Word: lives
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Nurtured by a growing number of live venues, ever decreasing barriers to recording and a broadening disenchantment with Cantopop - the city's dominant music form to date - Hong Kong's independent-music scene has suddenly become crowded. As you would expect, a great number of the bands that comprise it are vehicles for the subpar songwriting and cack-handed guitar playing of solemn undergraduates, chubby expats and the sort of people that have fabulous haircuts but dreadful day jobs. But a handful of ensembles are worth crossing the street to see. And a very few - perhaps no more than...
...They are an extremely likable band. Live shows are swaying, drunken, multiracial carousals of mutual infatuation between audience and musicians. Lead singer Jan Curious has a litheness and thinness of girth that would make a Rolling Stone proud. The English-language songs are delirious paeans to fast cars ("Tell Her"), fast girls ("Caroline") and fast times ("Something Special"). And how is it possible to not be won over by a group that declares its chief influence to be "every song we've ever heard"? (See Asia's best bands...
...This brilliance is not quite captured in their debut album, The King Lost His Pink, which was evidently recorded in haste (for some excruciating moments the live favorite "Head to Toe" is actually out of tune) and without the benefit of a seasoned producer. Chochukmo's fan base will cut them slack - such is the band's fey, disheveled charm - but a less breathless follow-up is plainly needed. So while The King Lost His Pink incurs no loss of potential, the hard part has yet to come...
...first race, his character doesn't know what to do when the pistol sounds, so he prays. "You idiot! Run!" the starter screams. That spurs the soldier into action, and the naive confusion on his face turns into determination. Extras from the Bengal Sappers - actual young army recruits who live on the base in Roorkee in northern Uttarakhand state, where the movie is being filmed - crowd around the sidelines as he lowers his head and takes...
Perhaps if the good people of Massachusetts had to live in my state, they would not have been so eager to derail President's Obama's health care reform. I live in an area of California where 36.3% of the people lack health insurance and more than 17% are unemployed. Our emergency rooms are jammed with nonpaying customers. I am white, middle class and highly educated and can barely pay for insurance. The state and local safety nets are in tatters. Think about us next time you vote...