From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V6 #273 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Sunday, September 17 2000 Volume 06 : Number 273 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Bjork article [Valerie Richardson ] Re: is it possible? [RedWoodenBeads@aol.com] ELYSIAN FIELDS Show [Steve Molla ] Re: "good" and "bad" in the forests of the west (too long) [Joseph Zitt <] Re: ecto-digest V6 #270 [Joseph Zitt ] Re: "good" and "bad" in the forests of the west (too long) [Joseph Zitt <] rebecca timmons [the real dick cheney ] Re: "good" and "bad" in the forests of the west (too long) [Joseph Zitt <] Re: Rock novelists. [Joseph Zitt ] Re: is it possible? [meredith ] Re: Rock novelists. [meredith ] eli whitney folk festival [meredith ] Re: "good" and "bad" in the forests of the west (too long) [RedWoodenBead] Re: kid-friendly ecto [meredith ] Re: ecto-digest V6 #270 [RedWoodenBeads@aol.com] Re: ecto-digest V6 #270 [Joseph Zitt ] RE: Rock novelists. ["Foghorn J Fornorn" ] Re: eli whitney folk festival [Joseph Zitt ] Re: eli whitney folk festival [Sue Trowbridge ] Re: ecto-digest V6 #264 [Dave Williamson ] Re: madonna(well, not really) [Dave Williamson ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 07:34:54 -0400 From: Valerie Richardson Subject: Bjork article There's a longish article about Bjork and the "Dancer in the Dark" project in today's New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/17/arts/17POWE.html (free registration required at the NY Times site) - --Valerie Richardson ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 09:31:49 EDT From: RedWoodenBeads@aol.com Subject: Re: is it possible? In a message dated 9/16/00 11:01:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time, owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org writes: << A few people will embrace this band as their own. The band will start off with a small hard core and rabid cult following. A handful of critics (probably from NME and Rolling Stone) will hail their work as "brilliant, bold, and a work of true innovation". Then the cult following will grow steadily into mass popularity and hysteria. They will then sell millions of records. Where they used to play in small, filthy hole-in-the-wall clubs, they will now play in huge football stadiums. The band members will indulge their every decadent whim. The critics and original cultists will now deride them as being "sellouts". Their bass player will have a sex change, their lead singer will be found in bed with an underage groupie and spend most of his royalties on lawyer's fees, the lead guitarist will end up in the Betty Ford clinic for cocaine abuse, and the drummer will die of an unfortunate, accidental alcohol and sleeping pill overdose. Ten years later they will again be hailed by some fans and critics as geniuses. The band will have their story told on "VH1: Behind the Music" with exclusive new interviews with the remaining band members. They will claim to be much wiser for the wear and ready to unleash a new barrage of inspired dissonance on the world's radio and Internet waves. They will mount a come back tour with a new drummer to a small, but loyal mix of the original cultists and their "golden days" fans. Most of the fans will think that the shows were marginally "OK" and most of the critics will give them a C- stating that their music is a tired rehash of a once ground breaking musical genre. >> Haha, I really enjoyed that little discertion. Kudos, kudos kudos. Joe http://www.angelfire.com/indie/impryan "This is a risky anti-candle scheme!" ~Al Gore if he'd been there for the invention of the light bulb ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 11:30:23 -0400 From: Steve Molla Subject: ELYSIAN FIELDS Show >ELYSIAN FIELDS >Saturday, September 23, 2000 >Midnight I would so much LOVE to see them on concert!!! Does anyone know if they ever venture towards the mid west (Ohio)? Steve ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 12:19:18 -0400 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: "good" and "bad" in the forests of the west (too long) On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 12:36:00PM -0400, dmw wrote: > first: music that is working in an established, recognized form, that > deviates from that form in a way that does not seem to be a deliberate > artistic choice. maybe it's a sweet little major-key pop tune, but the > singer is drastically off key. maybe the bass line is too busy, > and distracts from the other qualities of the composition. maybe the > tempo of the drums is sloppy, or the kick is unsteady. maybe the mix is > muddy, or just plain weird: drums too loud, vocals too low, whatever. That's what gets me about My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and their descendants: for all their supposed inventiveness, they just sounded to me like pop bands with lousy engineers. > the catch, of course, is that i can think of examples of all of the above > in songs that i think are extraordinary, and very meritorious. the way > pere ubu's david thomas sang on the early records, for example, seems to > make the whole question of being "in key" ridiculously irrelevant. on the > other hand, i hear these flaws all the time in recordings that *don't* > have the magic spark that makes some extremely unconventional musicians, > like pere ubu, or the shaggs, or beefheart, etc. make virtues of what are > commonly heard as flaws. presumably, the musicians *themselves* are > experiencing the work from a different perspective. i can't deny that > it's always possible that a half-assed demo that i dismiss today will be > hailed as visionary in ten years time. the music industry is littered > with rueful tails of a&r people who passed on records that became huge > hits, it's not a purely academic concept. I'm also finding that I like stuff now that I dismissed when I first heard it years ago. The most recent example is John Zorn's "Spy v. Spy" album, which seemed to me to be undifferentiated threashing when it first came out, but now sounds quite lucid. (It may come from making music with my groups that tends not to fit in categories: if you approach it expecting to hear "classical" or "jazz" or "electronic" or "genre-free improv", you'd probably be disappointed, since what we do hits right at the nexus between them. OTOH, the musician with whom we played double bills in Philadelphia this weekend was pretty much spot on descrbing in our performance Friday as "Morton Feldman meets the Art Ensemble of Chicago", which cuts well across the boundaries :-]) > for the most part, my practical definition of quality rests on > demonstration of appeal that goes beyond the artists involved. that is, > if the record has a "face only a mother could love" and even the > girl/boyfriends of the band can't bring themselves to say they like it, > then it truly is "bad." if a bunch of people appreciate it, then, > presumably, there must be something "there" to "get," and the work has > merit. While I'm finding myself increasing wanting to do music that an audience would like, I'm not sure that likeability is the essential definer of quality. I have lots of records of "difficult" music that, while they intrigue and inspire me, I can't say that I really like, or that much of anyone else does. > second, i think of works as "bad" if they don't seem artistically honest. This I can see more clearly -- though sometimes what the artist is being honest *to* is hard to tell. The mud-mixed musicians I mentioned earlier were apparently true and honest to a vision of the sound that they were doing, though to my ears it sounded like sloppy, dishonest mucking about. > there's a more general category of records that, rather than aping a > particular artist or sound, seem to be trying to imitate the general > quality of success, and i generally think these are the very worst of the > lot. however, they are, almost without exception, extremely well > produced/performed according to the current dominant standards of > technical merit - it's the songs underneath the gloss that are > soul-sucking pits of vapidity. but don't get me started. Ohhh, yeah. > of course there are exceptions here, too, although i think they're > comparitively rare. if you're being imitative, most especially if > you're being imitative of the color of money, it's hard to transcend > your source material, but it does happen now and then. It's almost maddening, after all, that the moguls behind the current teen heartthrobs manage to rewrite Abba so well :-) - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Jerusaklyn http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 12:22:48 -0400 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: ecto-digest V6 #270 On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 12:56:02PM -0400, RedWoodenBeads@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 9/15/00 6:41:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time, > jzitt@metatronpress.com writes: > > << Now if we can only figure out what the bleep the current .sig could > possibly mean... >> > > This sig has always been there. An interesting view of the term "always", extending back a couple of weeks. > It refers to Al Gore's constant referals to > everything from tax cuts to school vouchers, etc, as a "risky scheme". At the > Republica National Convention, Bush pointed out that if Gore had been there > for the invention of the light bulb, automobiles, etc he would've called them > "risky schemes". Ah. Taking the word of George W for what he'd like to pretend Al Gore said. I hope all who believe this have their bids in on the Ebay offering of the Brooklyn Bridge. - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Jerusaklyn http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 12:40:55 -0400 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: "good" and "bad" in the forests of the west (too long) On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 01:11:06PM -0400, RedWoodenBeads@aol.com wrote: > Anyway, here's what I'm trying to say: is glossy production an attempt to > fill a vacum of artistic worth? Not necessarily. There are very good albums with "glossy" production, if by that you mean using the best in studio technology for maximum impact. You'll often find respected "artists" using the same producers and technologies as though whom you find vacuous -- it's just with firmer artistry it doesn't stand out as much, and is better integrated. You also have to look at the goals: I don't think Britney Spears is looking to do anything other than superficial pop, and any attempt to get "deeper" would just interrupt the flow of what she's doing. OTOH, Happy Rhodes, for example, has gone for more content -- but has always used the best technology she can afford (hence, the flow from the simpler productions of the first albums to the more glossy, electronic sheen of Many Worlds Are Born Tonight). In other words, a fine frame and mounting doesn't necessarily invalidate the painting it contains. - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Jerusaklyn http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 13:34:55 -0400 From: the real dick cheney Subject: rebecca timmons last night, while meredith was busy working at the eli whitney folk festival, i moseyed down to new york city to see rebecca timmons at arlene grocery, meeting up with don keller along the way. it had been a while since i've been to arlene so i was a bit surprised by its reconfiguration. the club used to be one space which didn't lend itself to being a good listening environment, especially when folks came into to go only the bar (one of the perils of not charging a cover). they've acquired the next door property and turned that into a bar, though which you enter the performance space. a nice rearrangement which, along with a cheap cover, should hopefully improve the atmosphere during performances (alas, there were several folks, fans of the second act i presume, yakking loudly during rebecca's set -- grrrrrr.) don and i paid our cover and commandeered the front table, minutes before rebecca and her band took the stage. rebecca was seated at her keyboard center stage with the usual guitar/bass/drums encircling her. first thing i noticed was that she didn't look like any of the pictures of her on her website. the second thing i noticed was that her entire band had an air of serious musicianship about them -- in fact, they reminded me, in appearance anyways, of mary margaret o'hara's ensemble. they were pretty comparable technically too, though with a different style. rebacca started off with a keyboard-only song which, combined with her voice, immediately recalled some of milla jovonich's slower songs. with the exception of one other keyboard-only song, the rest of the set was with the full band. her music was well-executed, fairly straight-forward, pop songs with a bright edge that are far enough from the norm to be interesting -- in the same way that heather nova writes fairly straight-forward pop songs which are just bent enough to catch my ear. however, i think a better comparison point for rebecca's current state of musical affairs would be the latter t'pau albums which is reinforced by a similarlity of her voice to carol decker's when she's belting out the faster, louder songs. regardless of the compare and contrast game, i rather enjoyed her nyc-hour-sized (45 minutes) set and was very happy to get a copy of the new album, _the turning event_. woj ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 12:57:30 -0400 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: "good" and "bad" in the forests of the west (too long) On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 05:15:08PM -0400, RedWoodenBeads@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 9/15/00 12:50:49 PM Pacific Daylight Time, glenn@furia.com > writes: > > << A Britney > Spears song might be bad for listening, but good for dancing. >> > > I dunno. I've always found the beats of Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, etc, > to be horribley electronic and emotionless, jerky and unsoulful. It is my > personal opinion that the best stuff to party too (including dancing) would > have to be early soul music like Aretha Franklin or Sam & Dave, etc. So much > smoother, so much more soulful. But what kind of partying? The dance music field is wide and highly differentiated because there is music for many different kinds of dancing and partying. I suspect, for example, that the comparitavely dense verbal content of Aretha's work would be less optimal for, say, a rave, but the thump-heavy, abstracted, repetitive would that works there might go over less well in more intimate environments. OTOH, the heavily compressed, rhythmically catchy, repetitive teen pop sound is perfect for playing loud out of suboptimal sound systems for generic audiences. Like when you're playing music in a store trying to get people to buy things, or (especially) driving around with the windows open. (I find that, frustratingly, I can't listen to much of my favorite music when driving. Even in a relatively quiet car on smooth roads, I have to keep twiddling the volume control to keep music with a wide dynamic range within a listenable volume.) - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Jerusaklyn http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 13:24:22 -0400 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: Rock novelists. On Sat, Sep 16, 2000 at 06:16:27PM -0400, dmw wrote: > On Sat, 16 Sep 2000, Stuart Myerburg wrote: > > > Craig