From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V5 #309 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Wednesday, September 15 1999 Volume 05 : Number 309 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Melissa Etheridge in Sydney (NIGC) [Sherlyn Koo ] Today's your birthday, friend... [Mike Matthews ] Dido [anna maria "stjärnell" ] RE: Dido ["Martin G Bridges" ] CLB's MEMOIRS OF A FEMALE MESSIAH [ABershaw@aol.com] Re: Dido [Ellen Rawson ] Re:Happy, happy! (cd) ["cjmacs" ] Re: CLB's MEMOIRS OF A FEMALE MESSIAH [jburka@min.net] Re: Happy, happy! (cd) [Joseph Zitt ] CD from Ectofest ["Sire of Sorrow" ] Happy Ectofest CD...organization? [Christian Reiter ] RE: Happy Ectofest CD...organization? ["Foghorn J Fornorn" ] Re: Happy Ectofest CD...organization? Etc. [Joseph Zitt Subject: Melissa Etheridge in Sydney (NIGC) Hi folks, On the radio the other day I heard that Melissa Etheridge will be performing a free show at Tumbalong Park at Darling Harbour in Sydney this weekend. I don't know any more than that, so don't sue me if I made this up entirely... Slightly confused, sherlyn =-= Sherlyn Koo - sherlyn@fl.net.au =-=-=-=-=-=-= [Sydney, Australia] "Going eighty on the highway, we're all rushing somewhere; But the way I feel tonight, it's like I'm already there..." - Lucy Kaplansky ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 03:00:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Matthews Subject: Today's your birthday, friend... i*i*i*i*i*i i*i*i*i*i*i *************** *****HAPPY********* **************BIRTHDAY********* *************************************************** *************************************************************************** ***************** Karron Lynn Lane (Wink@mail.sstar.com) ****************** *************************************************************************** -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Karron Lynn Lane Tue September 14 1751 Ophelia Virgo Troy Wollenslegel Mon September 18 1972 Virgo Mark Frabotta Sun September 19 1965 Don't even THINK about parking here Joe Zitt Sat September 20 1958 Will Hack for CDs Ani DiFranco Wed September 23 1970 Virgo Paul Kim Sat October 01 1977 fetal position JoAnn Whetsell Fri October 01 1976 Pendulum William Gill Wed October 05 1960 A wide-eyed wanderer Dan Riley Sun October 08 1961 Libra Neile Graham Wed October 08 1958 pen Quenby M. Chunco Tue October 08 1968 Crunchy Frog Mike Garland Wed October 08 1952 Creature_of_the_Night Irvin Lin Tue October 09 1973 Libra Michael C. Berch Wed October 10 1956 No parking Chris Gagnon Sat October 10 1970 Libra Wolfgang Drotschmann Thu October 13 1966 Waage Gracescape Fri October 13 1967 unbalanced Brian Bloom Tue October 14 1969 spam - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 02:07:26 -0700 (PDT) From: anna maria "stjärnell" Subject: Dido Hi.. Does anybody know if Dido's No Angel is any good? Anna Maria np-Sarah Slean-Blue Parade(thanks Neile!) nr-Tanith Lee-Vivia __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 20:48:37 +1000 From: "Martin G Bridges" Subject: RE: Dido Anna Maria said: > Does anybody know if Dido's No Angel is any good? > Anna Maria I'm sure you'll get a few responses to this! I bought the album a while ago and it didn't blow me away instantly but it's grown on me a lot. I think it's very good indeed. A great voice and some cool tunes. I'm sure there are some samples on the web somewhere but I can't remember where. Cheers, Martin ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 08:06:26 EDT From: ABershaw@aol.com Subject: CLB's MEMOIRS OF A FEMALE MESSIAH Hi all, I know quite a few Ectophiles are fans of Cindy Lee Berryhill & those of you who are (& those casual fans intrigued by her readings on the Living Room Tour gigs of yesteryear) will be interested to know that the first shipment of CLB's novel MEMOIRS OF A FEMALE MESSIAH have arrived at the office of its publisher, Entwhistle Books. It is now finally available to the public. Cindy Lee gave me a transcript of this a few years ago & I found it hilarious, thought provoking & a very enjoyable read. For those who are hip to CLB's music, you'll also find clues & references to some of her more puzzling lyric content (especially some of the "Marysville" album tunes & unreleased material performed at the LRT gigs). If you are interested in this & like to order books locally, tell your bookstore that Ingram has it in stock now and they can order it from Ingram (huge book wholesaler and the book's printer via their new-tech Lightning Print division). Or you can also order direct ($14.00 plus $2.00 postage anywhere in the world) by calling 760-753-1815, via email to Paul@cdaddy.com or by writing to Entwhistle Books, Box 232517, Encinitas CA 92023 USA. All the best, Alan NR- "Sabbath - Restoring