Word: ballads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers and Burn!, brimming with political conscience and passion. John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic, a witchy reverie of evil and redemption. Terrence Malick's edgy elegy to heartsick heartland America, Days of Heaven, took on the resonance of some dark folk ballad. And all Sergio Leone's pop-folk epics, from A Fistful of Dollars to Once upon a Time in America, have had their mythic dimensions deepened by Morricone themes. The music and the filmmaking are reciprocal: each makes the other indelible...
Similarly, "Wrong In The Charts" uses low vocal distortion to offset some Beatle-esque harmonies, and "San Quentin, CA" muddles a country ballad with a batch of terrific grunge. The best tune here is "Loch Ness Monster," an outlandish love song directed at Scotland's most famous anachronistic ichthyosaurus, more commonly known as "Nessie...
...what will happen in this world if we have to die when we make love? AIDS is the century's evil." That lament, from a pop ballad that is sweeping west Africa, probably seems overdrawn to most Americans. Not so for Josephine Najingo, a 28-year-old mother of five who lives in the dusty Ugandan trading center of Kyotera, near the Tanzanian border. For her, the lyrics describe a bitter reality. Josephine is dying because she had sexual intercourse with her late husband. A prosperous trader, he had contracted "slim disease," a painful wasting away of body tissues...
...indefatigable researcher as well as an arresting stylist, Hughes, born and raised in Australia, has brilliantly filled the gap. The Fatal Shore (the title comes from a typically doleful convict ballad) is more than factually comprehensive; it re-creates the emotions of history, allowing the reader to smell the gin and feel the pain, to experience that misery-filled world almost as intensely as those who lived...
...notion of a country-rock and torch-ballad singer fronting an electronic avant-garde ensemble may seem fairly far out, but it appeared to be a normal idea to Composer Philip Glass. Last week the minimalist music master completed a five-show, three-city tour showcasing Songs from Liquid Days, a song cycle performed by the likes of Linda Ronstadt and The Roches to lyrics by Paul Simon, David Byrne and Laurie Anderson. Anyone hoping for a Top Ten single from the extravaganza is likely to be disappointed. The songs are more symphonic than pop, Glass explains. "There's really...