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 #330 ecto, Number 330 Sunday, 13 September 1992 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Newsweek and Us MTV VMAs nonsequitor! throwing muses noteworthy? CD's HELP! re: your review of digging.... Re: Happy Rhodes Astrid Hadad ======================================================================== Date: 10 Sep 92 14:31:10 EDT From: MJM Subject: Newsweek and Us Newsweek (9/14/92) has this to say about the new Peter Gabriel release: The most promising of the flights from rock is "Us," the new album from Peter Gabriel. Recorded at his Real World Studios, which he has made a mecca for international musicians, the album features players from Armenia, Egypt, Kenya, Moscow, Senegal, and Turkey, all elaborating on Gabriel's British notion of Memphis soul [?!]. Not counting the soundtrack for Scorsese's "TLToC," "Us" is G's first album since the 1986 megahit, "So." In the interim, his marriage broke up, he took up with actress Rosanna Arquette, and *that* fell apart. "Us" picks over these failed connections as well as larger ones appropriate to G's global grooves. Also mentioned is Sinead O "who weighs in with an unnec. album of pop standards", and "Neil Young's "Harvest Moon," which he's offering as a sequel to his 1972 classic, "Harvest."" [??!] Oh boy. ______________________________________________________________________ |--------------------------------.------------------------------------ | || mjm@zylab.mhs. /\/\ / /\/\ "No pinky ring hustlers, || || compuserve.com / / /_/ / / / No sabre-tooth neighbours" || |\_____________________________________________________________________/ \--------------------------------------------------------------------/ ======================================================================== From: kyrlidis@athena.mit.edu Subject: MTV VMAs Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 16:05:22 EDT Hi, Anyone see the VMA's. Weren't they *boooooooring* except for a few exceptions? I was impressed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers! They were *so* funny, and their performance was definitely a highlight of the whole show. I even started liking November Rain...(he admits) How about the U2 performance (much inferior to the Apollo 440 remixes though)? I also liked their exchange with Peter Gabriel. Nirvana were *boring* and dull (even the screams sounded boring). Smashing their instruments is so passe'. They should have done something more original, and more provocative, if they wanted to seem rebelious. They should definitely hang out more with the Peppers. Liked seeing Brian May and Roger Taylor from Queen, but Kurt Loder pissed Roger royally, when he didn;t let him talk about his solo work in the pre-show thingie. Too bad Tori didn;t win anything. Why didn't she perform? They certainly must have invited her with 4 nominations... ramble ramble ramble outahere angelos ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 09:07:30 EDT From: woj Subject: nonsequitor! some recent acquisitions: throwing muses' _red heaven_. well, i've been waiting for this for a while, especially after rediscovering their earliest albums which are certified boots-to-the-head. with the exit of tanya donnelley, the expected trend for this new album was a move back towards the dense, spiky sounds of the first lp and _chains changed_. to a degree, _red heaven_ is that, but it is such rather unsatisfyingly. after one listen, i really found only one song that i really liked: "pearl". the rest are alright, but there is nothing of what made them interesting. instead, we are given kristen hersh's version of pop music: dense guitar work, uninspired melodies and simple four time beats. boring. i know she can do better though; witness "hooks in her head" on _the real ramona_ as evidence. zero thumbs. kristen hersh - _live at maxwells_. this disc is a limited edition only available with the first pressings of the british _red heaven_ release. it comes packaged with _red heaven_ in a regularly sized cd jewel case with a nifty flip-out tray (i hope that more double cd sets are released like this - *much* nicer than either the usual double box or the less common two-into-one box which i've only seen used for a rem bootleg cd). anyways, this is a recording of an acoustic concert that kristen did at one of my fave hangouts (maxwell's in hoboken - unfortunately, i had to miss this particular show, so it's nice to hear it finally). and the show is quite brilliant - acoustic retakes on many a muses song from the old to the new, including a few then-new (the show was from 1991 sometime) songs that made their way onto _red heaven_ and _the real ramona_. if you can get your hands on this, grab it - it's a much more worthwhile cd than _red heaven_ (then again, if you