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 #454 ecto, Number 454 Tuesday, 23 February 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Re: k.d. lang Happy Giant? Americanism Eddi "Zoolook" Psychowelder Goes to Concert Philip Glass Misc again... Re: Judie Tzuke A Question of Balance Re: DARPA-Net Cohabitants Sometimes truth is more exciting ======================================================================== From: S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk Subject: Re: k.d. lang Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 18:28:27 BST On Tue, 23 Feb 93 at 13:02:43 EST, special K wrote: > Steve wrote: > > And at the end of the day, if you don't like k.d. lang it's not the > > end of the world, in spite of the sometimes rather fervent barracking > > in her favour that comes from certain quarters on this list. It would > > I enjoy your using the word "barracking", but am clueless as to why you used it. > Was there some barracking about kd from an ectophyte that I missed? To what are > you referring, Steve? Possibly a poor choice of word, since it can also mean to criticise loudly, or jeer, as well as having the sense in which I intended it to be taken of to shout support for. As in shouting support for a football team at a game. I was referring, admittedly somewhat obliquely, to your own very strong advocacy of k.d. lang in this forum. After all, you can hardly pretend to have been reticent in encouraging people to get into her music. It occurs to me that this may not be an American usage. I will check... [rustle, rustle, rustle] ...and my dictionary confirms that it is indeed restricted to Britsh & Australian English, and comes from 19th Century Irish where it meant to boast. Oh well. Another instance of us being two peoples divided by a common language. Now who said that, I wonder? -- Regards Steve Fagg ( S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk +44-279-402437 ) BNR Europe Ltd., London Road, Harlow, Essex, CM17 9NA, UK *** "Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown". *** ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 13:28:31 -0500 (EST) From: Gray Abbott Subject: Happy Giant? Just curious if anyone else had noticed a similarity between some of Happy's music and that of the group, Gentle Giant. Some of Warpaint and Ecto remind me of them, and I noticed it again on Cohabitate, today. Has she ever mentioned any influence, there? Gray ======================================================================== From: S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk Subject: Americanism Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 18:40:40 BST Having been caught out using "barrack" in a sense which it doesn't usually have in American English, in the cause of mutual understanding I now seek an explanation of an Americanism. In the evaluation sheets from a course I was doing last week, one of the students (a Canadian), said of me that I "bat from left field now and again". This looks like it is a baseball analogy, and from the context it was not meant as a compliment, but I regret I don't know what it means! Please can somebody translate and, if possibe, explain *why* it means whatever it is that it does. Thanks! -- Regards Steve Fagg ( S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk +44-279-402437 ) BNR Europe Ltd., London Road, Harlow, Essex, CM17 9NA, UK *** "Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown". *** ======================================================================== From: S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk Subject: Re: Americanism Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 19:04:09 BST On Tue, 23 Feb 93 12:57:48 CST, guetzlaf@gravity.cray.com (Cathy Guetzlaff) wrote: > >In the evaluation sheets from a course I was doing last week, one of > >the students (a Canadian), said of me that I "bat from left field now > >and again". This looks like it is a baseball analogy, and from the > >context it was not meant as a compliment, but I regret I don't know > >what it means! > > Well Steve, I wonder if your student has the wrong saying. I've never heard > of 'bat from left field', but there is a saying 'out in left field' which > is indeed not a compliment and used to describe one whose ideas/thoughts/ > comments are totally off the wall. > > In baseball, the left fielder is the player who is farthest away from home > plate. So to be 'out in left field' is to be far away from any semblance of > normalcy. Make sense? Well, I suppose that might have been what he meant. In which case I'm not sure I wouldn't regard it as a compliment. I mean, to be "off the wall" now and again seems to me to be highly laudable, nicht wahr? -- Regards Steve Fagg ( S.L.Fagg@bnr.co.uk +44-279-402437 ) BNR Europe Ltd., London Road, Harlow, Essex, CM17 9NA, UK *** "Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown". *** ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 19:07:13 GMT From: brage@sphere.home.id.dth.dk (Jens P. Brage) Subject: Eddi "Zoolook" Psychowelder Goes to Concert Hi! Vickie wrote: > I also just listened to Eddi Reader's _Mirmama_ (I still have Charley's > CD. He wants it back and it will be so hard to give up) and it's still > brilliant! > [...] > Avery knew I only had a dub of the album and *badly* wanted a CD. I could probably find another copy of "Mirmama", and I think I saw a copy of "Ay Fond Kiss" some