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 #427 ecto, Number 427 Tuesday, 9 February 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Re: Hello Ecto! Re: Cocteau Twins question Re: Shepherd Moons Re: somE CTOmments Dr Toby Mountain The Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music Re: Laurie Freelove. Today's her birthday friends--at least by one definition S.O.S. Other stories from yesterday and today Laurie Freelove revisited ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 8 Feb 93 23:33:25 EST From: jessica Subject: Re: Hello Ecto! Hiya! Welcome! I added you just after having sent out a digest.. I'll mail that one to you.. (I'll also mail you the index of the archives - if there's anything you want from it, just let me know, and I will mail them to you - i assume you can not ftp from genie accounts...) It's great to have you on the net! I'll let you introduce yourself to the list.. don't forget to include your shoe size! :) jessica || jessica || It is this that || Don't try to tell me there's no reason for || || lawrence || brings us || any moment in time, every memory of mine. || || koeppel || together. || Those years are lines of color on my face, || || dembski || --Kate || the past is warpaint. --Happy Rhodes || ======================================================================== Subject: Re: Cocteau Twins question Date: Mon, 08 Feb 93 20:24:57 -0800 From: johnz@eaglet.rain.com Greg feverishly footahs: > >speaking of "lonely is an eyesore", did anyone see the video? i have >never seen a c'twins video, nor a throwing muses video (and man, the >muses threw a lot more back then...) > MTV's 120 Minutes has occasionally shown CT videos; they showed 'Heaven or Las Vegas' a couple of weeks ago in fact. I haven't checked my tapes, but I do also recall seeing 'Crushed', 'Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops', 'Aikea- Guinea', 'Love's Easy Tears' and the clips from _Blue Bell Knoll_ and _Heaven or Las Vegas_ being played in the last few years. (It helps to be a life-long nightowl. ;) I believe the Twins are releasing a new one in a few months. I'm pretty sure they've played Throwing Muses clips, but I've never been a major fan and couldn't tell you which ones. Sorry. Hope you're feeling better soon! John Zimmer johnz@eaglet.rain.com ======================================================================== From: Scorpii Subject: Re: Shepherd Moons Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 3:33:31 EST Forwarded message: > From kyrlidis@athena.mit.edu Mon Feb 8 18:10:15 1993 > Message-Id: <9302082228.AA29886@carmel> > To: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu > Subject: Re: Shepherd Moons > In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 08 Feb 93 17:19:10 -0500. > <9302082219.AA29729@uhura.cc.rochester.edu> > Date: Mon, 08 Feb 93 17:28:57 EST > From: Angelos Kyrlidis > > Drewcifer complains about Enya-bashing... > > I speak for myself, but my Shepherd Moons bashing originates from the fact > that it sounds totally uninspired, and cliche'-ed, compared to 'Watermark'. > It's repeating the formula, not exploring new ground. Nay, sir, 'tis quite new. In fact, I listened to both today and decided that both are equally inspired. _Watermark_ may have a lyrical edge, but I no longer could honestly say that I prefer it to Shepherd Moons. It's not repeating the formula any more than Kate's Lionheart repeats The Kick Inside's formula. Neither in fact HAS a formula to repeat, and the same is true for Enya. The two albums may SOUND a bit alike, only in that they are in the same style, which is not unexpected. I do think SM explores a bit of new ground, in terms of a subtle shift of mood. > > >I will be very worried about the Happy fan's aesthetic sense. > Granted the songs are nice as aural wallpaper. But see previous paragraph for > the reasons they don't provide aural gratification to me at least. Oh, of course they're aural wallpaper. But let's face it, your home would be a dismal place without SOMETHING on the walls, now wouldn't it? No one called Enya the be-all and end-all of musical invention, I just said her stuff is pretty. And that it still is. > > There is *one* artist who sure knows how to do that! :) On this I agree. I can't wait to order Equipoise! Drewcifer ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 09 Feb 93 10:40:57 MEZ From: Dirk Kastens Subject: Re: somE CTOmments Hello, Meredith believes: > Dirk doesn't believe I can remember things from the age of 3 or 4. Well, > working it out with my parents I've figured out my earliest memory is from > around 9 months