Errors-To: ecto-owner@ns1.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu From: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@ns1.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@ns1.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #853 ecto, Number 853 Tuesday, 9 November 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* oops Bumper to bumper on the information superhighway More cyberink for Happy DCD, Strategie Oblique' ectopics Re: Obscenities/Indecencies in broadcasting the fall of technology broadcasting guidelines TRS, etc. (m-o-u-s-e) ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 13:30:14 PST From: kyrlidis@templeton.cchem.berkeley.edu (Angelos Kyrlidis) Subject: oops Sorry for the 88 character lines in my previous post. Somebody changed the size of my window while I was away from the terminal... :) Angelos ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 08 Nov 93 16:15:26 CST From: Deep in the heart of texts Subject: Bumper to bumper on the information superhighway This is, believe it or not, my first time online since Wednesday afternoon. That night, a burglar forced open a window in my place of residence and made off with a nominal amount of cash, a cheap flashlight, and a banana (no shite :-) ). This necessitated my devoting a substantial part of the next day to waiting for the cops to come and take a report, dust for prints, etc.; as well as await opinions on the need for new locks, window bars, etc. These things happen :-). The next day was devoted to taking care of business WRT a potential job opportunity; I didn't expect that to take all day, but it did. Those things, it is obvious, also happen. All this has now come home to roost as I find myself having to go quickly through all the literary discussions, the full text of "Injun Summer" (never dreamed my free associations would inspire such a reaction :-) ), numerous introsucktions (ah there, B&B, favorite sons of eMpTV :-) ) to _TRS_, _Fresh Air_'s generally favorable review of the Breeders' new album, and all the other material that makes this the most consistently fun to read of any of the lists I subscribe to, all the rest of which may well have to wait one more day. Perhaps the next product to come out of the ecto industrial empire should be ecto condensed literature :-). Glad to learn that Vickie's feeling better. Hope the trend line continues linearly in that direction. Saturday, I stopped at Coconuts at Diversey and the L to get some tape, and browsed a bit to see what else there was to look at. As fate would have it, they had a bin card with Happy's name on it, next to which was a single copy of _Equipoise_. They also had many tapes, but no CDs, of _TRS_, and many copies of Kirsty MacColl's new CD but none of _Kite_, precluding my looking up the year of release in response to somebody's query about that a week ago. You win some, you lose some. This morning, I looked around at Musicland at Randolph near the L and found CDs of _TRS_ and of the _Even Cowgirls Get The Blues_ soundtrack album. They were asking $16.95 for each of them. I think I'll hold off until the price comes down. We all forgot kd lang's birthday last week. I don't remember what day it was. Browsing in B. Dalton around the corner from Musicland, I found out that the current issue of a lesbian magazine, which I think was called _Deneuve_, has a cover story on Melissa Etheridge. The thread on women with tool belts reminded me of how _TV Guide_, a few issues ago, lamented that _Home Improvement_ retained another generic hardbody to play the new Tool Time Girl after the previous one left to join the cast of _Bay- watch_ full time, when they could have gotten Jo Anne Liebeler_, who's been reduced to doing bowl cleaner commercials since leaving _Hometime_. Such things seem to happen in TV. I'm pleased to read that people are favorably impressed with the HBP tapes. Remember: it's not too late to send in your contribution to the sequel, this year's HGP-in-formation. Now that the oracle has spoken, and the word on the ad idea is ixnay, how does the idea of sending Happy a quart or two of homemade Ecto Cooler grab everyone? Aeren's chronology of the events leading up to the PC thread, and his attempt to introduce a red herring in the form of Mercedes Lackey's books, reminded me that I've read the word "lackey" used to describe the blackface iron lawn jockeys that many view as racist icons. The PC subtext would appear to be sort of the Tar Baby of threads here: just when we thought it had subsided, another perspective on it emerges :-). Yesterday I was tuned to PBS when a kid show called _Ghostwriter_ came on, and one of the kids on it was wearing an "Everything Reminds Me Of My Dog" T-shirt. It occurred to me while reading the saga of Vickie's close encounter with Jane that had that album, rather than WIWAB, come out in this Canadian election year, it would have been appropriate for her to dedicate it to Louis St. Laurent, the 1950's prime minister who, I once read someplace, was a somewhat eccentric character