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Word: gimmicking (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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Some band’s musical identities are entirely bound up in a single, sometimes peripheral, instrument, sound or refrain. This is, in parlance, the gimmick. The gimmick defines the band, makes it unique, is its lifeblood—without the gimmick, the band cannot musically subsist in any recognizable form. Familiar gimmicks include (or, better, should include) Jethro Tull’s flute, Jimi Hendrix’s Arbiter Fuzz Face, The Police’s delay pedal and Peter Frampton’s Talkbox—all part and parcel with their performers’ legacy...

Author: By D. ROBERT Okada and Z. SAMUEL Podolsky, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERSS | Title: Out of Mind, Out of Sight | 10/12/2001 | See Source »

...tracks, but it remains their most distinctive feature, and the cornerstone of their unique no-depression, “alt-country” timbre. And when multi-instrumentalist/technician Jay Bennet (i.e. the banjo guy) left Wilco earlier this year, so too did the all-defining Wilco gimmick. Bennet left behind a deflated effigy of a band, an artifact which in its present incarnation is almost unrecognizable (save Jeff Tweedy’s unmistakably textured vocals). In a sense, the whole quiditas of Wilco, at least the Wilco of 1996’s epic double album Being There, was lost...

Author: By D. ROBERT Okada and Z. SAMUEL Podolsky, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERSS | Title: Out of Mind, Out of Sight | 10/12/2001 | See Source »

...flip side, the number of times that I’ve heard the description, “the band that will save rock and roll” from record companies and magazines in the past year is quickly approaching infinity, and translates into a hollow gimmick to sell more records—platitudes are often the worst kind of compliment. But to reinforce the pre-existing hype, nostalgia has been hanging oppressively in air for a band whose musical roots include punk and brit-pop. Such a noble rock lineage evokes memories of music’s halcyon days where...

Author: By Daniel J. Cantagallo, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER | Title: Strokes of Genius? | 10/5/2001 | See Source »

Most prominently, three of the fall's highest-profile new series--CBS's The Agency, ABC's Alias and Fox's 24--are about CIA agents, and they'll be hard pressed to avoid opening wounds while staying plausible. A month ago, the talk about 24 was its gimmick of taking one season to show one day's events. Now it's about a too-close-for-comfort scene in the pilot, in which an assassin (out to kill a presidential candidate) blows up an airplane in flight. The explosion will be cut, but, says co-creator Robert Cochran...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: What's Entertainment Now? | 10/1/2001 | See Source »

...Hash Pipe” video as a straightforward expression of a song about a teenage transsexual prostitute. Not only was “Hash Pipe,” or, as they call it on puritanical M-bleep-bleep, “H*** Pipe,” the gimmickiest gimmick that ever gimmicked, now they’ve shot an alternative video for “Island in the Sun,” laden with Jonze love. Production, of course, was without bassist Mikey Welsh. And speaking of music celebrity nervous breakdowns?...

Author: By Thalia S. Field and Michelle Kung, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS | Title: SEEN + HEARD | 9/14/2001 | See Source »

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