Word: instruments
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Paganini, or maybe the Jimi Hendrix, of the five-string banjo recalls the first time he heard that instrument. "I was four or five years old," says Bela Fleck. "My brother and I were on my grandparents' bed watching TV when The Beverly Hillbillies came on. The theme music started, and I had no idea it was the banjo. It was Earl Scruggs in his prime. I only remember hearing something beautiful. It called...
...light of these revelations, it seems odd that San Francisco, America's best-known earthquake center, has not taken the obvious course of compelling accordion players to register with the authorities. Instead, the board of supervisors has designated the accordion as the city's official instrument, thereby hastening the decline of San Francisco as we know it. Nothing more perverse has happened in that town since a woman collected $50,000 after claiming that a 1964 cable-car accident had transformed her into a nymphomaniac...
...Francisco is not the only epicenter of this distress. Deborah Norville, new co-anchor on the Today show and a closet accordion player, assaulted her audience with a blunt instrument rendition of the dreaded Lady of Spain. No earthquakes were reported, though the performance succeeded in further sinking the show's shaky Nielsens, while Norville's personal Richter rating slid glissando-style to C below low A, somewhere to the left of the keyboard...
What can be confirmed is that despite the frantic opposition of music lovers, the accordion gained wide notoriety, prompting such otherwise sensible composers as Sergei Prokofiev and Virgil Thomson to write for the instrument. When their work fell on deafened ears, Serg and Virg realized they had made a terrible mistake and returned to more dignified pursuits...
...their own narrowly conceived version of the truth. They find any moderating voice repugnant, contemptuous and subversive. This is both pathetic and lamentable behavior. They have expected all members to submit to their authority, and in doing so failed to recongize that the Republican Club itself is an instrument of dissent here at Harvard. As leaders in such an organization they have a special responsiblity to Republicans who normally feel beleagured on campus...