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 #817 ecto, Number 817 Thursday, 21 October 1993 Today's Topics: *-----------------* perfection disappear fear shiela chandra/statistics/baseball/emotions/etc. Sandy Denny Julia Fordham Put up a wandering Ecto-waif for Christmas! Coming to Chicago?? Ein Klaus wie kein andere ======================================================================== Subject: perfection Date: Wed, 20 Oct 93 23:05:12 -0400 From: jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu >Hi, > >welcome to > >BRNI'S TOTALLY OBJECTIVE YET WOEFULLY INCOMPLETE >COMPILATION OF NIGH-PERFECT SONGS Most interesting. I've heard surprisingly few of them. >"Troy" -- Sinead O'Connor Yup. >"The Ninth Wave" -- Kate Bush Sneaky. And mostly true. But every now and then "The Morning Fog" doesn't sit with me quite right. I'd settle for just "Jig of Life" or maybe "Under Ice". >"Precious Things" -- Tori Amos Maybe. But "Mother" is slightly more perfect. Okay. My turn. "Army Dreamers" by KaTe has to head off the list because it is *the* perfect song. Everything else just tries to be as perfect. Tries. "Words Weren't Made for Cowards" "Possessed" "Touch" "Mercy" -- Sarah McLachlan (the idea that anybody could find "Touch" pointless is astounding to me) "Dewy Fields" --Bel Canto "Family Snapshot" "Mercy Street" -- Peter Gabriel ---------- It's much harder for an album to verge on perfect, but here are a few: _Hounds of Love_ -- KaTe _Graceland_ -- Paul Simon _Animals_ -- Pink Floyd An honorable mention goes to Genesis' _Duke_ which might be truly perfect if it weren't for "Turn It On Again," a song I absolutely loathe. Jeff (banging his head to the new Pearl Jam album and lovin' it) ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 Oct 93 20:16:14 PDT From: Neal R. Copperman Subject: disappear fear Best wishes to all car accident victems, and hope you start feeling better too Jessica. While I'd hate to see a spate of car accident stories, much too depressing no matter how humorously written, I just had to make one comment. When I was hit by a truck (not at a light, but stopped on the road), and knocked into oncoming traffic, the guy came up to me and said "Why didn`t you go that way?" Is there a class or something these guys take that teaches them to transfer the blame to you after they have smashed into you? I would like to see there written drivers tests. Ilkeeeeeeeeeee - I've caught up on my mail and don't need any more Police box set info. disappear fear, briefly mentioned somewhere, is a wonderful band from Maryland. I'd call them more akin to the Indigo Girls than my brief Story listen, but maybe I'll revamp my opinion after Friday's Story show. I have heard complaints about the sound quality of their Live at the BOttom line CD, but I still recommend it, and they are not to be missed live - usually dirt cheap and fantastic. I had that with Ecto in the car for my Arizona trip. I was wondering about the sound quality. It never bothered me, since I have all the songs in my head from live shows, and the disc is just a reminder. In fact, I can't even objectively think about the disc, because I must have heard all the songs live dozens of times before they recorded them. Thanks for the Sheila Chandra interview Vickie. I think I need to run out and buy a disc right now. Neal ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 21 Oct 93 00:16:22 EDT From: mojzes@monet.rutgers.edu (brni) Subject: shiela chandra/statistics/baseball/emotions/etc. hi all, i just realized something terrible has happened. i didn't have the time or braincells to read the shiela chandra interview the other day, and the lack of braincells also caused me not to save it for later perusal before i deleted all the mail i'd gone thru. :( vickie, if you get a chance, could you send me another copy of the interview? thanks. :) thanks to all those who have given responses to the "nigh-perfect song" list. i'll be incorporating your suggestions into the list. any further suggestions are more than welcome. begin klaus... ------------------------ >Joe Zitt theorizes, later confirmed by MJM: > >>Uh... "kvell" as far as I know, means sort of to be extremely proud >>of happy. Is that correct here? > well, of COURSE we're proud of happy! :) >WRT Drewcifer's ruminations on time: If WFMT is on the cable where you are, >keep listening to _The Midnight Special_ to see when they next play Henry >Morgan's monolog on how time was invented. You have to be there; it's hard >to describe secondhand. > i don't know if its my mood today, but right now my favorite characterization of time can be found in the opening few lines of david bowie's "rock n roll suicide." >In pondering what local politicians with good musical taste could bet for >the World