Leslie Edward "Les" Claypool (born September 29, 1963) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, composer, author and actor best known as the bassist and lead vocalist of the band Primus. Claypool's playing style on the electric bass mixes tapping, flamenco-like strumming, whammy bar bends, and slapping.

Claypool has also self-produced and engineered his solo releases from his own studio, "Rancho Relaxo". 2006 saw the release of a full-length feature film Electric Apricot written and directed by Claypool as well as a debut novel South of the Pumphouse.

Biography

Early years

Claypool was born September 29, 1963 in Richmond, California, but was raised in El Sobrante, California in a working-class family with a history of working as auto mechanics. He remarked: "I could've been a guitar player, but back then everybody wanted to be a guitar player, because everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen. I knew that if I got a bass, I could at least get a gig." Claypool therefore decided to become a bass player, taking it up at the age of fourteen. His early education included Collins Elementary School and De Anza High School, where he was a personal friend of Kirk Hammett of Metallica.

Running the gauntlet or gantlet is a form of physical punishment where a captive is forced to run between two rows, a gauntlet, of soldiers who repeatedly strike him.

Etymology and spelling

The word originates from Swedish: gatlopp, from gata "lane" and lopp "course, running". It was borrowed into English in the 17th century, probably from English and Swedish soldiers fighting in the Protestant armies during the Thirty Years' War. The word in English was originally spelled gantelope or gantlope, but soon its pronunciation was influenced by the unrelated word gauntlet meaning an armored glove, which is from French: gantelet. The spelling changed with the pronunciation. Both senses of gauntlet had the variant spelling gantlet. The spelling gantlet is preferred for the punishment in American English usage guides by Bryan Garner and Robert Hartwell Fiske. American dictionaries list gantlet as a variant spelling of gauntlet, while British dictionaries additionally label it American.

The Cleveland metropolitan area, or Greater Cleveland as it is more commonly known, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, United States. According to the 2010 Census, the five-county Cleveland-Elyria Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) consists of Cuyahoga County, Geauga County, Lake County, Lorain County, and Medina County, and has a population of 2,077,240. The 2010 Census ranked Greater Cleveland as the 29th most populous metropolitan area in the United States and largest metro entirely in Ohio.

Northeast Ohio refers to a similar but substantially larger area. This article covers the area generally considered to be Greater Cleveland, but includes some information generally applicable to the larger region, which is itself part of what is known historically as the Connecticut Western Reserve.

Combined Statistical Area

The larger Cleveland-Akron-Canton Combined Statistical Area is the 15th-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States, and includes the above counties plus Ashtabula County, Carroll County, Erie County, Huron County, Portage County, Stark County, Summit County, and Tuscarawas County, with a population of 3,515,646.

The Naked Brothers Band is an American musical comedy series created by Polly Draper. The show depicts the daily lives of Draper's sons, who lead a fictional world-renowned rock band from New York City. As a mockumentary, the storyline is a hyperbole of their real lives, and the fictional presence of a camera is often acknowledged. Lead vocals and instrumentation are contributed by the siblings; they wrote the lyrics themselves. The show stars Nat Wolff and Alex Wolff, who encounter conflicts with each other that are later omitted. Nat's fictional female admirer and real life preschool friends—including the guitarist who had no prior acquaintance with the family—feature as the band members, with the siblings' genuine father and Draper's husband as their accordion-playing dad and Draper's niece as the group's babysitter.

The series is a spin-off of Draper's 2005 film of the same name that was picked up by Nickelodeon, premiering in January 2007. Draper, star of Thirtysomething and her writings The Tic Code and Getting Into Heaven, is the executive producer of the series, and often writer and director. Albie Hecht, former Nickelodeon president and founder of Spike TV, is the executive producer, under his Worldwide Biggies tag. Draper's jazz musician husband Michael Wolff serves as the music supervisor and co-executive producer with Draper's brother, Tim, as the consulting producer.

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, within Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area and Liberty County. The population was 7,954 at the 2010 census.

History

In 1854, a church and convent was built by Father Peter La Cour near the town's present site.

The town began forming in 1878 when Charles Lander Cleveland, a local judge, donated 63.6 acres (257,000 m²) of land to the Houston East & West Texas Railway (now part of the Union Pacific Railroad) for use as a stop, requesting that the town be named for him. Since 1900 Cleveland has served as the junction of this line and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe (now the BNSF Railway). The town was not incorporated until 1935.

The forests around Cleveland, including Sam Houston National Forest, which is located just to its north, are a resort for many inhabitants of the Houston area, who come to camp, hike, hunt, and fish. Cleveland has several historic sites and public recreational facilities, including two parks. The Austin Memorial Library Center offers a wide range of services to the community, and the Texan Theater and the annual livestock show and rodeo, Dairy Days, provide entertainment. Commercially, Cleveland has been a shipping point for timber, lumber, and lumber byproducts since the 1870s. A large medical community, oil, gas, cattle, farm products, and sand and gravel are important to the town's economy. The general trend toward urbanization of the entire area is reflected by the fact that in 1965 Liberty County was added to the Houston Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population of Cleveland grew from 1,200 in 1930 to 7,605 according to the census of 2000.