the Sacred Rhythm Of Rest" by Wayne Muller (NOT a religious book, nor a Ozzy Osbourne book, hehe... a "how to slow down & rejuvenate yourself when life is an unending workload" book.) NP- "Joy-A Holiday Collection" (Jewel's forthcoming Christmas album) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 07:03:46 -0600 From: Ellen Rawson Subject: Re: Dido anna maria stjärnell wrote: > > Hi.. > Does anybody know if Dido's No Angel is any good? > Anna Maria I personally liked it and did not think it was derivative of Sarah M. :-) Ellen ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 09:38:13 -0400 From: "cjmacs" Subject: Re:Happy, happy! (cd) hi all! christian wrote: >Well at least Foghorn and I have made CDRs of the thing so we would be >logical candidates. If several people are interested I guess it would be >a nice idea to ask if anyone made photos of Happy and the band at the >show so we«d have something for the cover. if i can get a copy on cd i can burn a bunch too... and lots and lots of ectofest pics are coming REAL soon... (adam just had 4-5 rolls developed and will be getting them to me by the weekend) and lots more ectofest stuff will be happening... we got tshirts, posters,etc left over and info on getting these will also be coming real soon.... trying to extricate myself from neglecting my job for the past month.... chuck ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 10:03:01 -0400 (EDT) From: jburka@min.net Subject: Re: CLB's MEMOIRS OF A FEMALE MESSIAH ABershaw@aol.com sez: > NR- "Sabbath - Restoring the Sacred Rhythm Of Rest" by Wayne Muller > (NOT a religious book, nor a Ozzy Osbourne book, hehe... a "how > to slow down & rejuvenate yourself when life is an unending workload" book.) "shamor v'zachor" -- observe and remember...the whole sabbath concept is at the very least spirtual if not flat out religious; why insist otherwise? jeff n.p. _Bachelor No. 2_, Aimee Mann (still incredibly tasty after so many plays in the last few weeks!) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 10:23:17 -0500 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: Happy, happy! (cd) On Tue, Sep 14, 1999 at 09:38:13AM -0400, cjmacs wrote: > christian wrote: > > >Well at least Foghorn and I have made CDRs of the thing so we would be > >logical candidates. If several people are interested I guess it would be > >a nice idea to ask if anyone made photos of Happy and the band at the > >show so we«d have something for the cover. > > if i can get a copy on cd i can burn a bunch too... Dunno if this will make *that* much of a difference, considering the original recording was on Minidisk, but.... if there's going to be a tree happening, it might be best to master it from Chris's original files, rather than those that others have ftp'ed and unpacked, since they won't have the (small) amount of sound change caused by going WAV->MP3->WAV. n.p. Nusrat Father Ali Khan: Mustt Mustt (does anyone know the lyrics to the title track? I'd love to cover it...) n.r. David Pogue: Palm Pilot: The Ultimate Guide (Yeah, I geeked out and got one...) - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Shekhinah: The Presence http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 09:02:22 PDT From: "Sire of Sorrow" Subject: CD from Ectofest Greetings, gang. I just got back from vacation (which included Ectofest) and man, do I have some reading to do! I was happy to read that someone else has a copy of the performance (is this from the soundboard? I noticed the audio mics out in the audience)... but since I haven't read the week-and-a-half's worth of Ecto digests since then, I'm not clear if it's just Happy's performance that they captured. I have pretty much the entire thing on five minidiscs. I was thinking about doing a sort-of "Ectofest 99 - Greatest Hits" compilation CD with tracks from all the artists. Is this something that interests people? I'd probably do it for myself anyway, but if I knew others were interested, I'd plan it a bit better. Of course, if the other person (sorry I don't know who!) has the soundboard recordings, then mine probably wouldn't be _as_ great-sounding (even though I have no complaints about what I have on minidisc). I'm rambling now. If anyone can fill in the blanks for me, I'd appreciate it! bye! :o) - -josh- www.cris.com/~deziner T H I N K D I F F E R E N T ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 18:07:17 +0200 (MDT) From: Christian Reiter Subject: Happy Ectofest CD...organization? OK, it seems there is pretty big general interest in this. First, it seems there is a consensus that we want to have a nice cover with photos from ectofest on it. chuck has these photos on the way. Foghorn suggested he wanted to design a cover with such photos. I guess it would be a nice idea to use a universal