Word: riff
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...mock documentation to fill a small library. There are only eight painters out of 81 artists (Holliday brings the count to 82). But that's because it's more or less given that painting is a form of white male domination, implying "mastery." Indeed, the catalog presents quite a riff on this subject when it reflects on what might strike the unprepared visitor as the wretched pictorial ineptitude of such artists as Sue Williams, Raymond Pettibon, Mike Kelley and Karen Kilimnik. (Williams can't draw at all, although her installation The Sweet and Pungent Smell of Success includes a dandy...
...BRITAIN BEEN OVERRUN BY RODENTS lately, or is it just British movies? In Truly, Madly, Deeply, Juliet Stevenson spent a lot of time in bed with large, scruffy rats. The vermin abound too in RIFF-RAFF, a rambling comedy from director Ken Loach. Stevie (Robert Carlyle), an ex-con finding construction work in London, falls in love with a pretty girleen (Emer McCourt) who wants to be a saloon singer. If this sounds like the plot of The Crying Game, don't blame scripter Bill Jesse; Riff-Raff was made a year before Neil Jordan's gender bender. Loach...
...Cherry with her husband Booga Bear and Johnny Dollar, kicks off with the appropriately titled Sassy, an old-school, freestyle rap tune, in which she asserts, "Fellas got to give me the most respect/ 'Cause you know I don't waste my time." Propelled by a jazzy piano riff, she rhymes a duet with the Guru, a raspy male rapper from the group Gang Starr. "If you step to her wrong," he warns, "you're getting played like jazz...
Dean Ween looked over at the sound man, grinned, and launched into the opening riff. The crowd surged forwards, fists in the air, and Gene began to sing. People were mouthing the words. "Fat Lenny's gonna walk right into mah self...Fat Lenny's gonna lick my head off..." Gene was swaying with the microphone stand. "This a story 'bout mah friend Fat Lenny," he shrieked. Rock 'n' roll glory streamed from his face. The crowd went nuts. We were in the presence of greatness...
...people who performed preachy songs in funny voices into a booming business. Raffi has since retired from entertaining the peanut-butter-and-jelly crowd, but major record labels and musicians of every persuasion, from rock to reggae and from country to cabaret, have picked up on Raffi's riff...