Word: harping
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Robbie Robertson, the group's lead guitarist, is not only one of the best lyricists in rock, he is far and away the greatest storyteller. In Daniel and the Sacred Harp, he spins an almost biblical allegory about a boy named Daniel who covets a sacred harp, arranges to obtain it by means devious and mysterious, and when it finally comes into his possession, finds that he has "won the harp" but "lost in sin." His fate is proved to him when "he looked to the ground" and "noticed no shadow did he cast." Robbie also turns his hand...
...Plot. Ostensibly the last of the 19 LPs turned out by the Beatles in the extraordinary six years of their fame, Let It Be is also one of their worst. The Long Winding Road, for example, with Spector's broad-brushed addition of strings, harp and choir, is outright embarrassing. Most of the takes were recorded in early 1969 during the shooting of a Beatles film happening, also called Let It Be. While the film (to be released this week in the U.S.) has no plot, its basic theme appears to be "a day in the recording life...
...beginning, there was total darkness. Then charts blinked blindingly on and off five screens as an electronic-music sound track filled the New York Hilton ballroom with Tarzanlike cries, boos and whistles. Next, harp music played while the screens flashed images of the sybaritic life-money, an island sunset, girls. Finally, a slender, gold-shirted young man with flowing sideburns mounted the podium. To belt out a rock paean to hedonism? No, to denounce the Securities and Exchange Commission for not sufficiently analyzing the economic impact of its regulatory decisions...
Stylistically, The Band is Country and Western rock, with mandolin, jew's harp, and some very funky ragtime piano to hint at the down home atmosphere, while drums, organ, and electric guitar give the music a drive which CandW does not possess. The album is technically sound and it is the kind of music you can hum in your mind when you're falling asleep in lecture. Each cut is very professionally arranged and performed to project the atmosphere which the Lyrics describe. As a unit then, the Band works. But judged according to standards set by people like Cream...
...Based On" and "Freely Adapted From," Broadway goes on musically robbing Peter to pay Paul. Alice will take Lewis Carroll's little girl on a drug trip. Cherry sets William Inge's Bus Stop to music, and Yellow Drum, based on Truman Capote's The Grass Harp, reiterates Broadway's faith that a weak play sounds better set to music. Robert Shaw will star in the hymnbook version of Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis' novel about a corrupt evangelist. Fellini's film La Strada is being unspooled, as is All About Eve (stage title: Applause...