Errors-To: ecto-owner@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 #1042 ecto, Number 1042 Sunday, 13 March 1994 Today's Topics: *-----------------* On Diamanda and Trent About DepthGauge/EctoWare Re: Happy Rhodes (Marc Vigod's offer) Re: mailing Re: Sarah M. videos Re: Cast a big weighty YES vote for rec.music.rem Re: Cast a big weighty Alternative music downloads? (fwd) Hmph, Sarah tickets DID go on sale... Re: Hmph, Sarah tickets DID go on sale... Re: Talked to Susanne... Today's your birthday friend.... ======================================================================== Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 23:07:00 PST From: kyrlidis@templeton.cchem.berkeley.edu (Angelos Kyrlidis) Subject: On Diamanda and Trent Hi, well, with a Diamanda Galas and a NIN thread going on, it's getting gloomy here, but since I like both of them a LOT I will feed the fire and make a few random comments: Alex writes: >This description sounds like a pretty good description of Trent's >_Pretty Hate Machine_ (1989) to me. [...] How does _The Downward Spiral_ >compare to _Pretty Hate Machine_? TDS is not PHM. It is IMHO a much better album. It is a lot noisier and thrashier at points and a lot mellower in others. It's hard to describe. It even brings Einstuerzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle to mind at times (especially 'Eraser', 'Reptile' and the noise in 'Hurt', which by the way also made me ready to start crying for no apparent reason after I had TDS and Hurt on repeat mode for one hour yesterday, something that not even Happy Rhodes or anyone else has managed to achieve so far!). Take for example 'TDS', the title track. It is probably the one song that manages to create a sonic ambience that really shakes me. It almost sounds like the soundtrack to a funeral from the point of view of the person being buried. There is a buzzing sound in the intro, which made me think of flies, and an acoustic guitar hovering on top, then it builds up to a crescendo of muffled guitars and drums and screams over which the 'fuzzy blue' lyrics are read in a way that they don't sound like words but like thoughts. Incredibly powerful music. And yes, it is angry. I think it is Trent Reznor's greatest musical achievement to date. 'A warm place' is also brilliant, but after reading a post on alt.music.nin I went back and listened to Bowie's 'Crystal Japan' and it is indeed practically a carbon copy of that instrumental, which is unfortunate :( Anybody who feels uncomfortable about anti-religious messages should not even bother listening to it. The appropriately named track 'Heresy' is a very angry anti-God diatribe. Which leads me into my second topic, which is Diamanda. My recommendation is to check out her trilogy 'The mask of the Red Death'. It comprises of three parts on 2 CDs. Part 1, 'The Divine Punishment' borrows from the Old testament. Part 2, 'Saint of the Pit' borrows from 19th century French poetry, and Part 3, 'You must be certain of the devil' borrows from more modern 'tele-evangelist' religious themes. The first two are very powerful and experimental, while the third is more accessible. I think they stand very well together, plus the packaging is very informative (all original liner notes are there intact, and a nice piece explaining the origins of each part is included). Again, don't blame me if you cannot stand this. Alex also says about PHM: >It no longer fits how I feel but I now see >that even more of it than I thought well expresses how I felt inside >then (although not all of it fits). However, after a while it was no >longer good for me; being stuck that way is hell. and then: >The new point is that it is a highly emotional album about very dark >things that are a part of being human at times, and as such it is >great. Which brings me to my third point. Many people have problems with dark, angry, and depressing music. They feel like it can drag you down and make you depressed. My entire family thinks I should not be listening to what I do, because it's unhealthy... I don't agree. I take the observer approach, and listen to music, like I would watch a play. I am moved by it, but I don't let it overcome me or be me. And TDS and Diamanda are both similar to ancient greek tragedies in the force of their emotional impact. And nobody blames Aeschylus for being gloomy! :-) And on a happier note, here are some anecdotes about people dealing with computers that a friend sent me: > > At AST, another customer dutifully complied with a technician's request > > that she send in a copy of a defective floppy disk. A letter from the > > customer arrived a few days later, along with a Xerox copy of the floppy. > > And at Dell, a technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy > > back in the drive and "close the door." Asking the technician to "hold on," > > the customer put the phone down and was heard walking over to shut the > > door to his room. The technician meant the door to his floppy drive. > > > > The software inside the computer can be equally befuddling. A Dell > > customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. > > After 40 minutes of troubleshooting, the technician discovered the man > > was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor > > screen and hitting the "send" key. :) Angelos "beneath the stain of time the feelings disappear you are someone else, i am still right here" - NIN 'Hurt' ======================================================================== Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 18:12:52 EST From: WretchAwry Subject: About DepthGauge/EctoWare For those of you who are curious...wondering what prompted that letter wrt "DepthGauge" - here is the original Press Release for it. Someone asked about it a long time ago and I finally found this to post. By the time I did find it, it was so far past when someone asked about it that I figured everyone had forgotten about it anyway. Mr. Promoter's letter brings it all up to date again, so now I have an excuse to post this :-). Note the date on this press release...obviously, a lot of the information about Happy is out-of-date, including her address. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 22 Oct 91 16:50:57 U From: "Tom Johnson" Subject: EctoWare Press Release EctoWare Press Release MOVED OVER ECTO AT 4:34 PM, PDT, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1991. Contacts: Thomas A. Johnson tj@cs.ucla.edu Daniel A. Segel daniels@xstor.com DepthGauge 2.5.3 Unveiled Today. New Version of Popular Pixel-Depth Switching Utility goes EctoWare. Menlo Park, California; Los Angeles, California--October 22, 1991--The highly awaited upgrade to DepthGauge, the popular depth-switching utility for the Apple Macintosh was released today to an enthusiastic response. Bored with the rather stagnant shareware market, the authors decided to attempt to create a brand new software category: "EctoWare". Both authors are devoted fans of a singer-songwriter from Albany, New York named Happy Rhodes. The talented Ms. Rhodes has five albums available on the independent Aural Gratification label. Where ShareWare authors ask users of their software for a payment directly to them in cash (or some other commodity) the authors of DepthGauge are asking users to purchase a copy of one of Ms. Rhodes' albums for themselves. "Our goal is to increase the base of Happy Rhodes fans, worldwide", said Tom Johnson, one of the two talented programmers who created DepthGauge. "She has an incredible voice, and writes truly beautiful songs, but since she doesn't fall into any easily recognizable category of music, she hasn't yet attracted the attention of the major record labels". "DepthGauge is a quality product which has attracted many imitators," added Daniel Segel. "We feel we not only have the best product available, but that we offer the most for your money. Where else do you get a useful piece of software and a compact disc for only $15.99? Even if you don't use DepthGauge, you should purchase a Happy Rhodes album, and treat yourself to some beautiful music". DepthGauge Advantages In addition to this unique payment system, DepthGauge has many advantages over the many imitators it has spawned. Many of it's competitors suffer from memory loss: every time they are used they waste a small amount of the system memory. Use one of them enough times, and the Macintosh will crash. DepthGauge offers better compatibility with various third-party video hardware, and offers a visual pixel-depth indicator in the menu bar. System Requirements DepthGauge requires Color QuickDraw and System 6.0.5 or later. It is fully System 7.0 compatible. Balloon help, 32 bit addressing, and virtual memory are supported. Pricing and Ordering Information Interested parties may fulfill their payment obligation by writing directly to Aural Gratification at the following address: Happy Rhodes EctoWare Payment c/o Aural Gratification P.O. Box 8658 Academy Station Albany, NY 12208 The first four albums ("Rhodes Vol 1", "Rhodes Vol 2", "Rearmament", "Ecto") are only available on cassette. "Warpaint", her latest stunning release, is available on both cassette and compact disc. The CD is $13.99 and the tapes are $9.99 each. Postage for the CD is $2.00, postage for one tape is $1.50, and $0.35 for each additional tape. New York state residents must include the appropriate sales tax. Checks should be made out to "Aural Gratification". Neither Segel nor Johnson receive any financial considerations from the sale of Happy Rhodes cassettes and compact discs, they claim to be purely interested in the creation of Happy Rhodes fans everywhere. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, AppleTalk, and LocalTalk are registered trademarks or Apple Computer, Inc. DepthGauge Copyright 1990-1991 by Daniel A. Segel & Thomas A. Johnson. All Rights Reserved Complimentary copies of DepthGauge are available to members of the "ecto" mailing list. Please contact the authors for details. