Word: ballads
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When García Lorca wrote The Ballad of the Spanish Civil Guard in 1924, twelve years before he was murdered by Franco sympathizers at the beginning of the Civil War, the paramilitary Guardia Civil was already a widely feared institution in Spain. Since its formation in 1844 during the Bourbon monarchy, the corps had been the efficient internal security force of the central government in Madrid. Under Franco, it became part of the dictatorship's apparatus of repression. For many Spaniards, the gray-green uniform and the black patent-leather cap remain symbols of reaction and oppression. Thus...
...worked on several films (including The Charge of the Light Brigade), I'll take his word for it. Thus the best moment in Act Two is a poignant intermezzo where on a darkened stage, the makeup girl swabs blood off fallen extras to the strains of a soldier's ballad. If there's anything funny about this, it is the cynical vision of a survivor who sees it all as a black farce. As Wood writes in the program notes, "there is something that is proof against courage, against planning, against tradition. It is, I suppose, simple 'cussedness...
...over 30 hit singles, including 1978's You Don't Bring Me Flowers, a duet with Barbra Streisand. Diamond loyalists right now are making their boy's latest efforts two of the year's hottest records. Love on the Rocks, a typically canny Diamond ballad, is currently No. 2 on the charts, while the album it comes from, The Jazz Singer, is fifth among the top LPs. Gratifying as this may be, at least one question remains: How come all the people who are buying The Jazz Singer are going in only modest numbers...
...with I'm the Man, the songs on Beat Crazy form an almost unbroken whole; a tune hardly has the chance to fade before another sneaks in. He perfects his delivery on "One to One". The ballad begins with a single organ chord, grows into a piano piece on loss of individuality, and recedes to its original chord. Thus, without breaking his train of musical thought, Jackson draws us into his musical continuum...
...commercialization, rock and roll slunk away from the topic of war. America's popular music forgot about Vietnam long before the last helicopters left, and by the mid-'70s war appeared on disc only as tongue-in-cheek posing--the Ramones sang "Blitzkrieg Bop" in 1976--or historical ballad--Al Stewart's "Roads to Moscow...