Errors-To: owner-ecto@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 #449 ecto, Number 449 Saturday, 20 February 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Sheet music, arrangements Movie recommendation Voyager....Beyond the Beyond Wonderful Music Catalog Victoria Williams (re-post) Oh, 'twas your birthdays, friends... Re: Movie recommendation Thanks! Victoria Williams, etc. ======================================================================== From: alan moorse Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 23:13:16 -0500 Subject: Sheet music, arrangements Troy mentioned asking about sheet music for Happy's songs. Has anyone out there by any chance managed to figure out any of the finger-picked guitar pieces? I've been trying, but I'm disadvantaged in two ways; I'm a rank beginner, and I'm playing a dulcimer. Oh, I hope there WILL be a book, but I can't wait for '94. alanm ======================================================================== From: alan moorse Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 23:53:06 -0500 Subject: Movie recommendation If any of you like mildly morbid movies, I suggest you see the documentary "Brother's Keeper" if it plays in your area. I'm going to see it for a second time Sunday, and I'll be paying full price again, gladly. I also will be sending a note to an uncle in Germany (Koln) whom I rarely bother with movie recommendations (he's in the TV/movie biz). It's THAT GOOD. The basic story line is that four 60-ish farmer brothers lived together in a dismally filthy house. Two shared a bed. When one was found dead one morning, the one who slept with him was charged with murder. He even signed a confession, which he said the police bullied him into. The documentary picks up just after the accused gets out on bail and continues through the trial. Some scenes are not for the weak-of-stomach, others funny in a sad way, still others hilarious. As one of the producers said, you won't ever forget the Ward brothers. alanm ======================================================================== From: jmg@rocket.com (Jim Gurley) Subject: Voyager....Beyond the Beyond Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 14:41:08 PST As per the recent debate about just what was on the Voyager spacecraft, I have found where I work a NASA report about the Voyager and the different elements in it. Here's what it says about the "disc of gold:" The voyager message is carried by a phonograph record--a 12inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in sixty languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim. Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and neddle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form. The remainder of the record is in audio, designed to be played at 16 2/3 revolutions per second. It contains the spoken greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic music. As Carl Sagan has noted, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet." -- FYI: If anyone is interested I have the listing of all the languages, sounds, visual images, and musical selections included on the "discs of gold." >Wishing you all eternal happyness ======================================================================== Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 23:27:16 -0800 (PST) From: Steve Potter Subject: Wonderful Music Catalog Skaludy here. My best friend's girlfriend's roommate got a catalog,which is now in my posession, that is the most amazing and complete listing of music by females I have ever seen. it is called Ladyslipper. Has anyone else out there heard of it? Perhaps it is old news, but I have not seen it mentioned in the few months I have been on Ecto. They have really excellent descriptions of all of the records, eg, all of the "1st 5": (under a picture of the Warpaint cover, a whole column on HRs records) HAPPY RHODES VOLUME I Most debut releases are a bit tentative, and usually rightly so. However, this upstate New York native debuted herself into the music world with a double cassette in 1986, obviously having no qualms about showing herself-- and how thrilled we are that she's here! Incredible voice, lots of dramatic synthesizer, plus her earlier work such as this album is also characterized by lovely acoustic interludes. The artwork is an original painting of something hungry-looking (out of Clive Barker's "Cabal"?). Highly recommended (a comment you're going to be reading frequently among the next few listings)! HAPPY RHODES VOLUME II If you haven't read the review of Volume I yet, please do so now , then order them both. In fact, read on, and get them all! I promise you won't regret it, unless the covers give you nightmares, or something (and if they do, perhaps this is the time to check out that great therapist your freinds keep recommending). Includes _Under and over the brink_, _One alien_, _ To the funnyfarm_, _The revelation_. HAPPY RHODES REARMAMENT More electronic than her first two releases, this 1986 recording contains shades of early Kate Bush (most notably _Lionheart_): Lovely ethereal vocals, multi-layered melodies