Word: backgrounding
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...eleven months since her disappearance. I've learned a lot about John--who much as a person could without normally meeting her. I know about her undergraduates background (Syracuse University), What kind of friends she liked (outgoing athletic), how she enjoyed spending most evenings (at the theatre), what kind of records she listened to (James Taylor, Janis Joplin...
...ALBUM'S COVER-- a line drawing of Jackson at a grand piano, with a dark New York skyline in the background--tells much of the story. Jackson wrote and produced the album in New York, following a tradition of British fascination with the city shared by the likes of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The effect of this extended stop in New York's is evident in vivid songs about paranoid street walkers, sexual deviants and smiling snipers...
...Jackson does temper his sometimes morbid accounts ("Someone could smile at me then/shake my hand then gun me down") with sprinkled humorous comments, often in background harmonies or spoken asides. He does this most effectively in "T.V. Age," a Talking Heads-style song about modern-day peoploids living their lives in front of the tube. Jackson cries...
...lesson lasted. Says Woodruff: "As with most competitive pursuits, nice reporters tend to finish last." Woodruff has also learned from her husband Albert Hunt, the Wall Street Journal's highly respected congressional reporter, though he and she hardly have an open-notebook policy. Last year Hunt hoarded background information he gleaned from Budget Director David Stockman, while Woodruff tried vainly for days to get Stockman to return her phone calls. Says she: "People assume that we share everything. But sources are a reporter's most valuable possession...
...idyllic Hawaiian background makes the Shields family's troubles all the more startling. Mynah birds scold in the trees; the children live in the Big House; their father is rich and respected; their mother is beautiful and indulged. Anna appears at one dance wearing a cape made from thousands of gardenias. Her children know that she is somewhat different and worship her for it: "She is not the kind who bandages cuts, Lily thought. She is not like other mothers, who make grocery lists and wear undergarments. Other mothers do not forget that you go back to school...