From: owner-basia-digest To: basia-digest@smoe.org Subject: basia-digest V1 #127 Reply-To: basia@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-basia-digest Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "basia-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. basia-digest Thursday, 30 May 1996 Volume 01 : Number 127 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Anyone There? Re: Anyone There? The Missing Message, Part One The Missing Message, Part Two A Really Long and Complaintive Post... Re: A Really Long and Complaintive Post... Administrivia (re: smoe.org) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Philip B Hall Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 08:02:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Anyone There? On Tue, 28 May 1996, Dennis J. Majewicz wrote: > Haven't seen any messages in days. Just wondering if the server at > smoe is working... > Dennis > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > Dennis J. Majewicz Empire Sports Network majewicz@buffnet.net > "On the road to a non-linear, tapeless, DIGITAL tomorrow" > ------------------------------------------------------------ Dennis, Yo! Thing is, there's nothin to report re Betty. However, I did get a message from Smoe welcoming me to the list the other day (?). Also, during the Indy 500 last Sunday I caught some seemingly Danny White-ish riffs in the background of a Chevy Truck commercial. This is not the first time. I thought the same thing of some Coke spots last year. Phil ------------------------------ From: "J.S. Lohr" Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 12:45:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Anyone There? On Wed, 29 May 1996, Philip B Hall wrote: > Dennis, > Yo! > Thing is, there's nothin to report re Betty. Betty? Uhhhh... > However, I did get a message from Smoe welcoming me to the list the other > day (?). Hey, I sent a big, long, complaintive message yesterday - apparently, no one's gotten it yet. Maybe I finally broke the computer with all my yackin'. Hopefully, it'll go out soon. It was a good one. Has anyone gotten their CDs yet? Toodles! JSL. ********************************* R O A C H ********************************* * The Roach Motel @ http://zeus.towson.edu/~jlohr1 -- Bugs are people, too * * He loves Yugoslavians, Boba Fett, Chunky Chicken, and Yummy British Cows * ***************************************************************************** ************* "Live every day as if it were your last `cause ************* ************* sooner or later, you'll be right." - Hal Roach ************* ********************************* R U L E S ********************************* ------------------------------ From: "J.S. Lohr" Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 17:00:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The Missing Message, Part One Ok - since the machine has apparently eaten my original message I'm sending it again, this time in two parts (just in case the machine doesn't like messages bigger than 10k). Here is part one: Greetings guys and gals. With finals over and done and Towson a distant memory (at least for the Summer), I now have more time for trivial net.slacking. I'm sure you all are enthused ;D Anyway, while doing some routine fact-checking for Agitprop the other day, I tripped over the following, rather disturbing, article in the March 26th, 1994 issue of Billboard Magazine. If, upon reading the article (which I'm about to transcribe), you don't understand why I'm so peeved, feel free to finger through my commentary after the article - though I'm sure most of you won't miss what I'm talking about. First, here's the article in its entirity: EPIC EAGERLY ANTICIPATES BASIA'S "SWEETEST ILLUSION" By Melinda Newman NEW YORK - Basia knew Epic Records was eager for her new album when head honchos Dave Glew and Richard Griffiths dropped by the London studio to check her progress. By the time they'd made their third trip, she figured they were downright antsy. "The first record they didn't have a chance to hear, because they didn't know who we were," she recalls, referring to herself and her producing and songwriting partner, Danny White. "On the second record, no one, including our manager, heard that record. Only [Sony U.K. A&R exec] Muff Winwood was allowed to come in. On this album, we had so many visitors from America I think they were all very anxious." And with good reason: By the time Basia's third solo album, "The Sweetest Illusion," comes out May 3, it will have been four years since her last release. "We were very eager to get this record," admits Epic VP of product development Dan Beck. "We were very pleased to hear what she and Danny were able to achieve." What the pair has achieved is a record that embraces all the styles present on previous projects, from the free-spirited, often Latin-tinged melodies the pair made famous when part of the short-lived group Matt Bianco to jazzy, well-arranged pop tunes. Atop the polyglot of rhythms are relentlessly upbeat lyrics about the possibilities of love, all delivered without a trace of cynicism. "I am actually quite uncynical - particularly about love," says the Polish-born singer. "I see women sometimes being so bitter and so afraid to take risks because they already got so hurt and I don't want to be like that." ...to be continued. END PART ONE. ------------------------------ From: "J.S. Lohr" Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 17:03:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The