Gidney wrote: > > > > > I got a copy of Jelly Roll, a novel by Luke Sutherland > > > of the Scottish bands Long Kin Fillie and Bows. > > > Haven't read it yet, but it was shortlisted for the > > > Whitbread award. > > > > > > Anyone know of other novels written by > > > singer-songwriters? Sam Rosenthal (?) of Black Tape for a Blue Girl packaged a novel with one of their CDs. And do I recall correctly that Emma Bull works in both media? - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Jerusaklyn http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 16:24:57 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: is it possible? Hi! Bill mused: >Actually, what would probably happen is as follows: Congratulations, you just described Spinal Tap! (The movie _This Is Spinal Tap_ was just re-released to theaters. If you all haven't seen it, because you weren't born yet when it was originally out or whatever, you must. It remains hilarious and brilliant, particularly if you list Behind The Music as a favorite TV show...) +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 16:23:22 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: Rock novelists. Hi! Craig inquired: >Anyone know of other novels written by >singer-songwriters? Bill Morrissey, _Edson_ -- came out a couple years ago on a small press and is already out of print. I didn't read it but heard good things about it. I read Nick Cave's _And The Ass Saw The Angel_ 10 years ago. It remains the most disturbing book I have ever read. It's a novelization of the themes and leitmotifs of most of Cave's darkest songs (lots about blood and "black bones" and dysfunctional people doing evil things because they just can't help it). I couldn't stop reading it, though -- it was fascinating, in a can't-tear-your-eyes-off-a-car-wreck way. Veda Hille's "The Boy In The Woods" seems on the face to have been directly inspired by the book, though Veda told me she's never read it. (That frightened me, actually. :) +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:07:59 -0400 From: meredith Subject: eli whitney folk festival Hi! Since I'm a glutton for punishment, I was very much involved in the Eli Whitney Folk Festival, which took place down the street here in New Haven this weekend. I had a variety of jobs, ranging from building and maintaining the web site to handing out programs at the door of the Friday night portion to providing artist hospitality for The Nields. I am completely wiped (not helped by the fact that I didn't get to bed until 5 this morning thanks to the after-festival party :}), but it was a lot of fun. Friday evening we staged a song-swap at the Eli Whitney Barn (yes, it really was his barn), featuring local guitarist Robert Messore, a somewhat legendary songwriter named Bob Franke, and personal faves Kris Delmhorst and Jennifer Kimball. Robert led it off with a short set of his instrumental guitar material -- he's a noodler, and does some really flashy stuff. It's pleasant music to listen to, and I like going to see him play. Plus, he's such a sweet guy - I've gotten to know him this summer. He's one of those quasi-ethereal guys who never leaves home without his guitar, and is often moved to pull it out and start noodling even in the middle of a festival organizing committee meeting. :) Anyway, Kris Delmhorst followed, and did a nice short set of songs, some of which were inspired by the "very barn-y" setting we were in. (Did I mention that a local theater troupe is currently staging _Much Ado About Nothing_ in the Barn, so all this was happening in the middle of their leafy set? It was actually quite cool.) Then Jennifer Kimball did a set, accompanied by the ubiquitous Marc Shulman on spastic electric guitar. (He always plays like he's getting constant electric shocks from the thing.) Unbelievably, this was the first time I've managed to see her play live. woj was a lot more blown away than I was, but I thought she wasn't disappointing. I liked her "little instruments" -- baritone ukelele (could someone please tell me how this instrument differs from the tenor guitar?) and strum stick. For "Veering From The Wave" she asked Kris up to sing harmony with her, and it was a deliciously Story-like moment. She's coming back to the area in October to play at the Acoustic Cafe, and I hope it's on a night when I can go. I'd love to see her do a full show. I'll admit I spent Bob Franke's set out front chatting with some Folk Alliance people -- I knew I wasn't going to be all that interested in his old-time folkie stylings, and what I could hear confirmed it. I did get to see him in the second part of the evening, in which he and Kris and Jennifer did a Falcon Ridge-style song swap. They did three rounds, with Kris picking the theme for each one. The second round was new songs, and Bob Franke did one called "The Acid Polka" that had everyone on the floor. The third round was "songs we like to sing with Jennifer". :) Jennifer and Kris had been singing on one another's songs all night, and it was good to hear her with Bob Franke as well -- they performed the song from his last album that she appeared on. The grand finale was the three of them rocking out on Jennifer's "Meet