Word: millers
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Still, each of the characters seems believable in Curt Miller's production. The actors do a fine job of highlighting the three-dimensional nature of these characters, who are sympathetic if not always honorable. Thurston plays the sniveling, pathetic figure of the party-giver and "sugar daddy" with a sufficient amount of groveling to make his character farcical but not iritating. Fields makes the switch to his various characters (a barman, a sergeant, Lenny) with ease and enhances the dark humor on stage...
...that? This: you can now get, on one CD, the first three records by the best American pop group of the 1980s. Get past the "new-wave" production--flat drums, brassy synths, quiet bass--and enjoy the startlingly syncopated, intricately intellectual pop craft of main guy Scott Miller, whose love of complication used to get in the way of lyrical clarity (and in the way of his collegiate love life, if you believe the lyrics he wrote) but never stopped him from writing a catchy song...
...Miller was, and is, equally capable of astonished joy ("Sleeping through Heaven"), comic enthusiasm ("The Girls Are Ready to Go," unaccountably abbreviated on the new CD's label as "TGARTG"), Elvis Costello-ish self-mockery ("Bad Year at UCLA"), and honestly painful self-reproach ("The Red Baron"). Once you stop noticing how high his voice is, you'll probably start noticing its agility: "I want to go bang on every door/And say 'Wake up, you're sleeping through heaven'" has three contrasting riffs buried in it. Your average power-pop singer would give it one at most. Far from being...
...Blaze of Glory, the longest, oldest and most dated-sounding of the three records here, covers Miller's collegiate and post-collegiate life ("Bad Year at UCLA" would have been "Bad Year at U.C. Davis," but he couldn't find a rhyme for "Davis"). Pointed Accounts of People You Know (1983) and Distortion (1984) are shorter and easier to dig, with delights to be found not only in the multiple melodies and the self-conscious wit, but in the sheer breadth of brightly muddy synth sound in, say, "Metal and Glass Exact...
...that would minimize the local impact of exports from Mexico. California lawmakers want to delay lifting the wine quota. Martin Frost of Texas is worried about flat-glass imports, and has asked for a study on how many jobs will be lost and won in his district. Republican Dan Miller is worried about the impact of Mexican produce on vegetable growers in his Florida district who specialize in the "winter tomatoes" that spruce up salads between late fall and early spring. "I've got a major tomato problem," said Miller last week. "I'd like...