Errors-To: owner-ecto@athos.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu From: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@athos.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@athos.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #203 ecto, Number 203 Wednesday, 1 April 1992 Today's Topics: *-----------------* beware of darkness New Happy Happy Fan Fluff (tm) ectodyssey ectoes and feet Laura redux redux from Vickie and me gif-printing help! Re: West Australian Review ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 1 Apr 92 13:11:52 EST From: jessica@cs.rutgers.edu Subject: beware of darkness laura just answered this, but i'll just say, yup, she's right. George Harrison did the original version. (Joe actually has it on album, the day i bought the cd, we put the original on, then the CB version). I like the CB version better, but it's not one of my favorite of theirs. jessica ps: angelos, you're hysterical. :) ah if only it were true:) ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 1 Apr 92 10:15:30 PST From: "John M. Relph" Subject: New Happy Happy Fan Hello my April Fools! A few weeks ago I went to Dallas to attend the 10th annual North Texas Irish Festival. I took a couple of tapes to listen to in the car, including a tape of "Warpaint" and the Bartlett-Rhodes demos. When I left my sister's house, where I had stayed, I accidentally left the Happy tape in her cassette deck. Dang! But I talked to her a few days later and she said she had been listening to it and Really Liked It. So I told her a little about Happy and ended up giving her the address of Aural Gratification. It looks like she's going to order her own can of "Warpaint". Yo! -- John ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 1 Apr 92 13:48:15 EST From: David N. Blank-Edelman Subject: Fluff (tm) > However, I'd like to note that the emphasis should be more on > "songwriter". Her own records never did well at all (I haven't heard > any, so I can't comment why, though I believe she just lacked the > voice to go with her songs), but many other artists had huge hits with > the songs she wrote. I'm not sure why she never made it big on her own, but it isn't a voice problem. You really should pick up an album of hers, she has a beautiful voice. Peace, dNb ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 1 Apr 92 17:23:52 -0500 From: gb10@gte.com (Gregory Bossert) Subject: ectodyssey okay, by popular request, here it is: The Strange and Supernatural Tale of the Ectomobile === ======= === ============ ==== == === ========== It was a dark and stormy night... No, really. Interstate Highway 84 was visible only as a vague dimpling of the snow that howled and moaned and draped sheets of ecto-white across the windshield. The trees huddled away from the wind on either side, illuminated only by the eerie light of BMWs blown off the road. Suddenly, the solemn, weary procession of cars is disrupted -- just a quarter of a mile ahead, cars have collided, and before us, drivers awaken to the sight of trees, drifts, and jersey barriers. I pump the brakes, but the tires are slipping and we veer gently but inexorably toward the median strip. Suddenly... But I am getting ahead of myself. A week or so before the Philly show, Angelos Kyrlidis made a reservation with Budget Car Rentals for a "small van". We were at that point uncertain how many people would be driving with us from Boston to Philly, but given that it is a 6-7 hour drive under the best of conditions, we thought it made sense to rent a roomier vehicle... After all, this was a special occasion, and we wanted to arrive and depart in a style appropriate to the celebratory mood we all shared. Skip ahead to Friday... But be careful not to trip over Wednesday night, and Happy's amazing debut in Albany! I will post more about that ANY DAY NOW, but let it suffice for now to say that we were psyched right off the scale in anticipation of the Philly show. (Doug mistakenly reports "Greg was practically ready to go into orbit;" i was, in fact, already up there whizzing past sattelites.) KiRi (Haaaaarrrrggie) drove down that evening, and it was with a great deal of excitement that she, Angelos, and I went to pick up the van. We were not disappointed. The "small van" proved to be a Ford Aerostar monster, with two full size benches, large bucket seats in front, a good sound system with a cassette deck and separate controls for the passengers in the back, four-wheel drive, and a deep grey finish that almost looked blue in the right light. Even better, the previous renters had apparently stuck duct tape all over the outside of the van -- we pointed this out to the rental company, and then felt free to use as much tape as we needed for our own ectopurposes... So, we drove the newly dubbed "EctoMobile" to my house, and spent the night in dreams of Happy haunts and Ecto expeditions. Comes the day -- heralded by the cheerful sun and the pitious moans of a sleepy self. Despite the complete absence of any higher brain functions, kIrI and I manage to get into the van and head of in search of our Boston comrades. Before long, we were all assembled: kIRi, Angelos, Liz Warwick, Mark Semich, and your humble footah. We