From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V5 #317 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Thursday, September 23 1999 Volume 05 : Number 317 Today's Subjects: ----------------- The Bottom Line and Tori [John Drummond ] Re: when it rains it pours [Ted Jacobs ] Venus in digipak ["Marcel Rijs" ] ... As easy as A B C ["Drew Harrington" ] misc [joann.whetsell@oberlin.edu (JoAnn Whetsell)] lots of ny show! ["Nick Nadel" ] Re: misc [meredith ] RE: ... As easy as A B C ["Foghorn J Fornorn" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 23:58:54 -0700 (PDT) From: John Drummond Subject: The Bottom Line and Tori Lord... since I'm so Tori-psycho right now, y'all, here's a REAL blast from the past... the live clips from Tori's video "Little Earthquakes" (the live performances and LE videos)... wow, now I'm thinking back to all of that time at the beginning of Tori's career... that was such a magical time, that first album really just stuck Tori into such a unique category, and to see the roads she's paved for herself as an artist and for all of these other less-amazing girls as artists... wow... I don't know, there are a whole hell of a lot of y'all who keep saying "choirgirl was such a disappointment IMHO" or whatever, but I guess I'm strange, I absolutely loved the album from the first moment, and I love the new album too, though I'm going to have to listen to it on my friend's really nice recording headphones soon so I can hear more of the layers, Lord knows trying to get a hold on the new album at 1/8th volume so as not to wake the rest of the folks in the house up isn't an idea listening environment. I think Tori is really moving into a much different zone than she ever has with this album, and having the live album with it is EXTREMELY strange and poignant, it's like she's showing us the trail that she already has left behind... all of those old songs... it reminds me of the line from Joan Osborne's old song "Flyaway" from Early Recordings "number one for takeoff to that big drowning pool in the sky, number one for takeoff and her dress waving you goodbye", I think that's VERY much the tone I get from the whole album... the old albums these days are very strange for me to listen to, LE and UtP and even BfP sometimes, I listen to them and there are SO many rich memories associated with them, from what I was doing at certain times listening to certain songs, to the digging into each song, into what the hell she was talking about, and how attached to them and to her I got, each album really opened me up to SO much, they're so full of intellect as well as visceral emotion, and Tori always has been the one to face full-throttle against ideas, rather than just kind of halfway touching upon them... and I'm sorry, but Sarah McLachlan is never going to be on that kind of a level. She's wonderful, she made "Fumbling towards ecstasy" which is one of the most amazing albums ever made, but there's just very little dispute as far as I'm concerned as to who's the better artist, there are SO few people pressing themselves so completely against topics like Tori is... there's Veda, who is in every good way the Canadian Tori (or perhaps Tori is the American Veda... I think that's probably a much better way of putting it), there's Catherine Irwin, there's David Eugene Edwards, in his own fucked-up way... there's Diamanda Galás, uniquely... PJ Harvey, almost, but she's more in some other ways... but at the very base of it all, it always comes right back to Tori, and I'm half terrified to see where she'll go next, after having this album that I almost feel is a kind of apology and at the same time a confrontation to herself even, she's like, "Compare and contrast... on the left we have who I think I am right now, on the right we have who I think I used to be and who I thought I am, let's see which one has more weight, shall we?" And of course, the right is 73 minutes and the left is only 47, but the left is still extremely new, and the right is all of those years lumped in together, the best or most curious of all of those years... but what she's saying is that we really need to take a look at her, I think a lot of her fans really always play the "What Tori wants is for us to look at ourselves, long and hard," but now, it's all about her, Tori's finally getting the balls to demand our attention to herself, not ourselves. And I love her for that. For all of her be-your-own-savior talk, she's saying that she may as well get saved somewhere in there too. No, I haven't listened to the new album more than once, I'm not even done listening to the live album yet, it's playing as I'm right here, so I can't give you all kinds of in-depth which-songs-I-loved-most really, nor do I think I'd be doing anybody else any kind of service by doing so... plenty of y'all are going to give us impressions and other stuff... but this album is changing all of my perspectives and perceptions