Word: rolled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that zenith of supergroup super-ness that allows a band to create a completely new sound for each album, satisfying its by now numb zombie-fans and hooking in new ones. New Adventures in HiFi, R.E.M.'s latest, is millennia away from the hipness of Monster, substituting rock'n'roll swagger for the earlier album's cyber cool. The departure is so extreme, and the change in genre so overt, that one can't help sensing some irony in this flavor-of-the-week from everyone's favorite emperors of alternative ice cream...
...first few tracks are rock'n'roll, plain and simple. "How the West Was Won and What it Got Us" has the over-produced slickness of, say, an INXS song; Stipe's voice even has a touch of Michael Hutcheson's throaty howl. Yet "West" succeeds by relying on its lazy seductiveness and evoking the bleary, muted resentment of the afternoon after the morning after...
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the bland "Wake-Up Bomb," which seems rife with the trappings of mid-80s rock and roll. "Wake-Up Bomb" packs on the weight of conventional, driving guitar chords, predictable drum patterns, and, deadliest of all, the title sung over and over again as the chorus, a la "Everybody Wang Chung Tonight." A later track, "Bittersweet Me," has the spastic energy, not to mention the intro rhythms and chords, of the Rolling Stones' "Start...
...though doctors refuse to use it unless there is a clear medical reason. For now the technique is being employed to bring healthy children into the world. Whether those children prove to be smart or good looking will still have to depend, at least for the present, on the roll of the genetic dice...
During the early primaries, when the race was not going well for Dole, the photographers on the campaign plane would play a little game, scrawling a silly message on an orange and rolling it up the aisle toward his seat. One message read: CALIFORNIA OR BUST! Dole would watch the orange but never roll it back, leaving it to an aide to pick it up and read him the message. But the morning after his critical win in the South Carolina primary, Dole leaned over and grabbed the orange. "We're on a roll!" he yelled, and rolled it back...