that reach right in and hook you, and wry, quirky lyrics. Her first 3 albums were released within the same year; all we can assume is that she's been singing, songwriting and playing since the early embryonic stages, given the high level of sophisticaiton and all-around superb quality. Also some stylistic references to Cocteau twins. Love this artist, and each of her recordings! HAPPY RHODES ECTO Happy has a voice which will be (exhaustively) compared to Kate Bush and Annie Lennox's; there's just no way to avoid the comparisons, but her visions are a bit darker, say in the gothic-apocalyptic vein - or, rather , lots of blood red roses and peeling wallpaper kind of moods. Anyway, it's just the greatest voice, and when she self-harmonizes, the result is just heavenly! The instrumentation is highly melodic and sometimes heavy synth, with sprightly counterpoints - "complex and labyrinthine but at the same time totally natural." This 1987 release is her 4th; highly recommended! HAPPY RHODES WARPAINT This 1991 release, Happy's 5th (not bad for a mere babe of 26!) and most polished to date, "drifts into the listener's psyche like urgently whispered messages from the spirit world". This self-confessed music addict brings a fresh energy to our collection of electronic/experimental music by combining fly-on-the-wall observations of life and living with an impressive array of electronic effects, plus a touch of haunting European-ish violin. The result is warmer than most synthesizer recordings, mostly due to her voice, which remains primarily in the lower registers here (Annie Lennox, is she yours?). Her bold and beautiful expression, vision and artistry account for her large cult following (that's us ;-), which we predict you'll be joining as soon as you experience her. Highly recommended! Interestingly, this was in Ladyslipper's "Rock" section. They also have: Drumming, Native American, Women's Spirituality/New Age, Recovery (Hey Vickie--some good stuff here for you), Feminist and Lesbian, Comedy, Jewish, African, Middle Eastern, Asian, Celtic, European, Latin American, Caribbean, Country, Folk, R&B, Rap, Dance, Gospel, Blues, Jazz, Classical, and Spoken. Phew! PLUS a bunch of books, videos, t-shirts, and other women-type paraphernalia. The company is run totally by women, mostly (all?) lesbians. Very thick, personable, well-done catalog (85 pages with fine print). No ectophile should be without! Ladyslipper PO Box 3124-R Durham, NC 27715 800-634-6044 (The 'postage paid' box says it is a non-profit organization!) Now back to our regularly scheduled digest.... -Skaludy "If you have friends, you never have to search for anything. It just funnels right to you." -me spotter@darwin.bio.uci.edu ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 4:47:12 EST From: WretchAwry Subject: Victoria Williams (re-post) I don't know what the people on rec.music.christian would think about someone like me reading their group :-), but I do check out the Subject Lines every now and then because there are artists in that genre that I like. I hadn't looked in it for ages, but for some reason I did tonight. I'm so glad I did. There were threads about Victoria Williams and Sam Phillips. When I started reading this post I knew that I wanted to re-post it in Ecto, and was going to e-mail Andy Whitman to ask his permission. Unfortunately, in the later Sam Phillips thread it was revealed that today (well, yesterday, Friday) was his last day on the net. I wish I had known, I wish I had seen this earlier. I wish I could write Andy and tell him that this post made me glow, his love for Victoria is so apparent and I feel the same way about her. This post also made me cry, because it's sad too. I wish I could have told Andy goodbye. I hope he can get back on sometime, through a Public Access site or through some other means. I've also added the post by Andy's friend Michael, and he gives some truly *wonderful* information! I just e-mailed him to thank him (and tell him what I did.) Chris and I went to see Lorenzo's Oil tonight and were in tears nearly the whole time. I hope that the work the Odones are doing will someday help Victoria, and we intend to contribute to The Myelin Project with that hope in mind. =========================================================================== >From: ajw@cbnews.cb.att.com (andrew.j.whitman) >Subject: Victoria Williams >Keywords: t bone, sam, mark heard, life, death, bag ladies >Date: 8 Feb 93 16:30:51 GMT Old Farthood is a terrible thing, and can result in creeping ennui and lethargy, often accompanied by a tendency to take afternoon naps or watch bowling on ESPN. To combat this mortal terror one must sometimes take drastic measures. So when the ever-youthful Michael Toth called me up and proposed a 450-mile road trip over twisty, mountain roads to see a 2-hour concert I gulped hard, thought about all the difficult 7-10 splits I might be missing, and said, "uh ... sure." So off we went. Our destination was Charleston, West Virginia, home of the syndicated weekly radio program "Mountain Stage," and the undisputed biscuit capital of the