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 #879 ecto, Number 879 Tuesday, 23 November 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* QUESTIONS. . . Quickie (whoo!) Oh yeah... Multiple meanderings Re: Dead Can Dance Death Gallery Claudia and the Sea Nymph Re: Big Happy Smile ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 20:51:09 -0600 From: Melissa Nordsiek Subject: QUESTIONS. . . ECTO-ITES- *a friend told me he is going to Curve...i am wondering, are they making a pit stop in chicago? when and where? i must go!!! i missed them last time, which really pissed me off cuz they were with spiritualized and mary chain... *does any one know of any raves any where in the mid-west area? i am dying to go to a real one being the dance phreak i am...but then again, maybe i am asking the wrong channel... DEATH TO ALL ROOM MATES!!! seizure later, missy ps-BIG HAT RULES!!! EMAIL-bighat@camelot.bradley.edu ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 22:20:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Suspended In Duct Tape Subject: Quickie (whoo!) Hi! Jeffy, congrats on your kiting win! That's way keen. Anybody going to the Big Hat show in Northampton on 12/4? I've never heard of the venue on the list that was posted here- but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Anybody have more info on that venue? Also, on 12/5 in Amherst Knots and Crosses (kinda folkish group from Peaks Island, Maine that I've mentioned here before) are playing, and The Nields are opening for them. (I think I'll just get a room in the Valley that weekend... :) I haven't said anything about The Nields here, but now I am- they re a quartet from Connecticut- specifically, they teach at the Loomis Chaffee School, a prep school in the northern part of the state. They play a fun kind of acoustic folk rock, if that makes sense, and with the exception of the new bass player they're all related by either blood or marriage. They have at least one album out, _Live At The Iron Horse_, which is quite good, especially since they're definitely a group you have to see live. I think they would be positively boring in the studio. I saw them do a set a couple months ago, and they were great- the whole show with Knots and Crosses ought to be amazing. Jessica, what exactly is a "Death performance", and would I want to go? Pomegranates. Never tried one, but I watched a friend of mine try once. That experience was enough for me. I just don't have the patience to go through all that just for a silly piece of fruit. Well gang, if I don't join you all again before the weekend, to all the Americophiles a wonderful and satisfyingly stuffing (hah) Turkey Day to you. Don't explode or anything. Meredith the still computerless meth@delphi.com ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 22:23:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Suspended In Duct Tape Subject: Oh yeah... ...Sarah McLachlan's _Fumbling Towards Ecstasy_ is an AMAZING album. It's just, like, great. My favorites so far are "Good Enough" and "Fear", the latter of which is in the running for Favorite Song of 1993. (Yes folks, it just might beat out "All The Candles In The World", "Human Behaviour", and "The Red Shoes"!) She's moving even farther up in my pantheon. Wow. Meredith the smitten meth@delphi.com ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 22:32:33 EST From: jessica Subject: Re: Quickie (whoo!) meredith writes: > Jessica, what exactly is a "Death performance", and would I want to go? not a "death performance" but a "death" show - "death" is one of the characters in Sandman - she's the cute one! There is a show of artist's reditions of her, or something to that effect. If you're a sandman fan you might want to go.. > Pomegranates. Never tried one, but I watched a friend of mine try once. > That experience was enough for me. I just don't have the patience to go > through all that just for a silly piece of fruit. I love pomegranates! *once*in*a*while*, anyway :) they _are_ a lot of work :) but it's worth it to have one once in a while anyway.. (i think, that is). I bought several things today: the mike oldfield "elements" box (yum yum yum yum), "even cowgirls get the blues" (haven't listened to it yet, haven't seen the movie either in case you're wondering, i just love the book and like k.d. lang enough to know i want this album), "no alternative" (haven't listened to it yet), Over the Rhine "patience" which i found used, and Cranes "Jewel" (also used, and haven't listened to it either.. how am I supposed ot listen to anything when i've got 4 lovely mike oldfield disks to listen to first!?:) I'll write my impressions of the other disks when i do listen to them.. jessica || falafel, || It is this || Don't try to tell me there's no reason for || || falafel, || that brings || any moment in time, every memory of mine. || || falafel, || us together. || Those years are lines of color on my face, || ||BaBaGanough|| --Kate || the past is warpaint. --Happy Rhodes || ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 20:02:32 PST From: erik@falcon.kla.com (Erik Johnson) Subject: Multiple meanderings brni muses: |> >From: snpf@ugcs.caltech.edu (The Duchess Of York) [ munched ] |> >-seanympf |> > |> you know, i don't know what it is, but every time i see this |> name, i pronounce it like 2 words: seany muff. i guess if you |> were native american, it would be shawnee muff.... |> its