cover for all the ectofest CDs, wherever they end up being made, so we have something like a 'semiofficial' Happy/Ectofest live album. So I´d say maybe let´s wait for that cover before everyone starts mass producing and sending out these CD´s... Fog suggested a geographic split-up of the work (Europe for me), that of course means he and chuck) get the most workload. I don´t think it would make sense for me to send CDs across the atlantic for payment of cost, because this cost would be more postal fees than anything else (the 80 blanks come at $1/pc). However, if someone has an interesting trade offer I don´t mind sending something to the States. It isn´t *that* expensive either. Then there is the question of the 'master'. If we wanted to record everything from the original minidisc then a) Chris still has to have it, b) Chris, or someone else with a minidisc player, would have to do all the work of the burning. if we use the MP3 file however we can have a distributed effort. The mp3 was 192k, most web sites, say Kristin Hersh´s work in progress, Sarah Slean´s website, etc. distribute 128k mp3s and those don´t really sound too bad so i guess given the usual amount of background noise in such a recording the MP3 encoding probably doesn´t compromise the quality much. Another possibility would be to have someone create a reference CD and mail out one copy of this to a few people around the world, who could in turn replicate these for geographically near people. This might make sense if we want to include any editing on the master. For instance, Fog clipped the applause down and then normalized to get a punchier sound, and I tried some other filtering on the WAV. Since recompressing an edited master is out of the question, and downloading 850megs of WAV data requires some really good luck and superpowered connections on both sides, in case chuck and I wanted to replicate ectofest CDs from Fog´s master he´d have to mail it to us (which might still be better than him having to make all of the CDs). Christian ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 13:54:16 -0400 (EDT) From: joann.whetsell@oberlin.edu (JoAnn Whetsell) Subject: Re: Dido There was a lot of discussion here on Dido and _No Angel_ a while back, over the summer. Most of it very positive reviews. I'll add my thumbs up, and say that I also agree with the person who said they don't find it derivative of Sarah M. There are things in her voice and music that remind me of artists such as Sarah M, Beth Orton, Tracey Thorn (of Everything But the Girl), and probably other people if I thought hard enough, but I don't find her a clone at all. JoAnn np: Emily Bezar _Grandmother's Tea Leaves_ This just arrived yesterday, and I'm on track 2 of my first listen, and I LOVE it! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 19:15:38 -0400 From: Michael Curry Subject: My ectofest photos Hi all, Well, I've finally gotten a few ectofest photos up on the web at: http://www.io.com/~mcurry/ectofest . The quality is about what you'd expect from a cheap camera and an inexperienced photographer, so I'm looking forward to seeing the "official" pictures. I suppose I should also offer a few comments, which I didn't bother doing last weekend because I would have just been saying "me too" a lot. Rachael was great, Mila was great, Susan was *really* great, and I liked the other acts as well. I'll agree with those who have already picked Susan and Sloan singing "Meet On The Ledge" as the high point of the day. I'll also take a moment to add my voice to the chorus congratulating Meredith and Chuck on a job well done. And yes, when they first started talking about doing this I thought they were quite insane. :) Mike np: Kate Rusby -- Hourglass ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 21:44:16 -0400 From: "Foghorn J Fornorn" Subject: RE: Happy Ectofest CD...organization? Right, let me reiterate that I fully intend to wait for photos. Obviously especially one of Happy & Co playing. As Michael mentioned on his picture web site, the deteriorating light for the last act means we need a pic from a camera suited to the low light conditions. Incidentally, if any photographers have a picture you like except for the lighting or coloring, please consider scanning it and letting me see it. I have Photoshop and it can do some pretty amazing things to marginal photographs. As I said, I'm already in trade negotiation with two people. A third emailed today and specifically wants to trade. I'll deal with them myself, particularly since 2 of the 3 want Ectopia while they're at it. I might be able to talk the 3rd person into participating in the tree, I know he has a burner and he lives on the US west coast. Howzabout this, while we wait and get this all together: I had set up a form on the web to