took time at Mark's house for some decoration: inside the van, we spread an amazing amount of fuzzy blue mylar stuff (easter basket grass, apparently, though it had a sort of Las Vegas ambiance not entirely suited to the holiday), plus a variety of blue thingums hung from the seats and mirrors. Outside, we applied the signs that KirI had prepared (one letter per sheet of paper, with Entertaining and Educational illustrations); on the left it read: HAPPY RHODIES and on the right: ECTO MOBILE So bedecked, we sped onto the turnpike and off to New Jersey! At the first tollbooth, the attendant asked, "on your honeymoon?" It was unclear which of the five of us in the van he was addressing. I replied, "nope -- off to a music concert." He asked, "Grateful Dead?" I said, "nope -- Happy Rhodes. You probably haven't heard of her." He said, "Probably wouldn't want to." We drove off. We didn't, to our knowledge, cause any accidents on the way down, but we got some looks to be treasured... The reactions ranged from laughter to puzzlement (usually emphasised by the onlookers' passing us several times on each side) to satisfied nods of understanding ("Yep, see, I told ya, Martha, Devil worshippers on our nations highways.") This last impression was not entirely groundless: when we stopped in Connecticut for tea and toilets, we discovered that the letters 'R', 'H', and 'O' had blown off, leaving the rather baffling sentiment: HAPPY DIES We laughed for some while, but we also replaced the letters. With luck, light traffic, and high speeds, we made it to Plainsboro, NJ, in time to join up with jessica "the ecto goddess", Vickie, Doug, Barry, Simon, and Dave (apologies if i have forgotten someone). We took the opportunity to enhance the splendor of the EctoMobile: we added black and white copies of the covers to the side, color shots to the nose, and the warpaint cover to the back with the helpful caption "THIS is Happy Rhodes." KIri authenticated the efforts with a sign declaring the van "the official ecto road trip vehicle." And then, we were off to Philly. Doug recounted our use of a sign and some dubious driving techniques to ask them what frequency WXPN uses. He didn't mention our second, far more desperate communication over gas -- we drove with the needle on 'E' for quite some while. Nonetheless, we arrived in Philly more or less on schedule, and found parking near the Eden restaurant. The EctoMobile figured little in the following hours' story, and I will tell that story at some other point, so skip ahead to 1am. (Be careful not to trip over the concert... *wham* oops! well, it _is_ hard to skip over :) I was drawn away from conversation with Kevin by the alarming news that the garage we had left the van in was closing. Indeed, it was looking pretty deserted when we got back there, but we managed to extract the 'Mobile in time. With no better place to go, we decided to park the van on the sidewalk in front of the Penn Towers Hotel. This arrangement proved fortunate, as the ectopians we had left behind convinced Happy and Kevin to come out front and see our, mm, artistic auto (mobile masterpiece? captivating car??) The reaction was gratifying -- Kevin wanted to know how come "we don't get to drive in something like this?!" and Happy happily explained that all the album covers *were* in fact pictures of herself at various times in the morning... I have a truly spooky picture of Happy viewing the van: she is standing in a crowd of ectopians, who are looking stunned and confused. Happy is the only person looking at the camera -- the flash left her skin pale and her eyes red flame, and i think of her new vampire songs and get chills... After some confusion and repeated goodbyes to H&K&company (who were in some confusion over where to eat at 2am in Philly), the ectomobilites load themselves back in the van, and we, Doug, and Jeff Burka followed Mark Carroll 45 minutes south into Delaware, where we spent a blissful night sound asleep on his floor. Thanks, Mark! Thanks, floor! We got a rather late start the next day, as we lingered over blue bagels and relaxed conversation, but 'round noon we got back in the van (which was still looking pretty good, if you will excuse a biased opinion) and drove to meet jessica, Joe, and Vickie in Philly. Mark followed us, and I boldly set out to find the Wyndham Hotel, with the knowledge that it was somewhere in the city of Philadelphia. (OK OK, we knew it was in Franklin Plaza... or was it Franklin Square..?) I followed signs for "Central Phila" until they stopped, and then Mark Semich asked at a tourist info booth and got us pointed in the right direction. We didn't have much time to chat -- they were late for the OmniMax show, and we needed to get on the road -- but we said "Hi" and "Bye" and headed north. We made good time through New Jersey, which was encouraging -- we needed to return the van by 9pm or pay for an additional days rental. By the time we hit Connecticut, however, our sense of satisfaction was buried deep under the snow -- White Out Conditions, indeed. We made our way at a cautious 35 miles/hour up Interstate 84, with good music and conversation and regular accidents to liven up the hours. (and hours