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 #453 ecto, Number 453 Tuesday, 23 February 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* New internet address for Bob! The Mystery of the Floating Dishes Re: PG at WOMAD Bing! Re: Little Equiquakes equipoise update riddle solution... Save Our Souls baked Englishmen Further first Happy impressions first the work, then the joy, but WHAT A JOY!!! Why I quote Happy Re: k.d. lang Re: Internet ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Feb 93 22:30 EST From: robert@deepspace.nj00802.sai.com (Robert Lovejoy) Subject: New internet address for Bob! Hi everybody! Just switched over to a new gateway for the internet, and boy I feel better! Genie was taking a large chunk of my wallet for internet access! Fortunately I discovered SAI out of New Hampshire and I'm hoping this will do the trick! Still no FTP, but it really beats Genie! I'm still rather new to the entire internet concept. I understand it was loosely created by the NSF, and loosely run by a bunch of loose people... Many of you use unix terminals. I was wondering if anyone on Ecto had noteworthy unusual access to the internet, or just any advice or tips for internet neophytes! In reading my digest, I note Julianne is from Champaign, IL. In a case of small-worldness, that's where my old (?) lead guitarist from my first band was last heard from! The thought that you may have sold him a recording or two crosses my mind. We met in Vietnam and formed a band on our return to the states. That band gave me back my sanity after that experience; music has great healing powers. Unfortunately I lost track of those guys after the band broke up (it lasted a year and a half...) Anyway, Julianne, glad you finally finished your Happy collection! My favorite song on Rearmament is "Til the Dawn Breaks"! Of course, they're all great songs! Glad to hear the Peter Gabriel show went well! I was reading in the paper today that Elton John had to cut off his performance in Melbourne due to a grasshopper attack! Apparently a swarm of them took center stage! You aussies have an interesting environment!!! Michael B. - that's an interesting theory about the Boston record stores! Knowing the city, I'm inclined to think there may be some truth to it!! BTW, Tower Cherry Hill has Happy in Folk! At least they have all the albums; we should count our blessings! You mentioned addiction: we're all addicted here at ecto! I'm surprised the government hasn't made Happy's music illegal yet! Happy listening, everyone, and to those who have just received their copies of Equipoise, welcome to a wonderful album! Bob Lovejoy ======================================================================== Subject: The Mystery of the Floating Dishes From: klaus@inphobos.w.open.de (Cosmic Vagabond) Date: Mon, 22 Feb 93 22:59:16 GMT Hmm, I haven't seen this mentioned before, so maybe noone noticed. One of the first things Claudia saw when she had a look at Equipoise was that the scales on the back don't have a beam! They are floating in the air! Now, I know that balance is hard to achieve and especially hard to maintain, but seeing those dishes unsupported is quite surprising. Someone who wants to try an interpretation? _____ Klaus "Cosmic Vagabond" Kluge --*-- klaus@inphobos.w.open.de "I saw the four seasons sitting on the back of wooden horses ... turning in a roundabout" Peacock Palace, "Like a snake" ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 2:00:17 EST From: WretchAwry Subject: Re: The Mystery of the Floating Dishes Klaus writes: > Hmm, I haven't seen this mentioned before, so maybe noone noticed. > One of the first things Claudia saw when she had a look at Equipoise > was that the scales on the back don't have a beam! > They are floating in the air! No, one's being held up by flight, and the other by a lamb. :-) Vickie ps, I *loved* your First Impressions post! Dirk too! Terry too! I'm keeping a file. ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 2:12:07 EST From: WretchAwry Subject: Re: PG at WOMAD > As I said before, I couldn't make it to WOMAD 8-( BUT it turned out the > our national radio ABC broadcast the concerts every night for 3 nights. They > -sounded- just great. PG and Shiela Chandra were wonderful (as were the rest!) > Still, NEXT year I'll be there for sure!! Graham, oh Graham, oh most wonderful One, you didn't happen to *tape* this, did you? > Ofcourse, I -did- get to see Shiela Chandra in concert in Sydney last > Thursday and got her to sign my CD's after the show. :-) :-) Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease tell us about it, the concert and meeting her. Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Feb 93 23:18:09 PST From: stevev@miser.