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 #279 ecto, Number 279 Wednesday, 1 July 1992 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Guests on Interest on Jay Leno More on the lexicography of Footah (or Foo, in its pediatric strength) DESPERATELY SEEKING SARAH SHOWS pleasze include ecto-update You are surrounded by Ectophiles! Odd lots Cyberspace on the radio audiophile information Re: Odd lots Gael Baudino Ecto and Me: Anniversary Reminiscences (Part I) ======================================================================== Date: 29 June 1992 14:49:19 CDT From: Subject: Guests on Interest on Jay Leno Promos for the Tonight Show over the weekend stated that this week's guests will include the Cowboy Junkies and Melissa Etheridge. Mitch ======================================================================== Date: 29 June 1992 15:28:47 CDT From: Subject: More on the lexicography of Footah (or Foo, in its pediatric strength) Let's not forget Amour Foo[tah], The Tao of Foo[tah] and most of all, I Am A Legend in My Own Mind/So Foo[tah] On You. Mitch ======================================================================== Date: 29-JUN-1992 18:09:27.50 From: MTARR@eagle.wesleyan.edu Subject: DESPERATELY SEEKING SARAH SHOWS Hi! I've heard sporadic reports of people across the country getting tickets to see Sarah McLachlan on various nights in July. Does anybody have a complete tour schedule for her? If so, PLEASE post it or e-mail me! I don't want to miss seeing her again... thanks! ======================================================================= |Meredith A. Tarr "Feel the yearning for peace and| |mtarr@eagle.wesleyan.edu happiness..." -Happy Rhodes| ======================================================================= ======================================================================== From: shark@cs.ucla.edu (Jeanne B. Schreiter) Subject: pleasze include Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 22:04:07 PDT Jessica, Please include aragorn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu in on the new digests posts. He really likes Happy's music (as well as Tori, Kate..) and he keeps asking me for more info. Thanks! Jeanne Another ectophile is born. -- ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 30 Jun 92 00:24:12 PDT From: stevev@greylady.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) Subject: ecto-update A while ago I gave one of my best friends a tape of _Warpaint_, which he later said sounded kind of "poppy" to him at first but which he soon warmed to. Recently he loaned me a tape of _The Real Ramona_ by the Throwing Muses, which I found quite enjoyable, if not completely soul-catching. So tonight I upped the ante in this exchange of artists by calling his Throwing Muses with _Rhodes Vol. I_ and raising him Jane Siberry's _The Walking_. In return I now have Throwing Muses' _The Fat Skier_, which I haven't had a chance to listen to yet, because . . . It's that frantic time again. I leave for Atlanta Wednesday morning to compete in the Peachtree Road Race, and, since it's so darn convenient under the circumstances, meet Chris&Vickie and kIrI in a 22-hour stop in Chicago on the way. When I get to Atlanta then I'll get to meet Valerie Nozick, as well as many of my friends in the wheelchair racing and running circuit. So tonight I: washed all my clothes removed all the tires on my racing 'chair and glued new ones on went to the local health-food store and picked up carbo-loading essentials watched parts of "Return of the Jedi" on TV :-) all between now and 9 pm when I got home. So I probably won't have much time to write to Ecto until I get back, but I'll be working on my presentation of the fundamentals of quantumfootahdynamics on the plane :-). And, of course, I'll be nearly surrounded by Ectophiles even though I won't be on the net much. ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 30 Jun 92 09:01:18 -0700 From: Michael Peskura Subject: You are surrounded by Ectophiles! Good Luck at the Road Race, Steve!! Cheers, Mp p ======================================================================== Date: 30 June 1992 12:39:54 CDT From: Subject: Odd lots Over the weekend, I saw the film _Night on Earth_, which concerns simultaneous encounters between cabdrivers and passengers in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. In the Paris segment, the passenger, a blind woman (Beatrice Dalle), is telling the driver (Isaach de Bankole) how she "feels" movies, the identities of her lovers in bed, etc. When he asks her how she perceives colors, having never seen them, she replies, "I feel colors." Might there be more to the concept of "fuzzy blue" than we thought possible? To