Word: ragged
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...surprisingly, Tigrett sees the situation differently. "The black community turned its back on the blues," he says. "Black intellectuals said, 'Blues, man, that's some rag-tag man singing on a front porch. That's poor self-image, singing in broken English.' And from 1963 to 1973 the black community abandoned the blues. The audience became white, and that was a tragedy." These are claims black and white blues lovers might question. But in an effort to show goodwill, Tigrett is trying to broaden the audience for the music he loves. HOB provides high-school seniors with college scholarships...
...waxing wrothful on Beatlemania ("They used us as an excuse to go mad, the world did, and then they blamed it on us"). Paul sounds earnest and superficial, like a Tory spokesman, and Ringo is still the ideal, unflappable pub mate. Even the grating last years, when Paul would rag George about his guitar playing, or sneak in to redub Ringo's drum parts, are events to look back on in sorrow, not anger. From the grave, Lennon has to give perspective to the breakup: "It was a slow death...
...guess that few families gather round the piano to sing of the invasions of Grenada and Panama. Vietnam is pretty much an angry face-off between Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler (The Ballad of the Green Berets) and Country Joe & the Fish (I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag). The Korean War has a memorial now, but still no memorable songs. It's as if, after World War II, Americans decided that internationally sanctioned slaughter was no longer something to sing about...
...deeds of three men in their early 40s who have not yet learned that they are out-and-out psychopaths. Pete Bondurant is a former Los Angeles County deputy sheriff who now works for Howard Hughes; Pete's duties include overseeing the staffing of Hush-Hush, a scandal rag Hughes has bought for titillation and political smears, plus procuring drugs for and keeping process servers away from his billionaire boss. One day Teamsters head Jimmy Hoffa, who is being hounded by the Senate's McClellan committee and chief counsel Robert Kennedy, calls to offer Pete $10,000 to kill...
...fabled American innocence is all shuck and jive? To underscore his thesis, Ellroy uses spurts of unimaginable violence the way other writers deploy commas and periods: "Sal burned a man to death with a blowtorch. The man's wife came home unexpectedly. Sal shoved a gasoline-soaked rag in her mouth and ignited it. He said she died shooting flames like a dragon...