old- and since Mom remembers it too, it's a real memory. I No, no, you misunderstood me. Sorry, if I didn't explain my intention clearly enough. I *do* believe that you can remember things from your childhood. But I do *not* believe that you remember the exact year of a certain event without the help of your parents (what you conceded in the above sentence). Nine month .... an *extremely* good memory! Jeff and all the other happy-to-own-Equipoise-Ectophiles: > There are too many highpoints to talk about right now, and I'm still on > an adrenalin rush. Thanks for the spoiler hints, but I couldn't resist. Now I'm really on needles and pins. :-) Dirk --------------------- "There is a mood of isolationism I find quite disturbing which is running alongside the increase of racism and the rise of the right wing in various countries. It is very dangerous because I think that it is much easier to abuse people when there is some distance between you and them, when you don't feel a connection with them and cut them off and they are treated as 'them' and not 'us'." PG ======================================================================== From: Martin Dougiamas Subject: Dr Toby Mountain Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 00:09:41 +0800 (WST) Klaus reminds me of something Vickie wrote that I had meant to answer: > Dr. Toby Mountain did the digital mastering of Equipoise. Kevin said > he *loved* it. Mountain is quite well-known in his field. He's worked > for Rycodisc, I know. Does anyone else know more about him? What things > he's worked on specifically? (Besides Warpaint, that is.) I have two CDs from the "The Atmosphere Collection" by Rykodisc. They are simply (!) digital recordings of natural phenonema... mountains, waterfalls etc... My favourite disc is "Midnight Rainshower", a one hour recording of rain in a Hawaain rainforest. It is *damned* addictive... I listened to it for fifteen minutes in the store before I bought it, utterly entranced. It's just superbly recorded rain. Dr. Toby Mountain is completely reponsible for these recordings. The sleeve includes a description of the recording conditions, some technical notes on his equipment, and a short bio, which I reproduce below: Dr. Mountain has music degrees from Princeton University (BA, 1972) and the University of California at Berkeley (MA, 1978, PhD, 1981) and considerable experience in the audio field as a sound engineer and producer. He worked as a recording engineer at the University of California from 1976 to 1980 and produced numerous recording projects in the Bay Area. He also spent several years working at the Stanford University Centre for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and the MIT Experimental Music Lab, two facilities which have pioneered research in computer music synthesis and digital audio processing. He currently owns and operates Northeastern Digital Recording, Inc. The man is no slouch! Martin -- ,-----------------------------+-------------------------------. _ . | "The shallow drowned lose | Martin Dougiamas. | ~ _r' Ll\ ~ | less than we", you breathe, | martin@cs.curtin.edu.au |~ | \ ~ | the strangest twist upon | martin@dialix.oz.au | ~ \ ._ / ~ | your lips. - The Cure | Perth, Western Australia ----+--> x~ `-' ~ `=============================+===============================' ~ V ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 08:35:10 -0800 (PST) From: Neile Graham Subject: The Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music Or, in which (oh, no!) Neile has another idea (beware, world!) As I was thinking about all the buried reviews in the ecto archives, it suddenly occurred to me that it would be wonderful to have easier access to them. Wouldn't it be great to have all our words of wisdom about the music we love more readily accessible? Say I see a used Hex album somewhere--wouldn't it be great to be able to check up on what Vickie or woj or any of the ectophiles had said about it? I know Jessica may have found some kind of indexing program, but I was thinking of something compiled from the archives. What I have in mind would be kind of complicated and would require a lot of help from people, so it could only fly if we have enough volunteers, and to organize it would probably require someone who knows something about the archives (about which I know nothing at all being all untried in the ways of telnetting to such places). Anyway, this is what I think might work if enough other people are interested in it: 1) Various people volunteer to wade through the archives section by section to cull out music reviews. They copy the reviews and make certain that the poster's name is attached to the review. 