Errors-To: ecto-owner@ns1.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu From: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@ns1.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@ns1.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #698 ecto, Number 698 Thursday, 12 August 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* that voice again Like IRC for Iceland IRC, and an alternative Re: Suzanne Vega - Video Singles ? Re: Keeper of the Radio Stations The Motels and Aimee Mann Hopscotching the posts for grist ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 12 Aug 93 12:56:00 EDT From: mojzes@monet.rutgers.edu (brni) Subject: that voice again hi there, its me, brni, the one-armed typist. i think that bob lovejoy has already given you some of the news, and i may wait until i can type more efficiently till i tell you the whole story. i'm still staying at my parents house (sans email :<), and sleeping a lot. the orthopedist is pleased with the way my bones are aligned (tho it looks terrible to me). well, i gotta run off and deal with the insurance company again. please don't send me any email--my account is close to blowing up and i won't have time for another week or 2 to clear it out. i miss you all brni (215)696-2425 603 gages lane west chester, pa 19382 ======================================================================== Subject: Like IRC for Iceland From: Tim Breitkreutz Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 11:17:36 -0600 Mitch mitches: > Personal to Tim: should you, indeed, visit Iceland, you should give us a full > report on the state of TV news there. Already the stuff of legend among affi- > cianados of _World News Now_ is the time that show ran a segment ... Sounds cool. What's _World News Now_? neal queries: > Anyone out there seen and read Like Water For Chocolate. I've > only seen it. While I enjoyed it, I imagined it would make a better > book, but I'm just imagining right now. I just read it a few weeks ago, and then saw the movie immediately afterward because it happened to be coming through town. I would say the book is far better, but the movie is good too. Obviously they had to leave out a lot for the movie, but the book (even in translation-- I don't know Spanish) is far richer all-around. It also has the neat format of starting each chapter like a recipe and then quickly deteriorating into narrative. However, the author is also a professional screenwriter so I have to say she did a great job of translating it into film. Also, the translation of the book is very smooth and easy to read--I managed to gulp it in one afternoon. :) Klaus reminds: > Tim asked who is on IRC: I've already mentioned that I occasionally > pop in, usually at around 11pm local time and I usually just check > if there's someone logged in that I know. Unfortunately the line the > host I use for IRC is not very reliable. Only once out of four I'm > able to connect to the system. Hmm. Well, Kiri and I had the very first IRC #Ecto chat yesterday! Maybe all us IRC'ers could pick a mutually good time of the week or month (might be hard considering the geographic diversity) and try to make it a semi-regular thing. What is your local time, Klaus? GMT+1? On another note, I donated an extra Warpaint I had to the Edmonton Public Library last fall. It took them *ages* to get it into their catalogue, but it's definitely in the system now and has been signed out every time I've checked their computer. Our library has a somewhat limited selection of CD's so they get very high circulation rates! They even got it filed correctly (under Rhodes, in their female vocalist section). Tim ======================================================================== From: S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk Subject: Re: Like IRC for Iceland Date: Thu, 12 Aug 93 18:34:11 BST On Thu, 12 Aug 1993 at 11:17:36 -0600 Tim Breitkreutz wrote: > Klaus reminds: > > > Tim asked who is on IRC: I've already mentioned that I occasionally > > pop in, usually at around 11pm local time and I usually just check > > if there's someone logged in that I know. Unfortunately the line the > > host I use for IRC is not very reliable. Only once out of four I'm > > able to connect to the system. > > Hmm. Well, Kiri and I had the very first IRC #Ecto chat yesterday! > Maybe all us IRC'ers could pick a mutually good time of the week or > month (might be hard considering the geographic diversity) and try to > make it a semi-regular thing. What is your local time, Klaus? GMT+1? This is a good idea! I