Word: livings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...expert in the use of unwarranted assumptions comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question of Hume not by baffling the grader or fencing with him but like this: "It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we first note the progress of that age on all intellectual fronts. After all, Hume did not live in a vacuum...
...Accidents Will Happen" in particular carry on the tradition. But all over the new album there are signs of his evolution towards more versatile music-making. He's always had a touch of the middle-of-the-road about him--he recorded a Burt Bacharach number on a live anthology last year. "What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding," a Nick Lowe song which Costello belts out on Armed Forces, brilliantly parodies good-hearted, wide-eyed lyrics with a seductive pop melody...
...personalities of the two men dovetail: Al is profane, athletic, gregarious; Birdy is decorous, wispy and fixated on a world that is real but more acutely visible to him than others. "One hundred billion birds," he muses, "fifty for every man alive and nobody seems to notice. We live in the slime of an immensity and no one objects. What must our enslavement seem to the birds in the magnitude of their environment...
Unfortunately, these promotional details are the most interesting things about this epic live recording. Columbia has packaged these records as an event, a happening of lasting musical significance, but the music represented here does not justify their extravagance. Chick Corea and company pulled out all the stops for their Spring 1977 tour of North America--they even carted along a full brass section and a concert grand piano--and their Boston appearance was sensational. But as so often happens, this performance lost much of its magic in the translation to vinyl...
...means minutes--yes, minutes--of applause on these records. Return to Forever was a tenpiece outfit on this gig, and on record the individual band members are introduced, with applause, often with testimonials of delight, not once but again and again. All this non-music presumably reinforces the spontaneous, "live" element of the performance--but the decision to include it in this finished product is puzzling, since the concert was marred by an especially rude and uncooperative audience. Unaccompanied solos are punctuated with cries of "Boogie!" and "Get down;" the performers were repeatedly forced to wait for the audience...