universe. Chinese restaurants sell biscuits in Charleston. You can order them for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Signs at Burger King announce, "We have biscuits now!". The largest chain in town appears to be a place called Tudor's Biscuit World. Regrettably, we passed on the West Virginia cuisine and headed for the Mountain Stage Theater at the Culture Center. We were there to see Victoria Williams, who is the most potent cure for Old Farthood known to man. There were other acts on the bill - the engaging and melodic Michael Penn, the woefully forlorn folky Kristin Hall, the woefully drunk Thelonious Monster - but I didn't spend all day in a car to listen to someone sing folk songs about vegetarianism or watch an obnoxious lout stagger about the stage. I came to see Victoria. I first saw Victoria five or six years ago, opening for then-husband Peter Case. I couldn't believe what I saw, and I wasn't sure if what I was witnessing was a comedy act or simply a painfully inept performer. Guitar chords never quite materialized. Songs would pause in mid-line for second after second as Victoria struggled to get her fingers on the right frets - then would start up again as if nothing had happened. And out of this waif-like hippie woman came these high, quavering, undecipherable squeaks that sounded like nothing if not a musical version of Olive Oyl, Popeye's beloved. This can't be for real, I thought. But it was for real. About half-way through that set it occurred to me that what I was witnessing was not an act, but a person. And for all the weirdness, and for all the bag lady clothes, and for all the eccentricities, what I was seeing was the genuine article. And toward the end of that set, when Victoria screwed up her mouth and rolled her eyes and sang with a voice of amazement, "Why, look at that moon!," I got it. I wasn't just watching a person, I was watching a child. I was watching Peter Pan. And I was watching someone who had somehow emerged with a sense of wonder fully intact. And I've been a major fan ever since. Her two albums, "Happy Come Home" and "Swing the Statue," invariably put a silly grin on my face whenever I play them. And I laugh with her, and I usually find a way to rediscover that sense of wonder and amazement that comes from looking up and really *seeing* that big ol' harvest moon for the very first time. Victoria sang the song about the moon yesterday, as well as songs about clotheslines and frogs and rainbows, and the God who sees them all. She messed up on her guitar chords, and she rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and grinned that silly grin, and I grinned right along with her. After the show Michael and I and a couple of our friends wandered down to the foot of the stage where Victoria was signing autographs. We thanked her for her music, and we chatted with her for a little bit. She asked us if we'd be interested in having dinner together. Does the moon shine? We jumped at the chance. So Mike and I, and our friends Steve and Skip, and Victoria and her violin player Tammy and her filmmaker-friend Nicky ended up at a tacky Italian restaurant in an industrial neighborhood in Charleston, one of the few places that didn't have biscuits on the menu. We hung out together for about three hours, and laughed and giggled like little kids and talked about God and churches and music and pet dogs and life in L.A. We heard lots of stories about T Bone and Sam and Mark Heard and Oliver Stone and Tom Waits and Maria McKee. I'll let Michael fill you in on those. They were good stories, and it was a good time. In the past two years Peter Pan has experienced a painful divorce and the discovery that she has Multiple Sclerosis. So, I suppose, in some morbid way I was curious to see if there would be trouble in Never-Never Land. There was. Victoria apologized for missing her guitar chords, explaining that her hands were numb and that she couldn't feel her fingers on the guitar strings. And she told us about the benefit concerts and recordings that were being organized to raise money for her medical expenses because no one will insure her. And she looked around the table, smiled that silly grin, said "Y'all are so nice. I don't know why people are so nice to me," and broke down sobbing. I'm not very good in situations like that, particularly when I don't even know the person sobbing across the table from me, and I wasn't very good last night. The conversation resumed again on some other, safer topic. After a while we all got up to leave, and we all shook hands, and Victoria put on her big, floppy red hat with the ear flaps and we went outside. And I was glad to have been there, glad that Victoria had friends like Nicky and Tammy who could be there day after day, and who could help her still see the wonder. I drove home to my wife and kids, and there was a full moon all the way. I felt like I hardly needed my headlights. When I got home at 2:00 a.m., I asked Kate, the medical person in my life, to tell me more about Multiple Sclerosis. "It's a degenerative disease," she told me, "and eventually it kills you. Nobody knows what the cause is, and there is no cure. You just gradually lose control of your muscles. You lose your strength. Most people die in bed, unable to move, either from pneumonia, or from staph infections that result from bed sores. It's the most terrible disease I've ever seen. I'd rather have cancer than MS." Then she rolled over and went back to sleep. I couldn't fall asleep for a while. I just lay there in bed, praying, and watching that big ol' full moon shining through the curtains. Andy Whitman AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio att!cblpn!ajw or ajw@cblpn.att.com "Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder?/ Didn't I come to lift your fiery vision bright?" -- Van Morrison, "Sense of Wonder" ================================== >From: tothmd@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Michael David Toth) >Newsgroups: rec.music.christian >Subject: Re: Victoria Williams >Date: 9 Feb 93 00:09:43 GMT In article <1993Feb8.163051.15161@cbnews.cb.att.com> ajw@cbnews.cb.att.com (andrew.j.whitman) writes: > >So off we went. Our destination was Charleston, West Virginia, home of >the syndicated weekly radio program "Mountain Stage," and the undisputed > >We were there to see Victoria Williams, who is the most potent cure >for Old Farthood known to man. There were other acts on the bill - >the engaging and melodic Michael Penn, the woefully forlorn folky >Kristin Hall, the woefully drunk Thelonious Monster - but I didn't spend >all day in a car to listen to someone sing folk songs about >vegetarianism or watch an obnoxious lout stagger about the stage. I >came to see Victoria. But boyoboy was I glad Michael Penn was the headlining act (He and Victoria, BTW, are definite TWIST award-winners (the Toth-Whitman "IMHO" Seal of Taste) and both of them were astonishing. Michael Penn was quite the icing on the cake singing with Victoria on "Why Look At The Moon." Call your local public radio station and ask if they air the Mountain Stage show transmitted Sunday any time during the week. And if you stand directly between your speakers, you might be able to hear us going "WooWoo" and "Yeah!" in the audience... Wish the world could have been there. The tone of the drive in was just how unbelievably good God is to us, and even moreso on the ride home. (Even though we were getting increasingly dopey and missed 3 exits and lost an hour on the road and Steve and I ended up playing "The Alphabet Game" ("X my name is Xavier from Xenos and I xerox x-rays"...etc., with obnoxious horn honking on desolate rural roadways from a non-existent panel of judges)) Okay, it's only February, but yesterday was top contender for best day of the year. >So Mike and I, and our friends Steve and Skip, and Victoria and her >violin player Tammy and her filmmaker-friend Nicky ended up at a >tacky Italian restaurant in an industrial neighborhood in Charleston, >one of the few places that didn't have biscuits on the menu. We >hung out together for about three hours, and laughed and giggled >like little kids and talked about God and churches and music and >pet dogs and life in L.A. We heard lots of stories about T Bone and >Sam and Mark Heard and Oliver Stone and Tom Waits and Maria McKee. And I don't know if it ever was settled whether or not flounders are the fish with both eyes on one side of their head... It seems like most of the people into her music are people in the music/film business. She has a sizeable (?) role in this summer's Gus Van Sant film _Even Cowgirls Get The Blues_, and a benefit album of artists doing cover versions of her songs should be out this fall. (some people doing Victoria songs: Michael Penn, Matthew Sweet, Soul Asylum, Tom Waits, The Jayhawks, some of the guys from Pearl Jam, and inevitably Sam, T-Bone & Company. An independent label will issue her 3rd release and hopefully re-issue the obscure Geffen 1st LP _Happy Come Home_ on CD. But the recurrent theme of the conversations seemed to point to a faithful God in control and the wonderful support of the Body of Christ. Thanks to Victoria, for redefining "cool" and showing us the joy of life that God desires for us all... (And maybe Olive Oyl isn't accurate, maybe Olive Oyl meets Janis Joplin?) Michael. "You couldn't have been much badder than me, who am I to say how you should be; you couldn't have been much sadder than me; oh be sweet, be free, every day is poetry..." -Victoria. ======================================================================== ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 5:02:10 EST From: WretchAwry Subject: Re: Wonderful Music Catalog Skaludy, thank you *SO* much for passing along the Ladyslipper information! It has been mentioned here before, but this must be a brand new catalog, because I don't think that they had all of the albums in the last one. It's good timing too, because I was working on a new edition of the FAQ and I added a bit about the Ladyslipper catalog. I couldn't find the address though (and, ooops, posted it to rec.music.misc without it) and kept forgetting to ask here what it was. I've gotten a few catalogs from