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 #460 ecto, Number 460 Thursday, 25 February 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Re: PG on the Grannies pj harvey Re: I could have used them :-) I won't subject you to this! Speaking of Tori and other sensible tastes in music Proliferation of MPs. Perspectives (??) on the Grammys (WARNING: LONG) ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 25 Feb 93 14:14:57 EST From: jessica Subject: Re: PG on the Grannies Jeff says: > Angelos sez: > > >Is *this* where PG is heading, or is this just a grande facade for the > >Big Time crowd? Was it live or memorex (the vocal)? Is this what his > >upcoming tour will be like (probably not)? > > Have you seen the video to "Steam"? To my mind, this was the closest one > could come to a live-action, real-time staging of it, and I though it > came off pretty well (other than the mis-timed steam eruptions...:-\ ) I haven't seen the video :P. I thought the performance was really great! I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't expect such a production for a one-song performance at the grammies. I was relaly impressed that he did what he did - and I thought it was visually extraordinary. > It also put me in mind of early Genesis in the sense of the whole costume/ > theatrics of it. That wasn't Peter Gabriel on the stage, per se, but > rather the persona of the character in the song/video. Mmm. As i said, I haven't seen the video, but it was definitely apparant that he was portraying the character from the song. > That said, it sounded like he was having a few problems with his voice. Hope > he gets it warmed up a bit better before touring! Hm. Unfortunately for me :( I missed the first minute or two. Was he having trouble with his voice at the beginning? Through the part I saw, he soudned fine, i thought. > Cirque du Soleil scared me. Humans shouldn't be able to do that. I agree!! Very scary stuff. It looked like they could simply re-define gravity any way they liked. Amazing! It was very surreal. > >PPS. Arrested Development looked very promising. Anybody have their album? > > My sister has it. It's pretty good--ups and downs, though. I much > prefer Neneh Cherry's _Homebrew_ (though admittedly, I've heard it more > and I absolutely adore "Trout") I kinda liked them (the grammy performance being the first and only song i've heard) but I felt like i wanted there to be *more*music* going on. > Jeff > jessica || jessica || It is this that || Don't try to tell me there's no reason for || || lawrence || brings us || any moment in time, every memory of mine. || || koeppel || together. || Those years are lines of color on my face, || || dembski || --Kate || the past is warpaint. --Happy Rhodes || ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 25 Feb 93 14:23:23 EST From: jessica Subject: pj harvey A friend of mine lent me a tape - just for one day - a few months ago. it had curve on one side and pj harvey on the other. I only got to listen to each side once, so i can't really describe pj harvey to you very well :) but i remember being *very* interested and wanting to get a pj harvey album. Unfortunately, finances prevent me buying *any8 new albums (except Happy :):) so i haven't yet heard more. My friend Liz (Hey you, i know you're lurking here somewhere) also recommended pj harvey quite enthusiastically the last time I saw her. So, I'd definitely say pj harvey is ecto-material, even though i haven't really got a clue. jessica || jessica || It is this that || Don't try to tell me there's no reason for || || lawrence || brings us || any moment in time, every memory of mine. || || koeppel || together. || Those years are lines of color on my face, || || dembski || --Kate || the past is warpaint. --Happy Rhodes || ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 25 Feb 93 14:30:07 EST From: jessica Subject: Re: I could have used them :-) greg> the thought of us travelling the world, instruments in hand, bringing greg> our interpretations of Happy's music to people in transit to exciting greg> places, is truly frightening... ;) dan> I had this sudden image of me, greg, woj, meth and jess in a chicago dan> subway station, playing happy covers on greg's toy instrument collection. dan> And, yes, Happy was there in the background, though I'm not sure if that dan> was a stake she was holding... hee hee hee hee heehee! :) jessica || jessica || It is this that || Don't try to tell me there's no reason for || || lawrence || brings us || any moment in time, every memory of mine. || || koeppel || together. || Those years are lines of color on my face, || || dembski || --Kate || the past is warpaint. --Happy Rhodes || ======================================================================== From: "Michael Blackmore" Date: 25 Feb 93 14:40:02 EST Subject: I won't subject you to this! Dan says: >Careful there! I seem to recall a certain ecto-ma going through >exactly the aforementioned conversion... I support John on this one, spill the beans! Confession is good for the soul, and confessing someone else's sins is even better! :-) This actually brings up an interesting flip-side to Guilty Secrets (music you used to like but now embarrasses you). What music didn't people like initially, but have learned to like/love? I'd have to think about that for a minute. I used to be totally apathetic to Suzanne Vega, but now I love her. I used to hate country music and folk music with a passion bordering on insanity! Only as recently has two years ago! Now I love some country music. I love Rosanne Cash and Hank Williams, Sr. (Junior could drop down a mine shaft for all I care!) I went to Emmylou Harris in concert and loved her too! And there are a number of local folkies that I have tapes of and will go see in concert. Etc. I actually can't think of someone I truly disliked and now like. I don't know if this speaks to my musically inflexibility or clear- earedness?!? Onwards! - Michael B. ("Ward, you were awfully hard on The Beaver last night." June Cleaver 'Leave It to Beaver") ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 25 Feb 93 13:08:47 CST From: ecto's #1 source for nonsense Subject: Speaking of Tori and other sensible tastes in music The new issue of the _Chicago Reader_ indicates that Tori Amos, the genuine article herself, will be putting in an appearance at Rose Records' Ashland branch (corner of School st., one block north of Belmont) at 7:30 PM Wednesday, March 3. Should Suspended in Gaffa be a rerun next week, we'll know why :-). While browsing in their branch at Washington and Franklin yesterday, I came across an allegedly limited-edition EP CD out of Nettwerk in Canada, of Sarah McLachlan live. There were a number of copies in the bin after I purch- ased mine, which I gladly point out for the benefit and use of anyone in the market for this real or imagined rarity-to-be. (Those flying in for the occasion should take the Blue Line from O'Hare to Washington St., then just walk the four blocks west to Franklin. Railfans can simply take the 157 bus from Union Station directly to the aforesaid intersection.) Which brings to mind a notable omission from Greg's suggested repertoire for subway buskers, namely "Blue Suede Shoes." :-) A couple of nights ago, the "Today's Papers" segment on _World News Now_ (seemingly one of the few shows nowadays that's on when I'm awake :-) ) took note of a story in the _Toronto Star_ which played up the number of Grammy nominations that went to Canadian artists. (My own checking indicated that most of these actually went to kd lang, a couple to Celine Dion as the co-coverer (with Peabo Bryson) of the _Beauty and the Beast_ theme, and one to Alannah Myles, so that the proportion of Canadians in the mix of nominated art- ists is actually a little less impressive than the _Star_ implied.) _WNN_ anchor Aaron Brown quipped that their chances may have been problematic, since Eric Clapton was going to win everything anyway. (If the newspaper story took the stratification of nomination categories by gender, Brown didn't deal with it.) It is fortunate that while Clapton did indeed walk away with all the marbles in his various categories, the Canadians were not shut out (or oot, as I ironicall y typoed initially :-) ) altogether. Not only did kd win in one category, but Celine Dion did also, conveniently keeping the ratio of French to English Can- adians actually winning Grammys in equipoise. (Based on the extrapolation of overall trends, however, it may well be an open question whether they and Melissa Etheridge would have won had the Clapton stampede also been nominated in those categories :-). ) At least, neither the Grammys nor _World News Now_ appear to be at any continued risk of replicating the events of 1961, when _The Bullwinkle Show_ arrived on earth, and the wags of the period predicted war with Canada within 39 weeks over "Dudley Do-Right." :-) WRT other aspects of the Grammys: _Morning Edition_ had an interesting piece on them this morning, noting among other things the press' complete disinterest in any of the award winners except the headliners. They recorded, for posterit y, the brief sojurn of Alison Krauss and Union Station to the press tent, "just to say hi" or something to that effect. All of which has gotten me to wonderin g (again? :-(' :-) :-) ): If AK&US were to cover Happy's music, would wags in the music business or elsewhere dub it Fuzzy Bluegrass? :-) WRT Stuart's response to my response to his ICBM server spoof: it seems to me that one needs to look at this on two levels, as it were. On the one hand, an authentic Internet domain for such a thing would indeed have .mil, as opposed to .gov, for a top level. On the other hand, it must be considered whether the great American war machine would put such a thing on an unclassified comput er to begin with. I tend to think