whose most significant social relationship was with his dog. Wonder if Tower still has Holly Cole's new album on sale. Last week (I think), it was on sale at Rose in Hyde Park. Sounds like it would have been the perf- ect thing to get in tandem with a first edition of _TRS_. WRT Jeeves, Wooster, and the video: Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry also appeared in the film _Peter's Friends_, which is worth looking at if you come across it. I found it noteworthy that everyone vouchsafing an opinion on _TRS_ refers to the former Prince by his historic name, as opposed to his current one, until it dawned on me that the latter is hard to spell out on a traditional keyboard. I've gotten to wondering how Victor Borge, he of the phonetic punctuation, would conclude that it's pronounced :-). In memory of Meredith's PC (not that kind, the other one :-) ). Mitch ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 17:36:42 CST From: Subject: More cyberink for Happy In giving a fast read to my backlog of incoming from the folk_music list, whaddya think I found? The latest Happy FAQ, which I sent to the f_m list's admin last week in case he was interested. He attached his own encomium of sorts to Happy, saying he'd heard of her but never heard her, and even threw in a plug for Ladyslipper. Another post was from a reporter for the _Philadelphia Inquirer_ who's inter- ested in doing a story on recording artists who are on the net. Wonder if that would extend to artists who aren't on the net, but almost all of their fans are? Mitch ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 15:53:19 PST From: dixon@physics.berkeley.edu (David Dixon) Subject: DCD, Strategie Oblique' I second Angelos' comments about the Dead Can Dance show last night. I enjoyed myself, but we were rather far from the stage... going to a concert but not being able to see the musicians' faces clearly makes the experience lose something. During one of the songs, Brendan stopped suddenly, paced around in a huff, obviously frustrated/angry, sat down and started a different song. First time I've ever seen a pro do that... Lisa was in top form, of course, resplendent in her priestess outfit. I wish they had played some of my favorite songs, though, like "Ullyses" or "The Carnival is Over". They did a killer version of "Cantara" though. As part of the Happy Gift Project this Xmas, I've typsetted a deck of Eno's "Oblique Strategies" cards for H&K to use in their creative processes. If anyone wants a copy of the deck, email me for info. D^2 dixon@physics.berkeley.edu ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 19:24:27 EST From: woj@remus.rutgers.edu (the horizon you run to) Subject: ectopics kyrlidis@templeton.cchem.berkeley.edu (Angelos Kyrlidis) sez: >In fact I've never imagined the Trio Bulgarka as being funky divas :) check out the _from bulgaria with love_ release from le mystere de voix bulgares. lots of funky diva-ness going down there. :) Neile Graham sez: >Overall I like the [The Red Shoes], >but find it odd that there are so many songs that don't really have the >stamp of individuality about them that KaTe's music usually has. *bingo!* exactly my feelings about this album. like i said on love-hounds, it's not that the album is not "KaTe bushy," it's that the album is not distinctly KaTe and not someone else. robert@deepspace.nj00802.sai.com (Robert Lovejoy) sez: >You folks remember my "Well-nigh Perfect Songs" list? Near the top was >a wonderful ditty sung by Tracey Ullman: "They Don't Know". Turns out >to have been written by Kirsty MacColl! 'nother favorite of mine as well. i don't have the first kirsty maccoll lp, but it also appears on a promo cd single that was released around the same time as _kite_. it also includes the two covers (the smiths' "you just haven't earned yet baby" and the other one i can't recall the name of) and a remix of "innocence" which is just plain wunnerful. >And I missed DCD and will miss Firesign. dcd was cancelled due to illness on the part of lisa gerrard - she fainted during the show in boston the night before the philly show. bummerskis. she is alright though - the chicago show went off alright, apparently. neilg@sfu.ca sez: > Mae Moore is a Canadian singer-songwriter from Victoria. Her debut >album is called _Oceanview Motel_. It's slightly harder and rougher >than _Bohemia_. i've only heard a few tracks off the first album, but they weren't interesting enough to grab my attention and seek it out. _bohemia_, on the other hand, is great. yeah, anytony, you should have asked here before - a number of us were babbling about mae moore a while back. +woj ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 22:18:11 EST From: woj@remus.rutgers.edu (the horizon you run to) Subject: Re: Obscenities/Indecencies in broadcasting if this stuff bores you, just ignore it - i took it out of my usual catchall ecto reply just to make it easier for you folks to do so. Chris Sampson sez: > I quote from page 5 of the WHUS programming manual for 1993/94: > The "Miller