Word: idiom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Hooray for Antipodean rock: Sure, it may have all been done before, but these days few can keep the rock idiom alive without sounding dated. And now here’s a charm-filled album by the former frontman of New Zealand band The Verlaines, Graeme Downes. A lecturer in a rock degree program (can you imagine?: Speaking tonight, we have Professor Axl Rose, lecturing on “Teased Hair and Split Ends in Detroit Rock of the mid-1980’s: Hair today, Gone tomorrow?”), this is rock done just right, as the minute...
...Dealing in substance rather than style, "Big Mon" is more concerned with exploring the possibilities of Monroe's songs than strictly rendering them in the idiom that he invented, which may explain the shortage of instrumentals or breakneck showstoppers; there is a hoedown finale of "Big Mon" but no "Uncle Pen," "Rawhide" or "Hoppin' John." What we do get is Bruce Hornsby turning in an unexpectedly effective, moody version of "Darlin' Corey," John Fogerty lending the Creedence treatment to "Blue Moon of Kentucky," and the Dixie Chicks showing off creditable playing skills in their duet with Skaggs on "Walk Softly...
...national margins. He set out consciously never to settle issues raised by the strip and never to bring in issues from outside. He never made overt political statements through "Peanuts." He remained apart from specific social and political causes, never joining the battle of ideas. Having established an idiom and a mode that commented on modern ills such as commercialization, real estate development, generational distrust, Schulz extended the area of doubt in modern life only insofar as he made it funny to doubt. But, as the '60s intensified, as the Vietnam War failed and nothing quite worked...
...language - not simply its slang, which is as likely to be heard in Yale dorm rooms as on inner-city street corners, but its idiom, which involves combining the spoken (or screamed) word with a pastiche of musical elements drawn from previous songs and styles reassembled in new and unique combinations - is not only the preeminent musical genre of a generation, it's also a complex, ever-evolving organism that has spawned countless dialects that are constantly in conversation with one another...
...folk music, few of its early practitioners actually exploited the instrument beyond strumming chords in accompaniment. But among the few who did, Doc Watson stands as a monument of inventiveness and virtuosity. Now 77, Watson was the first to adapt the fiddle tunes at the core of the bluegrass idiom to the guitar, taking the instrument out of the background and putting it front and center, often solo, with a sparkling, rigorously precise flatpicking technique that is as fiendishly difficult as it is exciting - all the more remarkable for the fact that Watson has been blind since his youth...