supposed to be sea nymph, yes? i don't know why my |> brain insists on reading it otherwise... Funny you should mention that. The first few times I saw it, what I read was as a name 'sean ympf', where for the gaelic-impaired among us 'sean' = "shawn" = a man's first name. I actually know why my brain reads it that way - my cousin married a Sean. Distant cousin of Chicago's Mayor Daley, I understand. Good Irish name. :-) I think I've managed to reeducate my brain to see 'sea nympf', but every once in a while some unreconconstructed atavism in my brain says, "Duchess Sean!? How...unusual." ;-) jessica has good news |> Well, good news: I've got my license back, at least until |> I go to court. (And it only cost $90! I still owe the DMV |> $290, but I can pay it in installments. Wow. I certainly |> feel pretty dumb. If i'd just payed the $90 6 months ago, |> I wouldn't have gotten in trouble. But I'm learning - not |> paying the bills has a lot to do with being depressed, not |> taking care of myself. I'm learning to take care of myself |> now... If anything this situation helps 'cause it pushes me |> to get that part of my life straightened out.) Great to hear! I've been there, done that, and hope to God I never get the T-shirt. ;-) But in that mindset it's too damn *easy* to let things slide. The consequences never seem real, because nothing seems real - or at least, nothing seems important. The only thing that seems to help me is to put it on my list, assign it a specific time & deadline, and force myself to not let it slip. Doesn't always work - if you come up with a better way to handle it, I'm all ears. It seems to me to be a vicious cycle - when I'm depressed, it's too much trouble to deal with things, so my life gets more backlogged, which makes me more depressed, which... I've managed to stay out of that spiral for a while now, but it's just an exercise of will more than anything else. Of course, willpower is what goes missing when I get depressed. Bah. Didn't mean to dump all this when I started - please ignore as necessary. |> more good news: Got to see Tribe in concert twice in one |> week. |> |> even better news: hung out with Terri and Eric (keyboardist |> and guitar player, both do a lot of writing for the band) after |> both shows. Sounds like *lots* of fun. Still haven't heard Tribe yet - it's on my list, but it's a case of so much music, so little time... :-/ Erik the occaisionally overloaded ___________________________________________________________________________ Erik N. Johnson Don't believe any return address KLA Instruments Corp. rumors. The one and only True San Jose, CA Address is e_johnso@kla.com. Fortune presents gifts not according to the book. When you expect flutes, it's whistles. When you expect whistles, it's flutes. -- Dead Can Dance ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Nov 93 20:06:57 PST From: erik@falcon.kla.com (Erik Johnson) Subject: Re: Dead Can Dance Kannisto Juha asks: |> I collided with a DCD cd 'A Passage in Time' just two days ago in a local |> store where they sell used discs and as I had heard their name so many |> times during recent years, I bought the thing. My luck didn't quite end |> there, I even like it! The gothic kind of mood has always appealed to me, |> and they're very strong in that field. Now, I was wondering if anyone could |> tell me something about the group. I have very little information myself. |> I also noticed that there's a rather new release from them out there, |> what is it like in comparison? Anyone? Thank you! I collided with them a few months ago and *love* it. The hybrid influences just do it for me. If you get the chance to see them live, *GO*!! I saw them a couple of weeks ago in Berkley, and it was great. I didn't see how they could possibly recreate that sound live, but they did - plus more. As fate would have it, you're in luck. I'm also on the 4AD mailing list (DCD's label), and someone posted a biography just a couple of days ago. So, without further ado, here it is. Enjoy. Erik ----- Begin Included Message ----- Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1993 00:15:40 -0800 From: Peter Werner Subject: Dead Can Dance biography I found this among the Warner band promos on America Online. Its actually quite informative. Beast of Eden ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dead Can Dance Biography In September 1993, Dead Can Dance - Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard - release their new album Into The Labyrinth. Brendan Perry lives on an island in a river on the border between Eire and Northern Ireland; Lisa Gerrard lives in the Snow River mountains in Australia. As a result, they wrote independently and then, in three months together, prepared and recorded both Into The Labyrinth tracks as well as other material. Brendan Perry: It's a journey into a year of writing, very much focused on living in the countryside with rural people. There's folk rootedness, in one respect: a love for natural, primitive music of the world, and a love of very natural sounding things: bird song, wood.. Some of the songs on Into The Labyrinth are without words, perhaps some are beyond them. Some are deceptively straight forward, heaving pop ballads, and some are disconcertingly unpinned instrumentals. Some brook no explanation, while some allow a little. "The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove" is Brendan