Missing Message, Part Two Here's the rest of the article: (my commentary follows) Love's redemptive spirit informs first single "Yearning," which Epic will service to contemporary jazz stations in mid-April before taking it to other formats later this spring. "We're going out initially to NAC [with "Yearning"] prior to the album's release," says Beck. "Basia's career really began in the U.S. at the point when NAC was forming, and she's a founding artist of that format. We respect that and want to reinforce that in every way." Basia credits that format with getting her label to recognize her sales potential. "I don't think they really believed in [her first album, 1987's] 'Time and Tide,'" she says. "It seemed so un-American, and they didn't really think it was going to be a major record, but because of the radio and word-of-mouth, people were buying 10 to 15 copies for Christmas presents, no hype at all, and that record sold over a million; so it took them by surprise, and they took a little more notice." What the label noticed with "Time and Tide" is that Basia's records have a lingering shelf-life and tend to sell over a long period of time. A multiprong marketing plan that took this fact into account was developed for the platinum-certified "London Warsaw New York," and some of its elements will be repeated for "The Sweetest Illusion." Among them will be a servicing of the CD to bookstores, boutiques, and other non-music retailers, who hopefully can bolster sales through in-store play. Much of the campaign focuses on television appearances, Beck says. "We will have an initial phase of television exposure prior to release," says Beck. "Then we will do another phase just prior to the tour. There will be another push at the conclusion of the tour to reinforce the tour's success, and to start aiming the way into the holiday selling season." When possible, all facets of the project will be tied together via the artwork of Polish painter Halina Tymusz, whom Basia discovered. An integration of Tymusz's works and pictures of Basia "will be featured on all of our elements, whether its a CD pro, a commercial single, or the album," says Beck. "There will be a cohesiveness with everything." Additionally, during the first week of release, Epic is planning listener appreciation receptions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. The parties, coordinated through local radio stations, will be attended by Basia. Video plays a big part in the plan. The clip for "Yearning" is being directed by British director Howard Greenhalgh, who is noted for his work with Sting and the Pet Shop Boys. Basia will be VH-1's May artist of the month. Beck credits Basia's new manager, Dee Anthony, with helping bring the whole plan into focus. "We started our planning process for this project much earlier, and had more time," says Beck. "That's something Epic is doing in general, but it was also because of Dee. He has been especially involved in looking at comprehensive touring plans and putting those plans together early." Basia will start a would tour in July in the Far East that will bring her to the U.S. toward the end of the month. Among the proposed stops, according to Basia, is a two-week stint on Broadway in New York. "I'm going to bring my mom to New York," she says. "She's never been to America. She's never seen me on stage, and now she's going to see me everyday!" In fact, if Basia has her way, her mother also will see her in Poland. "We're planning to play there because Poland is becoming more and more capitalist, and there are so many promotion companies now," she says. "Once, it was impossible; we would have had to go there and play, and we would have to add our own money [to cover concert expenses]." Welcome back to reality. First and foremost: Basia never was VH-1's May artist of the month. You know who was? JON SECADA. See, I'd always had my suspicions that Jon Secada was the antechrist, but now I'm convinced. Its that particular infuriating part of the article (as opposed to all the other infuriating parts of the article) that has me peeved the most. But the real question is, who should I or we be peeved at? Five weeks before TSI was released, Basia was scheduled to be VH-1's May artist of the month. This would've meant that the video for "Yearning" would've been shown as much then as a Hootie and the Blowfish song is played now. There probably would've been a half hour special of some kind, be it a "VH-1 to One" interview or something else, and you'd probably almost be sick of it all by the time May was over. But obviously, something happened to prevent this and Jon Secada was Basia's replacement. I certainly have my suspicions as to what happened. At first, after reading the article, I was convinced that Sony was to blame for this - convinced that the label bumped Basia in favor of their golden boy. But then I thought, "Wait a minute...is Jon Secada a Sony artist?" Turns out he isn't. And then I realized that not even Sony would be dumb enough to eliminate Basia's only true source of airplay in favor of promoting an artist who didn't need promoting. So, if Sony isn't the badguy, who is? Are you surprised? Are you shocked that VH-1 would do something like this? I'm certainly not. Granted, I have no proof of this, but I'm willing to bet $10,000 that VH-1 probably got a hold of the "Yearning" tape and threw it in the trash. I mean, how else does an artist go from being a tenative "Artist of the Month" to having her video