there were -- I drove about 9 hours in total...) And thus we return to the beginning of this tale: swerving off the road with a choice of ditch or neighboring car as target... As it turns out, we ended up safely on the road, though i did wake up the people in the back. (Sorry 'bout the anticlimax... ;) With Happy in our hearts and McDonald's fries in our stomachs, we made it back to Boston at 10pm. Fortunately, there was no one at the Budget car return place. This allowed Liz room to maneuver: she called the national reservations line and complained in exhausted tones that we were TRYING to return the van and we just wanted to go to SLEEP and WHERE was the attendent and WHY wasn't there a time stamp, and I swear if she had kept it up they would have waived the rental fee altogether... As it was, they told us to just leave it and they would ensure that we would not be charged for the extra day. (Of course, when Angelos called the next day, they *had* in fact charged us for the extra day -- but he just imitated Liz and all was well again!) So, there it is. Next time, I'll actually tell you about the concerts... but until then, have fun and footahs! -greg -- gb10@gte.com -- "if love is a game, i win" -- HR ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 1 Apr 92 17:27:30 EST From: woj@remus.rutgers.edu Subject: ectoes and feet katefans@chinet.chi.il.us (Chris n Vickie) sez: >Since it's common for people to join Ecto without having heard Happy's >music, I wonder if a "Happy Sampler" might be a good idea to add to >Doug's collection of tapes to dub. this reminds me. remember the ill-fated ectopoll that angelos ran a few months ago? well, i suspect that now that there is a bigger base of people to poll from, it might be time to run another favorite song poll. plus, i think that more people have heard the 1st4 now, so we have those songs to choose from as well. from this new poll, i'd be willing to put together a sampler tape for new list members. how about? so here's the deal. send me your 10 favorite happy rhodes songs. i'll compile a list and post it in a week or two. send your votes to me at: with the word "ectopoll" in the subject line. >I recorded my Kansas City show tonight and this is my playlist: >Big Hat Garden of Edith (thanks woj!) yow! you picked my favorite song off the tape. it's actually a bonus song on the cd release. and it's light and airy unlike most of the rest of the release. coolness... >Hugo Largo Eskimo Song this following big hat surprises me not at all. big hat is kinda like hugo largo without guitars - they use violin, melodica, percussion and other "non-rock" instruments to get the same sort of feel. big hat's "pluck song" is so hugo largo it's not even funny. gb10@gte.com (Gregory Bossert) sez: >as Angelos mentioned the other day, i am convinced that there is a >boom of interest in alternative female vocalists... which is just >fine with this footah! eh. i have to stand with vickie on this one. there may be a seeming boom of female performers, but i don't think that there is. it seems pretty constant as far as i can tell. you get a few people who get notable attention for whatever combination of luck and promotion and many other get out in the cold. honestly, i think that part of the seeming boom is the fact that there are a lot of people on ecto and gaffa who have diverse tastes. as a result, *you* (the net.addict) gets to hear about a lot that is out there that joe average emptv watcher has no clue about. most of my music info comes from the net now - the balance comes from trade mags that i pick up here and there. dbx@olympic.atmos.colostate.edu (Doug Burks) sez: >No problem on my end. What's the difference between seven and eight tapes, >anyway? :) The "Happy sampler" would be a good idea. As for what to put on >it, why not return to your original idea for the Ecto SiG, where you were going >to put the songs we voted as Happy's best. hmmm...i should read the digest more closely, hm? well, in any event, i don't mind taking votes for a new poll...send 'em in (unless someone else has already volunteered to that is - being on the digest is good for the mailbox but bad for the timing). woj ======================================================================== Date: 1 April 1992 10:44:46 CST From: Subject: Laura redux redux from Vickie and me The following was sent to me by mistake instead of its intended destina- tion, which was posting to ecto: [begin intended posting by Vickie:] From: gatech!chinet.chi.il.us!katefans%harvard@harvunxw.BITNET (Chris n Vickie) Subject: Re: Laura Nyro To: U38373@uicvm.bitnet Date: Tue, 31 Mar 92 1:28:40 CST Vickie here. Thanks for the welcome back, Vish! Meredith, I'd be very curious to know which artists you aren't familiar with from my tapes. "Silence of the Lambs" sweep. Amazing! Just simply amazing!! Mitch provides a Laura Nyro discography. I would have answered Angelos' question, but I was hoping that someone more knowledgable would jump in. > For your future reference, the discography is like so: > (all on Columbia unless noted) > > "The First Songs" (1966 on Verve, reissued on Columbia c. 1973) > "Eli and the Thirteenth Confession" (1968) > "Christmas and the Beads of Sweat" (1970) > "Smile" (1976) (Out of Print) (includes "The Cat Song," should Court be readin g > "Nested" (1978) (Out of Print) I have these Laura Nyro albums. It's not exactly my cup 'o tea, so I have to admit I've hardly listened to them at all. In looking at these albums I was suprised to see that she wrote some big hits for other people. 