change the subject completely: Yesterday, the country music critic for _Fresh Air_ on NPR had high praise for the music of Iris DeMent, particularly her current recording of "Let the Mystery Be." He said he was particularly happy that her song could get his mind off the incessant airplay that "Achy Breaky Heart" is currently getting. Sounds like she may be well worth checking out further. Mitch ======================================================================== Date: 30 June 1992 13:12:51 CDT From: Subject: Cyberspace on the radio On Friday, June 26, WBEZ radio in Chicago carried interviews with Cliff Figala, director of the WELL computer conferencing system, and with several authors of cyberpunk fiction: John Shirley, author of _City Come A-Walking_, _Eclipse _Penumbra_, and other novels; Pat Caddigan, author of _Sinners_ and _Mind- players_; and Lou Scheiner, editor of _Slam_ magazine and the _Hacker Files_ comic book. Transcriptions are available through Sound Ideas Recording Studio, 20 W. Hubbard St., Chicago, Ill. 60610, (312) 245-5420. They charge $10 (plus (shipping, as well as sales tax for Illinois residents) for a one-hour show; you'd have to ask them for a price quote for excerpts, whose total length I'm unsure of, from a two-hour program (which is the case with these interviews). Mention the segments from the June 26 Mara Tapp program, guest hosted by Stuart Rosenberg, dealing with computer conferencing in the first hour, and with cyberpunk fiction in the second hour. In the alternate, an ectophile who wanted to do it cheaper could send me a blank tape and return postage, and I could spin off a copy of my copy-- whose quality, what with the multipath and all, is a little problematic in spots, but seems intelligible for the most part. Mitch ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 1 Jul 92 10:02:50 EDT From: Chris Sampson Subject: audiophile information Hi, all, A coworker (who doesn't really ork cows....) of mine with the means to procure such things recently asked me for the definition of a CD TRANSPORT.....and how it differs from a CD player.....anybody know??? w/o a clue in CT. ======================================================================== Subject: Re: Odd lots From: "Mark C. Carroll" Date: Wed, 01 Jul 92 11:44:02 -0400 Mitch says: > >Over the weekend, I saw the film _Night on Earth_, which concerns simultaneous >encounters between cabdrivers and passengers in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, >Rome, and Helsinki. In the Paris segment, the passenger, a blind woman >(Beatrice Dalle), is telling the driver (Isaach de Bankole) how she "feels" >movies, the identities of her lovers in bed, etc. When he asks her how she >perceives colors, having never seen them, she replies, "I feel colors." > >Might there be more to the concept of "fuzzy blue" than we thought possible? > Well, I've always thought that "fuzzy blue" wasn't really a color, but was just a visual description of the feeling of ecto. So I don't think that it's any new addition... just a formal statement of what I've thought all along! By the way, I've created another Happy fan! Down at UD, we have one very big office that we use for the more advanced grad students in the department. I've been raving about this amazing Happy Rhodes woman for months, and finally, I convinced my next door neighbor in the office to take a listen to Warpaint. She didn't give it back for over a month, and then I only got it back because I was suffering from _severe_ withdrawal. She's ordering at least Warpaint from AG. I'm going to loan her Ecto next... || Mark Craig Carroll: ||"I live to see my fondest dreams realized, || Univ of Delaware, Dept of CIS|| Of living under the sights and sounds of || Grad Student/Labstaff Hacker || the gifted, Who gave so much to me" || carroll@udel.edu || - _Feed_the_Fire_, Happy Rhodes ======================================================================== Subject: Gael Baudino Date: Wed, 01 Jul 92 20:05:30 -0400 From: jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu reposted, with permission: ======================================================================== From: umd5!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!wupost!