only be played once on the same station on some Sunday morning video special? I'll tell ya how: VH-1 must've hated "Yearning." They must've called up that same idiot from the article, Dan Beck, and told him something like, "get with the program, pal - we don't play this crap anymore." Then I was reminded of an article I read back in June `94, also from Billboard magazine, in which it described how Virgin Records was BEGGING VH-1 to play the single from Julia Fordham's (another VH-1 alumni from the "good" years) upcoming album (released July `94) because they knew that if VH-1 didn't play the single, no one would buy the album. Unfortunately, Julia's "Falling Forward" suffered the same fate as "The Sweetest Illusion" - no one bought it. You know, I was sitting here the other day, going through the tapes that I'm about to send to Ben for the Video Project, and I sat through some of the old VH-1 stuff that I had - I got really bummed, seeing firsthand how VH-1 went from something so completely cool to something so completely disgusting, and this within such a short period of time. I see the videos I made, the Basia compilations and the Julia Fordham compilations and the episodes of New Visions that I taped - and I get furious. VH-1 sucks. Plain and simple. Next bone to pick: "What the label noticed with 'Time and Tide' is that Basia's records have a lingering shelf life and tend to sell over a long period of time." Who came up with this bulldung? It appears as though, even going into "The Sweetest Illusion," that Epic never wanted to admit to themselves that Basia had nothing more than a cult following. You'd think that they would've learned their lesson after their proverbial big marketing mouth got them in a ton of trouble with the "London Warsaw New York" marketing plan: after boasting about how that album would confirm Basia as a mega-international pop superstar, it floundered and quickly died once it went gold (500,000 domestic units). A "long shelf life?" What, is that Latin for "Cult Following?" Long shelf life my ass...Epic just doesn't seem to want to admit to themselves that Basia only ever had a core following of about 500,000 U.S. fans, and most of them were apparently turned off by TSI's newer sound. Frankly, I can't wait to see what kind of marketing strategy they come up with for the 1998 album... "We're trying to see if Basia can be the featured artist one week on 'Yo! MTV Raps.' We think she could really do well with the 18-22 year old Gangsta Rap audience." There is one good thing about this article: I can now see why BOB never made it onto Billboard's Top 200 - it was probably lost in the Christmas shopping rush. Since a lot of more popular albums were selling at a quicker pace, little albums like BOB certainly could never keep up. If it had been released in, say, May or June, it would've probably had a better chance of sneaking into perhaps the Top 170-190 range. That'll do it for now. Keep the faith. JSL. ********************************* R O A C H ********************************* * The Roach Motel @ http://zeus.towson.edu/~jlohr1 -- Bugs are people, too * * He loves Yugoslavians, Boba Fett, Chunky Chicken, and Yummy British Cows * ***************************************************************************** ************* "Live every day as if it were your last `cause ************* ************* sooner or later, you'll be right." - Hal Roach ************* ********************************* R U L E S ********************************* ------------------------------ From: "J.S. Lohr" Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 20:10:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: A Really Long and Complaintive Post... (so what else is new, eh?) Greetings guys and gals. With finals over and done and Towson a distant memory (at least for the Summer), I now have more time for trivial net.slacking. I'm sure you all are enthused ;D Anyway, while doing some routine fact-checking for Agitprop the other day, I tripped over the following, rather disturbing, article in the March 26th, 1994 issue of Billboard Magazine. If, upon reading the article (which I'm about to transcribe), you don't understand why I'm so peeved, feel free to finger through my commentary after the article - though I'm sure most of you won't miss what I'm talking about. First, here's the article in its entirity: EPIC EAGERLY ANTICIPATES BASIA'S "SWEETEST ILLUSION" By Melinda Newman NEW YORK - Basia knew Epic Records was eager for her new album when head honchos Dave Glew and Richard Griffiths dropped by the London studio to check her progress. By the time they'd made their third trip, she figured they were downright antsy. "The first record they didn't have a chance to hear, because they didn't know who we were," she recalls, referring to herself and her producing and songwriting partner, Danny White. "On the second record, no one, including our manager, heard that record. Only [Sony U.K. A&R exec] Muff Winwood was allowed to come in. On this album, we had so many visitors from America I think they were all very anxious." And with good reason: By the time Basia's third solo album, "The Sweetest Illusion," comes out May 3, it will have been four years since her last release. "We were very eager to get this record," admits Epic VP of product development Dan Beck. "We were very pleased to hear what she and Danny were able to achieve." What the pair has achieved is a record that embraces all the styles present on previous projects, from the free-spirited, often