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 #345 ecto, Number 345 Thursday, 8 October 1992 Today's Topics: *-----------------* bdays Happy Birthday Happy Gifs Gabriel stuff Suzanne Vega, Sinead, Peter Gabriel, and more! singles aussies ecto #343 Tom Robinson Re: singles aussies Film flam Happy Birthday! Whoa! whoa! digitized hell On ectopsychopharmacology An afterthought HATED IT! ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1992 06:07:35 -0230 From: eperry@kean.ucs.mun.ca Subject: bdays Happy Bday yesterday Alberta Tim!! and happy bdays to Dan and Neile today! We are having major power problems *again* as a result of hurricane-force winds. I lost power for 24 hours and on top of not having the computer I was also without music and heat -- brrrr!! Those cold Arctic winds are making life tough... At least I've still got a roof! :) Anyway, I have just discovered that the universitiy has re-established the modem lines so I thought I'd send off bday wishes and let people know why I haven't replied to messages... I'm not ignoring you. Beth ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 10:50:37 +0100 From: Terry Partis Subject: Happy Birthday Hi Niele, Here's wishing you a Happy Birthday for 8th. October Peace and Best Wishes Terry =============================================================================== _ __ Jolly Hockeysticks _ __ / `-' ( ,,, / `-' ( ,,, | I I ||||||[:::] | I I ||||||[:::] \_.-._( ''' Terry (Tel Boy) Partis \_.-._( ''' _ __ (tgp@ukc.ac.uk) _ __ / `-' ( ,,, With a smile and a song / `-' ( ,,, | I I ||||||[:::] I'm HaPpY | I I ||||||[:::] \_.-._( ''' \_.-._( ''' YYUR - YYUB - ICURYY4ME ================================================================================ ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 01:14:48 PDT From: spotter@darwin.bio.uci.edu (Steve Potter) Subject: Happy Gifs I have made numerous attempts to view the GIF files in pub/hr/gifs, and all I get is screens full of the kind of noise only a computer error can create. I am using Quickgif on a Mac. Jessica suggested that maybe this program cant do color gifs (I have a BW monitor). Its documentation doesnt say one way or the other. I know, I know, I ought to take it to comp.mac or something for advice, but but I figure some other ectophile can better empathize my plight, and will be able to verify that what I am trying to do with these particular files is actually possible. (No, I mean viewing them on a bw Mac, silly ;-) Any other public domain gif-viewing programs for the mac that I should get? -Skaludy spotter@darwin.bio.uci.edu ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 10:53:01 MEZ From: Dirk Kastens Subject: Gabriel stuff Greetings. Happy Birthday Dan & Neile. (Nice to see the familiar birthday cakes again, Klaus) To take up the discussion on the David star: I saw Limahl last night on TV and he also wore a big golden David star and a life symbol (is it the life symbol, a T with an o on top?) around his neck. I don't know if he's jewish, but maybe it really *is* a kind of fashion. Hi Angelos: Have you ever heard the *fantastic* songs My Secret Place by Joni Mitchell Fallen Angel by Robbie Robertson ???? Both are duets with Peter, featuring Manu Katche on drums. The funny thing about Fallen Angel is that Robbie sings: "Come down Gabriel blow your horn, Someday we will meet again" :-) Not to forget the brilliant song Silence on Manu Katche's solo album with Peter and Sting singing background vocals. Dirk ======================================================================== Subject: Re: Gabriel stuff Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 09:22:50 -0400 From: jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu Dirk sez: >To take up the discussion on the David star: >I saw Limahl last night on TV and he also wore a big golden >David star and a life symbol (is it the life symbol, a T with an >o on top?) around his neck. I don't know if he's jewish, but maybe >it really *is* a kind of fashion. Now *there's* a funny bit o' irony! The other symbol you're describing is probably an Ankh (as opposed to the Venus symbol which is for women and has been snagged by KaTe in her TWW symbol; I can't imagine why Limahl would wear a Venus). The Ankh, which does, to some degree, symbolize 'life' is an Egyptian symbol. Not the sort of thing you really expect to see with a major Jewish symbol. ;-) Jeff ======================================================================== Subject: Suzanne Vega, Sinead, Peter Gabriel, and more! From: "Mark C. Carroll" Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 10:38:11 -0400 First: I'd like to revise my earlier comments on the new Suzanne Vega album. It's a shock to listen to at first... and part of me still thinks that I don't like it as much as her earlier stuff - but I find that I listen to it a _lot_ more often that I listened to her earlier albums. 