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 #788 ecto, Number 788 Wednesday, 6 October 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Happy in Toronto! (kind of...) Possible costume Oops! Re: What musical instruments do I play? Firesign Theatre tour dates a short Klaus Re: vote "YES" for the EEP (European Ecto Party) Re: Recipes & Dunce Caps Jane & Anneli Fuzzy Set Theory Re: Jane & Anneli almost flawless ======================================================================== Subject: Happy in Toronto! (kind of...) From: ecurrent@sizone.pci.on.ca (Mr. Plow) Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1993 10:02:27 -0400 Well, I've *finally* done it. A couple of months ago, I started working a couple of nights a week at a local CD shop called The CD Bar. Although I am officially manager of the industrial/experimental and gothic/ ethereal sections, it was soon made clear (after I "proved" myself) that I was free to suggest orders for the other sections. So, of course, the first thing that popped into my head was "Happy!!" - after all, her stuff *still* isn't easily available up here. So, I faxed off an order to AG - I think I originally wanted to get 10 copies of "RhodeSongs" and 2 copies of each of her "real" discs. Well, AG forwarded our order to Trend Distribution, who have apparently become thier exclusive Canadian distributor. This, however, did us no good, since we don't deal with Trend for some reason. Bleah. Then, a couple of weeks later, "RhodeSongs" showed up on the upcoming release sheets of one of the U.S. distributors that we import American releases from - in addition to a note that they also have all of Happy's backstock on hand, as well. So, I decided to place a (slightly smaller - 5 "RS" and 1 of each of the others) order with them, and it looks like we're going to get the discs! YAY!! So spread the word - Happy is finally available in a non-US retail outlet (or soon will be, at least). (oh, and as for why I made a smaller order than originally planned - we had intended to get the original order in around the same time as the new Kate singles, which would've been a nice tie-in, giving us the chance to suggest Happy's material to everyone who bought the new Kate. However, the initial rush on Kate's singles has died down, so we missed out on that, making Paul, the owner, a little bit nervous about ordering too heavily on an "unknown" artist. Understandable, I suppose.) Anyway, I just thought I should share this with you all. And (plug time) I should also mention that the CD Bar runs a mail order service, so if there's something special that you're looking for on disc but haven't been able to find, give us a call - our North American toll free order line is 1-800-663-1616. Of special interest to people reading this might be the following... Currently in stock... o Cocteau Twins "Evangeline" CD-single (UK) o Kate "Rubberband Girl" CD-single (UK) and "Eat The Music" single (US) o Jane Siberry "The Walking" CD (Canadian - now deleted in US) Accepting pre-orders on... o Kate "The Red Shoes - Shoebox" ltd edition release (UK - includes CD,. t-shirt, badge and certificate) o Sarah McLachlan "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" CD (Canadian - late October release, no US release until January, 1994) And we have lots of other neat stuff too. Give us a call. Take care, Greg Greg Clow - ecurrent@sizone.pci.on.ca - ecurrent@io.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "This alternative dance rock shit is the worst music in the history of the world! It depresses me that members of my species like this industrial Nazi death-rock garbage!" - Daniel G. Clowes, EIGHTBALL #11 ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 00:21:09 PDT From: dixon@physics.berkeley.edu (David Dixon) Subject: Possible costume Vickie maped: > It would be great, but we've been invited to a Halloween party that > night at Preston Klik's house. He's the keyboard player for Big Hat > and I still can't believe he invited me since he hardly knows me. We're > not exactly party people, but I feel pretty good about being asked and > I don't think I should pass it up. Troy! Send me a costume! :-) > Perhaps you could show up to the party in rubber hip boots and Chris could be carrying a paddle. Roe v. Wade D^2 (ducking) ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 00:39:05 PDT From: dixon@physics.berkeley.edu (David Dixon) Subject: Oops! The other day I said that one of Hans Zimmer's CD's was "Escape from Television." I mis-remembered... "Escape from TV" is by Jan Hammer, not Hans Zimmer. Easy to mix those names up. I don't know if Hans Zimmer has any CD's of his own out, but the newage bin would be the place to look if he did. D^2 ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 08:48:27 +0100 From: yngveh@stud.cs.uit.no (Yngve Hauge) Subject: Re: What musical instruments do I play? WretchAwry writes: > Christo quotes Holly: > > > > I play the stereo. :) > > > > > *ROFL* :) > > I don't know why I found this so funny. > > (of the Cranes) and Anneli Drecker (of Bel Canto.) Diamanda Galas, Lene Just that I don't forget it - as I've done sometimes now :) Anneli Drecker is out with a single called "I'll Strangle You" (hmmm, wonder why it wasn't in the main catalogue, it was released sometimes in 1992) Haven't seen it mentioned here before at least :) Regards, -- T ---- Only In Your Eyes Lies Your Soul.............. H | --- ----- ---- --- - -- - - - - - --- E |-- | | | | | | |__| | | |_ | | | | | |--- | | | | | --- --- - - ---- - - - -- - - - --- --- Yngve Hauge (yngveh@stud.cs.uit.no).....University of Tromsoe...Norway ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 00:59:59 PDT From: stevev@miser.