have the wherewithal to participate in IRC but have never found anything interesting going on. Klaus is currently on GMT+2 (as is most of Europe, except that Eire, the UK, & Portugal are on GMT+1) that's six hours ahead of the East Coast. -- Regards Steve Fagg ( S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk +44-279-402437 ) BNR Europe Ltd., London Road, Harlow, Essex, CM17 9NA, UK *** "Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown". *** ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 12 Aug 93 13:50:50 EDT From: jessica@vizlab.rutgers.edu (jessica) Subject: IRC, and an alternative I have an alternative to IRC for those of you who have access to a UNIX machine that is on the internet. it is called icb (for international cb) though originally it was called "forumnet" by the guy who wrote it. This is sort of an imitation of the original forumnet. (it's a long story). Anyway, I prefer it to IRC, and I run a server here at Rutgers. It doesn't get a lot of use :) but if there are ectophiles who'd like to use it to get together and talk, please give it a try! It makes 'talk'ing with more than one person very practical and easy. In fact I prefer it over 'talk' even for one-on-one conversations because it provides facitlities to redisplay past lines (up to 500 i tihnk) and log to a file. If you'd like to give it a try, the sources are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/icb. There are binaries for sun4 and ultrix machines, (icb.sun4 and icb.ultrix) and the source is icb-client.tar.Z. There is a subdirectory for vaxen, but I have *no* idea if it works or how to use it. Those of you with vax access only are welcome to give it a try if you think you know what to do :) jessica ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 15:09 MET DST From: uli@zoodle.robin.de (Ulrich Grepel) Subject: Re: Suzanne Vega - Video Singles ? > I decided to order 'Suzanne Vega - Video Singles' vhs-tape from England > as it's only 7.99 pounds at Gilt Edge Enterprises and I was just > wondering if anyone here would happen to know which songs it contains? Suzanne Vega - The Video Singles - Book Of Dreams - Tired Of Sleeping - Men In A War - Luka - Solitude Standing - Left Of Centre - Gypsy - Marlene On The Wall I got mine mail-order for about 15 DM. And a live tape (Royal Albert Hall) for about the same. Both from Disc Center. Bye, Uli ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 21:05 MET DST From: uli@zoodle.robin.de (Ulrich Grepel) Subject: Re: Keeper of the Radio Stations > Here is the official List of Radio Stations: > > NORTHEAST CENTRAL MIDWEST > WCLZ Brunswick, ME WCBE Columbus, OH KUNI Cedar Falls, IA > [........] Me living in Germany always wondered why ALL of Americas radio stations have four-letter IDs starting with either of W or K. And the rest of the letters don't make any sense at all, at least not for the uninitiated. Is there any system behind the names? And what do W and K stand for? W like Wave? K like Kate-using-station? Radio stations in Germany have 'better' (well...) names. Some of them have acronyms where there is really something behind (SWF = SuedWestFunk = South-West-radio, HR = Hessischer Rundfunk = Hassian Radio), eventually followed by a number from 1 to 5 or so to indicate what particular program of that station you hear. Or you can have stations with really proper names, as for example Antenne Bayern or Starsat Radio. Anyhow, as long as there's no opportunity here in Germany (or anywhere else outside North America) to get Happys albums in any other way but mail ordering it directly from Aural Gratification we over here will have to do that. Someday... Bye, Uli ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 15:46:44 -0400 (EDT) From: consid Subject: The Motels and Aimee Mann Klaus asked about the Motels. I don't think they would really be considered ectofood -- more AOR (album-oriented rock) or new wave. The Motels were an L.A.