Word: straightforwardness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...most part, we have left these straightforward categories behind, but in high school, when we were less sure of ourselves and our identities, you could learn a lot from this question. Certain music provided very helpful associations, some more far-reaching than others. Liking Ani DiFranco was code for liberal politics and perhaps long flowery skirts or overalls. Liking Marilyn Manson meant you wanted to scare people. Liking Dave Matthews meant very little, perhaps on purpose. Bands no one ever heard of had their prestige, and if they had scary names, you were one step ahead of the game...
This means parting with some of our most beloved absolutes, and detaching ourselves from the blinding associations of the buzz topics. It means giving up some of the straightforward emotionalism that makes the kind of "identity liberalism" that I initially confessed was so personally satisfying. If political discourse at Harvard and beyond is going to serve to refine liberal ideology, raising it above the frequent epithets of "knee-jerk" and "bleeding-heart," then liberals need to be wary of the assumptions we share with each other. This is, after all, a good rule for conservatives and liberals alike--although these...
...perhaps the linchpin line of "Loser" was "chokin' on the splinters." The album captured a miserable white-trash vibe within a sample- and distortion-laden sound that reeked of personal "Beercan" experience. It was a slightly grating album that was heavy on engineering but still naive--or at least straightforward. With Odelay and now Midnite Vultures, Beck has left these Mountain Dew-soaked roots for something more rarefied and cosmopolitan. Even his voice seems to have gotten higher. Grooviness has replaced grit, and Beck has moved from the wood-paneled periphery of the music industry to its hollow matrix-like...
...overwhelmed by its crackling originality. The album's main fault is that such a hectic blend of music eventually sounds a little thin and is more exciting as an artistic maneuver on Beck's part than as a long-term fixture in a CD-changer. It's the most straightforward (and final) track, in fact, that will probably become Midnite Vulture's best-remembered track. "Debra" is a funk-love send-up; its proto-cheesy sound is so robust that all irony melts away. It's got joy, like the joy Beck had when he was so suddenly confident...
...manager might have talked her out of the visit. But Clinton has no manager and is her own strategist. Faced with howling tabloids, she retreated behind the haughty protective screen of her First Ladyhood. "It is unfortunate," she sniffed, "that there are any questions about what was a very straightforward occasion." A First Lady can get away with that kind of arrogance; a candidate can't. As she told a friend not long before her West Bank visit, she has been in the wheelhouse for all 10 of her husband's campaigns, but "it's different when...