Test" is a three-part definition of obscenity, and >material must meet all three criteria for it to be subject to this >restriction. The material must (1) appeal primarily to the prurient >interest and (2) violate local contemporary community standards, and (3) be >without any significant of redeeming social, artistic, political or >educational value. the problem with all these criteria, which do doubt has be debated to no end in rec.radio.noncomm or some such newsgroup is that each and everyone is completely subjective. it's pointless to argue this here though since it'll never come to resolution, it'll never answer the question and, perhaps most importantly, i suspect that most of us will agree on the above anyways. > Now that I've wasted half a bandwidth typing this nonsense, we ask >ourselves if Kate's use of the word bullshit is indecent or >obscene...personally, I don't think it's either try bringing this argument up in a court against the fcc or, even worse, try to use this argument against your school's trustees who've just decided to shut down the school's station on the basis that one deejay couldn't practice some restraint in deciding what to play on the air (admittedly, i'm writing that from the point of view of the trustees). in my experience, i've found that the administration of a college can be much more draconian in their control of a college's radio station than the fcc would ever be. my old station had a situation in which this was proven true last spring. a caller from the local town voiced a complaint (the veracity of which i've never been able to fathom) which resulted in the station being shut down for the rest of the semester. i know that they were threatened with a loss of funding (or equivalent organization-ending measures) for this fall if they didn't shape up. i dunno if they are on the air now or not. i agree with you completely that the moral watchhounds and their ilk are putting a stranglehold on free speech and so forth and i agree completely that KaTe's use of the word "bullshit" is neither indecent or obscene (though i might consider it somewhat silly ;) but in the hopes of protecting what free speech is left in college radio and other such mediums, i'd recommend that you not rick it if you are in a slot where there is a potential for public outcry. woo. i think i meandered from my original point there somewhere. wonder if i can remember what it was. wonder if it matters. >"...I don't think I'd like to be a 'test case'..." is that CONVICTION of >one the above transgressions is not necessary for most stations...in the >US, anyway...as the fine $12,500 (i think), versus the necessary legal fees >is a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, and is enough to close >down most non-profit/college radio stations. the radio station at the state of new york college at cortland (wsuc) was fined in the neighborhood of $23,000 last year for an indecent charge. i'm not sure if they are still on the air or not either. the fine alone exceeded their operating budget. i imagine the school absorbed the fine, but i'd be hard-pressed to imagine the school allowing the station to continue to be that kind of liability. that's the part that bothers me the most perhaps: commercial radio is held captive by its advertisers. college radio, which one might think would be free of those ties, is held at bay by a more insidious force: the college administation which, for private schools and, for all practical purposes, many public schools, is free to do what it wills or nills. enough for now. +woj ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 22:19:33 EST From: woj@remus.rutgers.edu (the horizon you run to) Subject: the fall of technology as if meth's computer wasn't bad enough, my cd player just started flipping out on me. grrrr. i think it's a conspiracy (but then, that's what i always think). +w ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 09 Nov 1993 00:46:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Suspended In Duct Tape Subject: broadcasting guidelines Hi! I should've been in bed two hours ago, but hey- my roommate doesn't need his computer tonight, so I'm taking full advantage of the opportunity to get caught up on my mail... I just wanted to say a couple quick things about what you can and can't say on the radio. If my time slot were between the hours of 8PM and 6AM, the issue would be moot, since WESU's policy is that during the "safe harbor" time you can play whatever you want, as long as you either play or say a proper disclaimer beforehand. Said disclaimer goes something like, "If you're offended by naughty words or potentially offensive content, now would be a good time to turn down your radio. Come back in about five minutes, ok?" Doing this technically gets us off the hook with the FCC, and presumably with the Wesleyan administration as well. The only time i heard of someone getting in trouble for playing "naughty stuff" was five years ago when the FCC was vacillating between yes-you-can and no-you-can't and