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) Subject: Firesign Theatre tour dates Again, from the alt.comedy.firesgn-thtre FAQ: A Reunion Tour is planned for the Fall of '93: Illusion Of Unity (IOU) Tour: ----------------------------- Tickets from Ticketmaster starting October 2. A possible CD recording of the tour may be in the works, as well. The word from Chicago is that tickets are selling fast, so order early! Illusion of Unity Tour Schedule: ---------------------------------- Show Date Location Other Info --------- ------------------ ---------------------- Oct 28th: Auditorium Theatre Denver, CO oct 29th: Midland Theatre Kansas City, MO Oct 30th: Arie Crown Theatre Chicago, IL Oct 31st: Fox Theatre Detroit, MI Nov 4th/5th: Mullen Center Amherst, (MA ???) Nov 6th/7th: Orpheum Theatre Boston, MA Nov 10th/11th: Warner Theatre WT Box Office: (202) 783-4000. Washington, DC Nov 12th/13th: Beacon Theatre New York, NY Nov 20th/21st: Berkeley Theatre Berkeley,CA Dec 2nd/3rd: Wiltern Theatre Los Angeles, CA ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 Oct 93 13:21:07 MEZ From: Dirk Kastens Subject: a short Klaus Hi, Guess, what I spent the last day with? I waded through 50 digests. Ilka hebered: >thanks a lot, Anthony, for asking Jane about German tour dates. Hey, you >Germans, get out there and buy her album so that they send her on a tour!!! >I'm soooo disappointed!!! = ( Yes, I bought it a couple of days ago! It's WONDERFUL, probably my "album of the year" (I don't believe that TRS will be better, if they ever release it this year), followed by RhodeSongs. _Love is everything_ is the only song that I don't like (although it appears twice on the disc). My favorite songs are _Temple_, _All the candles..._ and _An angel stepped down_. (BTW, this is my first JS album) I found two Cassell Webb albums for a very reasonable price, (Thief of sadness + Songs of a stranger) although I don't like them very much. She has a great voice but the songs and the instrumentation are weak IMO. Steve fixxed: >But it's healthy to like The Fixx, isn't it? Isn't it? Don't >all look at me like that. You can call me a big Fixx fan. I've all of their albums and saw them live twice. Unfortunately their only big hit was _Less Cities_. Their last album _Ink_ was rather disappointing and I'm not sure if there will ever be a new one. Did anyone notice that Jamie West-Oram, the Fixx's guitarist, played on Jane's _Temple_? Jim said: >John Martin also played on the show. He is an amazing guitarist. You didn't mean John Martyn, did you? Tim wrote: >For those of you who know me, I thought it would be more effecient >to let you know through Ecto--I passed my final oral exam on Friday >so I'm done my Master's! So it looks like the Edmonton branch of Congratulations, Tim! I now have to prepare for my final oral examinations. MJM wrote: >and esp. that, as Uli put it, to be big in Germany you must >sing in English. I find this a fascinating social phenomenon I think, you got this wrong here. You CAN be big in Germany if you sing in German. It simply depends on the genre. We have many singers and bands who sell millions of albums in Germany although they sing in German (Muenchner Freiheit, Matthias Reim, Die Prinzen,...). But they have a different audience which is musically unpretentious IMO. Most of the English singing German bands want to be successful outside of Germany and some of them ARE successful (Scorpions, SNAP!, Rainbirds). I don't believe that the Scorpions would be that successful if they sang in German. Songwriters like Groenemeyer, Kunze, Westernhagen sing in German because they want the audience to pay attention to the lyrics. And, finally, if you want the German language to sound good being sung you have to slur and mumble like Herbert Groenemeyer, so that even a German has difficulties to understand the lyrics :-) Bye for now, Dirk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ || \\\\\ || ///// | dkastens@dosuni1.rz.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE || ))))) IRK || ((((( ASTENS | "Music's the way, the only way I know" || ///// || \\\\\ | Happy Rhodes ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ======================================================================== From: S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk Subject: Re: vote "YES" for the EEP (European Ecto Party) Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 13:24:17 BST On Tue, 5 Oct 1993 at 23:00:14 klaus@inphobos.wupper.de wrote: > Cambridge is definitely a nicer city than Wuppertal! > Maybe we should check which venue would attract more people and make > that the "official" ectoparty. I'd be interested in joining a party in Cambridge (sorry Klaus!) as it's only just up the M11 from Harlow and (more to the point for a non-driver