The Bobs

The Bobs are an a cappella vocal group founded in San Francisco, California in the early 1980s. Now based in Seattle, Washington, they have been recording, and touring throughout North America and Europe ever since.

Background

Founding members Gunnar Madsen and Matthew Stull decided to form an a cappella group when they left their jobs as deliverers of singing telegrams in San Francisco. Instead of covering more traditional doo-wop songs, The Bobs started out with original arrangements of their own songs and songs like "Helter Skelter" and "Psycho Killer" . Although two of their albums are dominated by cover versions, the overwhelming majority of their repertoire is original, with songs discussing diverse subjects like lunar cattle farming, sleepy bus drivers, bumper stickers, laundry, hurricane-related flooding, graffiti, Oliver North, shopping-mall security guards, celebrity autographs, synaesthesia, post office violence, heart transplants, Heaven's Gate, spontaneous human combustion, turtles, rebellious footwear, tattoos, nicknames for genitalia, and felines intent on ruling the world.

Bob Beck

Robert E. Beck Jr. (September 2, 1944 – May 24, 2008) was a zoologist and conservationist, who worked to save Guam's indigenous native birds from 1982 to 2003. Beck championed the fight to save Guam's native birds, such as the Mariana crow, rufous fantail, Guam flycatcher, Guam kingfisher and the Guam rail, known locally as ko'ko' in Chamorro, which are under the extreme threat of extinction due to the non-native brown tree snake and habitat loss. The rufous fantail and the Guam flycatcher listed above are now extinct in the wild in their native Guam. However, the captive and wild populations of the Mariana crow, Guam rail and the Micronesian kingfisher have increased, due in large part to conservation efforts by Beck.

Early life

Bob Beck was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, on September 2, 1944. His parents were Robert E. Beck Sr. and Ruth Powles Beck. Beck graduated from Hagerstown High School in 1962. He obtained his bachelor's degree in education with a concentration in zoology from the University of Maryland. He completed his master's degree in zoology with an emphasis on genetics and population biology at the University of Maryland, the University of Rhode Island and the University of Tennessee. He started his career as a school teacher in the Montgomery County, Maryland, public school system.

Bob Graham

Daniel Robert "Bob" Graham (born November 9, 1936) is an American politician and author. He was the 38th Governor of Florida from 1979 to 1987 and a United States Senator from that state from 1987 to 2005.

Graham ran for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, but dropped out of the race on October 6, 2003. He announced his retirement from the Senate on November 3 of that year.

Graham now works at the newly established Bob Graham Center for Public Service at his undergraduate alma mater, the University of Florida. He also served as Chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD proliferation and terrorism. Through the WMD policy center he advocates for the recommendations in the Commission's report, "World at Risk."

Graham also served as co-chair of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling and a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the CIA External Advisory Board.

In 2011 Graham published his first novel, the thriller The Keys to the Kingdom. Graham has written three nonfiction books: Workdays: Finding Florida on the Job, Intelligence Matters, and America: The Owners Manual.

Bob Graham Round

The Bob Graham Round is a fell running challenge in the English Lake District. It is named after Bob Graham (1889–1966), a Keswick guest-house owner, who in June 1932 broke the Lakeland Fell record by traversing 42 fells within a 24-hour period.

The Round was first repeated, in a better time, in 1960 by Alan Heaton. Since then over 1900 individuals have completed the Round with the fastest time being 13hr 53m set by Billy Bland in 1982. The Lakeland 24 Hour record has also been improved with the current holder, Mark Hartell, successfully reaching 77 summits in the allotted time.

Along with the Paddy Buckley Round and Ramsay Round, the Bob Graham Round is one of the classic big three mountain challenges in the UK. Some thirty individuals have completed all three.

History of the round

The development of progressively lengthier and more competitive rounds of the Lakeland fells is chronicled in the Bob Graham Club's Story of the Bob Graham Round, and in the fell-walking section of M. J. B. Baddeley's Lakeland guidebook:, and most recently in Chapter 15 of Steve Chilton's It's a hill, get over it: fell running's history and characters

Beck

Beck Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970), known by the stage name Beck, is an American singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his lo-fi, sonically experimental style, and he became well known for creating musical collages of a wide range of styles. His later recordings encompass folk, funk, soul, hip hop, alternative rock, country and psychedelia. He has released 12 studio albums, as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music.

Born in Los Angeles in 1970, Beck discovered hip hop and folk music in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and clubs. He moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the city's small but intense anti-folk movement. After returning to his hometown in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single "Loser", which became a worldwide hit in 1994. His 1996 album Odelay produced hit singles, topped critic polls and won several awards. He released the stripped-down Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The downcast, acoustic Sea Change (2002) showcased a more serious Beck, and 2005's Guero returned to sample-based production. The Information (2006) was inspired by electro-funk and hip hop, and Modern Guilt (2008), likewise, by 1960s music. In February 2014, Beck released the album Morning Phase. It won Album of the Year at the 57th Grammy Awards on February 8, 2015.