Word: popped
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...days, rumors have circulated that Michael Jackson was startin' somethin'. And Thursday afternoon, before a couple of thousand screaming fans at London's 02 arena, the King of Pop revealed what has been referred to as "the worst kept secret in the world" - namely, a 10-concert residency beginning July 8 - his first slate of shows in 12 years...
...ready to indulge the fans of Kevin, 21, Joe, 19, and Nick, 16 - I've now learned the Jonases' names and ages - because I can recall another pop band that had a little impact. Back in 1964, the Beatles made the same four-media triumph in the U.S.: on records, on The Ed Sullivan Show, with their film A Hard Day's Night and on an American concert tour. When I caught them, in Philadelphia's Town Hall (honest, I was an infant back then), they could have been a mime troupe, so helpless was their music against the sonic...
...city streets - and of the stars taking their fame with sensible aplomb, as if clarity comes only in the eye of the media hurricane. At one point watching clips of the Beatles and other teen idols on Sullivan, the Jonases are presented as people schooled in the history of pop-mania, its skyrocketing and fizzling. Their mission is to enjoy and survive...
...That's a dividing line between old and modern pop-music culture. The Beatles were just about the last gigantic group that was pre-sexual. The guys stood still, played and sang; their girl-fans screamed in veneration, not in venery. The Rolling Stones changed that. From then on and forever, the public playing of rock 'n' roll was a physical activity, and the focus was on the lead singer's sex appeal. By now that tradition is so dominant that it may not even be sexual; it's simply the language of pop performance...
...Born before the first commercial radio stations went on the air, Harvey fashioned a personality and career that spanned the medium's Golden Age, its postwar retreat into a pop jukebox and its later resurgence as the place for news and talk - exactly what Harvey did for more than 75 years. He spoke with clarion clarity, his voice an elocution teacher's pride, easily parodied but intimate, powerful and oh-so-precise. It was "nee-ews," never the lazy "nooze," and "reck-ord," not "reckerd." For emphasis, he'd add a vowel to a word with abutting consonants...