Word: jammed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...maybe that's not always a good idea. This year R.E.M., Pearl Jam and Nirvana, three of the genre's biggest and most critically acclaimed bands, all released new albums with comparatively little fanfare--and all three albums sold poorly, relative to the huge hits these groups have scored in the past. The chart slippage of these and other megagroups, coupled with the sad state of the industry in general, has set music executives abuzz--about the declining aesthetics of alternative rock, about what the next Next Big Thing will be, and especially about the tenuous status of their jobs...
...other hand, some musicians have nothing but their own bad luck, or bad attitudes, to blame for their commercial missteps. Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and Nirvana did not mount much of a publicity campaign or tour to support their new albums because, in the case of Pearl Jam, the band has become too haughty to do interviews and is involved in a long-running feud with Ticketmaster; in the case of R.E.M., the band was plagued with health-related problems and decided to skip a major tour; and in the case of Nirvana, the record--a live album--was released...
...there is also the matter of getting value for your entertainment dollar. Rated this way, books usually do much better than movies. You can get weeks of pleasure from The Pickwick Papers for the cost of a ticket to Space Jam. At $26, though, Airframe is a pretty expensive movie on paper. Why not wait for the real thing...
...Core classes and scamper right up to the front of the room. As if impelled by something deep inside, they belt out the first few bars of some vaguely familiar song. Then one of them steps out from the group to identify the ensemble and invite you to its "jam." Finally, they rattle off a few more notes and disappear as quickly as they arrived...
...some explanation to the peculiar phenomenon, some understanding of what makes a cappella tick. Eventually I found out about the complexity of scripting an a cappella performance, the countless hours spent on things like choreography and "patter." I found out about the dual role of the annual Freshman Jam as both an initiation of a new audience and a way for all the groups to advertise themselves in front of prospective singers. But these things didn't interest me nearly as much as something no one was particularly interested in talking about: The A Cappella Council...