Word: tempo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Here's Where The Strings Come In bore the subtle marks of a potential breakdown. For a band that calls its publishing company All Songs Sound The Same Music, they displayed little awareness of how little difference down-tempo songs and complicated arrangements made to the record's sound. It wasn't bad (wasn't terrible, anyway) but people who bought the album, bought the hype and subsequently bought the back-catalogue noticed that Mac McCaughan's ragtag quarter sounded like a Superchunk cover band...
Hollywood rules. Moviegoers in almost every foreign country prefer American films to their own. They love our action pictures, with their size and tempo and assurance, and all those pretty people realizing outrageous dreams. Our directors know how to fulfill Alfred Hitchcock's aim: to make the Japanese audience scream at the same time as the American audience. Perhaps they know it too well. A manic roteness now envelops action films; the need to thrill has become a drab addiction. Isn't there more to moviemaking than having your finger on the pulse of the world public...
...self-interest (Use What You Got), sung by hustler-narrator Jojo (the excellent Sam Harris), and keeps topping itself. Lillias White, as an over-the-hill hooker, brings vivacity and soul to Gasman's clever lyrics ("I'm getting too old/ For the oldest profession"), and the driving, up-tempo number Why Don't They Leave Us Alone turns the hookers and pimps into the most inspired chorus line in town. The Life may, in truth, be just another kind of Broadway hustle, but when the con men are as slick as these, you drop your money with a smile...
Ultimately, Crystal Boys succeeds on a number of levels but falters in others. It is paced to a much slower tempo than we are accustomed to in theater, and it's not clear that the literary and atmospheric benefits that derive from its slow pace is a worthwhile trade-off for the audience's attention. It also suffers from the fact that several key performers seem to have a hard time remaining engaged and focused throughout the play's duration. But the atmospheric effects are intriguing, the lyricism and symbolism of the text moving and the subject matter utterly fascinating...
...Brahms opened with his Tragic Overture in D minor, Op. 81. Though not one of Brahms' most widely played pieces, the overture is by no means dull, beginning with two dramatic chords and followed by the full statement of the main theme. The piece fluctuates between extremes in dynamics, tempo and mood, immediately placing it in the Romantic period...