Perry's alter ego ...the abstract relationship of myself and woman.. "The Wind That Shakes The Barley," a late eighteenth-century piece written by Dr. Robert Dwyer-Joyce to commemorate an uprising in Wexford against the British. Lisa Gerrard wanted to do her own version...it was meant to be a rallying song, but it has such an intense sadness that it becomes an anti-war song... "The Carnival is Over" is a reminiscence of pre-teen Brendan Perry living in East London, visiting the circus. "Tell Me About The Forest": When you live in Ireland you see the people who have been away for years returning to their parents, and you also see those they leave behind..the breaking down of tradition along with the uprooting and upheaval of tribes. In Ireland, and in the rain forests. If we could only keep the oral traditions going, and leave the clerical bullshit behind.. "How Fortunate The Man With None": Brendan Perry set words from Brecht's Mother Courage, to music from a Temenos production of the play. This is only the second such permission granted by the Brecht estate, the previous one in 1963. Dead Can Dance will tour the United States during September, October and November with a full complement of accompanying musicians. ...live, we don't play much from our records. We have a system where we introduce nodal structures which allows room for improvisations, according to a melismatic approach. You can achieve some dangerously beautiful musical moments by way of this process... Into The Labyrinth is Dead Can Dance's sixth album...we make records because we still have a lot of demons to exorcise: we enjoy the therapeutic nature of making music and through that enjoyment we want to express that joy and pass it on to people. It is our greatest source of therapy, and our greatest means of expression... A Brief History 1980-81 In '80, Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard, both of Anglo-Irish extraction, meet in Melbourne, Australia. 1982-early 1984 In '82, they move to London and the next year sign to 4AD. In March '84, they release their first album, a collection of the songs they have written over the previous four years. It is simply entitled Dead Can Dance. The album artwork, a ritual mask from New Guinea, attempted to provide a visual reinterpretation of the meaning of the name Dead Can Dance. The mask, though once a living part of a tree is dead; nevertheless it has, through the artistry of its maker, been imbued with a life force of its own. To understand why we chose the name, think of the transformation of inanimacy to animacy.. Think of the processes concerning life from death and death into live. So many people missed the inherent symbolism, and assumed that we must be "morbid gothic types," a mistake we deplored and deplore... Late 1984 As well as contributing two songs, "Dreams Made Flesh" and "Wave Become Wings," to the first This Mortal Coil album, It'll End In Tears, Dead Can Dance recorded a 12" EP, Garden Of The Arcane Delights. The themes of the EP's central song, "The Arcane," were illustrated by the Brendan Perry drawing which appeared on the sleeve. ...The naked blindfolded figure, representing primal man deprived of perception, stands, within the confines of a garden (the world) containing a fountain and trees laden with fruit. His right arm stretches out - the grasping for knowledge - towards a fruit bearing tree, its trunk encircled by a snake. In the garden wall - the wall between freedom and confinement - are two gateways: the dualistic notion of choice. It is a Blakean universe in which mankind can only redeem itself, can only rid itself of blindness, through the correct interpretation of signs and events that permeate the fabric of nature's laws. 1985 The second Dead Can Dance album is released and reaches #2 in the British independent charts. It is called Spleen And Ideal. ...The terms 'spleen' and 'ideal' were taken from nineteenth century symbolist ideas. Spleen - the ill natured and malevolent aspects of human nature such as envy, ill temper, spite and intolerance - was seen as inextricably linked to the notion of the ideal. On one hand it tended to rob the ideal of its potentiality to exist; on the other hand it would shape and influence the ideal's very nature. Correspondingly, our songs were about the truth and illusion; conditioning and freedom; doubt and faith; and beneath all these couplings, the quest for perfection. The attainment of the ideal... 1986-87 In '86, Dead Can Dance tour extensively and contribute two songs, "Frontier" and "The Protagonist," to the 4AD compilation and video Lonely Is An Eyesore. They also release their third album, Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun. ...We realized we had been limiting our musical visions, adapting role playing fixed around guitar, bass and drums. And a lot of things we were hearing, these instruments weren't adequate to express them. So we were learning classical theory, particularly baroque structures based on counterpoint, and we decided we were going to work within the form of the classical idiom and use classical instruments, with the aid of samplers, computers and a few books on how to score. To play the parts we could hear... 1988-89 In the latter part of '88, Dead Can Dance write the film score for the Agustin Villarongas film El Nino De La Luna (Moonchild), in which Lisa Gerrard also made her acting debut. Earlier in '88 they release their fourth album, The Serpent's Egg. ....a lot of aerial photographs of the earth, if you look upon it as a giant organism - a macro-cosmos- you can see that the nature of the life force, water, travels in a serpentine way. We had a vision of this serpentine embrace around the egg: the earth. Again we were telescoping into an earlier period of European music. The troubadour trouvere musics going right through to the renaissance. The romantic elements had disappeared. 