time ago... We could set up an exchange (there's a lot of interesting music which isn't real easy to get hold of in Denmark!), but please note that CDs are pretty expensive here: A full-price CD costs about $24 (in the cheap stores!). My own import of Happy's music actually makes for some pretty cheap disks... > Ooops, Psychowelders just got over. Jens, I'm *so* glad you finally > got your stuff. > [...] > (To continue this bitchy honesty, they've > had a new CD out since before Christmas. Do I have a copy? No. > Rhondda said she'd send it to me and I haven't gotten it yet. > Do I have any right to complain? No, it's a promo, after all.) Btw, I forgot to thank you for your intervention. Thanks! Otherwise I might still be waiting... :-) A new CD? That sounds interesting, please tell us when (if?) you do get hold of a copy! > Right now I'm listening to Jean Michael Jarre's _Zoolook_, which, if > it isn't the most interesting thing he's done, then I want to know > about whatever else is out there that's better. > [...] > It's just great! It's > almost like listening to a dance version of the Blade Runner soundtrack, > with bits of Laurie Anderson thrown in. Well, "Zoolook" is probably his most original album. "Equinoxe" is pretty good too, but the style is very different: Purely synthesizers, no vocals. I got the "Zoolook" LP a long time ago, and I had totally forgotten that Laurie Anderson does the vocals on "Diva" (in fact, I suspect I didn't know who Laurie Anderson is, at the time). As I haven't got a record player, I never look at the cover... Then, recently, my brother borrowed the LP and pointed out the credits to me! Continuing the thread on weird harps: Someone mentioned Jarre's laser harp recently. While I'll agree that it's probably all show, and doesn't actually control the synthesizers, I think a real laser harp *could* be made. It would be pretty expensive though (involving separate lasers for each "string", and interferometry between the light reflected from the glowes and the light from the lasers...). Christine is going to the "The Great Miracle Prayer Festival": That sounds like quite a concert! I've seen Laurie Anderson ("Strange Angels") and Phillip Glass ("1000 Airplanes on the Roof") in concert, and at both concerts I came pretty close to sensory overload... ;-) Anybody else seen "1000 Airplanes [...]"? That's is probably the most impressive staging I've ever seen... Jens P. Brage | Dance the circle dance of dreaming, brage@sphere.home.id.dth.dk | lonely by the crystal sea. /\ | Spin the web of mist and moonlight, \SphereSoft | come, beloved, and follow me. ======================================================================== Subject: Philip Glass Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 14:41:00 EST From: Angelos Kyrlidis Since Jens brought up his name, let me seize the opportunity to ask if anybody has heard 'The Low Symphony', i.e. the re-working of 'Warszawa', 'The Subterraneans' and one more track from the Bowie(/Eno) album 'Low' for an orchestra. The concept sounds *very* promising, but I'd like to hear some reactions before I go out an get it! Angelos (who doesn't like kd lang :) ) ======================================================================== Date: 23 Feb 1993 15:39:43 -0500 (EST) From: SANDOVAL@stsci.edu Subject: Misc again... A few points... Steve says: > >In the evaluation sheets from a course I was doing last week, one of > >the students (a Canadian), said of me that I "bat from left field now > >and again". This looks like it is a baseball analogy, and from the > >context it was not meant as a compliment, but I regret I don't know > >what it means! Then Cathy says: > Well Steve, I wonder if your student has the wrong saying. I've never heard > of 'bat from left field', but there is a saying 'out in left field' which > is indeed not a compliment and used to describe one whose ideas/thoughts/ > comments are totally off the wall. > > In baseball, the left fielder is the player who is farthest away from home > plate. So to be 'out in left field' is to be far away from any semblance of > normalcy. Make sense? What Cathy says is the truth. The correct term is 'out of left field', but I think the reasoning for left field might be different. There are two possibilities. First is that, in one of the old-time parks, the left field wall was a LONG way out there. I know the Polo Grounds had a tremendous amount of space in centerfield. Now a days, most parks are pretty symetrical, and the left fielder isn't any further from the action than the rightfielder. The second option has to do with the whole "left-right" thing. Lefties are supposed to be somewhat touched (I'm right-handed myself, but I don't really believe this myth... :). And left has never been as accepted as "right". So that could have something to do with "out of left field"... (or maybe not) :) Klaus says: >Did I remember correctly that there were no whalesongs on that voyager >disc? What a pity. We all know that aliens like our whales, don't we? There were whale sounds on the disk, as well as other animal sounds (dogs, birds, etc). There weren't any cat sounds, however, and that kind of ticked me off, being the cat person that I am. :) There's nothing quite like a purring kitty on a lap... :) Uli says: >P.P.S.: John says >>> Bach Brandenberg Concerto Number Two, First Movement >Shouldn't that be 'BrandenbUrg' or is it spelled as 