Word: tempo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With the passage of time the music these groups play has become broad in its appeal. The up-tempo songs have become a general expression of joy and enthusiasm, the blues one of sadness in the abstract. When jazz began, its emotions seemed more specific, even functional, engendered by the saloons on the New Orleans waterfront and the brothels in the Storyville district and the people found in either. Whites and middle-class blacks hated the music, just as they despised the life it represented...
...MAKE MATTERS worse, even Ronald Melrose's score is hardly ever better than its lowest points. He can borrow a few bars from Handel, a few more from Richard Rogers, and a tempo from Sir Arthur Sullivan, but when the band gets back to Melrose's score, it's slow going again. Still, it's the kind of show kindhearted audiences try hard to like, and the cast is already learning how to spread its limited talent thin. David Lewis does reliably unflappable matron Prune, waddling through both acts with his dignity intact even when his virtue has been lost...
...masterpiece here is "Roll Right Stones." It's the key to the album's interest, for the discerning listener. "Roll Right Stones" is the only fourteen-minute song I know that's brought off successfully without a soaring guitar solo. Listen closely: there are several themes, subtle changes in tempo that sustain interest that to begin with was merely hypnotic. The song changes tempo, only slightly, something like six times in the first four minutes. It opens pastorally with mild flute in the introduction, and then evolves through each theme, culminating in a beautifully double-tracked accusation, "Many a thief...
...song is brilliantly structured; each transition is smooth and subtle. The rhythm section is once again supremely simple, Winwood's piano phrases take the song through each change in tempo, with a short sax solo improvised off the second statement of the chorus. Wood's a little gimmicky here, as he is all over the album, but the mix makes him unobtrusive as well. He relies on the intensity of the chorus to carry him through. After a restatement of the second theme, the chorus carries the song...
...result is a fast-breaking, hard-pressing attack that gradually and inevitably overwhelms. "Wooden's success," says one rival coach, "is based on upsetting the tempo and style of his opponent. He does it by running, running and running some more. He mixes that up by ball hawking, by grabbing, by slapping and by hand-waving defense. His clubs dote on harassing the man with the ball." Gail Goodrich, for one, well remembers the grind imposed by "Mr. Run." "There were nights when I'd come home from practice so tired I'd be lucky...