Series, I am forced to conclude that the American side comes up >short. The mayor of Toronto could bet _When I Was A Boy_, but I can't think >of what the mayor of Philadelphia could counter with, unless Rhino has come >out with a Fabian compilation by now :-). > i heard on kyw news radio the other day that the philadelphia and chicago zoos have made bets on the games as well. seems that they are betting animals (i don't remember which ones, though). strangely enough, the animals that have been bet do not exist, but will be sent to the winner's zoo as soon a they are born... > Mitch > -------------------------- > >Aside to brni: **warm fuzziness** My mom was in a car accident this >summer, too, and the whole thing had that surrealistic air you described. >Nothing like calling a hospital and having someone tell you that they >haven't _lost_ your mother, exactly, they just weren't precisely sure >where she'd gotten off to... > ACK! that's terrible (but understandable, i suppose, given the general confusion that seems to prevail at hospitals). *hugs* to both you and your mother. >Oh, yeah, and yesterday I bought something called _Rearmament_. As soon >as I'm up to walking across my own emotional landscape, let alone >someone else's, I'll give it a listen. > i actually found myself writing about this to another net friend (from VAL-L, which i mentioned before) just earlier today. i think that when we find ourselves face to face with someone else's innards or "emotional landscape" as you put it (much more poetic, i think), or "baggage," as he had put it, we do one of two things. we turn it off, or we pay attention and find ourselves reflected in it, and by understanding what the other person is saying about themselves, we can come to better understand both them and the world in general, or and also, very importantly, come to better understand ourselves. i think that it is precisely because happy's music *does* reflect what goes on within her (and not some abstract, corporate notion of what people have inside them) that we can find it actually reflecting what is going on in ourselves. that, i think, is why happy's music resonates with ecto-type people, more than just her voice, or the instrumentation, or the composition, or production, or whatever. >Aeren > brni, who has wasted all day on the damn 'pooter when he should have been studying statistics (blech!--no wonder i feel nauseous today). ps. i figured out what it is about statistics that bothers me. the other day my teacher said "everything, every event can be converted to a number, to a random variable. and then we can manipulate it." this, i think, is a truly terrifying notion. ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1993 21:17:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Neile Graham Subject: Sandy Denny > "Gary Nichols" sez: > >I have been watching with interest all of the discussions about Sandy Denny, > >and I can't help but ask: "How did she die?" Then woj wojez: > "was she pushed or did she fall?" No, no, woj, it's "did she jump or was she pushed?" * The truth is that she fell down stairs at a friend's house. SNo foul play or drugs suspected, just a horrible accident. She left a two-year-old daughter and a husband, Trevor Lucas, who also is now dead, and a lot of wonderful music. * quoting a line from a song by Richard Thompson (a friend and wonderful guitarist, also a member of Fairport Convention) from the Richard and Linda Thompson album, _Shoot Out The Lights_, which according to RT himself has nothing to do with Sandy's death, but people have been speculating about it nevertheless. [Has everyone got the latest version of Neilespeak for a translation of this note?] --Neile neile@u.washington.edu ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 Oct 93 23:24:13 CDT From: Sammy Tao Subject: Julia Fordham >But why do you say "three-and-a-half albums? I have a promo copy that has 1. Genius (edit) [no Spanish] 2. For You Only For You 3. Cocooned 4. Your Lovely Face 5. Did I Happen to Mention 6. China Blue This is a maroon cardboard package, that Jerry's Records in Pittsburgh had quite a few of ~1-2 years back. -Sammy -- shTao@MMM.com | "A 3M Hardgoods and Electronics Support Division | straight (612)737-1111 (voice) / (612)737-3213 (FAX) | mentirosa" ======================================================================== Subject: Put up a wandering Ecto-waif for Christmas! From: Tim Breitkreutz Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1993 23:42:49 -0600 Hi everyone. In the next couple days I have to make travel arrangements which include Christmas somewhere in Europe. I will be in Malaysia for a wedding on December 4, and starting a job in Iceland at New Years. If there is anyone in the UK, Ireland, or northwest