Word: nasality
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Blistering day. The air is brown. Your nose doesn't work (And why don't the TV weather people issue a nasal caution, times like this?). Dodge a kamikaze bicycle messenger and step under the marquee. On the left, in a glass display case -- the Wall of Fame -- are the shoes of the famous hoofers who have cut a rug here. Betty Grable. Ruby Keeler. Anthony Quinn. Eleanor Powell. George Raft (tiny feet). Gregory Hines (boats). The cashier is on the right. The tariff is eight bucks. The ticket taker says sure, he'll get the manager. Call...
Whenever these diversionary tales threaten to get interesting, the She-rat interrupts with further animadversions against Homo sapiens. The narrator complains, "Her talk, that nasal piping, grumbling, muttering, went on and on." Indeed it does, drowning everything, including patience, in a sea of recrimination and invective. The preachiness of The Rat ultimately grows fatiguing and self-negating. If the human race is truly as pigheaded and suicidal as it is portrayed here, then such a book will only add to the "garbage mountain" from which the She-rat speaks her eulogy...
That ability to turn old into new is the secret of Feinstein's appeal. His baritone voice is pleasant, if unmemorable, a little nasal when he reaches for high notes. But he has an unexampled way with old lyrics: he not only understands them but makes them sound as if they were being sung for the first time. "Some singers get in the way of the song," he says. "I never want to be more important than what I'm singing. I'm simply the instrument through which that song is sung...
...YEAR is 1986. God is holding Oral Roberts for ransome. Unless God receives $8 million in unmarked bills in a plain brown paper bag with no coppers and no funny stuff, He swears to strike Oral Roberts down and legally change the names of Roberts` children to Aural, Nasal, and Anal. It is clear that God the terrorist has to be stopped. If not He might start hijacking airplanes...
...although some of the songs are lively and short enough so that they don't have to. "Unlucky in Love," for example, doesn't say much of anything, but its sonic-boom noise and punk/polka rhythm make it great fun. Otherwise, the new Rank and File's hybrid of nasal vocals and buzzsaw guitars sound like uniform drone. Rank and File may catapult the band to MTV stardom (and Rhino Records out from the novelty and oldies bins in record stores), but such success will come at the expense of the band's more interesting elements...