Me In The Twilight", and it was a great way to close out the night. Many of the volunteers were heard whistling bits of it as we cleaned up afterwards. :) (Kris Delmhorst remains the cutest thing in the Boston folk scene. Just had to state that. :) Yesterday was the main Festival, at Edgerton Park on the New Haven/Hamden line. It's a gorgeous park, a perfect setting for something like this. We had a free concert on the Upper Stage in the afternoon, which I'm not going to say anything about because I missed the whole thing, what with running around on garbage can detail then picking up the late-afternoon volunteers from Yale (as the Boston-New York AIDS ride blew through town, making traffic Interesting), and finally getting to the supermarket to pick up the things I needed for the Nields. The main stage started at 5:30 pm with Tangled Up The Blue, the Yale folk group started by Nerissa Nields in 1989. They still use the songbook of arrangements she compiled back then, and they were clearly excited to be performing on the same bill as her and Katryna. They did some really nice vocal arrangements of folk stndards, and for their last number they called all alumni in attendance up to the stage, which of course included Nerissa. It was very cute. Nerissa & Katryna (a.k.a. "The Probe") were up next. I got to relax and enjoy their set, and it was a good one -- I hadn't heard the duo arrangements of "Cool In The Backseat" and "Last Kisses" before (Patty, their manager hadn't either :). The songs really worked well in that context. For "Keys To The Kingdom" they called TUIB up with them, which was another great Festival moment. After that came Tom Paxton. It was clear a lot of the roughly 3,000 people in the crowd were there to see him. I'd gotten to meet him (very) briefly in the house across the street we were using as a green room for the performers - he seemed to be a genuinely nice man. I have to admit I'm not really into the folk music of his generation, but I enjoyed the bits of his set I was able to catch. He did a hilarious short song to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" about Tinky-Winky and Jerry Falwell, the followed that up with a ditty about how the Bushes should stay in Texas, because the greenery is sorely needed down there and we've got plenty up here, thanks. At the end of his set he called TUIB up to teach them a couple new songs, and it was fun to see how thrilled they all were. They were tossing cameras down to their friends in the audience to get pictures of them on the same stage as Tom Paxton - it was great. Finally, we wrapped it all up with the main event: Sweet Honey In The Rock. They don't perform in these parts much at all, and we'd really made an effort to market the Festival to the parts of New Haven that wouldn't normally care about such a thing, just because they were performing. The Festival was affiliated with the Trowbridge Renaissance, an organization from an historic neighborhood in the inner city of New Haven that was the hotbed of drug dealing and gang wars in the late '80s and early '90s, but has been revitalized by a group of residents who decided they'd had enough and weren't going to take it any more. The neighborhood has some award-winning architecture, and it is important because it was designed in the 19th century by a man who had been in the middle of the whole Amistad affair. It's now one of the most rapidly improving areas of the city. I did notice a few folks from that part of town in the crowd, which was good to see. We had Capt. Bill Pinkney of the Amistad (the replica was just launched this summer, and is docked right here in New Haven) introduce them, which was very cool. Sweet Honey were *incredible*. If Zap Mama doesn't count them as their main influence, that has to be the greatest case of synchronicity in the history of music. They don't do the choreography that Zap Mama does (in fact, they sit mostly the entire time they're on stage), but they have the African percussion instruments and they do all the vocal tricks. They are also very big into audience participation -- for the first song, they had the crowd split up into four parts doing an African chant, and it was mesmerizing. By the end of their show, there were at least 100 people dancing up a storm in front, and the entire crowd was on its feet clapping and singing along. Everybody forgot by that part that they were freezing (Fall came to New England yesterday, for sure). It was a great privilege to get to see them perform. It was a fun day - I enjoyed being behind the scenes for an event that New Haven sorely needs. There's just not enough good live music in these parts. Things are getting better, but there's still a long way to go. Next musical event: Dar Williams at Toad's Place on Tuesday, with Catie Curtis opening. Should be a great show. _The Green World_ is going to be very high on my list of new releases for this year. It's easily Dar's best album yet. +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:17:33 EDT From: RedWoodenBeads@aol.com Subject: Re: "good" and "bad" in the forests of the west (too long) In a message dated 9/17/00 10:02:35 AM Pacific Daylight Time, jzitt@metatronpress.com writes: << That's what gets me about My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and their descendants: for all their supposed inventiveness, they just sounded to me like pop bands with lousy engineers. >> I haven't listened to a ton of the mary chain, but i did go through a pretty intense MBV stage. I would say their sound was completely unconventional. Their songs weren't anything even close to radio friendly. Their guitar sound was completely out of this world. Who knows how they made half of those sounds. MBV would sound unique and original no matter who produced them. Joe http://www.angelfire.com/indie/impryan "This is a risky anti-candle scheme!" ~Al Gore if he'd been there for the invention of the light bulb ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:09:57 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: kid-friendly ecto Hi! >> > > Any other ectophilic kids albums? Rheostatics, _The Story of Harmelodia_ Rather twisted, but in a constructive way. +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:22:33 EDT From: RedWoodenBeads@aol.com Subject: Re: ecto-digest V6 #270 In a message dated 9/17/00 10:06:08 AM Pacific Daylight Time, jzitt@metatronpress.com writes: << Ah. Taking the word of George W for what he'd like to pretend Al Gore said. I hope all who believe this have their bids in on the Ebay offering of the Brooklyn Bridge. >> Gore DID use the phrase "that's a risky scheme" early on in the campaign. He stopped using it as soon as George W. pointed out how rediculous it was, but I remember , back in June, July, August, when all you'd hear is "lowering taxes is a risky scheme" or "school vouchers are a risky scheme". Joe http://www.angelfire.com/indie/impryan "This is a risky anti-candle scheme!" ~Al Gore if he'd been there for the invention of the light bulb ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:10:05 -0400 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: ecto-digest V6 #270 On Sun, Sep 17, 2000 at 05:22:33PM -0400, RedWoodenBeads@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 9/17/00 10:06:08 AM Pacific Daylight Time, > jzitt@metatronpress.com writes: > > << Ah. Taking the word of George W for what he'd like to pretend Al > Gore said. > > I hope all who believe this have their bids in on the Ebay offering > of the Brooklyn Bridge. >> > > Gore DID use the phrase "that's a risky scheme" early on in the campaign. He > stopped using it as soon as George W. pointed out how rediculous it was, but > I remember , back in June, July, August, when all you'd hear is "lowering > taxes is a risky scheme" or "school vouchers are a risky scheme". The only possible reaction is a heartfelt sigh at the gullibility of those who easily fall for media manipulation. Have you researched this at all? I have -- and the only reference that I can find to Gore having used the phrase "risky scheme" was in a debate in 1996 -- criticizing a ludicrous tax cut scheme that even his opponent, Jack Kemp, had criticized before falling in with the Dole camp. That's it. Spinmaster Dubya has then been thrashing it out of context all he can. In politics, there's the concept of the Big Lie: that if you repeat a statement often enough, people will believe it to be true. Please read the exact quote, in context, at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/extra/browse/html/altdebg_101096.html A simple Web search may provide further enlightenment. - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Jerusaklyn http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:47:34 -0400 From: "Foghorn J Fornorn" Subject: RE: Rock novelists. I have purchased, but have not yet read, Joe Jackson's "A Cure for Gravity". Its supposed to be more or less an autobiography, not a novel in the fiction sense. It should be an interesting perspective into the music biz. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:13:37 -0400 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: eli whitney folk festival On Sun, Sep 17, 2000 at 05:07:59PM -0400, meredith wrote: > Sweet Honey were *incredible*. If Zap Mama doesn't count them as their > main influence, that has to be the greatest case of synchronicity in the > history of music. They don't do the choreography that Zap Mama does (in > fact, they sit mostly the entire time they're on stage), but they have the > African percussion instruments and they do all the vocal tricks. You would have enjoyed a seminar I attended before Zap Mama's recent performance at the University of Maryland: among others, it included the leader of Zap Mama and a member of Sweet Honey in the Rock. While they didn't talk about influences, they did get along marvelously. - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Jerusaklyn http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 15:37:42 -0700 (PDT) From: Sue Trowbridge Subject: Re: eli whitney folk festival On Sun, 17 Sep 2000, meredith wrote: > The Festival was affiliated with the Trowbridge Renaissance, an > organization from an historic neighborhood in the inner city of New > Haven that was the hotbed of drug dealing and gang wars in the late '80s > and early '90s, but has been revitalized by a group of residents who > decided they'd had enough and weren't going to take it any more. Wow, judging from the name alone, I'm sure that's got to be a really fantastic organization :) BTW, in the "rock novelists" thread, I don't think anyone has mentioned Cindy Lee Berryhill's MEMOIRS OF A FEMALE MESSIAH, which Amazon.com has listed as "fiction," so presumably CLB herself isn't the messiah of the title... - --Sue Trowbridge * albany, california trow@slip.net * http://www.interbridge.