Word: musicalities
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...were friendly and the plastic was recycled. The unleashing of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam beyond the Pacific Northwest transformed Seattle into an adjective inextricably linked to the word sound, a marketable life-style packaged in flannel and devoid of shampoo. What turns a city into a seminal music scene? Minneapolis, Minnesota, the home of proto-alternative rockers like the Replacements and Husker Du, had its moment a few years ago. So did Austin, Texas, ground zero for the Butthole Surfers; and Athens, Georgia, the birthplace of R.E.M. and the B-52s. One necessary ingredient they all share...
SCIENCE Better Minds Through Music Listening to Mozart makes students smarter -- but only for 10 to 15 minutes. So argues a team of psychologists from the University of California at Irvine that published its preliminary findings in the British scientific journal Nature. Listening to relaxation tapes or sitting in silence had no effect, but the college students scored between eight and nine points higher on an IQ test after hearing a Mozart sonata. In the future the team plans, a bit tendentiously, to study whether repetitive music lacking in complexity (translation: rock) lowers test scores...
...show biz. Girlie Show -- at once a movie retrospective, a Ziegfeld revue, a living video and an R-rated takeoff on Cirque du Soleil -- opens with Smokey Robinson's Tears of a Clown and closes with Cole Porter's Be a Clown. Pierrot is your silent host; the calliope music announces that this is a three-ring circus of clowning around. And Madonna, once the Harlow harlot and now a perky harlequin, is the greatest show-off on earth...
...Vedder is a product of the thriving world of alternative rock, a musical genre that rejects the commercial values of mainstream pop. Alternative has no strict definition, but it has a feel. Its musicians reject show-biz glitz. They support progressive social causes. Many of them avoid dating groupies and models. Their music is usually guitar-driven, with experimental touches. While pop songs are often about love, alternative lyrics are usually about tougher feelings: despair, lust, confusion. Alternative rock is a reaction, especially among the twentysomething generation, to all the years of being subjected to Madonna's changing hair color...
...therein lies the controversy: alternative music is currently one of the most potent forces in the mainstream, which has triggered an identity crisis and rancorous debate among musicians and fans. If these rockers are stars now, fans ask, haven't they become everything we're against? Nothing better symbolizes the struggle for this musical genre's soul than the success of Pearl Jam, a band adored by followers but reviled by some fellow musicians as sellouts, poseurs or opportunists riding on the fame of their fellow Seattleites, Nirvana. Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain has said that bands like Pearl...