Latin-tinged melodies the pair made famous when part of the short-lived group Matt Bianco to jazzy, well-arranged pop tunes. Atop the polyglot of rhythms are relentlessly upbeat lyrics about the possibilities of love, all delivered without a trace of cynicism. "I am actually quite uncynical - particularly about love," says the Polish-born singer. "I see women sometimes being so bitter and so afraid to take risks because they already got so hurt and I don't want to be like that." Love's redemptive spirit informs first single "Yearning," which Epic will service to contemporary jazz stations in mid-April before taking it to other formats later this spring. "We're going out initially to NAC [with "Yearning"] prior to the album's release," says Beck. "Basia's career really began in the U.S. at the point when NAC was forming, and she's a founding artist of that format. We respect that and want to reinforce that in every way." Basia credits that format with getting her label to recognize her sales potential. "I don't think they really believed in [her first album, 1987's] 'Time and Tide,'" she says. "It seemed so un-American, and they didn't really think it was going to be a major record, but because of the radio and word-of-mouth, people were buying 10 to 15 copies for Christmas presents, no hype at all, and that record sold over a million; so it took them by surprise, and they took a little more notice." What the label noticed with "Time and Tide" is that Basia's records have a lingering shelf-life and tend to sell over a long period of time. A multiprong marketing plan that took this fact into account was developed for the platinum-certified "London Warsaw New York," and some of its elements will be repeated for "The Sweetest Illusion." Among them will be a servicing of the CD to bookstores, boutiques, and other non-music retailers, who hopefully can bolster sales through in-store play. Much of the campaign focuses on television appearances, Beck says. "We will have an initial phase of television exposure prior to release," says Beck. "Then we will do another phase just prior to the tour. There will be another push at the conclusion of the tour to reinforce the tour's success, and to start aiming the way into the holiday selling season." When possible, all facets of the project will be tied together via the artwork of Polish painter Halina Tymusz, whom Basia discovered. An integration of Tymusz's works and pictures of Basia "will be featured on all of our elements, whether its a CD pro, a commercial single, or the album," says Beck. "There will be a cohesiveness with everything." Additionally, during the first week of release, Epic is planning listener appreciation receptions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. The parties, coordinated through local radio stations, will be attended by Basia. Video plays a big part in the plan. The clip for "Yearning" is being directed by British director Howard Greenhalgh, who is noted for his work with Sting and the Pet Shop Boys. Basia will be VH-1's May artist of the month. Beck credits Basia's new manager, Dee Anthony, with helping bring the whole plan into focus. "We started our planning process for this project much earlier, and had more time," says Beck. "That's something Epic is doing in general, but it was also because of Dee. He has been especially involved in looking at comprehensive touring plans and putting those plans together early." Basia will start a would tour in July in the Far East that will bring her to the U.S. toward the end of the month. Among the proposed stops, according to Basia, is a two-week stint on Broadway in New York. "I'm going to bring my mom to New York," she says. "She's never been to America. She's never seen me on stage, and now she's going to see me everyday!" In fact, if Basia has her way, her mother also will see her in Poland. "We're planning to play there because Poland is becoming more and more capitalist, and there are so many promotion companies now," she says. "Once, it was impossible; we would have had to go there and play, and we would have to add our own money [to cover concert expenses]." Welcome back to reality. First and foremost: Basia never was VH-1's May artist of the month. You know who was? JON SECADA. See, I'd always had my suspicions that Jon Secada was the antechrist, but now I'm convinced. Its that particular infuriating part of the article (as opposed to all the other infuriating parts of the article) that has me peeved the most. But the real question is, who should I or we be peeved at? Five weeks before TSI was released, Basia was scheduled to be VH-1's May artist of the month. This would've meant that the video for "Yearning" would've been shown as much then as a Hootie and the Blowfish song is played now. There probably would've been a half hour special of some kind, be it a "VH-1 to One" interview or something else, and you'd probably almost be sick of it all by the time May was over. But obviously, something happened to prevent this and Jon Secada was Basia's replacement. I certainly have my suspicions as to what happened. At first, after reading the article, I was convinced that Sony was to blame for this - convinced that the label bumped Basia in favor of their golden boy. But then I thought, "Wait a minute...is Jon Secada a Sony artist?" Turns out he isn't. And then I realized that not even Sony would be dumb enough to eliminate Basia's only true source of airplay in favor of promoting an artist who didn't need