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- da v ======================================================================== Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 00:36:56 +1200 From: Philip Sainty Subject: Re: Happy Rhodes (Marc Vigod's offer) wrt feeling nervous about this offer, I see no need to be simply because it is not up to any of us whether anything comes of it or not... It seems the offer is sincere, but whether it is a desirable thing for Happy or not is a decision for Happy to make... The term "most marketable top four songs" doesn't bother me so much as the combining of it with "best" :) (although I no longer have much idea what is 'popular' in music as I rarely listen to the radio (and I never feel compelled to listen for long when I do (which I suppose is a fair answer in itself...))) At any rate, I imagine that if Happy hasn't yet recieved a copy of this offer, one is at least on its way... :) Philip ________________________________________ _______ | __ _ ___ _ __ __ |\________/| | | / / | / \ | \ | | | | / | _ _ | _O_ | | \_ | | | | |__/ |__| | | \_ | / \/ \ | |/ | | / | | | | | | | | | / | \ / | |\ | | \__ \_ | \_/ | | | | |__ \__ | \ / | T W W | |________________________________________| \/ |_______| \ sainty_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz \________/ / `-------------------------------------------------------' ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 16:36:00 +0100 From: uli@zoodle.robin.de (Ulrich Grepel) Subject: Re: mailing Alex asks about the Happy newsletter: > Are they already unavailable? It didn't make it off my to do list yet. > (list? You mean scraps of papers...) I'd like to know too. I more or less immediately sent out $10 (five years subscription, $2 would have been less than the postage for me) to Happy after she announced the thing in the last newsletter. I still haven't received anything. Three possibilities: - Happy didn't get my money. Well, bad luck and it'd be the first time - I just haven't received the letter yet (surface mail perhaps?) - I won't get a letter because there aren't enough letters printed. I still hope for the second one, but nevertheless I'd like to have the letter transcribed & posted someday. Bye, Uli -- Ossi zum Wessi: Wir sind ein Volk! - Wessi zum Ossi: Wir auch! ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 11:20:00 +0100 From: uli@zoodle.robin.de (Ulrich Grepel) Subject: Re: Sarah M. videos > Does anyone know if Sarah McLachlan has a video compilation or something? I > called a few places but none of them had her on their list of available > titles. I asked Nettwerk, and they do not (yet) have a video compilation. But they said they are looking at one later this year (prob. NTSC only). Ciao, Uli -- Ossi zum Wessi: Wir sind ein Volk! - Wessi zum Ossi: Wir auch! ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 11:34:00 +0100 From: uli@zoodle.robin.de (Ulrich Grepel) Subject: Re: Cast a big weighty YES vote for rec.music.rem [sorry about the delay, but I goofed with the address] Hiya, phew! I didn't imagine that strong reactions about that simple a request ;-)... Well, to sum it up: 1. As Emily already said Larry was wrong with me putting words into a certain guy's mouth. I cannot quote the exact article (expired...), but basically he said that he is against all newsgroups devoted to a single artist because in two years noone might know anything about the artist. Only rec.music.beatles and rec.music.gdead should exist. He was even proud to be against rec.music.celtic which most certainly is NOT devoted to a single artist. He even said that his own and personal problems with one of the R.E.M. band members (he said that ca. 10 years ago he was almost run down by one of them with a car) deserve to be a reason against rec.music.rem. Well, go figure - we have someone whom we certainly do not want on our lists. 2. Campaining: A lot of us are reading & posting in alt.music.alternative. Me too. There are even quite a few Tori articles recently. a.m.a was the first or second most frequented group (# of articles) in the last two or four weeks or so. It gets more and more difficult to read it. The standard answer of usenet in such a case is to divide the group into subgroups. IMHO a.m.a is in the alt.* hierarchy only for historical reasons, it would most certainly pass any vote for a rec.music.alternative change (together with a two-fold increase in article volume of course...). Now how do you introduce subgroups here? Musical categories? Well, it's alredy alt.music.ALTERNATIVE. The most obvious way seems to create groups for single artists/bands, at least for those artists that get a lot of talking. R.E.M. does certainly, so creating rec.music.rem might pull a bit of traffic from a.m.alternative, which would be a very good thing. People interested in R.E.M. could read the new group, people not interested do not any longer need to skip them in a.m.alternative. They do not even have to download it if they do not really want to. Following this thread of thoughts I consider further rec.music.* subgroups a very worthwile thing. Not only for those interested in the artist/group the newsgroup is planned, but also for all readers of the current unspecialized *.music.* newsgroups (rec.music.misc is less volume but otherwise worse). And I think we have quite a lot of them on all three: rdt, gaffa and ecto. Rdt might (that's not yet decided) face similar problems as the r.m.rem soon, so rdt readers (or those rdt readers who are PRO rec.music.rdt) should have a vital interest in a working method of creating rec.music.