Word: showmen
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...miniscule Rolling Stones themselves, to not fully realize that the ubiquitous sound and energy was actually being created right there before us by real men with guitars and drums. Yet somehow the Stones, Mick Jagger in particular, did not have to compete for attention with their surroundings as lesser showmen might have, but instead thrived on them, became one with them and seemed to control every aspect of them...
Tuesday Jobs heads for Boston, traveling commercial, albeit first class. Once there, he surveys the Castle, a puny downtown venue chosen months ago for what was expected to be a snoozer of a speech to Mac enthusiasts by Amelio. Jobs has assembled an army of showmen to orchestrate his--and Apple's--return to competition. There is theatrical lighting and a concert-quality sound system. He stares at the mega columns with the Apple logo cut into them, grimaces at their "Hitlerish" appearance, but decides it's too late to do anything about them. Then he sets to work...
...chess-playing program of Deep Blue did not even bother to name IBM's Murray Campbell and Thomas Anantharaman, the scientists who were the program's authors. Artificial intelligence's other technical leaders were similarly ignored. When machines do think, it will be the scientists, not the showmen, who deserve the credit. MATTHEW GINSBERG Eugene, Oregon...
WHEN EARL WILD PERFORMS, the Golden Age of the keyboard suddenly reappears. Like the great romantic showmen who flourished before World War II, Wild revels in the sensuality and sheer kineticism of the piano, reminding his listeners that it is the only instrument capable of emulating both the tender nuances of vocal music and the thunderous range of the orchestra. When Wild plays, the pallid noodling that often passes for pianism these days vanishes: one hears the grand echoes of Paderewski, Rachmaninoff and Josef Hofmann...
More than anything else, the showmen are worried that the pumped-up glamour and hype on which their businesses depend will leach away if audiences can pick and choose and consume in electronic solitude. "We are standing on a revolutionary threshold," says MCA's Teller of on-line delivery. "But I don't believe the highest form of human existence is sitting at home in a cocoon downloading digital bits...