-based band who released several albums in the early and mid-'80s. Their first two, "The Motels" and "Careful," stiffed in the U.S. (but apparently were huge in Australia!). Their third, "All 4 One," was a smash; the group recorded a pair of videos for the tracks "Take the L" and "Only the Lonely," both of which received major MTV airplay. "Only the Lonely" and "Suddenly Last Summer," from their fourth album "Little Robbers," were Top 10 hits in the U.S. "Shock" was their last album; they broke up in '87. Lead singer Martha Davis released a solo album a couple years ago. "No Vacancy," the Motels' 1990 best-of, is the only one currently in print. Not a great band, IMO, but Martha Davis does have a wonderfully sultry voice ... Balt/Wash ectophiles should be aware that Aimee Mann is giving a FREE concert at Baltimore's Inner Harbor amphitheater tomorrow at noon!! sponsored by pseudo-alternative WHFS ... -Sue Trowbridge * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * You know that your time is coming 'round Don't let the bastards grind you down -U2 * * * * * * * * * * consid@access.digex.net * * * * * * * * * * ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 12 Aug 93 16:55:33 EDT From: rmorrow@afit.af.mil (Robert K. Morrow) Subject: Re: Keeper of the Radio Stations > From uli@zoodle.robin.de Thu Aug 12 14:22:31 1993 > To: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu > Subject: Re: Keeper of the Radio Stations > > Me living in Germany always wondered why ALL of Americas radio stations > have four-letter IDs starting with either of W or K. And the rest of the > letters don't make any sense at all, at least not for the uninitiated. > Is there any system behind the names? And what do W and K stand for? > W like Wave? K like Kate-using-station? > The W and K prefixes are "assigned" to the US by international agreement. The W prefix is mostly for radio stations east of the Mississippi river, and the K prefix applies west of the river. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) assigns callsigns, typically three or four letters beginning with the W or K, to broadcast stations when they are licensed. Stations can ask for a particular unique group of letters that may mean something, or they are assigned the next available callsign by the FCC without any particular regard to a meaning. Sometimes the meaning may be obvious, such as KROC playing rock music, and sometimes the meaning is a bit obscure, such as WYSO (out of Yellow Springs, Ohio). Another obscure one is KVOR ("Voice of the Rockies") in Colorado Springs, Colorado. There are some broadcast stations with only three letters in their callsigns; these are usually high power stations like KFI in Los Angeles, California, or WLS in Chicago, Illinois. US amateur radio callsigns are assigned with a W, K, or N prefix and consist of four, five, or six characters which always include one digit from 0 to 9, based on the area of the country that the licensee lived when the callsign was issued. Hope this helps explain the chaos, even if it doesn't clear it up. Bob Morrow ======================================================================== From: composer@beyond.dreams.org (Jeff Kellem) Subject: Re: Date: Thu, 12 Aug 93 17:08:44 EDT > Jeff Kellem reports the following Story tour date: > } 9/24: Algonquit, ME t.b.a. > > I assume you mean Ogunquit? (Must really be t.b.a., if they > don't even know what town it's in... ;) Could be what THEY meant. I just copied what was on the flyer. :) -jeff Jeff Kellem Internet: composer@Beyond.Dreams.ORG ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 12 Aug 93 15:51:23 CDT From: Serious but Offbeat Subject: Hopscotching the posts for grist The following thread was just picked up on again: > > "Adult-Oriented Radio". Stuff like Michael Bolton, Peter Cetera, ad nauseum > > is AOR. > > In the UK AOR means Adult Oriented Rock. Radio/rock, potayto/potarto it all > means the same thing. I can remember when it meant Album Oriented Rock, which really meant progress- ive rock, presumably by contrast with "single-oriented" rock, which I presume would have been tantamount to the dreary old top-40 crapola that AM still used to emphasize in those days. Alan tells us, in part: >than these though... Tinderbox was one of the first 4 CDs I ever >purchased, and one which I will never get rid of *PURPLE* (I threw that >last word in so I wouldn't have to end my sentance with a preposition >*ORANGE* (I threw that one so I didn't have to end with the actual word >preposition either *GREY* (is it ok to end a sentence with a >conjunction?))) (Geez I needed to put emacs into show-match mode to get >those parentheses right, and then I realized that dennis's quoted text >didn't include a closing parenthesis, so I'll put one extra one in for >good measure.)) Reminds me of the days back in the 60s when Laura Nyro, according to legend, used to drive the studio musicians to distraction with her constant requests for "blue," "orange," and other colored music, which nobody but she knew what those were. Somehow they managed to cut some superlative albums anyway. The latest dispatch from the recovery front: >hi there, > >its