buy this one, you've probably bought _red heaven_ in the deal). one thumb. the tone dogs - _the early middle ages_. i admit it: i worship amy denio (or at least her music). with that out of the way, i was overjoyed to find that this had finally been released after hearing spurious rumors for months about its availability. this offering from denio, fred chancelor and the-other-guy-whose-name-i-always-forget is yet more of the quirky, humorous and note-stuffed mix of rock, jazz and whatever else they con- cocteed for us on their first album (_ankety low day_). some of it is even as brilliant, but there are a few pieces that meander off into forgetfulness. the most striking piece (perhaps because of its position as the opening track) is a reworked version of "(when george bush was head of the) cia" - a song from denio's solo album _birthing chair blues_ (which is probably my favorite album of the year so far). but there are other nifties as well, including a fusion of serbian folk music and the band's sound. a bit inconsistant, but otherwise very good. one thumb pointed sky high. woj ======================================================================== Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 10:00:24 BST From: "Mr. P. Kulawec" Subject: throwing muses After woj's review I thought I'd write in and add a comment to the effect that, for me at least, all throwing muses albums sound uninspired until you get to know them. Personally I think the new one is their best since House Tornado (although there's nothing wrong with the two in between!). I've just seen them live in London. It was, to a large extent, a greatest hits set and I honestly couldn't tell any difference in quality between the new stuff and the old. Certainly the best concert I've seen this year if only for the lampshades... peter ======================================================================== From: sae@cmpsci.suffolk.edu (Alan Ezust) Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 16:08:18 EDT Subject: noteworthy? anyone have info on how to order stuff from noteworthy? I've heard so much about them, but only second-hand... -- S. Alan Ezust sae@cmpsci.suffolk.edu McGill University Department of Computer Science Montreal, Quebec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "No kindness when there's lack of dignity, politeness has to join simplicity, no caution without pure sincerety, compliance has to join with bravery." - BC ======================================================================== From: kyrlidis@athena.mit.edu Subject: CD's Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 11:21:23 EDT Hi! Wow, ecto has been quite silent recently, eh? Silent all these years? Nah ... Anyway I splurged again yesterday... I got me the new Suzanne Vega '99.9 F'. I **really** recommend this! It is IMHO her best, more unleashed, more varied album to date! I was personally quite disappointed with 'Days...', but I now feel like she's returned to top form. Some songs are classics, including 'Blood makes noise'. I LOVE the line 'blood makes noise, it's a ringing in my ear, blood makes noise, and I can't really hear you'. Could it be that the Happy parasites have attacked Suzanne? :) The title song is also pretty good, and also some other quieter tracks like 'Blood sings', and 'Song of sand', which brings up the question 'What if sand waves were sound waves?'. I admit that I expected a more industrial/techno twist to the album after the reports that it was Suzanne-meets-NIN but the whole thing flows quite well. I also got me Brian May's new single 'Too much love will kill you'. This and a reworked version of 'Driven by you' his previous single convinced me that *no* solo member of Queen can capture their magic now that Freddie's gone. Roger Taylor's solo albums were quite depressingly bad, don't know about his work with The Cross though. Has anybody here heard the new David Bowie single 'Real Cool World'? Any David Bowie fans who know what his next album produced by Nile ROdgers will be like? [My guess: Let's dance, vol.2 :(] I also *almost* bought a neat little publication called Opal information which is a Brian Eno and related artists magazine. I skimmed it at Tower, and saw how Eno came up with the whole Zoo TV concept that U2 are getting credit for, and it also had an interview with Eno, Gabriel and Laurie Anderson about the Real World theme park that is in the making somewhere in Europe. Anybody know more about this? More later (when the cosmic vagabonds make it to Cambridge) Angelos ======================================================================== From: kyrlidis@athena.mit.edu Subject: HELP! Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 18:29:04 EDT HI ectophiles, CLaudia and Klaus are continuing their trip through the cosmos (or the US) and we are in desperate need of Meredith's phone number!!!!! And that's her *new* nubmer. If anybody can help us with it, (Meredith that includes you if you read this :) ), please either e-mail, or call us at (617)6617652. Thanx, More from the cosmic vagabonds later, Angelos ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 19:57:23 EDT From: bdugan@gnu.ai.mit.edu Please add me to the ecto mailing list. bdugan@gnu.ai.mit.edu ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 22:15:36 EDT From: Vickie Mapes Welcome to Ecto! Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 22:35:06 EDT From: Vickie Mapes Subject: re: your review of digging.... 310 ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 23:28:05 EDT From: Vickie Mapes Subject: re: your review of digging.... Ooops, still trying to figure out a way to insert a file so I can quote from other posts, but it's impossible. I always have to post half- blind and from memory and it's a bit frustrating. Anyway, Gary asked a while back about the Peter/Jill/Rosanna triangle and Angelos answered, but reading Angelos' post I saw that he missed some of the story, perhaps because he wasn't aware of it. When I referred to Peter's "anger" at his wife Jill, it was in reference to the fact that Jill had a few affairs during their marriage. Those who know something about "old" Genesis remember when Peter had his head shaved down the middle in a sort of reverse mohawk. The rest of the story is that Jill had had an affair and felt so guilty about it that she completely shaved her head. Peter felt bad that she felt *that* guilty and, in an act of solidarity, shaved *his* head too. When you see pictures of Peter from that time, his weird haircut has very deep psychological origins and was not done just to be "different." Peter and Jill worked for *years* to save their marriage, and tried all sorts of different therapies. None worked in the end, but from what I know, they tried harder, and for much longer, than most couples to work things out. Peter started having an affair with Rosanna Arquette during a time when he and Jill were separated. They were separated at this point because Jill had had an affair with Peter's producer David Rhodes. So although Rosanna has been accused of breaking up Peter's marriage, it's not true at all. Peter and Jill were both to blame in the breakup of their marriage, but, from all accounts, including Jill's, Jill's first affair undermined their relationship to an extent that they never really were able to get back on track, though they certainly tried. Peter had his share of affairs, but it seems they were always in retaliation for Jill's affairs. What a mess. Jill Gabriel, on her first affair: "It was such an intense tour (1973's _Selling England_ tour) and Peter couldn't give me what I needed at the time, constant reassurance. It's not as though he went off with anyone else, it's just that I needed to know I was needed. My affair caused all sorts of problems. He was a good friend of Peter's and it caused a rift, obviously, between them. I think in Peter's heart he knew what was going on; that's why he was so patient. No one solved it except for me and Peter. It was terrible while it lasted." Their relationship was, all throughout their marriage, very complex and unusual. For more information, try to find the authorized biography of Peter by Spencer Bright. It has a *very* honest, painfully honest, account of all the problems they went through. (_Peter Gabriel_ was published in 1988 by Sidgwick & Jackson Limited. The ISBN # is 0-283-99498. Sidgwick & Jackson's address is 1 Tavistock Chambers, Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2SG) The book ends just as Peter and Rosanna Arquette are seriously getting together so I don't know what happened to them, but I'm sure that Peter really loved Rosanna and their breakup was extremely painful to Peter. I do think the lyrics to "Digging in the Dirt" must have something to do with these 2 relationships, and it will be interesting to see the other lyrics on the album. Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 23:34:20 EDT From: Vickie Mapes Subject: Re: Happy Rhodes Hey Angelos, I think your list of songs is terrific! I have nothing to add or delete to it, so we'll find out after Thrusday. Please, someone tape it, please! Hopefully Phillyphiles will keep an ear on WXPN for any interviews Happy might be doing that day. Vickie ======================================================================== From: katefans@chinet.chi.il.us (Chris n Vickie) Subject: Astrid Hadad Date: Sun, 13 Sep 92 15:25:52 CDT And now, for something *completely* different.... Vickie here. WOW! I went to the wildest concert the other night! Astrid Hadad is like no one else I've ever seen before in my life. The best