'mountain' (Berg) instead >of 'castle' (Burg) in English? In Germany it's definitely 'Brandenburg'. I really don't know. I copied it from "The Voyager Mission" published by NASA. Of course, considering some of the things that I've seen in the short time that I've been working at The Space Telescope Institute, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they got it wrong... :) BTW, my undergraduate job was dealing with quasars and the structure of the universe. Our paper comes out in The Astrophysical Journal next month! :) About music tastes... That's really one of the nicest things I've noticed about Ecto these past few weeks. No one gets flamed for their own likes and dislikes. Myself, I don't like Tori Amos at all. But it's just my opinion and it's nice to know that I can have it and not be flamed (right??) :) OBHappy... Ecto is definitely my favorite album. I still haven't listened to Equipoise enough to get a good feel for it, mainly because I can't stop listening to Ecto. :) Take care :) John ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 20:50:27 GMT From: brage@sphere.home.id.dth.dk (Jens P. Brage) Subject: Re: Judie Tzuke Kjetil writes: > Oh, and thanks, Vickie, for mentioning her in the first place. In my > previous one-sentence review I called it "above average female pop", > but I have found upon deeper contemplation that is too weak a review. > It is actually very good, there are no weak songs. That was much the same process I went through with "Left Hand Talking": At first I considered it nice pop, but then after a while I really got to like the album. My favorite song is probably "Liam". Apparently, Judie Tzuke isn't very popular in Denmark: I recently found four copies of LHT at 29DKr (less than $5), an incredibly low price. Despite the fact that I already had a copy, I immediately bought one for use as a gift, and then tipped my friends off to the offer. My brother bought one of the remaining disks a few days later... This is probably the best quality/price ratio I've seen in a long time! :-) Jens P. Brage | Dance the circle dance of dreaming, brage@sphere.home.id.dth.dk | lonely by the crystal sea. /\ | Spin the web of mist and moonlight, \SphereSoft | come, beloved, and follow me. ======================================================================== From: jmg@rocket.com (Jim Gurley) Subject: A Question of Balance Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 10:20:01 PST Way back in the late seventies/early eighties I heard this bizarre song on the radio called "The Test of Love and Sex" by a group called FUN WITH ANIMALS. A couple years ago I found the 45 of that song, but since then have found nothing else on the group. Does anybody on ecto know anything at all about this group? I think they only had the one (kind of devo-esque) song, i.e. one single. ======================================================================== From: jmg@rocket.com (Jim Gurley) Subject: Re: DARPA-Net Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 11:00:06 PST >ARPA-net joined universities..... actually, it was first invented (?) in the mid/late sixties to link up the computers operating at different missile silos across the U.S.A. Part of the wonderful US cold-war paranoia. It was only after they did this that they discovered they could do nifty things like send electronic mail.... and set up wonderful mailing lists, like this one for HAPPY! ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 15:12:22 CST From: kiri Subject: Cohabitants someone asks..."does anyone else think Cohabitants is about multiple personalties." unfortunately I don't have a good editor so I can't include the real quote...or remember who it's from....anyway No, I don't think Cohabitants is about multiple personalities. I see it more as a song about different levels of a persons psyche. Maybe some people would define their 'conscience' as another 'personality,' but that's not how I view it. I see the 3/4 distinct voices in the song as a different aspect of one personality. I see it as a sort of dark side/light side living together in one brain kind of thing.... Maybe I'll change my mind in the future, when I really have a chance to read the lyrics carefully. btw Cohab is one of my favis! keep a look out for kIrI does Equipoise the full review! :) coming soon hopefully! kIrI ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 15:49:12 CST From: "Wordsmith and Wesson--For shooting from the lip :-)" Subject: Sometimes truth is more exciting Since I never saw the 1967 Swedish movie _Elvira Madigan_, for which the title of today's essay was originally the advertising slogan, I don't know what the slogan actually had to do with the film other than getting people intrigued by the enigma into the ticket lines. Which is actually quite enough for a slogan to do, logic aside. For all that, it still seemed to me an appropriate label for a post that starts out by correcting a couple of minor misconceptions. Angelos was right: you do need an intermediate step to get from the Red Line to the Blue Line, en route to the plane to Chicago to pick up your Happy CD's at Rose while the storewide sale is still on. Having been not been to Boston since 1979--when some of the older Green Line cars still sported little signs inside, touting a $10 reward for dobbing in anyone ripping off the Metropolitan Transit Authority; but by which time Scollay Square had already turned into