2) They send the reviews to various people who are covering parts of the alphabet. Someone would do maybe a-e, someone else f-l, etc. There would probably need to be one person to take the major folks mentioned here because of the volume of material, ie. one person designated to sort reviews of Happy's collections and the concerts, and maybe one for Tori. 3) The sorters could send them to one person who would then make them pretty and then maybe print them and photocopy them and mail (email & snail mail) them upon request and maybe start an archive. I imagine this would be a pretty long document, and would need to be updated periodically. I would certainly be willing to do 2 & 3 and probably 1 if someone would teach me how to do it. I probably would not be able to do the archiving bit other than what I could do using my own resources, though maybe these could be added to the real ecto archives by someone who knows more about this. I am quite proficient at desktop publishing (though there may be someone here who is more so, but I don't think we want a great production job here, just access to this material). I would also be willing to do the snail mailing for the cost of photocopying and postage. Does anyone else think this would be useful? Would anyone want printed access to it? Would anyone want email access to it? Would anyone volunteer to help with the work? Jessica, is this possible? Redundant? I'm willing to organize it if people want it and want to help. Let me know what you think. --Neile neile@u.washington.edu ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 10:49:54 PST From: tsai@ikos.com (Finney T. Tsai) Subject: Re: Laurie Freelove. :> :> I think I've heard Laurie Freelove's name mentioned before. I was at a :> CD sale a little while ago, and I discovered a disc by Laurie Freelove :> (this is before I'd heard the name), and it was only $4.95, and I liked :> the cover (now anybody who knows me knows I have a reputation for buying :> things in that precise situation - it's cheap and I liked the cover *:) :> and $4.95 is CHEAP!! ) so I bought it. I listened to a little bit of it :> once and put it away, almost forgetting about it. It's the 'Smells Like :> Truth' album. Now that it's appeared on Ecto with good reviews, I'll have :> to listen to it a bit more methinks. :> :> Chris. Well, I have Laurie Freelove's "Smells Like Truth" right on my desk now. It's a pretty old album, isn't it? 1991? I carefully listened to it again and still felt "Smells Like Truth" was only OK. The best songs in the album are "White Hail" and "O My Heart." Everytime I listen to Laurie, her voice and music just keep reminding me of Toni Childs. Aren't they quite similar? Anybody shares the same feeling? Sure, most Happy or KT fans may hate their voices and styles, too heavy and too dark? -finney --------------------------- Where's the ocean Where's the moments I once knew inside my heart? -- Toni Childs ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 12:22:38 CST From: Subject: Today's her birthday friends--at least by one definition Years ago, when I was engaged in buying life insurance, the agent pointed out to me that age at policy purchase is typically figured as of the nearest birth- day, rather than the last birthday the way the rest of the world does it. What this means in actual practice is that for underwriting purposes, one's birthday is deemed to be six months in advance of the actual anniversary of birth. The practical significance of this for us is that, at least in the eyes of the life insurance industry, the alleged _raison d'etre_ of this mailing list, that smiling duckfeeder of the inside back cover of the _Equipoise_ booklet herself, Happy Rhodes is 28 years ageless today. Too bad we haven't yet got a Happy Birthday Project tape in general release with which to celebrate this milestone in ecto history, but I suppose that in a pinch the _Equipoise_ CD can be a reasonable substitute. :-) So happy birthday, Happy, from the gang down at the All Things agency--the only one in the whole industry to see the possibilities for huckstering life and accident plans with jingles like "I had another accident last night/I tripped over a soul in flight" and "Tell me all your plans for the great beyond"--sure beats "What if you were out of the picture" for sheer panache, don't it? Mitch Pravatiner Chartered Obscurantist Gagwriter ------------------------------------ "mmmmmmm....yes!" --Kate Bush, by way of Jessica Dembski "mmmmmmm....Hamms!" --Beer commercial that ran during sundry Cubs games