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 #334 ecto, Number 334 Monday, 21 September 1992 Today's Topics: *-----------------* WXPN thing elaboration:) It's not just sex that makes the earth move... Re: Party in Chicago this Saturday....!! Mary Black music to possibly look out for Happy Birthday ======================================================================== Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 16:05:03 EDT From: kosky@saul.cis.upenn.edu (Anthony Kosky) Subject: WXPN thing Hi All! As Jessica said, Happy was faily dissapointing last night, though some of the other parts were pretty good. I think I had a better seat than the others (dead center about three rows behind the mixing desk). The sound for Happy's set was pretty awful and also she and the band didn't seem to be very happy about things and consequently there performance rather lacked enthusiasm. Cutting them off early definitely added a sour note to their perrformance. Jeffery Gaines was very good, and did a great version of In Your Eyes. I hadn't heard him before so I was pleasantly surprised. Shawn Colvin was also quite good, but I remember her as being better when I saw her with Richard Thompson a while ago. After that David Dye and someone I can't remember came on stage and started doing a "mock interview" so I went to wander around. I decided to try to find the backstage door in case there was any chance of meeting Happy. I found it but there didn't seem to be much chance of getting in and Happy wasn't anywhere outside. However I did notice a group of people standing around wearing ecto t-shirts so I figured I should introduce myself to them.... Live were OK, and very energetic. The lead singer struck me as trying to be very Jim Morrison-like. 10,000 Maniacs were good. It's a pity that Jessica et al didn't stay for the encore snce they seemed to pick up quite a bit for that, and played some of my favourites of ther songs. They only did one encore but it was a pretty long one, and they finished just before 12:00. Actually it's lucky you guys left early if you had a car, since otherwise it would have taken you about half an hour to get out. Bikes, however, don't suffer from such problems. -Anthony ======================================================================== Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 16:06:57 EDT From: jessica@maurolycus.rutgers.edu Subject: elaboration:) I realized after i got into work that i omitted one thing, and angelos points out that i wasn't too clear on what i *did* say :) (about feed the fire in specific :) The thing i omitted is that there should have been _4_ references in feed the fire - happy explained that she was just so flustered at that point that she was amazed she had gotten through the song at all! anyway, she said the first one would have been a david bowie reference. the first one we *heard* was from Yes, the second from Kate, of course:) the third from Queen (from bohemian rhapsody). I don't know what bowie line she was going to use, i'll ask at some point. jessica ======================================================================== Date: 18 September 1992 12:39:00 CDT From: Subject: It's not just sex that makes the earth move... It is written that after the bombardier on the Enola Gay released the first atomic bomb, he watched his radioactive payload descend toward the Hiroshiman landscape, saw the mushroom cloud rising from the explosion, and immediately wrote in his diary, "My God, what have I done?" It is a phrase I have been focusing on from time to time during the last 48 hours or so. Friends, after over a year of expounding from time to time on the specific positive points of the cassette format, I have finally capitulated to the blandishments of the digital revolution, and bought a CD player. It all started when on the way home Wednesday afternoon, I made a long detour to visit a record store in the vicinity of Wrigley Field, where I'd bought several cassettes over the weekend, to exchange a tape I'd picked up inadvert- ently for the one next to it on the shelf that I'd really intended to buy. I asked about a couple of others that I'd seen reviewed, but weren't on the shelf; and was informed that they were only available on CD--not the first time I've found this out about a title that interested me. On a whim, I stopped off at the eatery a few doors down for some Buffalo chicken wings and a Leinenkugel on the patio, in the presence of a few nodes of cheerful interactors, the Cubs having just won their game for the afternoon without a rainout. Whether it was the beer or the atmosphere of good feeling is unimportant; but on the way back to the L station my eye was caught by the large sign in the window of the elec- tronics store across the street, touting a bare-walls closeout on sundry equipment with markdowns up to 50%. On the spur of the moment, I decided to cross the intersection and see what I could see. My eye was caught by a Fisher portable CD player marked down to $169.95, and I asked for a look. The woman behind the counter told me that it had 8X oversampling, which I gather is a salutary amount of that process. The years of being unable to buy sundry recordings on the retail market in a format I could play must have come to a head in my subconscious, for I made a quick decision to go through with it. I handed over my Visa card, uncertain whether the remaining credit was enough for the purpose; and was finally assur- ed