description we could come up with is: try to imagine a Mexican version of Lene Lovich/Nina Hagen/Laurie Anderson/Madonna/Yma Sumac/ Charo all rolled into one! Add a bit of Marlene Deitrich & Lupe Velez! ======================================================================== "Hadad's U.S. appearances include the "Festival Latino" and an alternative show at "Thirty Centuries of Splendor" in Los Angeles; and at the Institute of Contemporary Art in the "Bleeding Heart" exhibition in Boston. Recently, Hadad recorded an album of Mexican pop music with post-modern commentary." She was Critic's Choice in the Chicago Reader. This is what Albert Williams had to say: ----------------------------------------------------------------- "When Pat Buchanan rants about building a big fence along the Mexican border, it's people like Astrid Hadad he wants to keep out. In her cabaret concert _Heavy Nopal_, which means "Heavy Cactus," the Mexican Lebanese singer-actress offers a prickly, postmodern reworking of traditional folk ballad archetypes of women as sultry spitfires and martyred madonnas. Paying homage to the 1940s ranchera singer (and drug-OD victim) Lucha Reyes, Hadad puts her aching alto to emotionally evocative and stingingly sardonic use on such songs (performed in Spanish and interrupted with English commentary) as "Mala" ("Evil because you don't love me...Evil like censorship...like a photo on your driver's license...") and "Kill, for God Forgives" ("If you see the students demonstrating for peace / You should kill quickly...God forgives those who confess"). Outrageous in a satin Virgin of Guadalupe skirt and a dominatrix's bulls-eye bra, Hadad grounds her feminist satire in solid musicianship-- her own powerful singing and the punchy playing of her backup bank, Los Tarzanes (the name is a put-down applied to Mexican aristocrats who ape America's upper class by wearing tuxedos or "monkey suits")." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, she was as interesting as that makes her sound. I'd never heard of her, but reading that prompted me to go to the show. She was *LOTS* of fun! She changed costumes multiple times (ranging from a black dress with Incan ruins sewn on, to a bikini top & mesh skirt with bells attached via big safety pins and all *kinds* of outfits in between) and she also used numerous props. In one song she had a headband with devil horns attached and angel wings with a halo; in another she had one of those "gun holsters" (Bandolero?) that sling around the shoulder and chest (stereotypical of Mexican bandits in old films) full of guns, including a water machine gun that she used to spray the audience! In one song she took huge swigs from a Tequila bottle and stumbled around the stage, though it became obvious in subsequent songs that the bottle just contained water, or else she wouldn't have been able to maintain. In one song, about a dockyard prostitute, she wore a "Statue of Liberty" mask. On and on and on! She was *wonderful*!! The only "problem" (my problem, not hers) was that she spoke very little English and most of her talking between songs was in Spanish. The program had most of the songs translated into English, but not her spoken word bits. Unfortunate, because she was very political. She spoke about George Bush (hates him!) and Free Market Trade, Somalia, Nicaragua, Iraq, Bosnia-Hertzagovia, Hispanics in politics and who knows what all. (I know some of that because there was a nice guy from the Mexican Fine Arts Center/Museum sitting next to us and he'd translate for us and for Astrid. We were sitting right up front and every now and then she would walk up to the front of the stage, say something and then hand him the microphone to translate for the English-only speakers in the audience. Still, we knew that we were missing out on *SO* much of what she said. For instance, before one song, (in which she had a foot-long, red-flashing "heart" pinned to the front of her dress) she talked for at least 3-4 minutes in rapid-fire Spanish and had the Spanish-speakers laughing throughout. Her only English translation was "Put one of your organs into Chili and you will know what this song is about." A cracked cabaret lovelost song followed. For the first time in my life, I *really* regretted not taking any Spanish in school! Still, even with the language differences, she got the point of all the songs across *very* well, and I had a GREAT time! I don't have a tour schedule, but I did hear that she's heading for New York this next week. Vickie "Kill, for god forgives.../You should be certain to kill/Bush never lies... Kill without feeling.../For the United Nations will clear the path" Astrid Hadad ======================================================================== 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)