on Channel 9 when I was a kid (my enigmatic contribution to the recently ended "memory" thread--but it did come in a blue can, and made the brain feel fuzzy after a few too many--the stuff that rational nexes are made of?) ======================================================================== From: jmg@rocket.com (Jim Gurley) Subject: Re: Dr. Toby Mountain Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 9:30:09 PST Can't remember who posted the original question, oh well... but I too tried to look up said Mountain and discovered that he worked with David Bowie in the late seventies... he's responsible for mixing/engineering both "Low" and "Heroes" two of my favorite Bowie albums and ones where he really experimented with sound and I guess with Eno. Hope that answers someone's question. Still can't get those Happy songs out of my head. All I can say to those who haven't gotten it yet is... Pity our Emptiness, Save our souls... ======================================================================== From: Kjetil Torgrim Homme Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 21:33:58 +0100 Subject: Re: The Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music I've been thinking about something similar: Just an index of all the artists mentioned in ecto, ie. Laurie Freelove mentions: 486:3, 486:5 comparisons: 486:3 reviews: trivia: 484:1 Where 484:1 means message one in digest 484. This would no doubt be a HUGE file, so a sensible format would be important (ie. easily understood by humans and computers alike). I was thinking about asking Jessica to put in a header in each mail, detailing which digest it is (half of ecto get it on a per mail basis), so I could start compiling the index, and announce when it was ready. Then Jessica mentioned the indexing program she found, and I have been waiting for her to tell us more, but I guess it will be too much work for her in any case. Kjetil T. (professional procrastinator; haven't ordered Equipoise YET! I'll *have* to do it tomorrow.) ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 09:34:51 EST From: ken@startek.com (Ken Descoteaux) Subject: S.O.S. Mitch said: >SAVE OUR SOULS: >The lyric "We give to you a disc of gold/it transcends the dreams we hold/ >We'll tell our children what to do/we'll show them how to listen for you" >sounds, if you look at it right, like a utopian scenario of Happy getting a >gold record. Well, I certainly hope that Happy gets that gold record but this disc is something a bit different. I don't think I've seen the connection posted yet, but this is *certainly* a reference to the digital disc that is accompanying the Voyager probe out of the solar system. Gold being used for its non-reactiveness. Besides having pictures encoded on it (of real people, of male, female and DNA icons) there is also the voices of children from around the world saying "hello" in many different languages recorded on it. That's the jist of it anyway even if I might have the details wrong.... This album is GREAT! I only wish I had more time to listen to it this week. The album would arrive during the busiest week! Ectoplasmically yours, -ken d ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 16:56:18 EST From: Greg Bossert Subject: Re: S.O.S. Ken gets it right: >Well, I certainly hope that Happy gets that gold record but this disc >is something a bit different. I don't think I've seen the connection >posted yet, but this is *certainly* a reference to the digital disc >that is accompanying the Voyager probe out of the solar system. yow! i literally jumped in my seat! ;) ever since jessica mentioned (before i had even heard the song) that "save our souls" reminded her of KaTe's "reaching out", i had kinda tuned the song out (apologies to those who have defended "reaching out" before :) but all i needed was the hint from Ken -- i mean, it even spells it out: "here we are reaching out for aliens"! i like the bit about wheatfields :) i am into my second listen here in the footahcave (thanks to jessica, who has gone for hours now without the CD :) and things are beginning to curl and cling... stay tuned for more updates from your 24 hour footah shannel (and thanks, Ken!!) -greg -- bossert@vizlab.rutgers.edu -- == i have never been afraid to change == Happy == the circumstances of the world == Rhodes ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 13:50:47 CST From: Subject: Other stories from yesterday and today In addition to today being Happy's birthday in the eyes of insurance salesmen everywhere, and practically no one else anywhere, it's the 28th anniversary of the Beatles' legendary appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. _World News Now_ observed the occasion by playing sundry Fab Four classics under the weather and sports displays. The previous night, they played a cut from Iris DeMent's album (other than "Let The Mystery Be") under one of the sports score crawls. It occurs to me that someone should suggest to Michelle that she send them a copy of _Equipoise_--wouldn't "Mother Sea" make a marvelous counterpoint to desert scenes as a visual for the weather listings? :-) And, of course, NPR should be on the list as well, to add it to their collection of buttons and zippers for _Morning Edition_ and _All Things Considered_. Speaking of NPR, _Weekend Edition_ did a lengthy interview with Thomas Dolby on Sunday. I tried to make as many mental notes as I could at the time, but inevitably a lot of it has since slipped away. Some of what hasn't: his real name is Thomas Roberts, but was nicknamed "Dolby" in college because of his status as an inveterate tapehead. He adopted his professional name after Tom Robinson hit the big time first, apparently pursuant to a tongue-in-cheek agreement he had with TR on that point. Ray Dolby, the inventor of the noise reduction system that bears his name, sued Thomas for infringement--apparently inspired by his son, also named Thomas, being an aspiring actor. It was sett- led, with Thomas Dolby the recording artist agreeing not to manufacture noise reduction systems under that name. His next album, as I recall, will be out shortly, and will be called _Astronauts and Heretics_. He foresees a shorter time lag until the next album thereafter than there was between the last one before now and _A&H_, due to the amount of musical overset produced for the latter; but that additional delays were possible because his wife was due to deliver any minute. Speaking of tapeheads, last Friday's _Chicago Tribune_ ran a feature on the paper's "all-star team" of local university professors. One of them was Marvin Camras, professor of electrical engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology, often called the "father of magnetic recording," without whose invention we probably would not be doing what we do here; in recognition whereof, his name appears on the canonical ecto birthday list, indeed leading it off, albeit the latter purely by an accident of birth. WRT the discussion yesterday of whether any out gay men have been nominated for Grammys: it's been my understanding that Elton John, who was mentioned in that connection, is actually bisexual rather than gay in the strict sense. It is my impression that the nascent bi ideology holds it to be a distinctive orientation unto itself, and to imply otherwise is unlikely to win you many E-hugs from the good folks over at soc.bi. (Then again, some readers of these pages may not be particularly concerned about that possibility, reasoning that as it is, we all get enough E-hugs from Vickie to meet our needs :-). ) WRT Drewcifer's query yesterday on Miranda Richardson's filmography beyond _The Crying Game_: she's also done _Dance With a Stranger_, _Empire of the Sun_, _Enchanted April_, and no doubt others as well, in addition to at least one episode of the British TV comedy series _Agony_. Thanks to Uli for his comments on ectopech, ectogluck, ectoglu"ck, and ectoglug . I had actually been fully aware that the opposite of ectopech should proper- ly be umlauted; but having not been introduced to the potential for the use of the 'u"' graphic, I shied away from the 'ue' spelling for this sspecific word because of the difficulty I have in uncoupling it, cognitively, from the legen- dary 1930's criminologists, Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck [glu-eck], to the point of other potential referents being crowded out. As for the true referent of "ectogluck," the notion of fuzzy blue beer was, of course, engaged at the end of my last post (q.v.); but I think it's well worth pondering the possibilities for an 'ectoglo"gg,' our own spin on that venerable Scandinavian wine-based hot potable held so dear by holiday revelers everywhere. (Or at least in my exper- ience. Somehow, I have just remembered a departmental Christmas party a decade or so ago, where someone received accolades for the drink she brought in which combined nuts, raisins, and hot wine. Somebody asked her what it was, and she replied that she wasn't sure what the technical name of the stuff was, but as best she could remember it was something like "Glopp" [sic]. Which in turn reminds me of my observation, also years ago, that common table grapes can be thought of as a sort of