like me) on the same rail line out of London. I can't compare it to Wuppertal, but I can confirm that Cambridge is a lovely city. Not sure mid-November is the best time to go sight-seeing though. :-) Picking up on something Geoff said, London Stansted is a really nice stress-free airport, and so much more convenient for this part of the country than Heathrow or Gatwick. Unfortunately it's so stress-free that American Airlines couldn't raise enough custom to keep their transatlantic (to Chicago) service running. :-( -- 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". *** ======================================================================== From: S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk Subject: Re: Recipes & Dunce Caps Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 13:34:22 BST On Wed, 6 Oct 93 at 1:22:47 EDT WretchAwry wrote: > > >*** "Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown". *** > > > > by the way, has the meaning of "duffers" ever been revealed? > > As SteveF explained it, "Better dead than dumb" (Nice papa, huh?) Well, maybe. But I actually think that in context it was an expression of confidence in the kids, sort of: "since I know I can trust you not to act dumb and get drowned, yes you can go sailing on the lake". Among middle class families in the 1930's the affection of parents for their children could be taken for granted (at least this was the consensual illusion). -- 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: Wed, 6 Oct 93 08:56:00 -0500 From: colford@clsn1231.noble.mass.edu (Michael Colford) Subject: Jane & Anneli As my first post to Ecto, I felt I must contribute my opinion of Jane's new album, _When I was a boy_. I've been a fan of Jane's for a long time, and I find _boy_ to be her most fulfillling, transcendent work (with the possible exception being _the Walking__) I hope an pray that she will be able to tour the U.S. this time out. I was fortunate enough to see one of her rare Sib- gathers (solo experiences) earlier this year in Northampton, Massachusetts. IMHO, Jane has surpassed the heights to which only Kate Bush had previously escalated. Now, as to Anneli Drecker and her single, "I'll strangle you." Has anyone heard it? Is it wonderful? How can I find it? I love Bel Canto, have they broken up? Any information would be appreciated. Thanks! Oh, and to Greg O'Rear, while Jane doesn't have a video compilation, you can order a video called "Boy Collect One" which is a short film Jane has directed featuring music from her latest album. The cost is $40 U.S. and more info about it (as well as the ordering address) can be obtained here: sibline box 291 238 davenport road toronto, ontario canada m5r 1j6 Michael -------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Colford | Reading Public Library | Reading, Massachusetts colford@college.noble.mass.edu | *North of Boston Library Exchange* -------------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 06 Oct 93 14:08:58 MEZ From: Dirk Kastens Subject: Fuzzy Set Theory Hi, As I told half a year ago the subject of my diploma paper was the application of fuzzy set theory in environmental impact assessment. Vickie asked me to give a short introduction what I never did. To make it short: The Fuzzy Set Theory was founded by Lofti A. Zadeh in the mid-60's. It is derived from the ordinary set theory where an object can belong to a set or not. These sets are called crisp sets because they have sharp (crisp) boundaries. Fuzzy sets have fuzzy boundaries because their elements have graded degrees of membership to the set. The two-valued logic of the ordinary set theory is replaced by a multi-valued logic. The degrees of membership can take any value in the interval 0,1Y. Now you can say that element "a" belongs partly to set A, or that the degree of membership is 0.8 or 0.3. A degree of 1 means full membership and a degree of 0 means no membership at all. This is important if you have to decide whether a man belongs to the set of tall men or not. In ordinary set theory you determine that everyone who is taller than 1.80m belongs to the set. But why should a man of 1.805m be called tall and a man of 1.795 not? How many hairs must someone have to belong NOT to the set of bold people? The concept of approximate reasoning allows the definition of linguistic variables. If you have to judge if an object is bright or not, you will compare its brightness to other known objects. Now you can create a set of objects with graded degrees of brightness where the "highest" object is what you call bright (membership 1) and the "lowest" object is what you call not bright, or dark (membership 0). The other objects have degrees in between 0 and 1. If you have a fuzzy set of 6 objects the degrees of membership could be (0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1). Now you compare an object to all the objects in this reference set. If you say your object is bright, then it's to a degree of 1 possible, that the object is as bright as object no. 6 in the set, or the possibility is 0.6 that it's as bright as object no. 4 in the set, etc. Now you can define linguistic terms that are represented by different fuzzy sets. You can create primary terms like "bright", "tall", etc. and