3 I can name off hand: Wedding Bell Blues (big hit, can't remember who by) Stoney End (big hit for Barbra Strisand, I think) And When I Die (again, bad memory, can't remember who it was a hit for) These are on _The First Songs_ album. I need to listen to these again. Vickie [end intended posting by Vickie] [begin _de novo_ material by me] "Wedding Bell Blues" was covered by the Fifth Dimension, who were heavy consumers of LN's songs in this manner. The best known of these besides "WBB" were "Sweet Blindness" and "Stoned Soul Picnic," both of which were, in their original form, on LN's _Eli_ album. The director of _Prince of Tides_ did, indeed, cover "Stoney End," but I don't recal how big a hit it actually was for her. It was the title cut on an album in which she experimented with more "contemporary" material than she'd typically been doing. "And When I Die" is best known as the cover by Blood, Sweat and Tears from their eponymous album. One famous cover of LN's material that Vickie didn't mention was "Eli's Coming" by Three Dog Night. I forgot to mention the other day that "Mother's Spiritual"--arguably LN's least-known album--is also out of print, as far as I can tell. Mitch Pravatiner Senior Research Associate Ecto Institute for Musicogerontology ======================================================================== Subject: gif-printing help! Date: Wed, 01 Apr 92 18:32:02 -0500 From: jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu Hullo, folks... I've started considering making the semi-official Fuzzy Blue Rokaku (a 6-sided traditional Japanese fighting kite). What I need is a print-out (or 3) of the ectopg.gif file (the one used for the shirts), in one of those mosaic formats--the sort where you cut'n'paste several sheets of paper together. If any of you are capable of such a printout, I'd appreciate it if you'd get in touch with me... Thanks... Jeff |Jeffrey C. Burka | "Show what you are / Be strong, be true | | | Time for you to / Be who you are." | |jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu | --Happy Rhodes | ======================================================================== From: Martin Dougiamas Subject: Re: West Australian Review Date: Thu, 2 Apr 92 11:45:19 WST Marty here. I wrote: > > You'll never guess what I found in today's newspaper: > [ short Happy Rhodes review ] Vickie replied: > WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! > > Was there a name anywhere on this? Is there an address we can write and > thank him/her? (Not to mention setting them straight on this "debut" > business) > How amazing! Thanks, Martin! Say, any chance of getting an original or > a photocopy for my files? Please,please,please... Doug wrote: > Thanks for that review, Martin, though the circumstances behind it are > absolutely mind-boggling to me. It's a small world! I personally didn't see > an Australian in Albany. Perhaps I should add that both of you are APRIL FOOLS!! :) :) (...unfortunately. :( I wish it WAS true, but I guess it's only a matter of time before reviews like that will be so common that even Ectophiles won't bother reading them anymore. AS IF!!!!! :) Martin P.S. Thanks to everyone for their great concert and party reports... I must second Vickie's comment: they really do make us outposts feel a part of it all. 'Twas also lots of fun to talk to the ecto-party when I phoned them up on Sunday. A very clear connection and minimal delay for a change combined to make me feel like saying "Stay there, you lot, I'm driving over to see you!" The real surprises for me were Albert and Court... Court has a lovely voice, and favoured me with a fair smattering of mews delivered with it. Actually, her voice made me think more like a sleek, elegant puma than a little pussy-cat. :) Albert sounded totally unlike his posts, ... he actually couldn't think of anything to say! As we all know, this is not the case in his recent entertaining posts! :) Klaus was good old party-host Klaus :), Claudia sounded exactly like I imagined her, and Chip was good old Jeff. :) Unfortunately, in the rush I didn't get to talk to Michelle... Chip? Could you please pass on my best wishes and apologies to her? Well, this was a rather silly way to write a "P.S." :-) Martin -- ,--------------------------+-------------------------------. _ . | Feel the searing heat of | Martin Dougiamas. | ~ _r' Ll\ ~ | heightened conciousness. | martin@marsh.cs.curtin.edu.au | | \ ~ | Feel the yearning for | Curtin University | ~ \ ._ / ~ | peace and happiness. | Perth, Western Australia | -->X~ `-' ~ `======= * Happy Rhodes * =+===============================' V ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is a README file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me (or leave in the incoming directory, just let me know) things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@athos.rutgers.edu)