chewable chablis. Viewed in that light, could gloegg according to the classic formula be seen as a sort of potable trail mix with a kick?) I suppose it would all boil down to what kind of blue wines there are that could be used as a vehicle, though I suppose that in extreme emergency there could be the potential for starting with the one and only Bahama Blue Punch, and simply cutting it with Grain Neutral. Angelos asked yesterday in ecto: >BTW, what does 'vern' mean? It is mentioned in OLAL, and I looked up the word >in all dictionaries I have but couldn't find it. It will help me understand >OLAL, and it being my favorite song, I *really* need to know. In a note to me earlier today WRT something else, he went on to ask, in passing: >BTW, what *does* vern mean? I asked in the middle of one of my mega-posts >and apparently nobody paid attention. As the author of many a mega-post myself :-), I know the feeling; so I looked it up in the online Oxford English Dictionary at this installation, and report- ed back what I found, which I now think was interesting enough to share with the rest of you as well: >From: >To: >Subject: Ask the wordsmith... > >[...] >The online OED here says "vern" is a Southern dialect for "fern." It goes on >to say that there are at least five meanings for the latter word. The third >in that series is apparently derived from the Icelandic, with meanings in the >general neighborhood of "big," "a lot," etc.--an interpretation quite consist- >ent with "Out Like a Lamb's" midnight mover motif. > >This presupposes, of course, that that interpretation is indeed the real one, >as opposed to the other one that spontaneously occurred to me within the last >few minutes. That interpretation is that the song is a sort of prequel to >_The Silence of the Lambs_, and that Vern was one of those whom Hannibal >Lecter >disaggregated early in his career, then carted off the premises piecemeal-- >sort of in the tradition of Raymond Burr in _Rear Window_. :-) WRT Ken's comments on "Save Our Souls" and the Voyager satellite: The drawings of anatomically correct earthlings sent on that flight did indeed cross my mind but I was thrown off by the "disc" language, since the way I remembered it, those graphics were engraved on an oblong plaque. WRT the renewed interest in Laurie Freelove in these pages: I went through my private archive for the review of _Smells Like Truth_ which I posted to this list when said album first came out, and will take the somewhat audacious step of sharing it anew with you all, under separate cover. Should Neile's proposed archive of reviews get off the ground, this would be a natural to put into it. I hope that it isn't an indication of the specific esteem (_vel non_) in which the market holds this album, that copies of the CD are available for as little as $2.99 at Dr. Wax on N. Clark St. FINALLY. The BBC reported today that the London _Sun_ intends to fight the suit brought by Buckingham Palace, over the paper's publishing the Queen's Christmas message two days early. Most of the earlier imbroglios over their reportage of the royal family were settled out of court. One can only hope that they didn't shoot themselves in the foot by running the speech on the legendary Page 3 :-). Mitch ----------------------------------- "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." --Chicago alderman William Beavers, in a City Council debate on a proposed domestic partners ordinance If tonight's _Frontline_ (PBS) is accurate, one can only wonder where he'd stand on whether God made Edgar and Clyde :-) ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 16:27:41 CST From: Subject: Laurie Freelove revisited [a repost of items originally spread out over two separate days--Mitch] Date: 25 November 1991 15:39:28 CST Subject: Miscellany [part] On the basis of Vickie's laudatory review of her Chicago concert last week , I bought Laurie Freelove's album, "Smells Like Truth," over the weekend and was in the process of giving it a preliminary listen today when my batteries ran out. Be that as it may, it seems quite good so far. When I first glanced at the cover picture of the artist, I couldn't decide whether she looked more like David Bowie or Billy Idol :-); after looking at it more carefully, her distinctiveness became more apparent. The same goes for the recording itself. The music, while mildly dissonant, is not unpleasant at all. I have yet to ponder the lyrics carefully, but they seem to be in the same category of thinking-people's words as those of Happy, Kate, etc. Date: 27 November 1991 12:07:39 CST Subject: More on Laurie Freelove's