* groups. Ecto readers can often be found on a.m.alternative. So I thought they might be interested too. Gaffa readers should be interested, since in the WORST case their newsgroup might be voted out of existence (unthinkable, but possible). And I don't dare to think what uunet would say about a sudden increment of love-hounds subscribers to a number of 33000 (estimated readership, remember?). IMHO that would even kill the digest mode... 3. Newsgroups are more flamy than mailing lists. Well, that's true for unmoderated newsgroups. That's also true for gaffa, despite being 'moderated'. But if I look back at the 2 years I do know gaffa now, every single flamewar was started by long-time love-hounds. So there aren't very many outsiders flaming mindlessly around. I haven't seen it. Prove me to be wrong. Remember Chris<->Jorn, both would certainly (have )be(en) on love-hounds if rec.music.gaffa didn't exist. Just give me one counterexample. On the other hand, if the moderation is done just a bit more restrictive this might hold of the casual flamer. How to do? Well, it would be possible to have a list of people who are 'subscribed' to a moderated newsgroup. Each mail from these people would go through the moderation gateway unverified. All others would (depending on volume) either be automatically rejected with a friendly message, or would go through the standard way of moderated newsgroups, that is, the moderator will/will not approve them. That way the only difference to a mailing list is the way of distribution, and the fact that it will certainly be read by more people. (Hey, I know someone who 'just waits' on these mailing lists to become newsgroups, so that he can read them without any hassle. He IS interested, but not THAT strongly, but certainly not of the willingly flaming kind.) BTW: There won't be ANY 'unsubscribe' messages any more... 4. Resources: Ok, a mailing list needs less resources than a newsgroup. And the resources needed by a mailing list are basically local to one site. Granted. But looking at the complete history of rec.music.gaffa for example - the whole traffic that is in the archives comes along full feeds every single day, and it needs even less than 24 hours. So a mailing list isn't really much. a.m.alternative is, of course, something else. But any given artist devoted newsgroup (except r.m.gdead right now) would be nothing compared to all the rest. Even putting all mailing lists (even non musical ones) into newsgroup would probably just double the traffic on usenet. That's something that happens every 12 or so months anyway. So the volume addition of one mailing list is probably less than the volume addition of one day. And not all sites need to carry a newsgroup. If someone doesn't get the group and cannot change that, noone says the mailing list shouldn't continue existing. But then it might be possible to do it bounce-mail again. (And I hate digests...) 5. rdt != ecto - of course rdt is not ecto. But as I tried to explain above there are reasons for both groups of people to be for various rec.music.* newsgroups. 6. Mailing lists are more private than newsgroups. I think that is the more important reason against newsgroups, not that they are less flamey. The flames could be moderated away (or might be, is there a test case which works in the way I proposed?), but nevertheless the audience of a newsgroup is bigger and therefore less private. But what do you want to do? If your mailing list approaches 1000 members (which the R.E.M. list got quite close to), then it is not very private either. Do you want to expell half of the readership? Do you want to have a queue of people waiting to be allowed to participate in a mailing list? Only way of joining is to find someone unsubscribing? I most certainly don't want to. But to keep the privacy it seems neccessary. This conflict is unsolvable. And if Happy gets what she deserves (to be a world famous artist as successfull as Tori or Kate for example), Ecto would explode too. How do you want to keep the privacy? Or do you want Happy to be unsuccessful? One of the reasons for gaffa, and lately also rdt, to have more heated discussions, is the success of Kate and Tori. You cannot (and probably do not want to) change that dramatically, do you? 7. Meth, the only way to stop rdt to become a flame feast as gaffa would be to restrict the number of members. Rdt's problem lately was exactly that we got too many members (multiplied by articles) to cope with. Just wait a bit for the next controversal topic (remember the bootlegs?) on rdt. Flamewar, here you are. On the other hand - yes, there are several thousand newsgroups. But with about 6000 articles (quickly increasing number) per week in alt.music.alternative it is more than neccessary to chop some pieces off alt.music.alternative, and rec.music.rem is one of the bigger pieces. Even rdt would remove about 30 messages from these 6000. So I don't think there ever will really be enough newsgroups, at least not as long as the internet and usenet is growing exponentially. Sorry that this got so long, but I had to clarify my POVs. Please reconsider your voting pro/con rec.music.rem. I don't know when the voting period ends, but anyhow. Ciao, Uli -- Ossi zum Wessi: Wir sind ein Volk! - Wessi zum Ossi: Wir auch! ======================================================================== Date: Sat, 12 Mar 94 21:01:06 EST From: WretchAwry Subject: Re: Cast a big