Word: boleros
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...Montgomery, jazz guitar greats have recorded pop and soul tunes, often in search of crossover success. Inevitably the results are ugly, as with Grant Green, and sometimes they are disastrous, as with George Benson. The latest releases of two young guitar virtuosos catch this fate, Stanley Jordan's new Bolero, and Mark Whitfield's '93 self-titled release. Both musicians began their recording careers with very impressive debuts that drew strong commercial responses as well as critical raves. Yet they share a disturbing tendency not to pursue their music in the directions that best suit their abilities...
Looking rather haute lounge act in black ribbed velour leggings, suede boots and a bolero jacket, Davis is of course nothing at all like either of the demure, well-behaved Nixon girls. Her days as a drug-using dater of '70s rock personalities are detailed in her autobiography, The Way I See It, a book that also devotes a good deal of print to depicting Nancy as a violent harridan...
...different women. Masayuki Mori as the husband is excellent; his serpent-like look of contempt is unforgettable. Takashi Shimura as the woodcutter is the quiet core of strength and humanity in the film, almost the movie's moral center. The music, which was written to resemble Maurice Ravel's "Bolero," is notoriously distracting, but this is an unfortunate cultural accident. At the time the movie was made, the Ravel piece was unknown in Japan and so Kurosawa was being innovative, unaware of the parodic status to which the music had descended in the West...
...much like "Personal Jesus." I guess one can only write so much about "darkness," "religion" and "forbidden love" before they become repetitive. Perhaps for a couple of albums, those themes can be cutting edge and cool, but by the tenth album, they get more redundant than Maurice Ravel's "Bolero...
Composers have long recognized the hypnotic impact of repeated melody: the grinding pathos of the Albinoni Adagio; the inexorable drive of Ravel's Bolero; the serene radiance of Gandhi's final aria in Glass's Satyagraha. None of these pieces, however, approach in length or cumulative impact a new work by British composer Gavin Bryars, Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which is at once an apotheosis of minimalist technique and a moving affirmation of the power of simple song...