Word: ladened
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Most everyone can agree that one of the first bands from the Pacific Northwest which made the kinds of songs associated with grunge--slow churning, soiled with feedback and riff-laden--was Melvins (not "The Melvins," but simply "Melvins"). Melvins have been around since 1984. Along the way, the band has gone through many line-up changes and has released albums as mediocore as Ozma and as flat-out irritating as Bullhead. Obviously I'm not a fan. But in fairness to Melvins followers (who call themselves not "Melvins Army," but "The Melvins Army"), I don't really like Black...
...appeal is universal; observe the diversity--yardlings' arms' laden with corn tortillas, salsa and soda; an older gentleman carrying a quart of milk and cereal; a German couple juggling "gourmet" deli sandwiches (chicken salad and ham and cheese); a semi-punk, white-faced crowd waiting on a pack of Marlboros and Lindt chocolate bars...
...America, John Mellencamp has hitched his muse to the hopes and broken dreams of the heartland. Even before the mid-'80s, when he renounced the pop artifice of his John Cougar past and took back his given name, he had found his calling as a spinner of hook-laden odes to the ordinary man. Early hits that hinted at the darker dimensions of suburbia, like Jack and Diane and Pink Houses, sold millions and made Mellencamp an MTV star. On later albums, like Scarecrow (1985) and The Lonesome Jubilee (1987), he used electric violin and accordion to evoke the bucolic...
...Efron fully developed his character without off-setting or being off-set by the swirl of other issues around him. In depicting Peter's decision to reveal his homosexuality to Heidi and in his response to the AIDS crisis--both dealt with in the midst of a play so laden with feminist concerns--Efron holds his own with captivating power. Efron's convincing combination of wit, cynicism and vulnerability made his character especially sympathetic to the audience. His final duet with Poreba in the hospital reduced many to tears...
Second, there is no shortage of Americans who weren't "movement" artists and yet turned into remarkable and even great figures in their own right -- and these aren't included either. Isamu Noguchi doesn't figure in a show that is laden to the gunwales with 1960s Minimal sculpture; later its curators find space for Jeff Koons' twerpy silver train and floating basketball, but none for Richard Diebenkorn's figurative paintings or even his superbly Apollonian Ocean Parks...