Word: riff
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...after delivering the best speech of his campaign before thousands of roaring supporters at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, the Illinois Senator is easily distracted, interrupting himself to get a bottle of water for a man with a cough. A few minutes later, he stops in the middle of a riff to pick up an earring dropped by a woman in the front row. And Obama's energy level fluctuates. "He hits the wall in late afternoon before really firing back up," explains Iowa press secretary Tommy Vietor, making a sine curve with his hand. For long stretches, audience members...
...spectacle of Tom Stoppard hoofing it through the theater district on a bum foot would be disconcerting to people who think of the playwright as something of an élitist. Ever since his sensational stage debut in 1967 with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead--his absurdist riff on a pair of minor characters in Hamlet--Stoppard has become almost a genre unto himself, taking intellectual, often abstruse subject matter and turning it into challenging yet playful drama. His game, frequently, is the oddball juxtaposition: moral philosophy and gymnastics (Jumpers); Fermat's last theorem and Byron's love poetry (Arcadia); James...
...drums. “Magic” kicks off with one of Springsteen’s best singles in recent memory. “Radio Nowhere” is one of the catchiest songs released this year, highlighting the return of a full backing band with a blazing guitar riff, saxophone solo, and wall-of-sound production. The lyrics, which trot out old Springsteen themes like the search for identity and longing for excitement, are not particularly inspired, but there’s no denying the song’s instant gratification potential. “Radio Nowhere?...
...Random Spirit Lover” is a valiant attempt to live up to them, it doesn’t quite make it. Opener “The Mending of the Gown” flicks and flutters at hummingbird speeds, with verses punctuated by a stabbing guitar riff and frenetic piano accompaniment. Krug’s eccentric wail reverberates somewhere on the spectrum between the New Pornographers’ A.C. Newman and Polyphonic Spree’s Tim DeLaughter, sharing the latter’s unabashed enthusiasm and strange habit of lengthening his vowels. The track’s chaotic arrangement...
...gospel band and began to shape the future funk king's sound. As collaborators in the Famous Flames, the band that launched Brown, the pair co-wrote tunes, including Brown's signature Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine. On the recording, Byrd sings the recurring riff, "Get on up." He was 73 and had cancer...