Word: falsetto
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...fact that Connie, the vocalist, who is also a girl, had the shortest hair of all, became the subject of nary a wry comment. Perceptive listeners also noted that she sang bass during the harmony while the males took over the higher octaves in falsetto. Rhythm guitar was played by a giant of a man with an Apostle's beard, hollow eyes, and a swollen voice. His guitar, slung low and hanging horizontal at fly level gave soul to his songs...
...plead for a tacit agreement with their audience: what is to be viewed is beneath contempt, therefore it is beyond criticism. Disarmed, audiences are presumably free to enjoy the movie in the same way they appreciate the sheer ghastliness of Mrs. Miller's wobbly warbling or the fruity falsetto of Tiny Tim. Two current examples come from...
Giggling, he takes the uke from its old cardigan wrapper. Plink-a-plank-aplink. His thin, reedy tones soar into an unearthly falsetto, the vibrato voice quavering like a hummingbird's wings: "Come tiptoe through the tulips with me . . ." In the audience, as at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium last week, his listeners are rapt, incredulous, amused-everything but indifferent...
Half a Bottle a Day. On the surface, Smith seems a cheery soul. From his burly, 6-ft., 205-lb. body, conservatively clad figure, pipes a merry, falsetto voice and a wealth of breezy wit. He is an incorrigible flirt-but friends who know him best compare him to St. Anthony and Martin Buber, calling him a kind of tormented saint. Says one of them, the painter Robert Motherwell: "Like myself and Jackson Pollock, he's a Celt. That partly explains his lyricism, his love of talk and drink -and his sense of being a minority...
...chorus of Beatles is sympathizing with the troubled solo voice, coming in with a soupy "oooo" that sounds a little mocking. At its best the irony is both cutting and touching, as in "She's Leaving Home," where the Beatles mock the uncomprehending parents by singing their parts in falsetto and by underscoring their grief with a treacly, melodramatic cello lament. Yet, like most of these songs, this one mixes deep pathos with edgy comedy. A good deal of the musical tension and emotional excitement of the record comes from the way the Beatles assault their own simple, vulnerable tunes...