Word: 80s
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What is the sound of one Head talking? Check out David Byrne. Since leaving Talking Heads, the brainiest rock band of the '80s, to go solo, Byrne has found his muse in the unexpected: an album of Latin salsa (1989's Rei Momo) and a mystical orchestral soundscape (last year's The Forest). Now Byrne has transplanted his rock roots into fertile tropical soil. In UH-OH (Luaka Bop), / released last week, jangling electric-guitar riffs alternate with piquant Caribbean rhythms, often in the same song, while Byrne aims his quirky intelligence at sex-change operations, domestic discord and even...
Unlike the bust of the mid-'80s, which was marked by nose-diving crude-oil prices, the immediate problem this time is natural gas. Often extracted from the same formations as oil, gas accounts for 24% of the nation's energy consumption, mainly in heavy industry. Producer prices at the wellhead have been in a free fall for months, plummeting last month to $1 per 1,000 cu. ft., down 23% from a year ago. At that price, producers say they can barely turn a profit, and many who can still afford to operate are shutting their supplies...
...many respects, the current slump is an extension of the mid-'80s energy bust that saw prices plummet to $9 per bbl. Just as the region was attempting to diversify out of its energy dependence, the gulf crisis suddenly forced prices to $40 in 1990, spurring some drillers to crank up rigs again. But when the war ended, hopes were dashed just as quickly; prices slid back down, and the small trickle of investment money dried...
...trouble is that the oil and gas industry is one that many Americans have learned to love to hate. With the memory of Big Oil's vast profits in the 1970s and early '80s still fresh in their minds, consumers and lawmakers outside the oil patch have little sympathy for the industry's woes. But that could prove shortsighted at a time when U.S. reliance on foreign oil is rapidly on the rise...
Madonna too became a symbol in the '80s of a maturing feminism, at least in the eyes of flame-throwing author Camille Paglia, who considers herself a feminist. "Madonna has enabled the young women of the world to recover their sexuality and yet to remain assertive, independent beings," Paglia says. "She was able to fuse this overt and almost pornographic sexuality as a woman with this dominant, managerial aptitude. It has been an extraordinary influence on women...