1990 Dead Can Dance's fifth album reflects their interest in liturgical and secular music from a period spanning the early Renaissance and incorporates reproduction instruments from those periods. It is called Aion. ...the word Aion - alternately spelled Aaon - signifies an age, but also the entire duration of the world or universe. In Platonic philosophy it represents benevolent power existing within eternity... 1991-93 In '91 Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard work with the theatre and festival projects in Eire, Dead Can Dance perform Lisa Gerrard's score for the Temenos production of Sophocles Oedipus Rex and, at the Cavan Lakes and Vales Festival, Dead Can Dance conceptualize and performed the music for the parade and closing ceremony of The Lughnasa. In '93, a mixture of new and previously released Dead Can Dance music appears in the American film Baraka, and they also contribute two songs to the '93 Hector Zazou album Sahara Blue. In October '92, Dead Can Dance collect their finest compositions (and two new songs "Bird" and "Spirit") as their first American domestic release under the title A Passage In Time. ...We chose songs to show a journey, where the pieces interlocked. It's evolutionary, traversing something, as opposed to a time which is fixed and linear. Derived from something and arriving towards something. The music tends to still sparkle and glow, though the events surrounding it are very dim... Dead Can Dance Discography 1981 "The Fatal Impact" Single 1984 Dead Can Dance LP 4AD 1984 Garden Of The Arcane Delights EP 4AD 1985 Spleen And Ideal LP 4AD 1987 Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun LP 4AD 1988 The Serpent's Egg LP 4AD 1990 Aion LP 4AD 1991 A Passage In Time LP 4AD 1993 Into The Labyrinth LP 4AD ----- End Included Message ----- ___________________________________________________________________________ Erik N. Johnson Don't believe any return address KLA Instruments Corp. rumors. The one and only True San Jose, CA Address is e_johnso@kla.com. Fortune presents gifts not according to the book. When you expect flutes, it's whistles. When you expect whistles, it's flutes. -- Dead Can Dance ======================================================================== From: Aeren Hawkins Subject: Death Gallery Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1993 23:11:06 -0600 (CST) I think y'all are taling about the Death Gallery, a show at 4 color images in NYC. The address, according to Neil's topic on GEnie, is 524 Broadway, suite 602, and the phone # is (212) 431-4234. There's a long, impressive list of artists who've contributed renderings of Death that I won't bore you with, but for those of us who can't get to the show, the pictures are going to be available in the (surpise!) Death Gallery comic on sale either tomorrow or Wednesday at finer comic shops everywhere. End of plug. Think Time-Warner'll pay me for this? Aeren, who came *very* close to murderizin' kiri's ride up to Chicago today ======================================================================== From: S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk Subject: Claudia and the Sea Nymph Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1993 10:13:04 +0000 (GMT) Now I know that "me too" postings are generally frowned on as being poor netiquette, but I just want to say that until the (presumably correct) Sea Nymph reading was discussed here recently I hadn't reand seanymph as anything other than Sean... the Ymph being assumed to be some initials of little import. Sorry Sean, er Sea, er.. gosh darn what *should* I call you now???? :-) Oh and while I'm on here I might as well do something useful and wish Claudia the very best of Birthdays today. Have a good one ma'am! -- 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". *** ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Nov 93 6:13:10 EST From: WretchAwry Subject: Re: Big Happy Smile RobC ravens: > : ) Hi! God... I feel so awful. I haven't even gone out and bought > myself a Happy disc, much less written to Ecto in so long. :( I just > haven't had much to say, I suppose. I feel very cut off from the world > around me here at college. And I don't get out much to concerts or > anything. I'm SO poor... Can you tell, I'm very behind on responses. You shouldn't feel bad about not having Happy's music! It's *not* a requirement for being on this list, from being an "Ectophile." You on this list? You're an Ectophile, and we're glad you're here, and just because you haven't heard Happy (yet! :) You probably will, eventually, I would imagine) doesn't mean that you're the only one, or that you don't belong here. (Besides, I'm automatically endeared to anyone who likes my hugs :-)!) *HUG* > Wish I had more Ectophilic things to say... :( You say plenty of Ectophilic things! Vickie ======================================================================== 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)