From: owner-avalon-digest@smoe.org (avalon-digest) To: avalon-digest@smoe.org Subject: avalon-digest V4 #173 Reply-To: avalon@smoe.org Sender: owner-avalon-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-avalon-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk avalon-digest Wednesday, June 9 1999 Volume 04 : Number 173 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [AVALON] Influential friends ? ["Garratt, Chris" ] To leave the list, mail majordomo@smoe.org with: unsubscribe avalon-digest ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 15:47:51 +0100 From: "Garratt, Chris" Subject: [AVALON] Influential friends ? 08/06/99 AUSTRALIA: COMPUTERS - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - ONLINE CD SELLER IS LOOKING FOR PARTNERS. By Philippa Yelland. PERIPATETIC industry trouble-shooter Clive Mayhew-Begg has started in his ideal job as vice-president international for CDNOW, reported to be the world's largest online music company after its recent merger with N2K Inc. The New York-based posting will allow the perfectly spoken Englishman to combine his three loves: setting up international operations, working with Internet companies, and listening to David Bowie and Roxy Music. ... ____________________________________ IMPORTANT - this e-mail and the information that it contains may be confidential, legally privileged and protected by law. Access by the intended recipient only is authorised. Any liability (in negligence or otherwise) arising from any third party acting, or refraining from acting, on any information contained in this e-mail is hereby excluded. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Copyright in this e-mail and attachments created by us belongs to Hammond Suddards: the author also asserts the right to be identified as such and object to any misuse. Hammond Suddards is regulated by the Law Society in the conduct of investment business. The partners in the firm are solicitors or registered foreign lawyers and a list of their names can be inspected at 7 Devonshire Square, Cutlers Garden, London EC2M 4YH; 2 Park Lane, Leeds LS3 1ES; at our other offices in Lloyds of London, Manchester, Bradford and Brussels; and at http://www.hammondsuddards.co.uk ____________________________________ - -------------------- To unsub, mail majordomo@smoe.org with: unsubscribe avalon ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999 16:09:28 +0100 From: "Martin Stockman" Subject: Re: [AVALON] up for a meeting in the foyer? Hi Andy I think you're spot on about the one song. I understand Bahi, Robert Fedder, you and I (+ friends/partners) have bought tickets. More may emerge from the Avalon woodwork as we near the great day. Our only proper way of thanking Bryan for his years of service will be to make many trips to the bar. And we can finally meet you after all those weeks waiting for you to return to your office. pip pip Martini - ---------- >From: Andy Cooper >To: Avalon >Subject: [AVALON] up for a meeting in the foyer? >Date: Sun, Jun 6, 1999, 8:16 pm > >OK - who's eager to meet in the foyer of the Festival Hall on the night of >2nd July - all you ticket holders say yes? This Harry Smith thing is >supposed to start at 7:30 so how about a meet at 7:00? And BTW, the >concept of the Harry Smith thing is very much along the lines of each >artist doing their individual interpretation of one song - so it probably >will be a single cover version from Bryan if anything at all. > >C'est la vie > >Andy > > > > >-------------------- >To unsub, mail majordomo@smoe.org with: >unsubscribe avalon > - -------------------- To unsub, mail majordomo@smoe.org with: unsubscribe avalon ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 03:34:54 +0100 From: Bahi Para Subject: [AVALON] Bete Noire reviews [long!] As promised, and only a day or two late, here are two reviews of Bete Noire, written by Peter Kane for Sounds, 7 November 1987. I hoe Bete Noire has received enough praise on this list (some of it from me) for its fans to be able to read this without too much pain. At the end of the message is a key that's supposed to help those of you outside the UK. I'd be pleased to see this slightly pathetic item corrected or clarified, if only for my own benefit. Bahi - ---- Sounds, 7 November 1987. Written by Peter Kane Johnny's Marr's involvement with The Right Stuff, Mr Ferry's first outing for his new Virgin masters, is the only unpredictable note sounded for this, Ferry's seventh solo album. Well, someone's got to count. The blood, sweat and tears quotient is turned right down, the cash tap is left to run and run and we're left with a bucketful of distressed bubbles that fade away with the breeze. And believe me, they don't come much slighter than New Town or Zamba. As ever, an immaculate crease in the threads is displayed as we're offered that increasingly withered croon nine times over, set to a fashionable array of gurgling keyboards, humming guitars and vaguely danceable rhythms. Take