well-okay-but-only- when-the-kiddies-are-all-in-bed, and had stopped to rest in no-you-can't for a month or so. One of my idiot frosh hallmates ent on the air at 2:30 AM and played things like "Too Drunk To Fuck" and the entire Butthole Surfers' _Rembradnt Pussyhorse_ album, making rude comments all the while over the air. An alumnus was listening (why, I have no idea), and called up Public Safety to have them throw the fool off the air and lock up the station, which he did. The alum also registered a complaint with the FCC, but nothing came of it because they went back to yes-you-can shortly thereafter. To Wesleyan's credit, nothing happend to my idiot hallmate. The station Bored revoked his FCC license, and that was that. Now, my time slot is currenly 4-5:30 PM on Sunday afternoon, when lots of people are listening who normally don't listen later at night when other things can and do get played. I don't play things that have naughty words in them because that's out of the safe-harbor zone, and that's that. It's not like I'm left with nothing to play. If my show were, say, from 8-10 PM, then I could say "Well folks, if you don't like the crass term for bullpuckey then turn down your radio for 4 1/2 minutes," play "Song of Solomon", and have done with it. But alas, I can't. Which is a pity, since it *is* a pretty song. But "bullshit" is one of the words you can't say before 8PM (station policy was, I believe, fashioned after George Carlin's Eight Naughty Words), so there's nothing I can do about it. Before you jump all over me for sitting back and letting my First Amendment rights get walked all over, remember this: It's not as if there's nothing left for me to play, and it used to be that you couldn't say those naughty words over the air EVER, any time, any day. I'd rather have it the way it is now, if that's all we can hope for at the moment, which I think it is. I'm rambling now, and the point got lost about four paragraphs back. Good night, all... Meredith meth@delphi.com dammit. ======================================================================== Subject: TRS, etc. (m-o-u-s-e) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 93 0:33:47 CST From: Joe Zitt Well, after listening to The Red Shoes a few skidillion times, I really like, but I find that unless I'm looking at the lyric sheet I can't recall a note of any of the songs. Maybe I'm too much of an old popster at heart, but my faves are the first three tunes. "Moments of Pleasure" is soppily bombastic in a pleasant way, *and* contains a Bass Note from Hell; I really would like to hear what Barbara Streisand would do with this tune. I recall liking "Constellation of the Heart" (though I can only remember the refrain), "Song of Solomon" (though the "bullshit" sounds gratuitous), "Lily", and "Big Stripy Lie" (though I don't remember what they sound like. I don't recall anything about "Why Should I Love You", "You're the One", "The Red Shoes", and "Top of the City", either than non-musical data about them; I guess they made little impression. Not that memorability is the sole quality I look for, but that's about all I can say about the stuff. I think I'll put "And So is Love" on my tape of "Songs for When I Want to Crawl Under a Desk and Feel Sorry for Myself" B-]. ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 8 Nov 93 23:24:28 PST From: stevev@miser.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) Subject: TRS, etc. (m-o-u-s-e) Joe Zitt writes: > Well, after listening to The Red Shoes a few skidillion times, I > really like, but I find that unless I'm looking at the lyric sheet I > can't recall a note of any of the songs. Maybe I'm too much of an old > popster at heart, but my faves are the first three tunes. I think there is a lot of variation in how well one can remember music (just like with any other form of memory) I remember as a child, before I owned any means of recording music or playing recorded music, I was capable of imagining in my head, to pretty high fidelity, music that I had heard many times. I would listen to a favorite song on the radio intently so I could memorize it; eventually I could play it back in my head. I can still do the trick today with recorded music; if I were trapped on a desert island I could probably play _The Dreaming_ for myself over and over, although it is hard to keep with the thread of a song unless I'm really concentrating on it and am pretty familiar with it. Although I've only been listening to _The Red Shoes_ since Saturday, I can recall to myself big chunks of "The Red Shoes" and "Constellation of the Heart". I got at least one funny look as I went down the street tonight whistling the melody to "The Red Shoes", including fitting some of the backing parts in the gaps. I really like "The Red Shoes". I'm pretty dance-resistant but that song can get me to do it. Kate still has her genius to make a song about dancing so appropriately danceable. ======================================================================== 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)