99.9oF has been in my CD player constantly... And that's the real measure of how good an album is, to me: how much I want to hear it. And it does have that old Vega intimacy - it's just styled differently. Second: I'm _furious_ at Sinead. I don't agree with what she did on SNL, but that's not what I'm so upset about. She felt that she had to make a strong political/religious statement, and that doesn't bother me, even if I disagree strongly with the way she chose to make that statement. What upsets me is the fact that she chose to wear the symbol of a different religion while she did it. I'm a Jew, and I'm very well acquainted with anti-semitism. It's a *huge* problem in America. The fact that she chose to wear a mogen david when she tore up the picture of the pope is going to be noticed and remembered by every antisemitic asshole in the country. She's welcome to do whatever she wants to state her opinion, but I deeply resent the fact that she had to do it in a way where *I* will have to face some of the consequences of her actions and *she won't*. Third: My comments on _Us_. I absolutely love this album. It's a very typical PG album - which means great writing, unusual sounds, experimentation with ethnic influences, bizzare instrumentation, brilliant lyrics, and Peter Gabriel wonderfully hoarse (is that the right way to describe it? I don't think so, but I can't think of a better word) voice over the whole thing. Simply stunning. And I think that the CD booklet is one of the best I've ever seen - I *love* the use of artwork as a visual for each song! And finally, a piece of wonderful personal news that I can't resist mentioning: I'm engaged! ======================================================================== Subject: Re: Gabriel stuff From: "Mark C. Carroll" Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 10:48:05 -0400 ->To take up the discussion on the David star: ->I saw Limahl last night on TV and he also wore a big golden ->David star and a life symbol (is it the life symbol, a T with an ->o on top?) around his neck. I don't know if he's jewish, but maybe ->it really *is* a kind of fashion. -> The Jewish life symbol is called a chai, and it looks vaguely like this: o o ooo oooooooo o oo oo o oo oo oo oo oo oo It sounds like your thinking of an ankh, which is I think an egyptian life symbol... it looks something like this: oo o o o o oo oooooooo oo ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 10:22:20 EDT From: woj Subject: singles aussies picked up a few singles earlier this week. both of them by (gasp) aus- trailian bands. yothu yindi - "treaty" i believe someone mentioned them on gaffa previously. a rough analogy to describe this band: to austraila what jaluka/savuka is to south africa. one minor difference is that yothu tindi seems to use native instrumentation and rhythms more as ornamentation rather than as a foundation like jaluka did. regardless, the album mix of this song (one of the four different mixes on the single) is quite good. the didjeridu plays too minimal a role for my liking, but i still blasted this in the living room a few times yesterday. their album is prob- ably getting on my to-get list as soon as i find out what it is called. falling joys - "god in a dustbin" wow. fucking wow (pardon my tasmanian). their first album was a good solid guitar-pop kind of thing, but if this single is any indication of the direction they've taken with _psychohum_ (the second album), then it is a welcome change indeed. the guitars are wanked up into a solid wall of sound, the rhythm is sped up and the style is lightyears more powerful than what they used to sound like. no distortion and no feedback - just a solid mass of guitar. there are two extra tracks as well - one is the "slammin' siren" remix of "black bandages", which is even more punishing than "god in a dustbin" and the other is a live recording from a radio performance on wjjj (or whatever that station with 3 j's in its identification is). but this. play it loud. aside: klaus, your address is bouncing all over germany again. thanks for the rough trade sampler - it's quite good. i finally got around to listening to it last weekend. send me a note and we'll see if bitnet can deal with your address. woj ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 11:40:13 EDT From: kosky@saul.cis.upenn.edu (Anthony Kosky) Subject: ecto #343 Dirk wrote: > >I find Bored To Death a more appropriate title for his new album, >because I was bored to death when I listened to it. This is another >example for the statement that a crowd of brilliant studio musicians (Jeff >Beck, Steve Lukather, Patrick Leonard) are not always guarantors for >a brilliant album. There a too many sound effects and much too dense >arrangements (never ending background choirs, etc.). >I find BTD (sorry, ATD) much better than The Pros And Cons Of Hitch >Hiking but not as good as Radio K.A.O.S. > I figured that this warranted some more comments from me. It's clear that Dirk and I aren't going to agree on this stuff since my opinions on the other solo albums are the oposite of his: I thought Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking was way better than Radio KAOS. Radio KAOS struck me as a very weak album: a sequence of rather unispiring songs loosely hung around a rather dubious and un-convincing theme. Pros and Cons didn't really break any new ground musically either, and seemed a bit inconsistent as an album. However it had some very good parts, and I liked the way he captured a dream like sequence of events in the lyrics: the kind of thing where events seem to follow from one another in a rational manner, but when you think about it later they make no sense. On to Amused To Death. The album opens with "The ballad of Bill Hubbard", in which Jeff Beck plays some haunting, mellow guitar while a WW1 veteran, Alf Razzel, recounts his efforts to save another soldier, Bill Hubbard, who was wounded and stranded in no-mans land. This strikes me as one of the musical highlights of the album, of which there are a few more, but basically I'd regard this as a listening to the lyrics kind of album. Roger Waters sings about the use of God and religion as a means by which governments, cultures and people justify or excuse their actions ("God wants Peace, God wants war, God wants famine, God wants chain stores"); he sings about about the vast quantities of contradictory and meaningless information pushed on us by television (represented by The Alien Prophet); he sings about media's use of war as a spectator sport, and about encourage and spur on these pointless wars from the comfort of a bar or their living room couch (The Bravery of Being Out Of Range). Interestingly I read an interview with RW a while ago in which he mentioned that the songs on this album were written before the Gulf War took place, which makes it difficult not to regard these songs as prophetic rather than merely moody or synical. Having said all this, I'd still only rate this good, rather than very good or excellent. Part of the problem I think, though it seems like a strange criticism, is that the album is too long. It over 70 minutes, being recorded for CD format, and it feels like there's only really enough music or ideas for a more conventional 45-50 minute album. The effect is similar to having a very eloquent speaker who insists on going on at too much length and thus steals his own thunder. Overall I'd say this album is interesting and worth investigating, especially if you like Roger Waters' other material, but I'm not sure I could give it an unreserved recommendation. On another, unrelated, note, Vickie had a parenthesis a couple of digests ago in which she asked whether I had anything to do with the MS society. The answer is no, except that I've taken part in sponsored bike rides to raise money for them for the last couple of years. MS is a disease that I tend to be concerned about because of knowing some people who suffer from it. One friend in England, who brought me up when I was very young and was almost a second mother to me, has had it very badly for some time now, and is paralyzed from the waste down and in constant pain. On the other hand another friend who was diagnosed as having MS about two decades ago, has never had it progress beyond the point where it prevented him going for long hikes. It seems that MS is still a very little understood disease, and while it can be extremely horrible, one can also be quite lucky with it. I hope that Victoria Williams is lucky with it. -Anthony ======================================================================== From: Tim Cook Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 17:05:22 BST Subject: Tom Robinson I remember Tom Robinson also co-wrote a song with Elton John which was released as a single in the UK. tim ======================================================================== From: kyrlidis@athena.mit.edu Subject: Re: singles aussies Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 12:14:06 EDT Hi, woj writes: yothu yindi - "treaty" >(one of the four different mixes on the single) is quite good. the >didjeridu plays too minimal a role for my liking, but i still blasted >this in the living room a few times yesterday. their album is prob- >ably getting on my to-get list as soon as i find out what it is called. I posted a little review of it in ecto a while ago under the heading dijeridus make noise too... tsk tsk tsk... not paying attention, woj? anyway the album is called 'tribal voice' and is *awesome*. The dijeridu is omnipresent on the album and there's even some *very* old triba; songs performed by the band. An interesting thing to notice is that most songs are written by one member of the band (if i am not mistaken the singer) and he is *very* talented in my book... The beats and vocals are irresistible. Highly recommended. Angelos 'Well I heard it on the radio, and I saw it on the television' ======================================================================== Date: 8 October 1992 11:59:46 CDT From: Subject: Film flam Yesterday's Sun-Times reported that Sinead O'Connor has been fired from the title role in a prospective