Limbo or Kiss and Tell. Yes, it's time for that authentic café au lait soundtrack beloved of millions as they sit at home darning socks and dreaming of heady ostentation. One extra pinta or two? [*1] Bete Noire itself is a curious little piece featuring gypsy violin, Parisian accordion and an introductory moan from the man suggesting that he's just sat in something rather cold and damp. The Ferry vocal stylings, in fact, now rub shoulders with the pastiche and so the coloured girls are called in to do whatever it is the coloured girls are supposed to do on occasions such as these: wail a bit and repeat the odd chorus here and there. But it's a feeling of lush and lazy moodiness that pervades. So the middle-aged man takes the money and... waits for a passing cab. [Two stars, according to the ratings key, mean "ignore" while 3 mean "hear"; Peter awards Bete Noire 2 and three quarters.] - ----- Melody Maker, 7 Nov 87. Written by Chris Roberts. We seem to clutching at any old back-yard anti-pop screech in search of the fresh and new, thus ending up with The Jesus and Springsteen Chain, The AR Kane Gang, and the Hersham Pet Shop Boys. Where we perhaps *ought* to look is toward the classy aliens, the distinctive born outsiders. Thus Sylvian's new lagoon, the ever-so-yearning bit in Donna Summer's Dinner With Gershwin where she goes 'so close, just as close as I can get' and of course Bjork's Birthday have licked the heels of God's toenails with an aplomb to shame the rest of the year's laborious runts. We need aesthetics and lazy instinct if we're to stick an arm up and catch an albatross as we drown. And right here is where old Uncle Bry starts praying again. As far removed from Pop Will Eat Itself as Catherine Deneuve from Su Pollard [*2], Bete Noire is slim, glacial and smells sublime. Radical, no, but a generation whose style icons include Paula Yates and Jonathan Ross [*3] desperately needs a considered demonstration of knowing class, the sophistry of old-style *romantic bluff* if we're to see Champagne and Roses outlive Dirty Den [*4] and Atari. With Boys and Girls, Ferry reached the zenith of his vagueness. It was the least eventful record of all time. As such, one could only pan it then, after cooling down, hold it up to the light and marvel at its *perfect* lack of any emoting. It was a muted sigh, not even a gasp, a decade (more) since he had tried to put it into words on Mother of Pearl. The '87 model, starting with Limbo (ha!), hovers slyly, waiting, observing, winking once so quickly you can't be sure you didn't imagine it. And as his doddering peers try everything from hapless hip-hop to whorish haircuts, Bry just ropes in some dickhead indie guitarist called Johnny Marr, knowing this will win him fifty thousand credibility units, then order him to play Manzanera on mandrax. Relax! A few titles with chic rugged-but-elegant connotations - The Right Stuff, Seven Deadly Sins, Kiss & Tell - and we're home and moist. The clicking of typewriters, the coo of lust from Siedah, Tawatha, Fonzi and Pine. That Ferry can slide this definitive absence of commitment, this crinkled twinkling narcissism into the homes of millions is a conjuring trick of devastating skill. Bete Noire is pure nihilism, a veiled zero in flames, a hedonistic long hot bath while Rome freezes over. It is utterly out of touch with reality. I recommend it without reservation. - ---- Here's a quick key of items that seem like they may not make sense outside the UK. (I'm guessing and may be showing my ignorance here.) 1. Pinta: pint of milk delivered (early in the morning, and usually daily) to your door. If you need more than your regular order of milk, you leave a note asking for an extra pinta. No idea what this has to do with anything. The next three are household names here. 2. Su Pollard: star (I can't believe I'm typing this) of an old British comedy series about holiday centres in which I think she played a friendly but stupid member of staff. How do you translate redcoat? It wasn't exactly a glamorous part, anyway. 3. Jonathan Ross: TV presenter and off-centre film buff, now quite mainstream. Once loved and hated in equal measure for his (then) Ferryesque suits and ties, his attitude, and his accent. The kind of bloke that people loved to slate for being an impostor of some kind, whatever that might be when you're a TV presenter. 4. Dirty Den: nickname for a then central character in the (still) massively popular soap opera Eastenders. Paula Yates was, at the time of the review, a TV presenter and Bob Geldorf's girlfriend. She used to be one of a few presenters of excellent music show The Tube but not one of its better ones, I think. - -------------------- To unsub, mail majordomo@smoe.org with: unsubscribe avalon ------------------------------ End of avalon-digest V4 #173 **************************** ======================================================================== For further info, mail majordomo@smoe.org with: info avalon-digest