solicit interest in Ectopia. I gathered enough information to decide to do that one myself. I modified the web site to reflect this ectofest recording and cleared the data files. Why doesn't everyone who's interested in a copy of Happy Rhodes at Ectofest 99 CDR go to the following web site and fill out the hopefully simple form: http://home.earthlink.net/~foghornj/ecform.html Let's let this run a week or so and see how many copies we're in for, and where they're all going. To the people I've already replied to regarding trades, you don't have to do this, unless you just like filling out forms. One quick note about multiple copies. I've asked a few people if they knew how the artists felt about distributing these recordings. The general feeling I get is that these artists don't mind copies shared among a "small" fan group like ecto, but do not necessarily want them given away to everyone, possibly in lieu of the sale of official product which feeds them. So please use discretion. If you want 4 copies, we'd like that the recipients have already spent or imminently will be spending their hard cold cash on a real Happy Rhodes CD or concert ticket. This is, of course, as opposed to Ectopia, where the whole point was to get the music to the widest possible audience. The artists all agreed to the distribution of the material in advance. Give that to anybody who'll listen :) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 22:47:29 -5000 From: "Chris Montville" Subject: Re: Happy Ectofest CD...organization? Etc. Josh said, > I have pretty much the entire thing on five minidiscs. I was thinking > about doing a sort-of "Ectofest 99 - Greatest Hits" compilation CD > with tracks from all the artists. Is this something that interests > people? I'd probably do it for myself anyway, but if I knew others > were interested, I'd plan it a bit better. Of course, if the other > person (sorry I don't know who!) has the soundboard recordings, then > mine probably wouldn't be _as_ great-sounding (even though I have no > complaints about what I have on minidisc). My recording isn't soundboard, but people seem to be pretty happy with the quality. However, it is certainly possible that yours is better. Do you have a fast enough connection to grab mine and compare? Christian wrote, > OK, it seems there is pretty big general interest in this. First, it > seems there is a consensus that we want to have a nice cover with > photos from ectofest on it. No question about that. Over 40 people have already downloaded the MP3's from me! I can only imagine the response to a CD-R version will be even larger. > chuck has these photos on the way. Foghorn suggested he wanted to > design a > cover with such photos. I guess it would be a nice idea > to use a universal cover for all the ectofest CDs, wherever they end > up being made, so we have something like a 'semiofficial' > Happy/Ectofest live album. Is there any concern about the artists disapproving of such a formalized CD, or am I just paranoid? On an ethical level, I don't want to do a serious disservice to the artists who volunteered their time, and on a practical level, the last thing I want is to show up at Ectofest next year and see "No Recording" signs. If anyone with better insight into this has any thoughts, please speak up! > Then there is the question of the 'master'. If we wanted to record > everything from the original minidisc then a) Chris still has to have > it, b) Chris, or someone else with a minidisc player, would have to do > all the work of the burning. if we use the MP3 file however we can > have a distributed effort. The mp3 was 192k, most web sites, say > Kristin Hersh´s work in progress, Sarah Slean´s website, etc. > distribute 128k mp3s and those don´t really sound too bad so i guess > given the usual amount of background noise in such a recording the MP3 > encoding probably doesn´t compromise the quality much. I still have both WAV's and the original minidiscs. My sound card has an excellent signal/noise ratio, so they WAV's should be as equivilent to the MDs as we're going to get. > Since recompressing an edited master > is out of the question, and downloading 850megs of WAV data requires > some really good luck and superpowered connections on both sides, in > case chuck and I wanted to replicate ectofest CDs from Fog´s master > he´d have to mail it to us (which might still be better than him > having to make all of the CDs). I'd be happy to copy them onto CD-R and send them to whomever is taking responsibility for this . Whether they want to do any further refinement would be up to them (such as dampening applause or running a noise reduction.) Joe Casandonte has also e-mailed me privately to ask if he can start the tree... just let me know who I should actually mail this out