Errors-To: owner-ecto@athos.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu From: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@athos.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@athos.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #139 ecto, Number 139 Thursday, 30 January 1992 Today's Topics: *-----------------* shawn Re: ecto #136 ectozine Cowboy Junkies; Anna Domino; Sugarcubes change of address Ramblings of great importance Re: Ramblings of great importance Stoff III: The Kibitzing Continues or Resumes, Depending ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 13:59:59 CST From: stern@chem.nwu.edu (Charlotte Stern) Subject: shawn Someone posted a long note regarding Shawn Colvin. Let me first point out that her name is spelled SHAWN, not like Sean Penn, or Sean Young, etc. I was lucky enough to see Shawn who opened for Richard Thompson this summer. The show (both artists) was fantastic. Thompson is as good a guitarist as you'll find in the folk-rock genre (or any genre) and he writes fine songs (with a twist, sometimes). Rumor and Sigh is his latest album, featuring lots of good stuff and some standouts (e.g. the one about the motorcycle (can't remember the exact name but it's got a year (55?) in the title). Anyways, Shawn not only opened, but also played (and sang a bit) with R through the *whole* *show*. This is the first time I've ever seen this happen... I guess I kina wonder whether there was something going on between those two besides music...:-) In any case, check out these artists. Also, for a taste of Shawn live, pick up the Theodore sampler that came out a while back (it had a KT song, and also some live Indigo Girls, etc. etc. [also a tune by a great band called Nuclear Valdez]). This sampler has an acoustic live version of Shotgun Down the Avalanche which easily beats the album version of this tune. A fine track. -mjm (mike mendelson)n ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 16:11:24 CST From: stern@chem.nwu.edu (Charlotte Stern) Subject: Re: ecto #136 Gee, you leave for a few months and you miss all the good stuff! Happy T's are ready ?! What are these (t-shirts?)? and how do I order one? ultra-bland and over-tried -mjm ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 16:03:19 CST From: stern@chem.nwu.edu (Charlotte Stern) Subject: ectozine Hey, have any ectozines actually been published yet? -mjm ade it....I'll try again. Sorry if I missed it. ---------- Date: Sun, 26 Jan 92 13:01:19 CST Subject: I'm back for a while Howdy folks, long time no speak. I have decided to resubscribe to ecto for a while since it's a bit easier for me to access the net now. And I wanted to at least get caught up on all the recent developments. Here are some questions, comments: 1) What is Happy Gift Project? 2) I will not be able to make it to Philly, but since I hear you guys are *taping(!!!)* I'd like to be sure to get a copy. Anything set up for this yet? -mjm (mike mendelson) -------- this ends the retransmission ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 21:01:45 EST From: justin@crim.ca (Justin Bur) Subject: Cowboy Junkies; Anna Domino; Sugarcubes (but not Happy...) Cowboy Junkies: now out in Canada, a CD single from their new album which will be released here 7 February (says Sam the Record Man in Montreal). I have managed to forget the titles of both single and album. Next time. Anna Domino: was listening to Brave New Waves on CBC Stereo last night; a song from her 1990 album Mysteries of America was played (bother, have forgotten the title of that too - it was track 5 i think, the one written by Jesse Winchester). When Brent Bambury came on afterwards to say what he had played, he mentioned that this album has no North American distribution (it's on Les Disques du Crepuscule in Europe; her first two albums at least were released in Canada by PolyGram), and that Anna had bought 50 copies of the album herself to take them around to record companies to attempt to arouse interest. Alas, in vain. She says she doesn't write `fad music', you have to listen to it a few times to really appreciate it, and record company-types just don't have enough time. Sugarcubes: also on last night's BNW, an interview with Bjork and Siggi from Sugarcubes. They too have a new album due out soon. Bjork has a speaking voice that's almost as striking as her singing voice! They talked about what they've been doing over the past 2-1/2 years, and about their biggest hit ever in Iceland (the song they recorded for Elektra Records' Rubaiyat anniversary album), and other stuff. I think I fell asleep before the end, but I have the interview on tape. a recommendation: Messe solonelle by Jean Langlais (20th century French composer), available on Hyperion records and at least