that it was. The transaction eventually was fully consummated; whereupon I pondered whether to take the Clark Street bus down to Tower to get something to feed to my new toy, concluded it was too late for that, and caught the L home, clutching a 15%-off (down from $200) piece of machinery that, for the moment, I could do absolutely nothing with, pondering as I went what I would write in these pages by way of announcement. The next morning, I happened to be passing by a downtown record store not noted for its everyday low prices, and decided to browse, as much to get out of the rain as anything else. To get a fix on sale and nonsale CD prices, I looked in the bins, found a few items I had not seen on tape, and bought them. Deciding that I wanted greater variety than those few, I proceeded to another shop a few blocks away and bought more (along with a couple of new releases on tape, simp- ly because it was cheaper). That afternoon, I stopped by a used record store of my acquaintance to see whether I could get CD copies of a few old favorites whose cassette copies are buried deep under other stuff at home, at a lower price than buying them new. I found I could, and did; whereupon I lugged it all home in the hope that my still-hyperkinetic cat had left me anything to come home to. I got home, discovered that the little fellow had left the place standing, unhooked the machine from the AC adapter/charger to which I had connected it the night before, tore open--with difficulty--the top end of the longbox containing Laura Nyro's _The First Songs_, and found out that the contents was actually packed in the bottom end. I proceeded to tear the second half of the box open, excavated the jewel box from its moorings therein, got the disc out of the latter, mounted it on the spindle, closed the lid, and hit play. Con- sistent with the way my luck so often runs in these matters, nothing happened. It turned out that the rechargable battery that the people at the store had alluded to was not built-in. I took another look at the packaging, found the battery, found an outlet that the charger would extend to, and hooked it all up. This time, I got sound, and pretty good sound at that, though there was some surface noise apparently due to dust left in at the factory; the latter seemed to disperse quickly, and subsequent playings came across well. It is ironic that the decline in normal disc RPM from 78 to 33 1/3 brought with it an increase in the quality of the recorded sound, and the next quantum improve- ment in fidelity was a function of drastically increasing the rotation speed of the disk (anyone know just what the rotation speed of CD's is?). I tried out several other of my new acquisitions, and they also sounded good. I think I will get a lot of satisfaction out of that little machine--notwithstanding that yesterday I noticed a newspaper ad touting a Sony player for sale for $40 less than I payed for my Fisher, marked down from the same list price, albeit at a chain store none of whose locations I have easy access to anyway. Rest assured that I have not committed a complete apostasy from my earlier position--not yet, anyway. The price spread between CD's and cassettes remains significant, especially when multiplied over a large number of acquired titles. As such, I foresee buying mostly CDs of titles whose availability in the cheaper format is problematic. There will, of course, be exceptions, especial- ly with the passage of time. Needless to say, I have my current large collec- tion of tapes which it generally would make no sense to buy duplicates of on CD. All this reminds me of the sequence in _Annie Hall_ in which Woody's grammar-school classmates expound on their subsequent lives, and one kid says, "I used to be a heroin addict. Now I'm a methadone addict." As it is, I have a lot of cassettes I have yet to get around to listening to; I would hate to pay the higher price for the privilege of accumulating a similar backlog of CD's. What is more, it appears so far that the player must be kept more or less horizontal for the laser to pick up the content of the disk; this makes it problematic to carry it around while listening--something I do at length with tapes. Be all this as it may, I have no regrets about abruptly ceasing to hold out (but get back to me about that after the bills arrive :-) ), and look forward to the creative alloying of iron and aluminum as vehicles for the canned music we all love. Mitch Pravatiner ======================================================================== Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 22:29:14 EDT From: Vickie Mapes Subject: Re: Party in Chicago this Saturday....!! I forgot to mention that Sunday is Chris's birthday, so the Saturday party will also be a birthday party for Chris! (How could I forget? :-( Dain-bramage) Vickie ======================================================================== Date: Fri, 18 Sep 92 23:22:01 EDT From: Vickie Mapes Subject: Re: It's not just sex that makes the earth move... First, I'm *really* depressed about the problems Happy and the gang experienced in Philly. Thanks Jessica, for telling the story. Years from now it will be mentioned in her biography as something along the lines of "trials and tribulations all great artists go through at some point or another" but for now, :-( :-( :-(. (The very first American date Genesis played, at Carnegie Hall or Radio City Music Hall--can't remember--had just as many