weighty Please, *PLEASE* keep this discussion out of Ecto! Newsgroup Yes/No discussions can turn into massive flame wars faster than nearly any other general subject I can think of. It does not belong here, it belongs in news.groups. The same things can be said over and over again and all it does is provide a forum for sarcastic witticisms and nasty name-calling. I've seen it happen elsewhere *far* too often. I asking, nicely, to please go to news.groups or e-mail with this subject. Before it gets out-of-hand. Vickie ======================================================================== From: mbravo@tctube.spb.su (Michael E. Bravo) Subject: Alternative music downloads? (fwd) Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 14:17:37 +0300 (MSD) Maybe this is interesting for someone out there :) P.S. If you want to say something for me, cc it here - I read ecto twice a month in megabyte chunks... Forwarded message: > >From: jem@sunSITE.unc.edu (Jonathan Magid) > >Newsgroups: alt.internet.services > >Subject: Re: Alternative music downloads? > >Date: 11 Mar 1994 21:28:43 GMT > >Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill > In article <2lo5pm$l9p@pipeline.com>, JJ Fai wrote: > >CNN ran a report last night about an Internet service that > >allows us to download alternative music / new bands. > > > >How can we reach it? > That would be the Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA)- > Reach it, > by ftp > by gopher > by WWW > cheers, > jem. > -- > jem@sunsite.unc.edu\/SunSITE admin -- Michael E. Bravo AKA /\/\ike 7 812 231 3951 (home) The Communication Tube and Tusovka, Inc. mbravo@tctube.spb.su ======================================================================== From: kmorrey@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Kathleen Morrey) Subject: Hmph, Sarah tickets DID go on sale... Date: Sat, 5 Mar 1994 13:06:06 -0600 (CST) So after all, Valerie and I had to make another trek to the Vic this morning. Fortunately, we ran into the keeper-of-my-car walking down the sidewalk on our way to the El, so we got a ride instead of having to shell out another $3.00 (goodness!) for the public transportation ride. And even though traffic was awful, I think we still made better time. -Kath, who is much happier now that she has Sarah tickets in hand, and the returned messages have trickled down to a total of 98... ======================================================================== From: rjk1@cs.wustl.edu (Bob Kollmeyer) Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 09:28:42 -0600 Subject: Re: Hmph, Sarah tickets DID go on sale... > -Kath, who is much happier now that she has Sarah tickets in hand, > and the returned messages have trickled down to a total of 98... Hmm. Tickets for her St. Louis also went on sale Saturday. From the last tour schedule I saw here, tickets were scheduled to go on sale April 2. Just a fortunate twist of fate that I found out about them going on sale yesterday. bob, who is much happier now that tickets for 4th row center are being mailed to him 8) (though still a bit bitter about not being able to get Chicago Tori tix because he couldn't make it through until 3 whole minutes after they went on sale |( ). ======================================================================== Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 19:47:16 +0300 From: apg@demos.su (Paul Antonov) Subject: Re: Talked to Susanne... In message Robert Lovejoy writes: > If any of you speak Russian, please Email me! (Mike Bravo, are >you still out there? Paul?) Happy needs a lyric translated from >English to Russian... Yes I'm still here and can try to translate lyrics to Russian although it's not easy. So, how soon it needs to be finished and, most interesting, WHY Happy needs it? :) -- Paul ======================================================================== From: klaus@inphobos.wupper.de Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 09:14:11 Subject: Today's your birthday friend.... i*i*i*i*i*i *************** ***HAPPY******* ********BIRTHDAY*** ******************* **** kIrI Hargie ****** *********************** -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- kIrI Hargie Fri March 13 1970 Pisces Randall K. Smith Sat March 15 1969 Pisces Tod Flak Tue March 15 1966 Pisces Alan Sodoma Thu March 18 1965 LuckyLurker Barry Wong Thu March 19 1970 Merlin Graham Dombkins Fri March 19 1965 Pisces Ian Young Wed March 19 1969 Falling Rocks Jeff Wasilko Wed March 19 1969 Pisces Geoff Carre Sat March 20 1954 Pisces Bob Brown Thu March 22 1951 Ham Valerie Nozick Thu March 25 1971 Aries Marc Power Sun March 30 1958 The Project Jennifer Albert Wed March 30 1966 Aries (w/Cancer rising!:) Warpaint Mon April 1 1991 Brilliant! Shorty Tue April 1 1980 happy cat Michael E. Bravo Mon April 5 1971 Dandelion Wine David Dixon Tue April 7 1970 Aries Klaus Kluge Sun April 10 1960 Unicorn Steve VanDevender Sun April 10 1966 Racer Art Liestman Fri April 10 1953 Repeat Michael Bowman Wed April 11 1962 Aries -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- _____ Klaus Kluge * klaus@inphobos.wupper.de * I'll be here, I'll be (in) Ecto! ======================================================================== 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)