hedges like "very", "more or less". The hedges are defined through operators on the degrees of membership of the fuzzy sets. The hedge "very" is a concentration, because you have to square the degrees, what means that the fuzzy set becomes less fuzzy. "Very bright" can now be defined as (0 0.04 0.16 0.36 0.64 1). "More or less" is a dilation because you take the square root which will make the set more fuzzy. "Not" is the complement of the set, "not bright" = (1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0). "Medium" can be defined as (0.1 0.3 1 1 0.3 0.1). You can create the wildest combinations of primary terms and hedges like "The object is more or less bright but not very bright", etc. Most of the ordinary set operations can be applied to fuzzy sets, like intersection or union. The Fuzzy Set Theory makes it possible to operate with linguistic terms and imprecise data. This was a very brief introduction and I don't know if it's understandable. It was a try... Fuzzy greetings, Dirk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ || \\\\\ || ///// | dkastens@dosuni1.rz.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE || ))))) IRK || ((((( ASTENS | "Music's the way, the only way I know" || ///// || \\\\\ | Happy Rhodes ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ======================================================================== Subject: Re: Jane & Anneli Date: Wed, 06 Oct 93 09:16:22 -0400 From: jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu Michael-the-new-comer writes: Welcome! >I was fortunate enough to see one of her rare Sib- >gathers (solo experiences) earlier this year in Northampton, Massachusetts. Interesting...a friend of mine was at that show too... >Now, as to Anneli Drecker and her single, "I'll strangle you." Has anyone >heard it? Is it wonderful? How can I find it? No, of course Bel Canto hasn't broken up (though for SW,B they were a duo, not a trio...). The members have always participated in outside projects. "I'll Strangle You" is a track from an album called _The Blue Sahara_ which was put together by a fellow named something-or-other (begins with an H but I can't remember the name. Harold, perhaps?) Zazou. Basically, it's musical settings of poems by Rimbaud (have I remembered the correct French poet? I really oughtn't be writing this without the CD in front of me. ;-) performed by a wide variety of artists. It was released on Crammed Discs back in '92. I've not heard the whole album but I was apparently the first ectophile to find the Anelli Drecker single, which is called "I'll Strangle You." The title track of the album is the b-side. It's a short single, maybe 10 or 11 minutes. But if you love Bel Canto, I'd say it's probably worth the money. The song is a "duet" of sorts. French actor Gerard Depardieu recites the poem and then Anelli sings it, alternating here and there. It's *very* dancy and Anelli sounds *great*. Also worth having is the album _Song of Joy_ by Tsunematsu Matsui (occasionally this can be found in the new age section, though I've *no* idea why). Anelli sings lead vocal on I think 7 of 10 songs (and wrote the lyrics) and it's absolutely superb. Jeff ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 09:29:23 -0500 From: colford@clsn1231.noble.mass.edu (Michael Colford) Subject: Re : Jane & Anneli Sorry, the Anneli Drecker portion of my message seems to have been munched. I was wondering if anyone had heard the single and if it was good? Also, where can I find this? Is it a U.K. only release? Also, I love Bel Canto, have they broken up? Thanks for the info. Michael -------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Colford | Reading Public Library | Reading, Massachusetts colford@college.noble.mass.edu | *North of Boston Library Exchange* -------------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================================================== Date: 06 Oct 93 10:04:36 EDT From: Mike Mendelson Subject: almost flawless I continue to be most impressed with the English of those ectophiles whose mother tongue is some other language. However, sometimes anomales do creep up and it is interesting to me to try to figure out *why* grammar happens the way it does. |You won't see me disagreeing to this statement, although sometimes |a couple of other albums occupy this place as well. You disagree (or agree) WITH something/someone; You agree TO do something; You would not disagree TO anything; You could not agree TO do something. Interesting. What is it about English that lends itself more easily to song writing? Does have implications on prose or poetry writing? Michael Jordan is leaving professional basketball. You heard it here first. News conference at 10am, central daylight-savings time. Happy hoshana rabah! -mjmthelinguisticsmajorofyearspast J A Y S A L L T H E W A Y ! ! ! ======================================================================== From: Tim "Cook." x297 Date: Wed, 6 Oct 93 15:19:58 BST Subject: Re: almost flawless > I continue to be most impressed with the English > of those ectophiles whose mother tongue is some other language. Me too. Wspaniale! ======================================================================== 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)