continental Europe who would be willing to let me hang around during the holiday season, I'd greatly appreciate it. I don't require much attention, if you set me off in a good direction I can wander without supervision for hours or days :) :) I don't have a copy of the Ecto-hostel list either, so if anyone has a spare copy I'd appreciate getting one of those too. And once I'm in Iceland, you're more than welcome to visit me there! I'm pretty sure I can get email access there. Thanks in advance, you wonderful people! And I regret to say I won't be able to visit any of you eastern Ectophiles on the way over there, since I'm heading around the other way--so it will have to wait until I come back, probably next summer or fall. Tim ======================================================================== Date: Thu, 21 Oct 93 2:14:11 EDT From: WretchAwry Subject: Coming to Chicago?? Hi, since brain-damage is my forte, I'm trying to remember who just posted recently about coming to Chicago. I know someone did, and it was someone I meant to write, but forgot, but not on purpose. This is someone who isn't Jeff.......it's not a lot of people I do know about since I've been trying to keep everybody straight and realized I was missing someone....... Here are thhe people I remember, who are coming to Chicago: (I don't remember exact dates off the top of my head, so i won't be specific with everybody) Jeffy - soon, end of next week(?) John Sandoval - 2nd(?) week of November Valerie - this weekend Who else? I'm forgetting and it worries me....... I space so many things out, and I hate it when I do that because it's a terrible thing, to space off e-mail, to space off things I want to respond to, to space off saying hi to newcomers (HI!!), and such like. More terrible, to space off someone who's coming to Chicago. Who, other than Jeffy, John & Valerie, is coming to Chicago? Please know that I didn't space you off on purpose, it just sometimes takes time for something to click in my brain....that "oh NO! I forgot to...." feeling came over me today and it was <"....respond to that person who's coming to Chicago!"> Forgive me, for I know not what I forget. :-) Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1993 23:34:31 -0400 (EDT) From: Suspended In Duct Tape Subject: Ein Klaus wie kein andere Hi! Gad, it's been a while since I've had a chance to sit down and actually take care of all my e-mail. From 2-9 October I was visiting my sister in Tucson, Arizona, for my first time further west than Binghamton, NY. Those of you who live in/have lived in and/or visited Tucson will surely agree when I go on about how beautiful it is out there. My sister lives on East Tanque Verde, which is right in the foothills of the Catalinas. (The view from her dumpster is superb! :) My trip was generally uneventful, since I was on vacation and just wanted to hang out with the cats and sleep. I did get to see a few episodes of MST3K, since the Tucson cable system carries Comedy Central as one of its basic channels, yay! I visited the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, which is a desert habitat with exhibits of the full range of Arizona desert wildlife, which in itself covers pretty much the full range of everything. Drive 20 minutes up into the mountains and all of a sudden you find yourself in pine forest- go up another few minutes, and you're in genuine tundra region. Truly bizarre. For those of you who have been berating me for going out to Tucson and not letting you know beforehand, I really did intend to publicize my impending visit a bit more before I left, but circumstances prevented me from either getting on line in the days before I left or logging on when I was there. Sorry- I'll be back, that's for sure, and we can have an ecto gathering then! My sister came with me back East and just left yesterday, so I'm just now starting to get my life back in order. So now, ein Klaus like you've never seen one before! Hey Martin, how's the German measles doing? (Or, better put, how are *you* doing?) I understand your dilemma with the amount of digests well! Chris Sampson reported: }Add my name to the list of DJs on EcTo....had my first show on }Wednesday, 9/28....at, uh.....0200 hours.....Played a wide }variety of stuff, including, of course, HR (He Will Come/The }Flight, S.O.S., No One Home, (I was feeling moody ca. 4:00AM)) Hey, that's great! Which station are you on, and can I pick it up in New Haven? Have you been on the air again since then? Looking back at Vickie's long-ago post about interesting and just plan weird musical promotional items, I was reminded of the cutest promo item I ever saw- an inflatable dirigible with the words LED ZEPPELIN on it, hanging from the ceiling of a collector I met in Germany. (He also has