Neon Jungle

Neon Jungle were a British four-piece girl group consisting of Shereen Cutkelvin, Amira McCarthy, Jessica Plummer, and Asami Zdrenka. They were best known for their second single "Braveheart", which peaked at number four on the UK Singles Chart. Their 2014 debut and only album, Welcome to the Jungle, features "Braveheart" alongside fellow top 10 single "Welcome to the Jungle", as well as the top 20 entries "Trouble" and "Louder". The group separated in 2015.

History

The group were formed by music manager David Cooper of Eye of the Storm, who began a three-month process of auditions in November 2012. Amira McCarthy and Jessica Plummer were initially scouted separately while shopping in London, while Shereen Cutkelvin and Asami Zdrenka were found via their solo YouTube videos. Cutkelvin, McCarthy, Plummer, and Zdrenka were told in February 2013 that they had made the line-up, and the same week the group began recording material in the studio.RCA Records UK signed the group by June 2013 and showcased them at a press event, although they did not have a name at the time. They chose the name Neon Jungle, which was derived from their song "Welcome to the Jungle" and to reflect that the members were "all individual and quite different". According to Plummer, "it’s like neon is bold, bright, strong individual characters and then the jungle part is the madness".

The Jungle

The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968). Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. However, most readers were more concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, based on an investigation he did for a socialist newspaper.

The book depicts working class poverty, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it, "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."

Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business. He first published the novel in serial form in 1905, in the Socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason, between February 25, 1905 and November 4, 1905. In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the newspaper. It was published as a book on February 26, 1906, by Doubleday and in a subscribers' edition.

Welcome to the Jungle

Welcome to the Jungle is a song by the American rock band Guns N' Roses, featured on their debut studio album, Appetite for Destruction (1987). It was released as the album's second single initially in the UK in September 1987 then again in October 1988 this time including the US, where it reached number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 24 on the UK Singles Chart.

On the 1987 release, the Maxi Single format was backed with a live versions of AC/DC's Whole Lotta Rosie, the bands debut single It's So Easy and Bob Dylan's Knockin' On Heaven's Door. In 2009 "Welcome to the Jungle" was named the greatest hard rock song of all time by VH1.

Background and composition

Axl Rose wrote the words while visiting a friend in Seattle. "It's a big city, but at the same time, it's still a small city compared to L.A. and the things that you're gonna learn. It seemed a lot more rural up there. I just wrote how it looked to me. If someone comes to town and they want to find something, they can find whatever they want." Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin summarises the song as "about Hollywood streets; true to life."

Jungle

A jungle is land covered with dense vegetation dominated by trees. Application of the term has varied greatly during the last several centuries. Jungles in Western literature can represent a less civilised or unruly space outside the control of civilisation: attributed to the jungle's association in colonial discourse in the British Raj. Therefore, the nearest equivalent scientific term is probably monsoon and seasonal tropical forest.

Etymology

The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala (Sanskrit: जङ्गल), meaning uncultivated land. Although the Sanskrit word refers to dry land, it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian interpretation led to its connotation as a dense "tangled thicket" while others have argued that a cognate word in Urdu did refer to forests. The term is prevalent in many languages of the Indian subcontinent, and the Iranian plateau, where it is commonly used to refer to the plant growth replacing primeval forest or to the unkempt tropical vegetation that takes over abandoned areas.

Neon

Neon is a chemical element with symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is in group 18 (noble gases) of the periodic table. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with about two-thirds the density of air. It was discovered (along with krypton and xenon) in 1898 as one of the three residual rare inert elements remaining in dry air, after nitrogen, oxygen, argon and carbon dioxide were removed. Neon was the second of these three rare gases to be discovered, and was immediately recognized as a new element from its bright red emission spectrum. The name neon is derived from the Greek word, νέον, neuter singular form of νέος [neos], meaning new. Neon is chemically inert and forms no uncharged chemical compounds.

During cosmic nucleogenesis of the elements, large amounts of neon are built up from the alpha-capture fusion process in stars. Although neon is a very common element in the universe and solar system (it is fifth in cosmic abundance after hydrogen, helium, oxygen and carbon), it is very rare on Earth. It composes about 18.2 ppm of air by volume (this is about the same as the molecular or mole fraction), and a smaller fraction in Earth's crust. The reason for neon's relative scarcity on Earth and the inner (terrestrial) planets is that neon forms no compounds to fix it to solids and is highly volatile. This led to its escaping from the planetesimals under the warmth of the newly ignited Sun in the early Solar System. Even the atmosphere of Jupiter is somewhat depleted of neon, presumably for this reason. It is also lighter than air, which has further depleted it from Earth's atmosphere.