of the entirety of this woman. Here, here, since I guess some of y'all are wondering where it is, I'll give up one thing I thought about something concrete from the new album: when you open the album up, there's Venus on the left and the mirror of Venus on the right (wow, symbolism), and Tori in the middle looking absolutely gorgeous, more gorgeous than I've ever seen her, with her hands extended down toward both, walking and conducting. And I'm done. John === ain't no way i lost this war and ain't no way you won __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 02:54:30 -0400 From: Ted Jacobs Subject: Re: when it rains it pours So your Friday is full, but pencil out all Saturday Activities; My Friends from the 80's, The Cucumbers also sent me this: "everything is green again and so we will be seen again September 25, at the Liquid Lounge (a place for liquid vegetility) 936 Park Ave, Hoboken, NJ, acoustic, 10 pm (201)420-7989 The Cucumbers with Edno sitting in on drums and for some mp3 cyber-vegetility: http://www.web-ho.com/sounds/cucumbers.html" Let me just add that anybody who hasn't seen them in the past 10 years or so will be pleasantly surprised to find that these guys are still in a class all by themselves, I like to refer to it as a "thinking man's fluff". meredith wrote: > Hi! > > Okay. So this Friday, September 24 absolutely EVERYTHING is going on in > NYC.... > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 09:07:36 +0200 From: "Marcel Rijs" Subject: Venus in digipak Hi, Since I've given up on the very tiresome Tori Amos mailing lists, I guess the best place to ask is here, where some people have already stated their contentment with the new album..... I understand "To Venus and back" is released in digipak in the US. Since I _need_ this digipak version (I really don't like those regular boxes) I was wondering if anyone can point me towards an online store where I can order these digipaks. CDnow, my usual dealer, isn't very detailed about the packaging and I have noticed that the US also sells the regular jewel box version,making it very hard to distinguish the two. Your help will be very highly appreciated. Kind regards, Marcel Rijs KB, afdeling STCN marcel.rijs@kb.nl (work) mfgr@casema.net (private) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 10:40:07 -0700 From: "Drew Harrington" Subject: ... As easy as A B C > Numero uno, when you record something from that no-man's-land called the > audience with a piece of portable equipment, no matter how groovy > said gear is, there will be a significant compromise of fidelity...I'm > sure the chief perpetrator in this debacle would not strenuously > disagree with this sidelong observation. I am not 'the chief perpetrator', but I will strenuosly disagree. Just because you've never heard an audience recording that isn't crap doesn't mean they don't exist. I personally will put my audience recording of Veda at the Coco Club, SF, December 7th, 1998, up against the Women in (E)motion disk any day. It's an audience recording - there basically was no board that night - and it sounds great. (And the gear wasn't even that groovy.) [BTW, it's still available for B&P to anyone who wants a copy. Blanks and Postage only - NO CASH.] > I don't think Happy is going to want to fist-fight anyone for the > rights to this particular work of art... What's actually at issue is not who has rights to the 'work or art', but the artist's right that the 'work of art' in question NOT EXIST at all. (I'm not taking sides here, just sharpening the point.) Drew ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 17:33:15 -0400 (EDT) From: joann.whetsell@oberlin.edu (JoAnn Whetsell) Subject: misc I was reading old ecto messages and read one about Meredith's radio show on WPKN and how that led someone to the ecto list. Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me that Meredith was in my dream last night. We've never even met, although I love the Veda and Susan McKeown tapes she sent me. My mother wanted to admit me to a mental hospital, and she was reading this list of doctors at different hospitals, and I kept saying that I knew these people from ecto, so I couldn't go to them. Meredith was one of the doctors. On to musical news: Finally got a chance to listen to Venus Still Orbiting today, and I loved it. The only song I didn't like was Cruel, and I don't like that song on Choirgirl either. I absolutely loved the version of "Sugar" and I preferred this upbeat "Cornflake Girl" to the atmospheric/ambient version I heard in concert. And it's great to have a live version of "Cooling" And "Precious Things" which also opened the Plugged concert I saw, as I think it did many. Very cool. np: Mary Lydia Ryan _Debut_ I ordered both cd's based on Neile's recommendations and the fact that I really liked the Diaphanous cover. Something about it really grabbed me. Anyway, it's quite good. Along the lines of Emily Bezar, but much