the screen that was used to print the marble versions of Hounds of Love, and the "00" Hounds of Love football jersey, lucky sod. He doesn't care a jot about Kate but for her market value- for 500 pounds each, those items can be yours! :P) John Relph opined: }Oddly enough, I prefer the German versions of the two albums, }Peter Gabriel III ("melt") and Peter Gabriel IV ("security"). }That's probably because I don't understand German. I think I }must have been overexposed to the English versions, and the }German gives a new twist to the original idea. The mixes are }different, sometimes longer, sometimes with different backing }vocals. An entirely different experience. I agree, and I can understand the lyrics! The changes he had to make in the lyrics are quite interesting in themselves, without the changes he made to the music and mixes as well. He really went and almost re-recorded these albums from scratch! "Schnappschub (ein Familienfoto)", the German version of "Family Snapshot" came in very handy in college when I directed a collection of scenes by the German playwright Botho Strauss in the original Deutsch: I needed intro music for the interludes between scenes, and this one fit *perfectly* with the finale, "Schlusschor" (Final Chorus), which took place entirely during the taking of a group photograph. Maybe you had to have been there, but it worked great, trust me! :) Michael Colford reported: }I was fortunate enough to see one of her rare Sibgathers (solo }experiences) earlier this year in Northampton, Massachusetts. WHAT??? When was that??? I go up to the Iron Horse for things all the time, I can't believe I missed that.... Argh! }Now, as to Anneli Drecker and her single, "I'll strangle you." }Has anyone heard it? Is it wonderful? Yes, and yes. :) Vickie noted: }What's alien to me: I was talking to Preston Klik, the keyboard }player from Big Hat, and I asked him what kind of music he most }liked. He said he didn't really listen to much music, and when }he did, he only listened to an album once. He's constantly }trading in CDs he's only listened to once, for CDs he'll listen }to once, then trade it in for a CD he'll listen to once.... That's ridiculous. Of course, when you think about it, many people treat books like that. There are a precious few books in my collection that I've read more than once- usually I read one, then put it on the shelf for lack of ambition to go trade it in, and eventually it gets loaned to somebody and never given back. The ones that I do reread are the ones I treasure forever. Most people (in my experience, anyway) won't go back and re-read a book they were lukewarm on just to give it a chance to grow on them for future readings. I guess to Preston, CDs are like books- examine their content once and maybe absorb some of it, then move on to the next one. woj mentioned his impending appearances at the New York DCD shows: }october 27th and 28th at the town hall. i'll be at the thursday }evening show (along with footah and another friend of ours) is }anyone going wants to try and meet up with us. woj and I will also be at the Philadelphia show on 30 October, since I can't make either of the NYC shows during the week and it was easy to convince him to drive me to Philly. ;) Anyone going to be there? brni? Bob? }i played one of the tracks from _titanic days_ ("the last days }of summer" is the title, i believe) last weekend during meth's }radio show. from what i previewed of the album, it seems to be }the typical fresh pop of kirsty (which is also to say that what }i heard sounded good to my ears). i'd like to hear other }opinions anyways. To me, it sounds exactly like everything else she's ever done, which all sounds the same. However, I like that one song that's getting repeated over and over and over, so I really have no complaints! :) }i was going to follow this song with "summer," but we were }dismayed to find that the rhodesongs cd was not in the jewel }booklet! argh! It wasn't in the case, either. ;) I found it sitting on top of my CD player a few days later. Oy. Chris Sampson asked: }Does anyone know anything about the band/album called "Welcome }to the Beautiful South"? To which woj replied: }t.b.s have three albums out: _welcome to..._,_0898_ (a reference }to 1-900-like number in britain) and the latest, the title of }which escapes me. i particularly like the first album and enjoy }the other two. Bzzzt. Their first album was indeed called _Welcome To The Beautiful South_, but _0898 Beautiful South_ is their third and most recent to date. Their second one was called _Choke_, and that's the one I don't have and have been completely unable to find. I don't think it was even released in the US, based on its absence from catalogs I've looked in and every radio station I've