that it would be more likely to reside on a classified system, which wouldn't be on the Internet; so that even listing a .mil domain would probably have been transparent to the true cognoscenti :-). WRT mjm's rumination on the alleged proliferation of so-called mp's in these pages: I was unaware of anyone besides Peskura (who usually spells it Mp) using that form regularly, until Mendelson himself used it the other day to attribute his end-of-post epigraph from me. I, personally, have not normally referred to myself that way when writing for this list. On the other hand, Mike M's suggestion that middle initials be used to differentiate between (I presume he's referring to) Mike P and myself inspires me to go off on what seems to me an interesting tangent: As fate would have it, my middle initial happens to be A. So if I were to follow that stylistic convention, I'd come out as "map" or something similar. Which, in turn, reminds me of the part in the English lyrics to "Die Gedanken Sind Frei" (the subject of a thread in ecto a year or so ago) in which the narrator characterizes his thoughts: "No schol- ar can map them/No hunter can trap them." Which, in turn, seems to me to des- cribe my own thought processes, at least when it comes to writing for ecto, rather aptly. Who says there isn't order in the universe? :-) WRT the query on domestic releases by This Mortal Coil: I found out today, in the course of bargain-hunting at Rose on Wabash, that a box set of theirs will be coming out on March 9 or thereabouts. Conscious of what box sets tend to cost, however, I still paid the premium for an import CD of theirs, on the theory it would still cost less in the long run then the box would. My latest entry in the Happy segue sweepstakes: "Cohabitants" with "Gloria" by Laura Branigan. (Amazing how well our Happy articulates with music for the mass market, is it not?) WRT the latest insights offered into the potential held out by subways as a performance venue, and to a lesser extent as a means of transportation: It has occurred to me that the ecto cover band could perfect this particular aspect of the craft with less long-distance travel involved, simply by busking in the New York subway instead of its Chicago counterpart. Being more extens- ive in the aggregate, the IRT, BMT, ETC. :-) would offer far more wiggle room from the standpoint of staying one step ahead of Happy and her stake. An exig- ency which the band, if so predisposed, could easily turn into a nice bit of subtle musical humor by expanding its repertory somewhat from its traditional base of Happy's songs, to cover Annie Lennox's "Love Song for a Vampire." :-) But with or without such an expansion, and regardless of what city's tubes the band follows its muse to, the return to these pages of the fully-flowered Bossert wit is always to be celebrated. The wrath of Dan's office mates is, IMHO WIVH, an acceptable price to pay for this :-). Mitchell Alden Pravatiner (Often reputed, over the last 4 decades, to be confused; but never before confused with any other ectophile :-) ) ------------------------------- "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." --poster on a professor's office door, circa 1974 ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 25 Feb 93 16:02:04 EST From: markp@serpens.sbi.com ( Mark P) Subject: Proliferation of MPs. Mitchell Alden Pravatiner wrote: >WRT mjm's rumination on the alleged proliferation of so-called mp's in these >pages: I was unaware of anyone besides Peskura (who usually spells it Mp) >using that form regularly, until Mendelson himself used it the other day to >attribute his end-of-post epigraph from me. I, personally, have not normally >referred to myself that way when writing for this list. On the other hand, >Mike M's suggestion that middle initials be used to differentiate between (I >presume he's referring to) Mike P and myself inspires me to go off on what >seems to me an interesting tangent: As fate would have it, my middle initial >happens to be A. So if I were to follow that stylistic convention, I'd come >out as "map" or something similar. I suppose that would work, so long as there are no other M.P.'s who, like me, have *No* middle initial. Cheers! Marc Power markp@sbi.com ======================================================================== Date: 25 Feb 93 14:34:54 EST From: Mike Mendelson Subject: Kiri: >> current favi: the whole album minus SOS - the cheesy trumpet just >> drives me crazy! the song is good minus the chorus. She definitely >> should have had a live trumpet in there - horns, brass etc. >> sound terrible synthesized This is utterly unrelated to ecto or qp, but you have reminded me of a concert I saw 1 or 2 years ago at Soldier Field: the supposed last show in Paul McCartney's tour. I had friends who told me not to miss it, so I went, along with alot of other people. Anyway, long story short, I thought the hilite came in the pregameshow video in which they showed Beatles clips and played Long and Winding Road, or some such. The *cheapest* part of the concert (save the icky persona that PM projected on stage) was that they did Beatles tracks that required horn sections, yet he had none. I think the song was Got To Get You Into My Life (might have been Good Morning?)