promoting. So, if Sony isn't the badguy, who is? Are you surprised? Are you shocked that VH-1 would do something like this? I'm certainly not. Granted, I have no proof of this, but I'm willing to bet $10,000 that VH-1 probably got a hold of the "Yearning" tape and threw it in the trash. I mean, how else does an artist go from being a tenative "Artist of the Month" to having her video only be played once on the same station on some Sunday morning video special? I'll tell ya how: VH-1 must've hated "Yearning." They must've called up that same idiot from the article, Dan Beck, and told him something like, "get with the program, pal - we don't play this crap anymore." Then I was reminded of an article I read back in June `94, also from Billboard magazine, in which it described how Virgin Records was BEGGING VH-1 to play the single from Julia Fordham's (another VH-1 alumni from the "good" years) upcoming album (released July `94) because they knew that if VH-1 didn't play the single, no one would buy the album. Unfortunately, Julia's "Falling Forward" suffered the same fate as "The Sweetest Illusion" - no one bought it. You know, I was sitting here the other day, going through the tapes that I'm about to send to Ben for the Video Project, and I sat through some of the old VH-1 stuff that I had - I got really bummed, seeing firsthand how VH-1 went from something so completely cool to something so completely disgusting, and this within such a short period of time. I see the videos I made, the Basia compilations and the Julia Fordham compilations and the episodes of New Visions that I taped - and I get furious. VH-1 sucks. Plain and simple. Next bone to pick: "What the label noticed with 'Time and Tide' is that Basia's records have a lingering shelf life and tend to sell over a long period of time." Who came up with this bulldung? It appears as though, even going into "The Sweetest Illusion," that Epic never wanted to admit to themselves that Basia had nothing more than a cult following. You'd think that they would've learned their lesson after their proverbial big marketing mouth got them in a ton of trouble with the "London Warsaw New York" marketing plan: after boasting about how that album would confirm Basia as a mega-international pop superstar, it floundered and quickly died once it went gold (500,000 domestic units). A "long shelf life?" What, is that Latin for "Cult Following?" Long shelf life my ass...Epic just doesn't seem to want to admit to themselves that Basia only ever had a core following of about 500,000 U.S. fans, and most of them were apparently turned off by TSI's newer sound. Frankly, I can't wait to see what kind of marketing strategy they come up with for the 1998 album... "We're trying to see if Basia can be the featured artist one week on 'Yo! MTV Raps.' We think she could really do well with the 18-22 year old Gangsta Rap audience." There is one good thing about this article: I can now see why BOB never made it onto Billboard's Top 200 - it was probably lost in the Christmas shopping rush. Since a lot of more popular albums were selling at a quicker pace, little albums like BOB certainly could never keep up. If it had been released in, say, May or June, it would've probably had a better chance of sneaking into perhaps the Top 170-190 range. That'll do it for now. Keep the faith. JSL. ********************************* R O A C H ********************************* * The Roach Motel @ http://zeus.towson.edu/~jlohr1 -- Bugs are people, too * * He loves Yugoslavians, Boba Fett, Chunky Chicken, and Yummy British Cows * ***************************************************************************** ************* "Live every day as if it were your last `cause ************* ************* sooner or later, you'll be right." - Hal Roach ************* ********************************* R U L E S ********************************* ------------------------------ From: "J.S. Lohr" Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 22:03:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: A Really Long and Complaintive Post... Oh, so now the damn thing comes. Thanks a lot, karmic beast. JSL. ********************************* R O A C H ********************************* * The Roach Motel @ http://zeus.towson.edu/~jlohr1 -- Bugs are people, too * * He loves Yugoslavians, Boba Fett, Chunky Chicken, and Yummy British Cows * ***************************************************************************** ************* "Live every day as if it were your last `cause ************* ************* sooner or later, you'll be right." - Hal Roach ************* ********************************* R U L E S ********************************* ------------------------------ From: jeffw (Jeff Wasilko) Date: Wed, 29 May 96 20:24:26 EDT Subject: Administrivia (re: smoe.org) At some point next week the smoe.org domain will be moving to a new internet provider. This move should be transparent to you, although there is a small chance that mail might bounce en-route to smoe.org during this transition. If it does, please wait an hour or so and try again. I will send out a reminder the day before the move is scheduled to happen. This change will allow my servers to be on the internet 24 hours a day, so I'll be able to provide ftp and WWW access to the archives. It will also mean faster email delivery. Again, this change should be 100% transparent--the list addresses will not be changing. - -Jeff ------------------------------ End of basia-digest V1 #127 ***************************