Government Center, though some Libertarians may feel that the dominant function either way was to screw the taxpayer :-) --my memory was, unsurprisingly, a little fuzzy WRT which lines intersected which other ones downtown, not to men- tion the continued need for the Massport Shuttle to actually get to the airport (a decade of direct trains can make one soft that way :-) ). You have to admit, though, there was a certain symmetry--dare I call it Equi- poise? :-) --to the way I made it out to be initially (Red to Blue to the skies to Blue to Red). Actually, it dawns on me that this feature of the color coor- dination is preservable after all. Just take the Blue Line to Lake Street, then switch to the Green Line (or the Orange Line, which should be up and runn- ing by then, if you want to wait for the next storewide sale in August) for the few blocks over to Adams and Wabash, where Rose's main store is right at the foot of the stairs, if you want to check there for Happy's music. Thence can you either walk over to State Street and take the Red Line to Belmont, thus resuming the symmetry of the original plan; or if you want to save some walking and immerse yourself in a hue unavailable on the MBTA, go back up to the L and catch the Brown Line, or during the rush hour also the Purple Line, both of which also stop at Belmont. Whichever train you take, the storewide sale is on through Sunday. The other record I should like to set straight: Vickie's recent comment notwit hstanding, my cat is, for whatever personal reason, slashing me less and less these days, judging from the rate at which my flesh has been healing from the earlier generations of scratches. His main mode of acting-out seems to have switched to slipping out the front door, whenever he sees the opportunity, and going out to visit the drainpipe from which he first entered my life, having been discovered wedged in between it and the brickwork six months ago last Saturday. Must be some sort of reaction to the anniversary, as well as it probably being as close as he now has to an ancestral home :-) By an appropriate coincidence, Garrison Keillor's show on Saturday was a rerun of the show last spring on which he performed the following number: CAT, YOU BETTER COME HOME My cat she pleaded, and my cat she cried For me to open up the door and let her go outside Then she sat on the lawn underneath a tree Pretending that she couldn't hear me My cat she turned, she tossed her head "I may or may not come," she said "I'm a cat who's deeply dissatisfied I'll let you know when I decide." I said "Cat, you'd better come on home. 'Cause there's dogs in the dark waiting to attack And cat hawks looking for a late night snack So cat, you better come on home." She said "I'd rather be a cat that meets a terrible fate Than live with a man who can't appreciate That a cat is independent and a true highbrow And demands a little high-class chow "I've seen the food that you feed your guests The turkey and the tuna and the chicken breasts Do you share it with your cat? No you don't, no way Not the poached perch liver pate' " And I said "Cat, shag it on in here I'm not about to stand here and argue with a cat Now what would the next door neighbors think of that So cat, you better come on home. "Well I never!" she said, and she turned in a huff "You've seen the last of your old cat Puff!" She left with a "huh!" and a sardonic laugh And she left for a year and a half I felt so bad, full of guilt and shame I walked around town just calling her name With a great big plate of chateaubriand And an ounce of caviar in my hand I said "Cat, oh please come home Come on, old Puff, come home with us I got a lot of fringe benefits I'd like to discuss So cat, oh please come home" I saw her six months later in a cat magazine She was the number 1 TV cat food queen With a fat contract with a cat food firm Her hair was done up in a perm I could tell it was Puff Though this cat was wrapped In a white mink stole Her teeth were capped She was lying on a beach In the south of Greece She changed her name to Clarice In the story It said she was voted Cat of all cats By the Greeks, and it quoted A noted poet, who said Clarice Is a national treasure And a centerpiece It said she lived in a ten-room villa And ate fresh fish flown in from Manila That famous people visited her And she spoke to them in a European purr "Now cat," I said, "You'd better come home You're no queen, you're Puff, you're you, And your friends can't love you like your true friends do So cat, you better come home" But she was a gypsy, she had no home She moved to Spain and then to Rome She moved to Copenhagen with a dog named Jens She had rich clothes, she had rich friends The thing she didn't have was common sense The luxuries, the vast expense She married again, and again and again It was all tres chic and tres bien She changed her name to Madeline She moved to Central Asia, and then I saw her one morning on the Sam Sloan show She said "Asia? That was ages ago My life has changed, thanks to romance With a beautiful man from the coast of France He loves me so much, he doesn't bark or growl" And there was her love--a great horned owl She said "He's so pretty, my lover, my bird He adores me," and the owl didn't say a word She spent a zillion dollars on ======================================================================== 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)