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!brichard! I'm looking for any information on a tape called "FOR MARTHA: Music of Solace Performed on the Gothic and Flemish Harps", by Gael Kathryns copyright 1990, Raging Celt Productions, Englewood, Colorado. Any more specific address for Raging Celt or information on the book _The Wire Strung Primer_ authored by the same person would be VERY appreciated! Apparently, "Gael Kathryns" is the name Gael Baudino (who has published some excellent SF&F [ob-motss]) uses when publishing her music related stuff. Please comply with the "Followup-To:" line and keep this in rec.music.folk (unless you know a better place to move it to :) Thanks in advance! =B.R= ------------------------------------------------------------------------ B. Richard Internet: brichard@commodore.com Make Up UUCP: {uunet!rutgers}!cbmvax!brichard C= H/W Engr. // Your "Who is John Galt?" Amiga CDTV \X/ Own Mind! 215.344.3875 ---------- I saw the above in soc.motss, of all places, and remebered all of the talk about Gael Baudino (_Gossamer Axe_ and whatever other books were mentioned). I didn't remember any of the Baudino fans saying anything about her music, and figured it was worth passing on... Jeff (who may have intrigued the original poster enough to subscribe to ecto...;-) |Jeffrey C. Burka | "Show what you are / Be strong, be true | | | Time for you to / Be who you are." | |jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu | --Happy Rhodes | ======================================================================== From: Date: 1 July 1992 14:01:00 CDT Subject: Ecto and Me: Anniversary Reminiscences (Part I) I: The Future Was Warpaint Ernie Kovacs, the legendary television humorist of the 1950's, once did a sketch in which a TV interviewer introduces his guest with a reference to the "fascinating and exciting story that Mr. Gridley has to tell...one that he will never forget." Mr. Gridley proceeds, "Yes. It is etched into my mind forever. It is as if it happened yesterday." The interviewer then finds it necessary to prompt him with almost every detail of a banal, boring story about some utterly mundane events, until he finally closes with a reprise of the "I will never forget it. It is etched into my mind forever" remarks--to the visible perturbation of the interviewer. This narrative may well turn out to be something like that. I had hoped to write it in time for the first anniversary of the day that Ectoplasm officially turned into Ecto, but the need to take care of a number of other matters interceded. Fortunately, another logical time peg is available, in the form of it being a year ago this week that I first acquired and listened to _Warpaint_, and thus got my first actual exposure to the music I'd already been reading about for a couple of weeks. So, on this second-level annivers- ary, my contribution to the "how I found Happy" genre. This odyssey had its ultimate beginnings, of course, in my discovery of the net and its panoply of newsgroups a few months before, a memoir of which I shared with you a few months ago. It was sometime in May of last year that I started to read rec.music.gaffa periodically. I soon began noticing an appreciable number of postings under the title "Happy News From Vickie." My curiosity was aroused, naturally enough, as to the nature of the news in ques- tion. Eventually, after reading a number of these announcements--most of which, as I recall, concerned where albums were available--I figured out what and who they were about. This, in itself, wasn't enough to put me firmly aboard the Happy Rhodes bandwagon right away; but it clearly was enough to get me to notice the prospectus that Jessica posted last June for a Happy Rhodes mailing list. Being a fairly casual reader of gaffa, I hadn't noticed any of the exchanges of flames over the presence of Happy-related material, generally reputed to be one of the immediate inspirations for starting the list. But my curiosity about the artist whose name I had read about, but about whom I knew next to nothing else, was enough to get me to subscribe. I seem to recall inferring from the text of the posting that it was the last day before Jessica would determine whether there was sufficient interest to start the list in the first place. No doubt, this had much to do with pushing me in the direction of an immediate, positive response. At first glance, I would seem to have been an atypical person to align myself with such a venture. I had previously heard, and enjoyed, artists like Kate Bush and Jane Siberry, but was not a hard-core fan of theirs, or indeed of any specific artist. I have always enjoyed the less mass-market oriented gen- res of popular music, and have particularly liked the music of women who were the _auteurs_ of their own artistic destiny, as opposed to being the tools of producers (not that some of what gets produced for the mass audience isn't good as well--cf. my recent essay on "Class Acts and Mass Acts"). Be all this as it may, the breadth of my musical tastes sometimes seems to slightly exceed their depth. In addition to all this, I apparently lack some of the background factors sometimes cited