problems. They were the opening band for The Incredible String Band ((?? I should dig out my copy of Armando Gallo's book for details but I'm not sure where it is)) and it was a benefit concert. Wait! I just went to get the Spencer Bright book and, I swear, the first page I stopped at while flipping through, was the account of this concert! Boy, I got *everything* wrong! It was their second concert--the first was in Boston-- and it was at Philharmonic Hall (now called Avery Fischer Hall) and...and...I'm reading....and, oh, ok, there aren't any other details except that the show was a technical disaster. "Peter's stories proved lifesavers while the various technical hitches (electrical problems) were sorted out, though some of the American audience thought the tales were the product of a sick mind." :-) It also says that Peter killed time by taking pictures of the audience from the stage with a Kodak Instamatic. So things like that happen to the best of artists, not that that story would cheer H&K up right about now...) Mark Carroll: :-( Meredith: Congratulations on getting your show back!! Glad you like Pamela Golden! Tim Cook: I'll let you know if I find an extra Walking. It seems to be getting rarer for some reason. Mitch: Used record stores are a great way to find good old stuff on CD for a great price. Check out Dr. Wax on Clark. They had, for instance, Laurie Freelove's _Smells Like Truth_ for $2.99. Congratulations to you too! Now you can get Happy's CDs (when your Visa is back up to snuff.) Klaus, Claudia and Chip came over last night and we had (I had, I think they did too) a great time listening to music and watching various and sundry videos and talking about all kinds of things. They'll be back tomorrow, of course. Martin: I talked to Angel yesterday and it turns out they *aren't* moving to Perth after all. They're going to Syndey. Darn! At least they'll know they have a friend *somewhere* on the island. :-) oops, misspelled Sydney, but you'all knew what I meant. Vickie ======================================================================== From: Martin Dougiamas Subject: Mary Black Date: Sun, 20 Sep 92 10:00:28 WST I just caught the last half of a song by an Irish songstress called Mary Black, on our public radio station RTR. She sounded like someone ecto people might know about (Before the song was back-anounced, I'd guessed she might be Jane Siberry or Sarah McLachlan). Anyway, apparently she's coming to Perth with her band next week (along with half of the rest of the world, so it seems :) ) Anyone here know more about her... any recommendations? -- ,-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | I remember the time that you rained all night Martin Dougiamas | | The queen of Siam in my arms martin@marsh.cs.curtin.edu.au | | Remember the time that the islands sank Curtin University | | But nobody opened their eyes Perth, Western Australia | `=== Just One Kiss - The Cure ===============================================' ======================================================================== Subject: music to possibly look out for Date: Sun, 20 Sep 92 10:05:49 -0400 From: jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu See if this scenario rings any bells: two women who started out in traditional irish bands in this area kept bumping into each other at various events and became friendly, possibly interested in working together. Both are still in bands, albeit new ones, but want to work together. So they arrange some material, cut a demo, and appear together as a duo at various tiny venues in the DC/Baltimore area. I just heard a long-ish interview/live-in-studio performance with these two women--Grace Griffith and Lisa Moscatello (I'm not positive on that spelling). They are *incredible*! A bit reminiscient of Indigo Girls, they've better voices and to my mind perform more interesting material (lots of traditional irish stuff, as well as contemporary stuff with a definite irish bent). Both are apparently guitarists--on the live material, I heard an acoustic guitar and a mandolin. Grace Griffith is currently with what I gather is another traditional irish band called Connamara (sp?), while Lisa Moscatello is with a contemporary, synth-based (irish?) band called New Saint George. New Saint George is currently 1/2 way through an album. I dunno if the two will ever do anything kooky like release an album, but I really hope so. I also hope to see them perform sometime in the area (they're performing this weekend, but I'll be out of town; they'll also be performing at the end of October, so who knows?) I realize that this is mostly of interest only to folks in the DC area because I dunno if they much of anything outside the area. And I also know I'm the only Ectophile in the DC area. But these are definitely names to keep an eye out for. Jeff |Jeffrey C. Burka | "Show what you are / Be strong, be true | | | Time for you to / Be who you are." | |jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu | --Happy Rhodes | ======================================================================== Date: Sun, 20 Sep 92 18:38:27 -0700 From: Michael G Peskura Subject: Happy Birthday i*i*i*i*i*i *************** ***HAPPY******* ********BIRTHDAY*** ******************* ******* Chris! ******* *********************** -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ======================================================================== 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)