Ladyslipper (and, actually, I was the one who told H&K about the catalog and urged them to contact Ladyslipper wrt distribution. It's nice that it all worked out) but anyway, I couldn't find my catalogs (which are a few years old, I'll send away for the new one) so, what was I saying....oh yeah, good timing! Thanks!! (What in the world is "Recovery Music"? Happy's is my recovery music. :-) ) Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 5:07:41 EST From: WretchAwry Subject: Oh, 'twas your birthdays, friends... HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAYS to Jim Sturnfield and to Bob Lovejoy!! (Bob's was on Groundhog day...was that the 2nd?) Vickie ======================================================================== From: rhogan@chaph.usc.edu (Ron Hogan) Subject: Re: Movie recommendation Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 2:30:32 PST I will back up the recommendation for the excellent documentary BROTHER'S KEEPER. I saw this film about a week ago in Santa Monica at the Nuart, and was blown away. Before then, every time I had gone to a movie at the Nuart, they had shown a trailer for the film in which Spalding Gray talks about having seen the film ("it's a film..not a movie") and how impressed he was by it. In his words, "It was so impressive I couldn't find a single moment in which to tear myself away to go take a pee." It really *is* that compelling. I've been studying film long enough to know that you can't just point and shoot and instantly capture reality on film, but some of the footage is just so amazing in its simplicity and clarity that I almost forgot what I knew about film. Talk amongst the film students about the Academy nominations came to rest on the shame of this film being passed over. I can't urge people strongly enough to go. Ron ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 5:35:16 EST From: WretchAwry Subject: Thanks! ...to everyone who sent in yay votes for The Crying Game. I definitely will see it. Angelos, I'm so glad you got your t-shirt. I guess that Rhondda had turned over the mail-order stuff to one of the guys in the band and he was behind. Jens, I'm still working for yours. Is anyone else waiting for Psychowelders stuff? Later (you can count on it, I have a story to tell), Vickie (who's fretting at the silence from Wuppertal) ======================================================================== From: heath@iceblink.cs.jhu.edu (Dave Heath) Subject: Re: Victoria Williams (re-post) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1993 19:06:21 GMT WretchAwry writes: Thanks for reposting this, Vickie. It was really touching. >An independent label will issue her >3rd release and hopefully re-issue the obscure Geffen 1st LP _Happy Come >Home_ on CD. Wow! Great news! -dave ======================================================================== Subject: Victoria Williams, etc. Date: Sat, 20 Feb 93 14:26:44 -0500 From: jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu First, a quick note regarding Victoria Williams--thanks for reposting that stuff, Vickie. It was cool to read. The author of the first post really struck a note when he talked about the first time he saw VW. I had much the same reaction the first time I heard one of her songs-- "Vieux Amis" from _Swing the Statue_. I was listening to a compilation tape (thanks, vickie! ;-) and I immediately looked at my Walkman to see if it was broken! I was *certain* that nobody could sound like that intentionally! Then I realized that the _music_ sounded right, and it was just the vocals that were screwy. I don't remember when I started really liking Victoria Williams (still don't have either of her albums, and I'll eternally kick myself for passing up a used copy of _Swing the Statue_ for an equally cheap Pogues album), but I have tremendous respect for her. "Happy, Happy come home!" Anyway. I've been thinking about Happy's library lately, and I realized that what I'd really love for HTR VII would be a well-recorded live album. I often think of the cool live arrangements when I'm listening to the studio discs, and I'd love to have an official release of 'em. Of course, Happy will need to mount a tour before this happens, but hey, I'm more than willing to let her do that! Generous, aren't I? ;-) Oh--and for Happy segues. In a non-tongue-in-cheek mode, the best Happy segue I've come up with was "Ecto" leading into Enya's "Cursum Perficio." They have similar themes of death/eternity (I love the repeated "eternum" at the end of Enya's song), and the previously discussed bassline of "Ecto" leads perfectly into the bass-heavy throbbing of "Cursum Perficio." A match made in heaven. Damn. I'd thought of a funny tic segue, and now I can't remember it. So it goes. Jeff |Jeffrey C. Burka | "Fairies are the perfect people to do this | |(suffering Bad Grammar) | sort of work. Biologically, their upper | |jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu | bodies are strong enough to wield a pickaxe...." | ======================================================================== 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)