Word: oddness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Depeche Mode: a name that demands satisfaction. And The Singles 81>85 can satisfy, if you listen with a bit of willpower. Generally, the early songs on 81>85 are boring and odd: deadpan lyrics against bonky day-train melodies lead to wholesome industrial marches. Depeche Mode did have some moments in their youth-tinny drum hooks after the "People are People" chorus, a lot of pleasant moaning, pipey synth pushing throughout. By the second half of 81>85, DM starts timing its airy crescendoes very well and on tracks like "Blasphemous Rumours" and "Shake the Disease" you can feel...
...featuring of these particular historical figures as stars in a musical may strike some audience members as odd-- and it would odd in a modern-day setting, withour instant-information pop-culture world whereHollywood stars are more adored than any pettyhuman interest hero. But at the turn of the lastcentury, people became celebrities for a varietyof reasons, not just because they starred inmulti-million dollar movies--the breadth and, yes,oddness of their respective accomplishments madethem famous and adored by (or at least mildlyinteresting to) the masses. Ragtime may bebased on E.L. Doctorow's 1975 work of fiction, butthe real...
...McCain to meet with me on the basis that I wanted to talk to him about why he wouldn't talk to me. The maverick McCain, if he could be lulled back into Dial-a-Quote mode, could explain the odd coalition of impeachment hawks, who want to keep the trial going in hopes they can finally land their prey, and process groupies, who want to keep the trial going largely to pass constitutional muster. He could explain that peculiar on-again, off-again relationship between Trent Lott and Orrin Hatch. He could explain Trent Lott...
...epic blunder in letting him retain the rights to the operating system Microsoft developed for IBM's PCs. Gates, who spent most of his waking hours among computers, turned as inward as the glad-handing Clinton turned outward. New acquaintances traded tales of his bad haircuts, dirty glasses and odd rocking motion. His early reluctance to give to charity--which he's recently begun to abandon--added to a perception that he lacked the Clintonian ability to feel others' pain...
...When Gates built his sprawling $60 million mansion, he had a quote from The Great Gatsby inscribed in the library: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it." It was an odd choice, and the software magnate may have missed its tragic import. In the end of the novel, Jay Gatsby does fail to grasp his dream, and success destroys him. The two Bills are already modern Gatsbys of a sort, having achieved their very different versions of the American Dream. Whether...