one other recording (see Schwann classical catalogue). Some parts of it are quite weird; others (especially the Gloria) are just wonderful, lovely melody all juggled around in a four-part fugue, whee. (I am becoming attached to it through repeated listening, side-effect of singing in the University of Montreal choir which is rehearsing it...) bye justin ======================================================================== Subject: change of address From: klaus@inphobos.w.open.de (Cosmic Vagabond) Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 23:01:06 GMT I've moved my mailbox. (as some have already noticed) All tests worked out fine, so it's time to announce it. In an desperate attempt to separate private from business affairs (to get more work and less e-mail done in the office :), I gave my PC at home an UUCP connection. So, which place in the big wide ectoverse did I choose? None less than Phobos! In addition to Happy, all of you now have a friend in Phobos. ;) So, please note everybody that I'm now: klaus@inphobos.w.open.de It is still a lonely place, me being the only inhabitant, but in just a few weeks Claudia will join me here (claudia@inphobos.w.open.de). And in a couple of weeks it hopefully will be crowded with Ectophiles. _____ Klaus "cosmic vagabond" Kluge - klaus@inphobos.w.open.de "I have a friend in Phobos, at times I think I'm almost there." ( Phobos - Happy Rhodes, Warpaint ) ======================================================================== Date: 30-JAN-1992 00:03:11.50 From: MTARR@eagle.wesleyan.edu Subject: Ramblings of great importance Hi! Jessica, was there ever a consensus as to what should be done when someone wants to post a REALLY long GiF or program that not everyone may have access to/ability to read/interest in? That last program did *not* make my system happy, and I'm just wondering if we could request that when stuff like that becomes available, a notification gets posted and people can order the programs personally via direct e-mail. I'm sure I'm not the only one here with ridiculously limited disk-space, and stuff like that really fries the account fast. Just out of curiosity, what does that program do? Re _Solace_: well, I got my info from this week's CMJ, which probably doesn't mean much. If it's out, it's out- I take it Dave Steiner isn't from Canada? This same CMJ placed the Sugarcubes release date at 7 February- if it's out already, I wanna know about it (more about this later :)! ======================================================================== From: woj:! >ooooo! i picked up a single of theirs a while back and liked it lots. um, >yeah, here it is: "billy blue" was the name it. light, poppy stuff that is >fun to listen to. not terribly dense or wonderful, but certainly nice. how >is this one? This didn't seem too "light"- kinda rough around the edges, but not too much. Of course, these are demos, so maybe a bit of difference is to be expected. I'll check out more of it and keep you, well, posted. :) >i remember those comparisons. i think they are a little unfounded. goes >back to a comment that someone made a while ago: when you've only got a >few popular/known female artists to compare new ones to, they all sound >like KaTe. If anyone has ever compared Melissa Etheridge to Kate Bush, please let me know so I can write off this plane of existence forever (not that I haven't already come close more than a few times). [A new album by her, as well as Tracy Chapman? Hope they're both better than the last ones, I'm psyched!] >huh. i *thought* i had that album. so i perused the records and instead i >find that i was just confused. This is a completely new phenomenon. ;> Seriously though, I'll look for the other Welsh albums in the station, especially the one with female vocals. And wait to see if Court can help me too. :) >>this is something I'd like to find out more about, >do i? Yeah, I think so. It's something you'd listen to once, say Hm, and probably never listen to again, but it'd probably pique your interest anyway. And now from Jessica: >in the cd player have been: the aforementioned solace, the mroe recent >rainbrids, many different cocteau twins, and the shawn colvin "steady >on". Has anyone mentioned that? i heard a song way back in oct i itnhk >it was.? i liked it, and dave got me the cd, and i just love it.. Which Rainbirds? Do you like it? As for Shawn Colvin, she's one of the multitude of artists whom I greatly adore, but own nothing of. Speaking of doing great Suzanne Vega impersonations, the best Suzanne Vega parody in the world (not mho, but Fact ;) is Christine Lavin's "Mysterious Woman" off _Good Thing He Can't Read My Mind_ (I think). It's hysterical- and subtle. As for the Sugarcubes, after hearing "Hit" on the radio a few more