biopic of Joan of Arc, and been replaced by, of all people, Wynnona Judd. The firing may be explicable in light of the SNL thing, but their choice of a replacement seems weird nonetheless. Be all this as it may, the role I'd most like to see Sinead play on screen is still the Yellow Kid in _Hogan's Alley: The Movie_ :-). Elsewhere on the celluloid front, a prospective biopic of Bessie Smith, to have starred Queen Latifah, has reportedly been put on hold. Mitch ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 10:44:10 -0700 From: Michael G Peskura Subject: Happy Birthday! To Neile (!), Dan and Tim ... Oh, boy another ecto-convergence! Cheers to you all. Mp ======================================================================== Subject: Re: Happy Birthday! Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 14:08:30 -0400 From: "Daniel S. Riley" Michael G Peskura writes: >To Neile (!), Dan and Tim ... Oh, boy another ecto-convergence! >From Morning Edition this morning I learned that October 8th is also Johnny Ramone's birthday (he's 41(!!)). Just made my day... (that, and all the ecto birthday wishes!) -- Dan Riley Internet: dsr@lns598.tn.cornell.edu Wilson Lab, Cornell University HEPNET/SPAN: lns598::dsr (44630::dsr) "Maybe, leastways is the best way of all" -Caterwaul ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 13:08:56 -0700 From: Michael G Peskura Subject: Whoa! whoa! Mitch writes: > the title role in a prospective biopic of Joan of Arc, and been replaced by, > of all people, Wynnona Judd ... Mitch ... just WHAT have you been smoking?!?! :) ha ha ha (?!) ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 16:19:31 EDT From: woj Subject: digitized hell sometime ago, not long after i got this keen 386-25 pc on my desk, i schlorked the happy gif archives over here and looked at them and played with them a little bit. not too much though, since i really didn't have the programs to play properly. recently though, i found out about a neat program called wingif, which is a windoze graphics converter than handles gif, windows bitmaps and a few other common file types and i started playing again. end result: my windoze wallpaper (how's that for an oxymoron?) is a rather nincely dithered closeup of the devil from volume one. screaming in digital as it were. i've thought about how to explain it to my fellow workers who pop in occasionally to see what the wallpaper of the week is. i've decided to let this one speak for itself. woj ======================================================================== Date: 8 October 1992 15:26:32 CDT From: Subject: On ectopsychopharmacology Mike Peskura writes... >Mitch ... just WHAT have you been smoking?!?! > >:) ha ha ha > >(?!) While it wasn't actually anything I _smoked_, I suppose this does indicate the pitfalls of reading the gossip columns so soon after being exposed to smokeless catnip, to which I had lately been exposing my cat in a rear-guard effort to get him to wield his claws more laid-backedly than is currently the case. Just say no to moral entrepeneurs! Mitch ======================================================================== Date: 8 October 1992 15:35:41 CDT From: Subject: An afterthought Having just read woj's last post, methinks that the issue is: what will his colleagues think _he's_ been administering to his pets? :-) Actually, the sensation that I get from the realization that the bangpath through Jersey is currently unstuck may not be that different from young Casper's transient catnip high :-). Mitch ======================================================================== From: foster@magnum.convex.com (Harry Foster) Subject: HATED IT! Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 15:58:38 CDT Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder what's become of the brilliant Sinead who once did "Troy"? ("Are you not my girl" CD - HATED IT!) I did finally pick up Suzanne Vega's "99.9 degrees" - LOVED IT! -- Harry Foster foster@convex.com "Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass!" -Republican Senator Barry Goldwater ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 14:33:51 PDT From: "John M. Relph" Subject: Re: HATED IT! >Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder what's become of the brilliant >Sinead who once did "Troy"? ("Are you not my girl" CD - HATED IT!) It's just you. Sinead may yet be able to do the "Troy" thing, but the important thing to remember is: she doesn't WANT to! She does her thang, and if it's "Troy", then great, maybe you'll like it, and if it's rip up a picture of the Pope and "Let's Get Political" and show tunes, well, great! But maybe you (and I) won't like it. Gotta respect her dedication to her own vision, however, even if you don't like her vision. >I did finally pick up Suzanne Vega's "99.9 degrees" - LOVED IT! What!? Oh where did the Suzanne of days past go? heh heh. -- John ======================================================================== 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)