to. Chris. +-------------------------------------------------------+ | Chris Montville / cmontvil@eden.rutgers.edu | +--------------------------+----------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 22:55:50 -0400 (EDT) From: tefinn@altavista.net Subject: Re: Dido ---- you wrote: > anna maria stjärnell wrote: > > > > Hi.. > > Does anybody know if Dido's No Angel is any good? > > Anna Maria > > I personally liked it and did not think it was derivative of Sarah M. > :-) > > Ellen > I've been thoroughly enjoying it. I believe there is aSarah influence in her sound, but only very slight. However, if you like Sarah M. you will probably like Dido. Tom - ---------------------------------------------------------------- Get your free email from AltaVista at http://altavista.iname.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 23:22:21 -0400 (EDT) From: jburka@min.net Subject: Re: Happy Ectofest CD...organization? Etc. chris sez: > Is there any concern about the artists disapproving of such a > formalized CD, or am I just paranoid? On an ethical level, I don't > want to do a serious disservice to the artists who volunteered their > time I've been a little concerned about this too. One thought, which comes with the caveat that we either have no one to enforce it or that we find someone we decide we can trust to handle the money, is to suggest a donation to one of the two beneficiary organizations from ectofest -- the interfaith aids ministry or the greater danbury women's center (or, for that matter, to the charity of your choice). It'd be a great adjunct way of continuing in the spirit of the festival. While I'm on it, three things... The first is a hearty thank you to Chris; the mp3's are fabulous, and I've been having a grand time listening to them. It's rather humorous when I hear something funny the performer says, laugh, and then a split second later hear myself laughing from way off to the left. The million dollar question, aside from whether any of the other recordings are better than Chris' and more suitable to burning, is whether anyone out there has Sloan Wainwright's set?! Finally...one of the highlights of the show for me was Rachel Sage's (new?) song about the girl from Warsaw. It was almost a tear-jerker at the show, and today, listening to it, it really bowled me over as I managed to catch most of the lyrics. The song is from the perspective of a girl in a concentration camp who has been told to make herself pretty in order to be chosen for a nazi's wife (or, perhaps merely plaything) and she's choosing to drink poison rather than be degraded to such a degree. I was wondering if anyone knew if this was a reference to a specific event/person, or a more generic retelling of holocaustal horrors. jeff n.p. nothing. it's bed time. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 23:17:46 -0400 From: Joe Casadonte Subject: Re: Happy Ectofest CD...organization? At 12:07 PM 9/14/99 , Christian Reiter wrote: >OK, it seems there is pretty big general interest in this. There certainly does seem to be quite a bit of interest! There also seems to be 2 sources, so maybe we should figure out between the two which has better sound, and tree that one. For people who are not used to "tape trading", there are some general guidelines to follow: 1. No one (except the artist, of course) can make a profit from this. This is the Prime Directive, for the Trek folks out there. Most people (myself included) take this to mean that no cash exchanges hands at all. I make exceptions when trading overseas, allowing the person to send cash or a check instead of CDs, as it's far cheaper (see #2). 2. There is a concept called B&P, which stands for Blanks & Postage. The basic gist of it is that folks without recording equipment or without anything to trade, send blanks (tapes, CDs, DATs, whatever) and return postage to the person who is making copies. That person then makes the copies (using the blanks) and sends them back (using the postage). No money changes hands, and no one profits in any way (except in the Karma department). 3. People who insist on doing "2-for-1" B&P deals are generally regarded as something lower than pond scum (not to give pond scum a bad name). 