Album Having given my batteries a fresh charge overnight :-) (cf. my posting two days ago), I was finally able to give a careful listen to Laurie Freelove's new album, _Smells Like Truth_. It turns out to be even better than it seemed in the beginning. Freelove, formerly a member of Two Nice Girls, has come up with an appealing mix of consonant and dissonant melodic styles, which to me seem evocative of an unusual array of other artists, combined with some very liter- ate lyrics to assure her, IMHO WIVH, a place in the universe of thinking people's alternative rock. The album starts off with the title cut, a mildly dissonant but pleasing tune that, to me at least, is musically reminiscent of several Fleetwood Mac songs (of all things), as well as at least one track--the name of which I have forgotten--on Sinead O'Connor's _Lion and the Cobra_ album. The lyrics seem substantially less "angry" to me than they did to Woj (cf. his posting yester- day; I interpret them more as a comment on the difficulty of making sense out of the contemporary world. The second song, "Eyes," can be described most succinctly (and ironically) as a dissonant love song, an allusion to the issue of communication in relationships. Its exotic, percussion-heavy tune has at least a bit in common with some of the better music of Martin Denny (about whom more some other time, perhaps), and the background effects include a good deal of whispering, much of it unintelligible but a bit of which comes out sounding like either German or Spanish--could well be the stuff that speculations are made of, in the great tradition of our ruminations on Happy's hidden lyrics in "Waking Up" and "Terra Incognita." Dissonant melodies yield to consonant ones for the next selection, "Arms of A Dream." Musically, this would fit well into the cult of the ethereal that was discussed in these pages some time ago, as well as into the laundry list of music to fall asleep by that was posted here recently. The lyrics seem heavi- ly influenced by New Age cosmology; but passages like "Powered by the lonely wounds of your childhood insanity/Caution steels you against the ghosts of its aging memories" may strike a responsive chord among ectophiles who have written recently of their childhood and adolescence with a jaundiced eye. "Walk Away Awhile" combines more New Age sensibility with music again reminiscent of some of Stevie Nicks' better work; while "Heaven On Earth" returns to a somewhat harder edge musically as it expresses a nonspecific hopefulness about the fate of things in general. Side 2 opens with a return to the ethereal, "Haunted," a lament for a failed relationship; the song's very mild lesbian subtext does nothing at all to keep it from speaking to anyone and everyone who's been in that situation. The acoustic folk-influenced "White Hail" is a rumination on the proverbial Meaning of Life, particularly the contrast between the bigness of the world and the smallness of the individual. "O My Heart"--which I lean toward fingering as my favorite song on the whole album--really rocks, in the tradition of the best of the British Invasion of the '60's; the lyrics are an anthem of defiance of those who would screw you over--possibly reminiscent of some of Tom Robin- son's work. "Getting Close" is another song of relationships, whose musical style evokes the late, lamented Joy of Cooking. The closing number, "Song to the Siren," starts out a capella; when the musical accompaniment kicks in, it remains understated throughout. It is another lament for a failed relationship --more specifically, for rejection in a relationship. In a nutshell, Freelove demonstrates herself to be a versatile singer- songwriter in her first album, capable of handling a wide range of styles and themes. I'd like to see her next album include a bit of whimsy, along the lines of her old group's signature tune, "Birth Control and Beer." But no matter what, her prospects for continued success seem strong. Mitch Pravatiner ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 18:19:20 EST From: ken@startek.com (Ken Descoteaux) Subject: Re: Other stories from yesterday and today Mitch, You are right, there was an engraving with the Voyager disc. If I remember right part of the engraving was intended as instructions on how to retreive the data on the gold disc.... There was also a "map" either encoded on the disc or engraved that showed where Earth is in the Milky Way as well... An interglactic welcome-wagon package... -ken d ======================================================================== 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)