times I'm hoping it bodes well for the rest of the album. Good dance music without being annoyingly Euro-House. Einar is almost nonexistent, in itself a good sign. :) Wow, this is turning into a Vickie. For that reason I'll let my favorite-songs-from-_Ecto_ list wait until tomorrow... *---------------------------------------------* | Meredith Tarr | | *** | | "Living in the gap between past and future" | | *** | | mtarr@eagle.wesleyan.edu | *---------------------------------------------* ======================================================================== Subject: Re: Ramblings of great importance Date: Thu, 30 Jan 92 01:10:31 EST From: jeffy@lewhoosh.umd.edu Meredith sez: >[A new album by [Melissa Etheridge], as well as Tracy >Chapman? Hope they're both better than the last ones, I'm psyched!] Well, yeah, I hope the new stuff is "better than the last ones" but that doesn't mean much other than that I'm selfish and greedy. I'd rather listen to _Brave and Crazy_ and _Crossroads_ than either of these artists' eponymous albums. Granted, _Tracy Chapman_ has a nice rough edge that works incredibly well, but I don't know that any of the songs on that album have quite the impact of, say, "All That You Have is Your Soul," which I think is one of the most painfully beautiful songs ever written (despite sounding absolutely nothing like Happy Rhodes...;-) Jeff ======================================================================== Date: 29 January 1992 14:35:05 CST From: Subject: Stoff III: The Kibitzing Continues or Resumes, Depending The hottest topic in these pages the last few days--the newsgroup v. mail- ing list brouhaha--seems to have been resolved in favor of the status quo; so the points I address have probably been mooted. Be that as it may, my 2 cents. If it ain't broke, I say, why bother to fix it? I don't consider the status quo an end in itself, but I'm eminently happy with it. The biggest worries of most of us seem to fall into two categories: first, that much of the socio-emo- tional content of ecto as it stands, as distinct from its hard informational content, would be lost in a public-forum structure such as a newsgroup. I enjoy this aspect of our group as much as the rest of us, and would be disturbe d to see it put at risk. The other is that a newsgroup would be a magnet for professional flamers. This may be true to some extent; but intuitively, I don' t see us being engulfed in flame wars even if we became a newsgroup. For some reason, my sentiments on the flame issue seem to boil down to a series of epigr aphs: first, the recent observation by Carl Kadie in the comp-academic-freedom -talk mailing list: "'bad speech' should be out-competed, not outlawed." Or hidden from in a protected enclave, I would add. Second, the great words of Elmer Davis: "Don't let them scare you." Third, as Someone We All Know put it: "Words weren't made for cowards." All things considered, however, count me among those who like things the way they are, both in terms of the means of transmission, and the content of our list. The whole issue of electronic communication as a primary building block of group cohesion is an interesting one. Meredith was the first in recent weeks, I think, to expound on this; the recent discussions growing out of the list/ newsgroup thing are also an object lesson in the expansion of an electronic group's functions from instrumental to expressive, as we say in my profession. Some time within the last couple of years, the American Sociological Associa- tion Sociology of Culture Section Newsletter carried an article on some of there themes. It gave much attention to the case of a man who was somehow mistaken for a woman by those reading his postings, and succeeded in letting this fiction stick--something that seems to run counter to Meredith's argument. I'm currently trying to track the article down; when and if I do, I'll share it with you all. In a recent message to me, Court observed, "you continue to amaze me with your posts." At face value, this is a difficult statement to evaluate; I assum e it's in the same vein as similar statements made in these pages in the last few days. _In re_ the recent discussion of Karen Finley's new album: You may also be interested in the new movie, whose name I forget, featuring Annie Sprinkle, whose performance art is in somewhat the same vein as Finley's. _In re_ the reactions to my recent ramblings on somatypes, and who the mesomorphic ecto-goddess might be: I'm unclear whether people want definitions from me, or prefer to look up the terms themselves; I especially have Meredith' s response in mind. For some unknown reason, all this reminds me of my remarks a couple of months ago on the educational content of ecto; perhaps we can add vocabulary development