4. A Tree is an excellent way for HQ shows to be shared, because it is an organized distribution (sometimes including several hundred people). A tree starts with the Seed, which is the show being treed. When a tree is announced people have until a certain time to sign-up. You can sign-up as either a Branch or a Leaf. A branch makes copies of the show for others. A leaf just gets a copy. The Tree Administrator is the lucky sucker that gets to keep track of the whole thing. I'd be willing to administer the tree if there's enough interest in having an official tree. Any thoughts? Regards, joe joc@netaxs.com - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Llama Fresh Farms => http://www.netaxs.com/~joc Gay Media Resource List => http://www.netaxs.com/~joc/gaymedia.html Perl for Win32 => http://www.netaxs.com/~joc/perlwin32.html Perl Book Buying Guide => http://www.netaxs.com/~joc/perlbooks.html PerlRing Homepage => http://www.netaxs.com/~joc/perlring.html Music CD Trading => http://www.netaxs.com/~joc/cdr.html - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Live Free, that's the message! - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 00:01:20 -0500 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: Happy Ectofest CD...organization? Etc. On Tue, Sep 14, 1999 at 11:22:21PM -0400, jburka@min.net wrote: > Finally...one of the highlights of the show for me was Rachel Sage's > (new?) song about the girl from Warsaw. It was almost a tear-jerker at > the show, and today, listening to it, it really bowled me over as I > managed to catch most of the lyrics. The song is from the perspective of > a girl in a concentration camp who has been told to make herself pretty in > order to be chosen for a nazi's wife (or, perhaps merely plaything) and > she's choosing to drink poison rather than be degraded to such a degree. > > I was wondering if anyone knew if this was a reference to a specific > event/person, or a more generic retelling of holocaustal horrors. It is. If memory serves, a group of women committed suicide together in this situation. I don't recall the details, though. That song really got me when she sang it. - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Shekhinah: The Presence http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 01:16:07 -0400 From: Paul Kim Subject: garmarna tonight (wow) and dido on letterman thurs Dido will be on Letterman this thursday the 16th, according to her website at Arista and also at BugJuice (what is bugjuice? they seem to be affiliated with BMG...they also have a page for the Innocence Mission). I'll see how different she sounds when she and her band aren't being pumped into my skull at 120 dB (THRESHOLD OF PAIN! :) ) Speaking of loud live sound, Jeff Wasilko and I saw Garmarna in Somerville at Johnny D's tonight. Ofer was also there along with various people Jeff knew, a fellow string player from Berklee who I know, and a rather sizable, voracious horde of Garmarna fans. What an excellent concert it was. After all those raves this past summer, I can see that the reviews were justified. I bought their two latest albums (i also bought their first EP which is usually not available in the US, but i gave it to my Berklee friend because he's a huge fan and didn't have it and they sold out by the time he went to get one) and upon looking over the back of the cd, I realized why the group constantly sounded familiar to me. I remember back when I first joined the list in 1996, Neile was raving about Cordelia's Dad and i latched onto that because they were from the Amherst area, and I think she also raved about Garmarna (or else someone was talking about them at the same time) and mentioned that they were on Omnium Records our ot Minnesota, and those associations just floated around in my head for years. So, the concert tonight was loud and raucous and full of energy. It was odd to have a female vocalist who would not be the center of attention. She had a beautiful voice, but she was quite motionless and, compared to her bandmates, seemed like she didn't want to be up there. Meanwhile, Stefan Brisland-Ferner, the violinist/violist/programmer/hurdy-gurdyist was going nuts all the time, rocking out and fiercely attacking the music; Gotte Ringqvist, the guitarist/violinist/backup vocalist who looked sorta like a handsomer Tom Cruise was playing with his own level of frenzy; and Rickard Westman on guitars, ebow, and bass was providing backbone and drone. The drummer, Jens Hoglin, gave a very hard-rock gung-ho performance which was tempered in the first encore with his playing the Jews harp on the tune "Halling from Macedonia." The music seemed to be some sort of thrashy heavy metal meeting up with Scandinavian folk melodies using some sampled and looped beats and bass. And it was always genius and fun. Stefan had two violins, at least one of which was in an alternate tuning, and a viola; and Emma Hardelin, the lead vocalist, shared a violin with Gotte. Emma seemed to be quite classically trained in her handling of the violin while Gotte and especially Stefan were a little more folk influenced. A very different performance from Dido last friday, but just as wonderful and probably more musically nourishing. Go see them on this oh-so-short tour of the US! Paul "sonically fatigued" Kim ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V5 #309 **************************