checked out. I was in Germany when it came out and "My Book" was somewhat of a hit (what an acerbic, wonderful song!!!), but passed up my chance to buy the album there. :P Any help in obtaining this brilliant CD would be much appreciated! Interesting that none of the replies to mjm's query about the works of Robert Fripp included a mention of his League of Crafty Guitarists, which is basically a group of his students. I saw them live before the making of the most recent _Show of Hands_, and it was one of the most amazing performances I've ever seen. 12 guys with 12-string guitars in a semicircle on a stage doing incredibly amazing musical things. Wow. I need all of their albums, too... Mitch wondered: }Do Gaffa, RDT, and other music lists/groups have the sort of }offline interaction (or even the online, non-artist-related }interaction) that we do? (I refer, of course, to interaction }not derived from overlapping memberships with us.) What say }those of us who are heavily into those other lists? Enough has been said about other Internet lists, but I just wanted to add that there is similar interaction over on GEnie, particularly among members of the Science Fiction Round Table. Hell, people are even starting to meet and marry folks they've met on the SFRT, never mind going to places like Tucson to visit GEnie friends and moving out there two months later because of it, in the same complex as said friends. It's really neat. woj lowercased: }you know, i had just commented to meredith the other day that }the more i listen to _touch_, the less i find i like it. well, }let me be more clear: the less i like the two instrumentals and }"ben's song". the former seem pointless and the latter just }grates on my ears. dunno why. i'm much more fond of _solace_. I don't mind the instrumentals, and "Touch" is quite beautiful- I like that vocal harmony stuff, anyway. My problem with "Ben's Song" isn't just that it grates on the ear, but that I react to it much as many people react to Tori's "Me And A Gun". I've been there, and I don't like the reminder, thank you very much! The song is about a baby who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), otherwise known as cribdeath, while Sarah was babysitting him. Ten years and a week ago, my four-month-old niece Jonika died of SIDS. I was twelve, and the experience affected me deeply. Luckily my brother and his wife have had three wonderful and happy kids since then, but that doesn't make the subject any easier for me to deal with. I usually skip over the track "Ben's Song" and go straight to the extended mix of "Vox", or do something to help me tune out the song. I simply can't listen to it confortably. However, of the two Sarah albums we have at this point, _Touch_ is by far the one I listen to the most. _Solace_ is nice, but I just don't feel the need to listen to it as much as I do the other. After this weekend I will have heard "Possession", so I can start reformulating this if I feel the need. I'll keep you posted. :) Jessica reported: }ps: for those who are wondering.. I was "diagnosed" today, as }having both disthymic (i tihnk i'm not spelling that right) }depression and major depression, and I'll be going on prozac }tomorrow. I'll also be involved in therapy.. Don't expect any }dramatic changes or anything :) but hopefully in time i'll be }back to my normal much more pleasant self :) Good luck! I hope the Prozac works for you- it's done wonders for my other friends who are on it. (Maybe I'll see you this weekend? I'll be in New Brunswick...) The only other thing I have to add is that while in Tucson I met up with a friend from Seattle, who brought me a copy of Laura Love's _Pangaea_. Has she been mentioned around here before? She's total ectofood, if she hasn't been. When asked what genre one could fit her music into, she responded that she couldn't find a genre, so she made up her own: Afro-Celtic Grunge. Now, I wouldn't use the word "grunge" within thirteen miles of any description of her music, but the Afro-Celtic bit sure is true! Great beat, wonderful percussion, and an interesting voice. Her label is Octoroon Biography in Seattle, and from what I hear her live shows are positively amazing. Those of you in the area, check her out!!! I want her to get big enough so I can see her in my area, too. Sorry for the length of this! I'll type in my intervening two playlists next, after I read the Sheila Chandra interview Vickie posted. To all those whom I owe tapes, thank you for your continued patience- I'll be able to finally get to them soon, I promise! Meredith meth@delphi.com On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. ======================================================================== 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)