Word: odd
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...correctly take their tunefulness for granted--the effort goes into making the songs messy: writing clever-odd lyrics, playing with AM radio-quality sound, or with cheap, half-broken microphones--anything that will throw their "pop" talents into sharper relief. "Marchers in Orange," on this new record, lasts about a minute and has no guitars, just an accordion and a bass: the vocal melody does all the work. "Gleaner (The Deeds of Fertile Jim)" uses a deadpan strum not unlike the one perfected by college-radio heroes Sebadoh (whose "Brand New Love" the knowing lyrics quote). "Exit Flagger" rides...
...pure? no sex appeal? no weird hats?); these people included one major record label, who scrapped Keene's contract only days after his last album came out, in 1988. Now he's back in the business, kicking around the independent music scene: The Real Underground collects 20-odd tracks from the start of his career (which dates back to about 1980, just like REM's) and adds a handful of new songs. The new stuff is fine; some of it's also funny (like a cover of the Who's "Tattoo"), making me wonder what direction Keene's forthcoming album...
...Thursday Clinton met in the morning with congressional leaders, who engaged him in spirited but mostly constructive debate. The most common complaint was that the U.S. had no vital interests in Somalia; Clinton replied, in an odd echo of the kind of arguments he might surely have rejected as a Vietnam War protester, that the vital interest at stake was the credibility of American power: the U.S. could not just cut and run. Leaving the meeting, some lawmakers gave reporters the idea that Clinton would delay his projected speech to the nation -- which prompted the White House to hurry...
...fact that Russian instability -- or Somali anarchy or Bosnian carnage -- keeps ringing at odd hours, and often on weekends, shows that turmoil has no respect for civilized comfort. More fundamentally, the alarms amount to further proof that the world is far from being a tidier place without Soviet- American antagonism to kick it around. If the Kremlin no longer helps to orchestrate conflicts in remote countries, it presides over a veritable Mongolian hot pot of disorder at home. At the same time, impoverished lands like Somalia, with a scant sense of nationhood, remain just as prey to pandemonium as they...
...water -- a far cry from previous years, when you could count on 5,000 former and current flyers to show up. Active-duty personnel stayed away because an ominous Pacific Fleet edict had warned that no officer could attend in uniform or join in public discussions, and the 20-odd young pilots who did appear were far outnumbered by the media and seemed as fearful as they were disconsolate. What was there to do? "Listen to a bunch of old geezers talk about the times when planes were wood and men were steel," according to a pilot...