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) Subject: Bing! Michael G Peskura writes: > Vickie writes: > > > ... When we moved up here we > > had to give away so many books, hundreds! We kept particular favorites > > and ones we didn't think we'd be able to find easily again. One of my > > favorite books is still in a box, _The Best of Cordwainer Smith_, which > > contains a story "Mother Hitton's Little Kittens" ... > > Holy Moly! I LOVE Cordwainer Smith! Why can't i write like that? > > Happily, > Mp Cordwainer Smith is also one of my all-time favorite science fiction writers. What I love so much about all of his work is the almost dream-like quality of his imagery and plots. It's not techie "hard" science fiction, but he is so thorough and so imaginative that things like laminated mouse-brains never seem out of place. I have been lucky enough to find collections of all of his work in paperback; although his science fiction writing fills only four volumes, they are among my most prized books. (Although two of them are currently out on loan . . . .) ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 2:31:32 EST From: WretchAwry Subject: Re: Little Equiquakes Dirk writes about "Save Our Souls": > (they should have taken a real trumpet) and mars the athmosphere > of the song, and I don't like the melody it plays, either. That's funny, because I've never heard it as a trumpet sound at all. It never entered my mind. I love how it sounds, because it's somewhat...um... unearthly, and to me fits with the song perfectly. Depending on what kind of mood I'm in, I either tolerate or can't stand the high, choppy voices near the beginning of "Runners" (the ones that sing "we talk" and "and the" and "oh no!") I really can't think of anything else that bothers me. (Though I am nearly sick to death of "I Say" but that's my own fault because I gave away my first random repeat tape--to a guy at a record store who'd never heard of Happy but loved Sarah McL--and when I went to make another one, I mis-programmed and the next day, on the way to work, I found that I had a 100 minute tape with nothing but "I Say" repeated over and over again. I didn't even notice until it had played about 5 times, but I kept on listening to it...over and over and over again. Wheras once I thought the song was too short, now.... Happy's primal wailing is too short, that's for sure. I want to hear an entire album of her doing things like that.) > But there are too many wonderful moments on the album that these trifles > are of no consequence. You bet! > By now I'm having some problems with the lyrics and I'm waiting for your > interpretations (who's the master in Runners, who is Gabrielle etc. > etc.) Asylum Master, of course! Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Feb 93 23:28:56 PST From: stevev@miser.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) Subject: equipoise update Recently I've been having the most unusual symptoms, caused by having had the big E on almost constant play since I got it. I'm beginning to feel I'm overplaying it a bit, but I also can't stop playing it at least a little. I find "Out Like a Lamb" to be one of the most uncharacteristically vague Happy songs I've heard. She really seems to be trying to hint around the meaning of the song. It's almost Katelike how obscure it is. But I love the bagpipes; perhaps it is just a case of being warned ahead of time, thinking "ewww, bagpipes," and then finding them nicely and unobtrusively integrated into the song. Last Wednesday I was listening to the big E at work, and after stopping the tape for a bit to respond to a co-worker's question, I restarted it, only to have the audio go dead a moment later. I pulled out the tape, found it undamaged, and after short investigation discovered that the drive wheels were no longer spinning, although the walkman would whir when turned on. So Thursday I bought a new walkman, which also improved my listening enjoyment, since it came with new headphones that don't buzz during certain bass notes. It also includes a radio, which I might not use much (especially now that local Happy-playing station KAVE has gone off the air from unprofitability), which made for a pleasant surprise today, when I went idly flipping through stations to see if anything was left to listen to. I found a station playing some interesting synthy song featuring a nice female voice, and listened through a couple of other jazz songs that followed it to find that it was by Mouth Music! I had never heard Mouth Music before, but now I think I like it. ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 11:33:15 +0100 From: Ulrich Grepel Subject: riddle solution... If anyone cares: If you start 1 + 1/2pi miles north of the south pole, walk one mile south (being 1/2pi miles north of the pole then), walk one mile east (arriving at the same spot you started since you just run around in a circle) and then the first mile north again, you have it. Uli ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 11:32:43 +0100 From: Ulrich Grepel Subject: Save Our Souls Stuart says: [> Ken says:] > > If I remember right part of the engraving was intended as instructions on > > how to retreive the data on the gold disc.... There was also a "map" > > either encoded on the disc or engraved that showed where Earth is in the > > Milky Way as well... An interglactic welcome-wagon package... > > When considering Voyager, I've never been able to dismiss the question, > "What if the people who find it are not friendly?" :-) The map (actually engraved) shows our position by "pointing" to several prominent pulsars (quasars being everything but NEARBY (they are actually the objects with the largest known distance)) and encoding their characteristical pulse frequency giving precise time and place coordinates. And there was a map of our solar system showing the relative size of the nine planets, that we're on the third one, that the sixth one (Saturn) has rings and what way Pioneer went through the solar system. Now for unfriendly aliens: If the plate or the disc will ever reach any other civilised (or should I only say intelligent) society, the only thing they would be able to do after "hurrying" to our earth is archaeology, except if they are more or less around us today, and then they would find us anyway. Don't forget that aliens might watch our TV programs and even if they're friendly they might think completely different about us from that... BTW: You don't need anything but sharpened fingernails (do aliens have fingernails? do they have fingers? do they have EARS?) to get sound out of a vinyl-like disc. Uli P.S.: For anyone who really wants to know: the two plates were designed in 1972 by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake from the Cornell University in New York. The two guys are astronomers. P.P.S.: John says > Bach Brandenberg Concerto Number Two, First Movement Shouldn't that be 'BrandenbUrg' or is it spelled as 'mountain' (Berg) instead of 'castle' (Burg) in English? In Germany it's definitely 'Brandenburg'. P.P.P.S.: He also asks of a list of 10 pieces to represent humans. I'm not sure what I would choose, probably I'm too much biased towards certain performes we often talk about on this list, but I think the list on the NASA disc sounds quite fair. Perhaps I would add some Beatles, mostly because their music has to be called the music with the most radical influence in our century. P.P.P.P.S.: If they included something about the nuke, we might have to include something of the anti-music we get flooded with nowadays. I won't say what I understand as anti-music, because I don't want to start a flamewar, but I'm sure everyone has his own anti-music. P.P.P.P.P.S.: Never having seen any comment about my P^n.S.:'es I might dare to tell you my own shame album here. I first have to say that I have not listened to that album for more than 15 years now, and if you look into Klaus' birthday-file, you'll find out that I was much less than 10 years old then. And if you don't know of whom I speak here, consider yourself LUCKY. And something else: I never throw away anything that I once liked and that is not actually defunct. Selling? No, I would have to give money together with it to find anyone wanting it. Now: it's an album of ... (can I really admit it?) ... (ok, this here is buried deep enough)... Heino... (Oops! I'm away now... did I break the record for the worst record?) P.P.P.P.P.P.S.: I REALLY LOVE THAT SOS SONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 11:33:46 +0100 From: Ulrich Grepel Subject: baked Englishmen Vickie says: > [...] and orders french fries. "Pom fritz, french fries are pom fritz!" he > says. I don't know if that's what he's actually saying, but that's how > I hear it. So now, when I see the word Pom in Ecto, I think of french > fries. Weird. (Would you like your Englishman fried or baked?) Besides the fact that it's not 'pom fritz' but 'pommes frites' (Pom Fritz would be the way a German child without any French knowledge would write the term ('Fritz' being a German name). The whole thing reminds me of the first (and, until now, only) time I was in England. I also went to McDonalds and wanted pommes frites. Had not much luck... Germans with not too much culture (or using some dialect) also call them 'Pommes', actually pronouncing every letter, sounding a little bit like 'pomm-as'. Uli P.S.: I want my Englishman fried, that's why I ordered pommes FRITES, not pommes cuires. ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 11:34:35 +0100 From: Ulrich Grepel Subject: Further first Happy impressions Stuart says: [> Ken says:] > > If I remember right part of the engraving was intended as instructions on > > how to retreive the data on the gold disc.... There was also a "map" > > either encoded on the disc or engraved that showed where Earth is in the > > Milky Way as well... An interglactic welcome-wagon package... > > When considering Voyager, I've never been able to dismiss the question, > "What if the people who find it are not friendly?" :-) The map (actually engraved) shows our position by "pointing" to several prominent pulsars (quasars being everything but NEARBY (they are actually the objects with the largest known distance)) and encoding their characteristical pulse frequency giving precise time and place coordinates. And there was a map of our solar system showing the relative size of the nine planets, that we're on the third one, that the sixth one (Saturn) has rings and what way Pioneer went through the solar system. Now for unfriendly aliens: If the plate or the disc will ever reach any other civilised (or should I only say intelligent) society, the only thing they would be able to do after "hurrying" to our earth is archaeology, except if they are more or less around us today, and then they would find us anyway. Don't forget that aliens might watch our TV programs and even if they're friendly they might think completely different about us from that... BTW: You don't need anything but sharpened fingernails (do aliens have fingernails? do they have fingers? do they have EARS?) to get sound out of a vinyl-like disc. Uli P.S.: For anyone who really wants to know: the two plates were designed in 1972 by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake from the Cornell University in New York. The two guys are astronomers. P.P.S.: John says > Bach Brandenberg Concerto Number Two, First Movement Shouldn't that be 'BrandenbUrg' or is it spelled as 'mountain' (Berg) instead of 'castle' (Burg) in English? In Germany it's definitely 'Brandenburg'. P.P.P.S.: He also asks of a list of 10 pieces to represent humans. I'm not sure what I would choose, probably I'm too much biased towards certain performes we often talk about on this list, but I think the list on the NASA disc sounds quite fair. Perhaps I would add some Beatles, mostly because their music has to be called the music with the most radical influence in our century. P.P.P.P.S.: If they included something about the nuke, we might have to include something of the anti-music we get flooded with nowadays. I won't say what I understand as anti-music, because I don't want to start a flamewar, but I'm sure everyone has his own anti-music. P.P.P.P.P.S.: Never having seen any comment about my P^n.S.:'es I might dare to tell you my own shame album here. I first have to say that I have not listened to that album for more than 15 years now, and if you look into Klaus' birthday-file, you'll find out that I was much less than 10 years old then. And if you don't know of whom I speak here, consider yourself LUCKY. And something else: I never throw away anything that I once liked and that is not actually defunct. Selling? No, I would have to give money together with it to find anyone wanting it. Now: it's an album of ... (can I really admit it?) ... (ok, this here is buried deep enough)... Heino... (Oops! I'm away now... did I break the record for the worst record?) ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 11:35:49 +0100 From: Ulrich Grepel Subject: first the work, then the joy, but WHAT A JOY!!! Finally, I'm balanced... I love the album, right from the first listen, and I think it might become my favourite Happy album. And - vielen Dank, Klaus - it is autographed :). I just had one problem: 'mother sea' from 4:07 on to 'I say' 0:20 was severely damaged by a deep scratch that caused my CD player (actually a CD-ROM drive, I think my real CD-player would just freak out and stop there) to jump like an old turntable. I think it was really time to (finally and successfully) try out the CD repair kit I already had for several years... Phew! that was a Ecto-marathon. As Vickie had mentioned before I received more than just Equipoise on Saturday - there were also 8 tapes with the Happy concerts from Albany and Philadelphia, the Sarah concert in Boston, the Tori concert in NYC, several interviews, Suspended in Ecto, several other stuff from other Ectopian artists. All in all about 14 hours of music I never heard before. Don't know where I should start. Later... Near the end of side one of tape 8 I was severely SHOCKED! Suddenly the Sarah McLachlan stuff ended and then I hear something I've really NEVER heard before. Not only the stuff itself, but nothing of its kind. What? Diamanda Galas. I now perfectly understand several people here who show certain reactions to her music (music? ;-). How often and at which volume do you have to listen to Diamanda to LIKE it? How high is the probability not to survive that therapy? How high the chance of success? PHEW!!! Uli P.S.: I really love the cover photo/pic. Nice job. ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 07:17:36 PST From: tjshadb@ceti.csustan.edu (Troy James Shadbolt) Subject: Why I quote Happy Thanks for noticing the quote Vickie (like she wouldn't see it a mile away). I always look for a few good one liners and, well...oh here it comes... I am completely infatuated with COHABITATE! Whew! that hurt; anyway, I keep listening to that song, and well- does anyone else think its about a person with multiple personalities? troy *** You see my face is unveiled to the world. *** ======================================================================== Subject: Re: first the work, then the joy, but WHAT A JOY!!! Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 11:13:28 EST From: Angelos Kyrlidis Uli writes about various things and then says: >Near the end of side one of tape 8 I was severely SHOCKED! Suddenly the >Sarah McLachlan stuff ended and then I hear something I've really NEVER heard >before. Not only the stuff itself, but nothing of its kind. What? Diamanda >Galas. Now *this* is weird. I would *really* like to know the source of the tape of the Sarah McLachlan concert in Boston that you got. The reason is that I once made a dub for honorable footah (aka Greg) and at the end of that tape I recorded the Diamanda Galas version of Gloomy Sunday, to contrast the soothing folkie version that SMcL used to close her show with the DG version. I wonder if this was the source of your tape! It's a small world. :) Now if someone else had the same idea, we're talking major ecto-synchronicity at work here. :) > I now perfectly understand several people here who show certain >reactions to her music (music? ;-). Hard *not* to have a reaction to her stuff, eh? >How often and at which volume do you have to listen to Diamanda to LIKE it? It took me a while. The best way is to see her live. If not, get 'The Singer', wait til you're thoroughly depressed one day, and turn off all the lights, crank it up and listen through the whole CD. By the time it's over, you'll feel *very* relieved. >How high is the probability not to survive that therapy? Pretty high. I don't know *too* many people who can stand her. Angelos 'Were you a witness?'-DG ======================================================================== From: special K Subject: Re: k.d. lang Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 11:06:11 EST > I don't know... I bought her album, and listened to it. It sounded > nice, but I didn't see anything special in it. Not everyone has the same tastes and opinions. I respect the fact that you don't find her music special. Although I can't understand why you don't. ;) > Am I wrong, or was the entire album composed of love songs? (It's so > hard to tell, sometimes... But I for one am sick of generic love > songs) What's your definition of generic? kd's songs on _Ingenue_ are love songs. kd fell in love with a married woman, and the love was unrequited. _Ingenue_ is kd's outpouring of the feelings she experienced. Generic? I don't know. You be the judge. I'd say they aren't run of the mill love songs simply because they are sung by a woman and are about a woman, but that's just my opinion. kd said in an interview last year that if she were a tube of toothpaste and you squeezed her, _Ingenue_ would come out (or something to that effect...it sounds kinda strange now that I write it, but it made sense when I read it). special K ======================================================================== From: S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk Subject: Re: k.d. lang Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 17:04:15 BST On Tue, 23 Feb 93 at 11:06:11 EST, special K wrote: > In-Reply-To: <199302222252.AA22089@pure.pure.com>; from "Na Choon Piaw" at Feb 22, 93 2:52 pm > > I don't know... I bought her album, and listened to it. It sounded > > nice, but I didn't see anything special in it. > Not everyone has the same tastes and opinions. I respect the fact that you > don't find her music special. Although I can't understand why you don't. ;) Quite right. Musical tolerance rules, OK? But for me "Ingenue" has rapidly become one of my current favourites. > > Am I wrong, or was the entire album composed of love