Word: riffs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...troubles began when he mangled his words in a speech last Monday night. Sounding a bit like his dad, he tried to say "tariffs and barriers" but came out with "terriers." He declared he would never allow rogue nations to hold America "hostile." And he ended a confusing riff about federal budgets with the vague assurance that "we've still got trillions of dollars left in the surplus." Aides explained away the slips by saying he was tired. But it was only August, and Bush had been away from home for all of one day. The next morning...
...decided we needed a break." There were personnel problems. Bass player Annie Holland, whom Frischmann describes as "the most punk rock of the lot of us," quit the group during the Lollapalooza tour in '95. There were legal hassles. The publishers of the new-wave band Wire claimed the riff in Connection was lifted from Wire's late-'70s song Three Girl Rumba and threatened a lawsuit (the affair was settled out of court). And there were the usual rock woes. Rumors spread that Frischmann was addicted to heroin and that Albarn was jealous because his girlfriend's band...
...before it ended, and the forward-thinking Miller came prepared for such fourth-quarter doldrums with the catch-phrase, "Start blow-drying Teddy Koppel's hair, because this one's done." His patter included a mention of the sword of Damocles poised above San Francisco's offensive line, a riff in which he imagined a player whose jersey number was pi, and the observation that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick "blinks about as frequently as Clint Eastwood in a Sergio Leone film." This isn't just wit. This seems to me to be the point of sportscasters. Football, like...
...That first paragraph was a lie, though it depends on what you mean by "lie." Rather, you could call it an ironic riff on the shocking predictability of political conventions and the importance of Gary Smith. At age 65, with 24 Emmy awards and four decades' experience with TV specials and variety shows, Smith has served as executive producer for Democratic conventions since 1988, when he began renting out his considerable showbiz expertise to a tradition that was, even then, wearing thin. That was the year he updated the look of the convention with an imposing wall of video screens...
...Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction," a perennial chart-topper in lists of this sort, placed second, a testament to the enduring appeal of a monster riff attached to a slurred lyric that manages to be youthful and world-weary at the same time - a three-minute "Catcher in the Rye" for its generation and all those that followed...