From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V6 #300 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Monday, October 9 2000 Volume 06 : Number 300 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Live At The House O'Muzak: Jessie Turner [meredith ] Sarah Hickman [tenthvictim@mindspring.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 08 Oct 2000 21:12:52 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Live At The House O'Muzak: Jessie Turner Hi! meth-n-woj present: LIVE AT THE HOUSE O'MUZAK Featuring JESSIE TURNER Saturday, October 21, 2000 8:00 PM Singer/songwriter Jessie Turner comes to us highly recommended from fellow San Francisco Bay-area artist Emily Bezar. Trained in both jazz and classical disciplines, she now makes intelligent pop music that has garnered comparisons as diverse as Tori Amos and Bonnie Raitt. She will be stopping in New Haven the night after opening for Kris Delmhorst at Northampton's Iron Horse Music Hall. Info (including intriguing sound samples) can be found at http://www.jessieturner.com. As always, there will be a $10 donation requested at the door, and space is limited to 25. Please get your reservation in early. We hope to see you all here! +==========================================================================+ | 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: Mon, 9 Oct 2000 00:11:30 -0500 From: tenthvictim@mindspring.com Subject: Sarah Hickman It's been awful quiet around here lately. So if no one else will post, I will fill up the white space a little. I've turned into quite the concert-goer of late. A couple of weeks ago I saw Willis Alan Ramsey at Poor David's Pub in Dallas. Tonight (Sunday) I went to see Sarah Hickman at the University of North Texas Lyceum. I suppose Sarah isn't ecto-- too outgoing, too positive-- but she is certainly the archetypal sensitive female songwriter with guitar. Perhaps you folks don't know who Ms. Hickman is. She had a very hot career going seven (?) years ago. You could hear her on KERA in Dallas on a daily basis. Johnny Carson fell in love with her (not literally), so she was on his show several times. Her albums were on Elektra (I think). As is often the case, Elektra got tired of her and quashed her third or fourth album. Ms. Hickman managed to scrounge enough money to buy the tapes from Elektra and put out a CD herself. (Is this sounding familiar?) I think she is back to producing her own albums and playing Texas venues. Anyway, she was very entertaining. First thing she did was apologize for her "Mommy hips," as she had had a baby three months ago. Then she laid into her train song (sorry, I don't own her CDs and don't know many song titles, just know her songs from the radio) and just about tore her guitar up. She was windmilling with her pick hand and barre chording with her left, suspending chords, and sliding up and down the fretboard. All the while she was vocally flying from low to high and hitting every note spot on. I was sitting in the dark thinking I was seeing a female Peter Townsend. About that time, she decided to tell a story about riding the elevator in New York with Mr. Townsend. She said she got on the elevator with him and was trying to figure out what to say to him. At last, she simply said, "It's been an honor to ride in the elevator with you." He said that was the nicest thing anyone had said to him in weeks and hoped she would have a good night. She played "Short Stop." Then she conversed with a nine-year-old girl in the front row, did a vocal caricature of Helen Ready singing "I Am Woman," and then sang her own woman-empowering song for the girl. She dedicated the song to the little girl, the women present, and the feminine side of the men in the audience. Someone in the audience said she thought Sarah was going to sing "I Wear the Crown." She quickly retuned her guitar and took off playing that song, even though it wasn't on her playlist. One song that was meant to be positive struck me as more chilling than affirmative. I didn't catch the name of the song, but it was about a woman who had nearly drowned in the sea. She had been revived and woke up laughing because she was experiencing bliss under the waves. One of the lines of the song was about how the sun shines whether you are alive or drowning under the waves. Miss Hickman took comfort in that thought. Just made me think how cold the world can be. It reminded me of a Brueghel painting where we can see Icarus falling into the ocean and off to the side a plowman digs his furrow without bothering to look up into the sky. She closed out with a song about everyone being everyone else's angel. Nice song. I believe there has been some anti-angel sentiment around here lately, but this was a humanist angel song. Here is a little Happy content. Since I didn't get to see Happy this week-- you lucky dog northerners-- I had to settle for another sensitive singer-type. Sarah was pretty good with the high-low thing. Not quite as high as Happy and certainly not with the clear, girlish soprano/falsetto notes. The command of the guitar was jaw dropping-- much as I would expect Happy to be. Ms. Hickman is quite the wordy songwriter. Nothing like the minimalist approach Happy takes. (I prefer fewer words; that way you can concentrate on the meaning without the words obscuring anything. But then Happy does sometimes use words that drift like smoke across the meaning of the song) Sarah and Happy differ in that Sarah is an extrovert. She is number two on the list of hardest working, most entertaining musicians, following Bobby McFerrin. Oops, what about James Brown? "Huh, jump back, kiss myself." From what I've read here, Ms. Rhodes seems to be an introvert (maybe ambivert?) who would probably want to read a book while sitting in your living room, while Ms. Hickman would be dancing around trying to get your attention. Okay. That's about enough of that. If Sarah comes to your town you probably ought to go see her, even if she isn't ecto. She gets points for being vivacious and sensitive at the same time. Plus, she wears wonderful platform sole boots. Bye, Lyle n.p. The sound of my computer's fan n.r. Parallel Universes: Fred Alan Wolf ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V6 #300 **************************