... Great song, but for the amount of money this cheesehead was making on this tour, at least have a hornsection if you want to play that song; otherwise, choose from amongst the myriad great Beatles songs that *don't* require horns. Man I couldn't get over that... it sounded so far below what it should have sounded like. Needless to say, I disagreed with just about every other person there in my opinion of the show. And of the walrus. ---end of tangent--- -mjm- ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 15:44:00 +0000 From: "Mary (M.L.) Rowe" Subject: Perspectives (??) on the Grammys (WARNING: LONG) Warning: Following post may offend Billy Ray Cyrus fans, people with Billy Ray Cyrus haircuts, fans of Ken Russell's "Tommy". Michael Jackson fans may have their inner children wounded. Lots of silly childish bather follows...... Yowza... Mary Lou couldn't make it today ... this is her evil twin 'Pop Culture Bitch' here to generally vent spleen and make smug sarcastic comments! (Any Roberta Gregory -- "Naughty Bits" fans out there? C'est underground comics for the uninitiated.) Never never never do what I did last night... that is ... watch the Grammies and Ken Russell's "Tommy" at the same time. Better still don't do this during the Billy Ray Cyrus and Michael Jackson segments of the Grammys. (I have masochistic tendencies so I'm excused.) (Apologies to Non-North American ectophiles who didn't get to see the Grammys ... this will probably not make much sense. GEEZ... I hope The Brit Awards were better...) "Tommy" - C R I N G E....... auggghhhhh another example why the early 70"s (in fact most of the 70"s) make me feel acutely embarrassed. Pity me... I was a teenager throughout that whole dispicable era. (Didn't get to discover punk/ New Wave until '79/80 which was almost too late). I loved the recorded version of Tommy by The Who but THIS debacle is only redeemed by Roger Daltry's voice (certainly not by the continual depictions of him as rock godlet throughout the movie. Auggghhh listening to Ann-Margret and Oliver Reed vocally mangling every line ... what a travesty. And JACK NICHOLSON does his Richard Harris/MacArthur Park imitation in this movie. Gosh Jack, I'm glad nobody remembers this screen gem. Burn the movie. Get the original recording. Hope The Who got big bucks for this 'cause they compromised practically every lyric. (No I didn't watch the whole thing last night... I saw it when I was 15 and I was EMBARRESSED then too.) How about them beans, eh? Thank you, Muchmusic (Canada's version of MTV), for airing this last night. I bet you everybody at the station was probably out back watching the Grammys with the volume turned down and wishing they had somebody good like Happy Rhodes to listen to. Billy Ray Cyrus -- I hate "Achy-Breaky Heart". I hate his poncing around on the stage. I hate his muscle man sweat shirts. And most of all: I HATE HIS HAIR. Can't he decide? It's real short in the front and real long in the back... one side for business, the other to pretend he's avant-gard? Puleeze. A charming juxtaposition to Roger Daltry's continually exposed torso and mane of just-so-charmingly tousled golden curls on the other channel. Twenty years of history between these televised images didn't remove the CRINGE factor. Wacko Jacko -- Who wants to bet that's the guy's just graduated from a Dale Carnegie course on effective speaking? I've never heard him sound so ... directed... more solid. That is the least 'whispy' I've ever heard him. Whatever.. it doesn't make up for the incredible fawning and gooshing and sweetness and light of the presentation of his achievements .... all this over-the-top stuff is TOO MUCH for me. I didn't see all the Grammys .. so I missed PG and Circ de Soleil (rats). YAY for k.d. lang .... take that all you cretins in the Province of Alberta legislature phhhhhhhhhhffffffftttttt!! Of course, I admit forthrightly that when Grammys go to people I like, I'm all for the institution. Otherwise it's all a crock of establishment u-know-what. 8-). Of course, too, after slamming 'rock/pop/country godlets', remember that I have elected Bono of U2, Mr. Larger-Than-Life himself, as my one-and-only-famous-person-whom-I'd-consider-conjuring-up-on-my-own -personal-holodeck-as-a-lust-object (a reference which may only be understood by fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation). So vilify me. Mary Lou will be back once she sleeps off the valium. Pop Culture Bitch ======================================================================== 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)