to the list of functions. It also reminds me of a forme r running shtick on the Arsenio Hll show, in which the keyboardist would banter with Arsenio regarding the particular $10 word being spotlighted that day. (As I write this, by weird coincidence, _Fresh Air_ on NPR has just announced t hat they'll do a segment on "50 Years of New Words" later in today's show.) At this juncture, I will digress to pay tribute to the memory of Willie Dixon, whose death has just been announced on the NPR newscast. Kiri's new .sig is indeed imaginative, though the cat abstractions might require some pondering on the part of those not already familiar with her devotion to the species. The earlier compliment paid to her graphics made me think of something that was once posted in the art room back in high school. It was a pen and ink drawing done by another student of a very happy cat, smiling from ear to ear as it stood in front of a wall, its tail ending in an electrical plug which was plugged into an outlet in the wall. (Try doing this kind of self-disclosure in a newsgroup :-). ) I don't think I'd be spilling any beans by stating that I enjoyed reading the post on the making of the SiG tape, and hope that the stuff that didn't make it into the final mix will eventually make it into subsequent ones. The discourse on some of the technical exigencies gave me a better understanding of the motives behind Vickie's recent inquiry to me on the sound of our recent audio _festschrift_ (ah, vocabulary development!), the HGP tapes. The fact is, it sounded wonderful to me, at least. The quality of the source recordings is always a limiting case, and some of the components reflect this. I must re- gretfully retract my earlier words of reassurance to Martin; on a more care- ful listening, there is a layer of white noise over your introduction. On the other hand, other people's introductions had similar problems. Factors could include the strength of the power source (batteries or house current), the proximity of the mike to the recorder motor, the condition of the tape, and similar exigencies. But even a cheap machine should be capable of producing a clear recording; I suggest getting the opinion of a "qualified service technician," as they are sometimes called here. (The same goes for others with the same problem.) In the alternate, you could self-administer a few oilcans of Foster's Lager (to yourself, not to the recorder :-)), and the quality of the recording won't matter as much in the short run. My earlier high school memory has further evoked another. In the fall of my senior year, the Four Tops' original version of "I'm In A Different World" was on the charts; by the end of the year, Mary Hopkin's original version of "Goodbye" was. The covers of both on the HGP are interestingly different from the originals. Ain't coincidences grand? I wonder if this retreat into memor- ies of my adolescence is linked to my impending entry into middle age (in another 5/12 months!). I hve just this minute gotten a bounce from MIT for my DON'T KNOW response to Angelos' snow poll. Consider me on the record anyway. I think there are chemicals that can, when burned, give off a nice blue color (any chem experts here who know what they are? Could use a little help here). Thus, Doug's notion of a blue Ecto yule log could actually be workable. I also know of a place that sells high-quality tape in bulk for very nice price s; if Doug is curious about this regarding his dub service idea, he should feel free to email me for more details. That's all until next time. Mitch Pravatiner ______________________ "When the skies above are gray/You can face the world today/If you'll only learn to say/ ----OHHH" --Flanders and Swann, "A Happy Song" "Mitchell, you're weird." --Wayne Brasler, on numerous occasions from circa 1967 to 1969 "I am a legend in my own mind...pooh on you." --Someone We All Know ======================================================================== To join ecto, please send electronic mail to the following address: ecto-request@athos.rutgers.edu To have your thoughts included in the next issue, send mail to: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is a README file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me (or leave in the incoming directory, just let me know) things you'd like to have added. To subscribe to "Ecto", the printed fanzine, send $8 to: Ecto PO Box 11291 New Brunswick, NJ 08906 Ecto is issued 8 times/year, and will include photos and as much material from non-net members as we can get! Donations above the subscription cost are welcomed - all money goes to bringing you better issues! I've been told I'm too far from humble to even have it in quotes, so, just "your moderator" -- jessica (jessica@athos.rutgers.edu)