songs? (It's so > > hard to tell, sometimes... But I for one am sick of generic love > > songs) > What's your definition of generic? kd's songs on _Ingenue_ are love songs. > kd fell in love with a married woman, and the love was unrequited. _Ingenue_ > is kd's outpouring of the feelings she experienced. Generic? I don't know. You > be the judge. I'd say they aren't run of the mill love songs simply because > they are sung by a woman and are about a woman, but that's just my opinion. I'd like to have "generic" explained too. I certainly wouldn't see the songs as being "run of the mill", or "standard", or "bland", or "ordinary". Not only because of the lyrical content that special K mentions, but also because I find the *sound* of the songs so captivating. There's something about the instrumentation and the arrangements that appeals very strongly to me. But perhaps that's not what you meant by "generic", please let us know! And at the end of the day, if you don't like k.d. lang it's not the end of the world, in spite of the sometimes rather fervent barracking in her favour that comes from certain quarters on this list. It would be a dull old world, and a dull old mailing list, if all our tastes were exactly the same. Vive la difference! -- 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". *** ======================================================================== From: Richard.Dean@central.sun.com (Richard Dean) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 10:11:20 -0700 Subject: Re: New internet address for Bob! I have a copy of "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet" it was funded by the NSF. It is somewhat dated -- 25 August 1987, but I'm sure most of it is still rather useful. Send me some email if you'd like a copy. It is an ascii document 23 pages long. tidings, /richard On Feb 22, 10:30pm, Robert Lovejoy wrote: } Subject: New internet address for Bob! } I'm still rather new to the entire internet concept. I understand it } was loosely created by the NSF, and loosely run by a bunch of loose people... } Many of you use unix terminals. I was wondering if anyone on Ecto had } noteworthy unusual access to the internet, or just any advice or tips for } internet neophytes! ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 9:38:33 PST From: "John M. Relph" Subject: Re: Internet Actually, the Internet was first created by the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), as the ARPAnet. It joined a bunch of DoD computing research sites, many of them on college campuses, I suppose long enough to prove it was doable. UUCP provided UNIX to UNIX connections, and there were other small networks as well. The Internet doesn't really exist, it is merely a number of protocols designed to make many smaller networks interconnect, hence "InterNet". But what does this have to do with Happy? you might ask. Nothing, except that it brings the Ectophytes together. -- John ======================================================================== From: special K Subject: Re: k.d. lang Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 13:02:43 EST Steve wrote: > I'd like to have "generic" explained too. I certainly wouldn't see the > songs as being "run of the mill", or "standard", or "bland", or > "ordinary". Not only because of the lyrical content that special K > mentions, but also because I find the *sound* of the songs so > captivating. There's something about the instrumentation and the > arrangements that appeals very strongly to me. Exactly, and we must again thank Ben Mink for his wonderful arrangements on _Ingenue_. The arrangements and vocal styling definitely set a certain mood. This was kathy's intention as it also was at her concerts...she said she wanted to create an almost womb-like atmosphere to draw the audience in, mesmerize it, massage it, stroke it, and then let it go. And do that she did...incense burning, Twin Peaks soundtrack before the show...it was quite an experience. (Sorry if I've mentioned all of this before, but I just can't say enough about her live shows) > And at the end of the day, if you don't like k.d. lang it's not the > end of the world, in spite of the sometimes rather fervent barracking > in her favour that comes from certain quarters on this list. It would I enjoy your using the word "barracking", but am clueless as to why you used it. Was there some barracking about kd from an ectophyte that I missed? To what are you referring, Steve? > be a dull old world, and a dull old mailing list, if all our tastes > were exactly the same. Vive la difference! What he said. special K ======================================================================== 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)