me, brni, the one-armed typist. The way _The Fugitive_ has been doing at the box office, it may be pragmatic for him to lie low until he rejoins the ranks of two-armed typists. If said film should spawn a _Rocky Horror_-type cult, you never know how they'd react to one-armed people while in that dramaturgid state :-). Tim responds to my description of _World News Now_'s infamous Icelandic news- cast tape: >Sounds cool. What's _World News Now_? And thereby, as the saying goes, hangs a yarn. _WNN_ is the ABC network's overnight newscast, and without a doubt the wittiest, most literate, most unconventional program of its kind since the late, great _NBC News Overnight_ a decade ago. It has backslud, to paraphrase Dizzy Dean, a little bit since both the original anchors left earlier in the year, but remains well worth watching. Not the least of its charms is the eclectic music which accompanies the weather and sports. Happy's stuff would fit in well there. Other inter- esting features include excerpts from local and foreign newscasts, and reruns of reports on long-ago events (which they call "World News Then"). One of the current anchors is from Canada, and has infused a significant dose of Canadian items into the show. Perhaps ecto's Canadian sampler in formation could be peddled to their music director along with Happy's music :-). One area in which Canada clearly has it all over the States (or at least, in which Edmonton has it all over Chicago) is in the availability of the Warpaint CD at public libraries. Ever since Vickie gave a copy to the library downtown, I've been checking the CD shelves and catalog periodically to see if it's there . It's never been so far. Steve Fagg says: [...] Klaus is currently on GMT+2 (as is most of Europe, except that Eire, the UK, & Portugal are on GMT+1) that's six hours ahead of the East Coast. In the long run, it would make sense to stay on top of when different countries switch between standard and daylight saving time. In a few months the UK and the continent will revert to GMT and GMT+1, respectively (even I was confused initially by the above explanation of British Summer Time), but the transition dates may or may not be the same everywhere. This could, in the worst case, make the pickings even slimmer than at present for real-time talk buffs. To all of which Jessica adds: >and the source is icb-client.tar.Z. There is a subdirectory >for vaxen, but I have *no* idea if it works or how to use it. Vaxen, huh? :-) Were America's first great director of sexploitaiton films to re-enter active filmmaking with an erotic cyberpunk epic, cineastes every- where might well have to face up to the possibility of _Russ Meyer's Vaxen_ arriving on earth :-). (I have arguably become jaded by the recent threads in comp-academic-freedom-talk on real or imagined porno on the net :-). ) As this is written, a post has recently come in from Sue Trowbridge responding to Klaus' appeal for information on the Motels. Sue answers his questions much better than I could, so suffice it so say from this corner that they are indeed worth listening to. (I had trouble finding a word to describe Martha Davis' voice, but I certainly must dissent from Klaus' likening thereof to early Cyndi Lauper. IMHO WIVH, they have essentially no shared qualities.) As fate would have it, Bob Morrow has just saved me even more work by bringing forth a much more informative answer than I could have to Uli's query about U.S. call letters. I'll have to agree, though, that German call letters can sometimes be more descriptive. I appear to be at little if any risk of becoming totally superfluous, though. Earlier today, I posted something to wnn, the _World News Now_ mailing list, on the favorable response my description of their news report from Iceland had gotten in these pages. Another subscriber to those pages, as opposed to these, just built on it as follows: >>Yesterday, somebody on another list I subscribe to posted that he was >>thinking >>of visiting Iceland. >> > >Dear Mitch Pravatiner, > >What list is this...sounds like I subscribe to the wrong list! While I disagree that wnn is the wrong list for her, this remains the highest tribute to ecto I've seen anyone not on the list come up with this afternoon :-). Mitch ---------------------------- "When I grow up I want to do what you do. Please do it better." --From a child's letter to Linda Ellerbee, quoted in _And So It Goes_ ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is an INDEX file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@ns1.rutgers.edu)