as attracting people to the likes of Kate and Happy. I was never the object of wholesale ostracism in elementary and high school, though like the rest of humanity, I would have liked to have closer relation- ships than I did with some people. I have never been pulled from the brink of emotional cataclysm by the music of particular artists--which is not to gainsay that some people do find it helpful that way. But even with this deprived background of mine :-), my tastes do seem to be a bit more upscale and cerebral than those of many music consumers, and I clearly saw the list that became ecto as like-minded company. From the beginning, I enjoyed following the discussions on Happy and her music, but lacked the mental energy to order her albums by mail right away (as well as the uncommitted cash to order them all at once, since the addition- al shipping charges entailed by ordering them one at a time would not have been cost-effective). So I was delighted to read that selected Rose Records stores in Chicago (for which organization Vickie was then working) carried _Warpaint_. I could avoid shipping fees, I could charge it, and best of all, I could listen to it the same day. As I remember it, the day before the Fourth of July was the last day they were giving double stickers on one's preferred customer card (which, when filled in, entitles one to a gift certificate); so I made the time to visit a conveniently situated Rose store, chosen from among those that both carried the tape and accepted one of my lower-balance credit cards, and I made the investment. When I first looked at the cover photo of the woman with the long, straight hair, I concluded that she must have a very 1960's sort of sensibil- ity. I don't think I was entirely wrong, but that's another story. I even- tually got around to actually listening. When I first heard the exotic percus- sion that opens "Waking Up," my first thought was of the exotic percussion in Martin Denny's pseudo-Polynesian mood music of the late '50s, to which I later introduced many of you in the HGP tapes. And while Happy sings a bit more in the lower registers than the higher ones on this album, her overall range immediately reminded me of Yma Sumac, though to be honest, it later also remin- ded me of Mariah Carey :-). I was impressed by the diversity of the musical styles, ranging from "All Things" to "Murder" to Terra Incognita" to the Weillian influences of "Lay Me Down" and "Words Weren't Made For Cowards." After I'd heard the entire album at least once, the phrase "not too"--of all things--came to mind as an overall characterization, the legacy of a cereal commercial that once ran on TV when I was a kid. By this I meant simply that it excelled at being what it was, without going overboard in any direction: the lyrics were politically and socially conscious without being polemical, the wordplay was imaginative without being obscurantist, the musical and vocal styles were individualistic without being weird, while at the same time access- ible without being homogenized. All in all, methinks, a good position for a record to be in. Admittedly, a far more lukewarm endorsement than those that many others were posting to ecto; I soon resolved that if I posted any review of my own, I'd call it "A Moderate Looks at Happy." For the time being, I didn't post anything, being content to read every- one else's postings. I did send a note to Vickie in mid-July, suggesting a number of local retail and radio outlets for Happy's music. The day after my 39th birthday, I read through my incoming ecto email to find that Vickie had led off one of her omnibus postings (I can think of no better term to describe them :-) ) with an invitation for me to call her, which I did that afternoon. It was my first actual interaction with an ectophile, and culminated with an invite to her and Chris' Katemas party a couple of weeks hence. At the latter, I first met most of what there was of the Chicago ectophile community at that time. Having read online that Happy was her real name, I happened to ask how she came by it. Vickie encouraged me to post the question (which actually was a little more complex than that) to ecto, which I did the following Monday. (To be continued) Mitch Pravatiner _______________________________ "When I am in submission to my husband, I am no doormat." --a Christian fundamentalist interviewed on "The Glory and The Power" (National Public Radio, June 25, 1992) ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is a README file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me (or leave in the incoming directory, just let me know) things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@ns1.rutgers.edu)