tamer, less experimental. Good stuff. Looking forward to hearing the second album which is apparently even better. JoAnn ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 17:52:47 PDT From: "Nick Nadel" Subject: lots of ny show! from this week's voice: natalie merchant-oct. 27th, town Hall paula cole-oct.12th, bowery ballroom innocence mission- oct. 21, mercury lounge 10,000 maniacs: 0ct. 10, bottom line and me with so little money! np. tori amos-venus and back (loving suede and glory of the 80's)_ ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 20:49:21 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: misc Hi! JoAnn reported: >I was reading old ecto messages and read one about Meredith's radio show on >WPKN and how that led someone to the ecto list. Anyway, it suddenly >occurred to me that Meredith was in my dream last night. We've never even >met, although I love the Veda and Susan McKeown tapes she sent me. My >mother wanted to admit me to a mental hospital, and she was reading this >list of doctors at different hospitals, and I kept saying that I knew these >people from ecto, so I couldn't go to them. Meredith was one of the >doctors. Oh. My. What makes this even stranger is, when I got to work this morning one of my colleagues stopped me and said "Hey, I had a dream about you last night! We were at work on a Sunday for some reason, and you were telling me not to take the elevator. I thought you were nuts." Now, I don't think I had any dreams last night. I wonder if this lends credence to Laurie Anderson's theory that when you don't dream that means it's because you're in someone else's dream instead? +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 22:18:26 -0400 From: "Foghorn J Fornorn" Subject: RE: ... As easy as A B C I will have to differ with this rebuttal and concur with the sentiment of the original poster. I've heard some wonderful audience recordings but the fidelity is always at best not quite as good as what would be done by the crew. I have a copy of the Veda Coco Club recording, and Women in (E)Motion. 'smatter 'o fact, I made a car tape of WiE, sorting it by solo Veda on side A and band on Side B. B came up short, so I lifted a track or two from Coco to fill it out. It's not hard to tell the difference. Coco is a very good recording, but it doesn't quite have the presence and fullness of WiE. What Coco and other good audience recordings give us, the fans, in many cases is fascinating content. Most artists can't afford to record all their shows for eventual release, even if they did so few would hit the light of day anyway. For those who've never heard a Veda live show, you're missing the choices she makes in 'medley-ing' her material in different ways at every show. Also, like Happy and many of the ectofest artists, they're all very interesting to listen to their between track banter, whether it's about the song or completely irrelevant observations. Most professional live recordings take much if not all of this out. But of course a professional recording company is in it to sell recordings and make money, tapers are interested in a true remembrance of the performer and performance. Interestingly, audience taping works best where the audience is small. For artists whose audiences are small, an audience recording getting into the hands (or even just ears) of a non-fan is hardly an issue. Worst case, the non-fan remains a non-fan. But sometimes, the non-fan is converted. And that's not a bad thing, is it? Ergo, most lesser known artists are not too upset about these recordings. The biggest issue is the lack of control or even say in what gets out representing them. Record companies are usually more irritated at this lack of control. Money isn't always the issue, as they know they won't make much money making every artist concert available. I just received Jane Siberry's Tree and Lips discs, sort of sad reading the notes to Tree how Jane could not get permission to put her version of Bambi on the disc. I suspect any potential "blessing" from Happy for the ectofest recording could well be thrown for a curve due to the presence of the song from the Monty Python film. They can't afford to be associated with condoning a possible copyright infringement themselves. Does anyone else find it odd that, if you take a snapshot at a live show, you can generally publish it and copyright it as your own? But record the audio and you must stay underground. All of this is peripheral to the point, which is not really about whether artists would/could sue tapers, or whether they desire that such things never happen. The point is the integrity of ectofest and by association, what transacts (or appears to transact) in this "public" mailing list. Meredith elaborated on this in great detail in her post of 9/20. So I will much belatedly shut up. (Audience applause here!) ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V5 #317 **************************