa, Broadway musicals, Abba, new age music, Zoviet France, King's X, Morbid Angel, Barkmarket, Grotus, Jane's Addiction, Metallica, Cop Shoot Cop and Fear Factory as his influences,^[67] and has also expressed his admiration for Meshuggah on several occasions, calling them "the best metal band on the planet".^[68] City was influenced by bands such as Foetus and Cop Shoot Cop,^[11] and The New Black's influences were Meshuggah, and "more traditional metal" like Metallica.^[22] He is also influenced by classical composers such as Igor Stravinsky.^{[citation needed]}

Discography[link]

Townsend has released fourteen solo studio albums and five studio albums with Strapping Young Lad. He has also released numerous EPs, live albums, compilation albums, and collaborations under a variety of monikers, and has produced several albums for other artists.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Devin Townsend

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Devin Townsend

• HevyDevy Records
• Devin Townsend on Myspace
• Devin Townsend at Allmusic
• Strapping Young Lad on Myspace
• Devin Townsend at YouTube