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 19:07:45 -0400 From: Dave Williamson Subject: Re: ecto-digest V6 #264 This is a little much - to say that the Smiths made this kind of dent in "changing the world of music in the 90s" is over the edge. And BTW, I like the Smiths... RedWoodenBeads@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 9/10/00 9:24:55 PM Pacific Daylight Time, > owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org writes: > > << oddly enough, that's pretty much how i feel about morrissey- > extremely overrated and unimportant. >> > > Well it's really almost impossible to dismiss Morrisey as unimportant to the > world of popular music when you consider the impact the Smiths have had. > Considering the fact that 90's rock would probably be pretty uncolorful (we'd > all be hearing flock of seagulls and thompson twins for the rest of our > lives) without the smiths, then I'd say the later is simply incorrect > historically and the former is simply an opinion. > > Joe > > http://www.angelfire.com/indie/impryan ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 19:10:20 -0400 From: Dave Williamson Subject: Re: madonna(well, not really) Best concert I've seen in years was a Neil Young and Crazy Horse show about two years back. Make most of the people half their age look like senior citizens in their abilities to play rock and roll. Age has no impact on the ability to keep playing the music one is great at - potentially many play it better than they ever did when they were younger. Many jazz artists are proof positive of same. Now if you want to talk about celebreties trying to look persisently young, I'll agree with you. Mick continuing to try to look 22 is a pretty hard pill to swallow... Dave. Ted wrote: > Joseph Zitt wrote: > > > There was also a deep, though perhaps unintended, sexism and ageism in > > the statements made about her. The statement that her supposedly > > advanced age makes certain aspects of her presentation of self and > > sexuality wrong is deeply offensive. Being a tad older than she is, Ihope never to lose the range of representation and performance that I > > > had when younger -- in fact, after decades of work, I find myself onlyin the past few years approaching the feeling of freedom that I shouldhave had when younger. (Dylan: "I was so much older then/ > > I'm youngerthan that now") And does anyone think Prince, who is also our age, isin some way too old to represent himself in highly sexual ways? How about the much older Smokey Robinson? or Robert > > Plant? > > Some things *do* look better on young people, for example: > A young Mick Jaggar strutting across the stage like Rooster was bold (dare I say Cocky), > an old Mick Jaggar doing the same thing was an embarrassment, he looked like Barney Fife > with a Mick Jagger mask on. Everybody was afraid he was going to break a hip. > At some point in a person's life they become old, square, and impotent. > For some reason in the Rock and Roll world this means they become the enemy. > They start growing hair in places they never thought hair could grow. > They fear dying, more and more with each passing day, because they start to > realize they're getting closer, and closer still. > They start appreciating the concept of law enforcement. > That is part of the cycle of life. It happens to all of us. > Why do Rock and Roll's elders sweep it under the rug? > Is Robert Plant embarrassed that his sexual drive has dissipated? > Has he ever done a song about indigestion? > This is why I think polkas have it all over R&R. Polka is a lifetime music. > > > And the hit-and-run tactic of verbal assault followed by the mask that > > it was just an "opinion" is a misuse of language and power. > > I disagree. Are you ready? Are you ready? > But that is just my opinion. > > > Regardless of whether the person being attacked and insulted is a > > commercial dynamo, I hope to retain the sense of justice to call people > > on these statements (though my own reactions could be a tad less > > extreme). > > In a world where everybody is "ok" as an artist, there are no artists. > I say pick an artist you don't like and say they suck! > There must be some artist you would never want to emulate! > If you can't find one I will volunteer myself. > -ted > PS - Although I pretty much think Skippy had it all over you in that > Madonna discourse, I personally didn't think taking jabs at his youth > and inexperience was terribly below the belt, but then again what do I know, > I came here from the Love-Hounds mailing list. > > -- > They Might be Giants Dial a Song Service > > 1-718-387-6962 > > "Free when you call from work!" ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V6 #273 **************************