From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V8 #62 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Sunday, March 3 2002 Volume 08 : Number 062 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Colette Baron-Reid ["n'woj" ] Happy's career [Jerene Waite ] natalie merchant _motherland_ tour [meredith ] Re: All Wound Up [Neal Copperman ] Quotations germane to the "Happy's Career" thread ["Mitchell A. Pravatine] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 12:24:21 -0500 From: "n'woj" Subject: Re: Colette Baron-Reid when we last left our heroes, Datura Child exclaimed: >I looked at her site...I wonder if her sounding like Tori has anything to do >with the fact that Eric Rosse is involved? Is there anywhere that you can >actually listen to any of the album? you can listen to the entire album on her site. on each song's page, there's a link to listen to the song via streaming windows media. i'm listening to it now and don't really hear a similarity to tori. but that may just be me. ;) woj ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 09:50:43 -0800 From: Jerene Waite Subject: Happy's career Knowing less than nothing about making it in the music industry, I have noticed another "model" of ascension (I think). It seems to me that a performer can spend a lot of time performing on her parent coast and building a name there without really moving much in that upward direction. Then this performer changes venue and moves to the "other" coast, essentially doing the same thing, but this time she is noticed and ascends. Her work has become "fresh meat" to the new audience. - --Not that I would ever suggest that Happy move to San Diego or anything.......................... - --Jerene ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 14:18:37 -0500 From: meredith Subject: natalie merchant _motherland_ tour Hi, Natalie Merchant kicked off her _Motherland_ US tour last night at the Palace Theater in New Haven (of all places). It's a really good show, ably mixing material from _Motherland_ (including an absolutely kickass version of "This House Is On Fire") with older material, including the 10,000 Maniacs songs she is still playing after all these years, "Hey Jack Kerouac" and "These Are Days". Her band was tight, and she was in fine voice. I was interested to note that on the songs from the new album where her singing is more husky, that's how she sang them, but on the older songs her voice sounded just like it used to. I had been wondering whether the vocal style on _Motherland_ was because her voice is just changing from age, but that doesn't appear to be the case after all. Oh yeah, and since one of my friends works for the guy who runs the Palace, I got to be in Natalie's crew for a day. Her band and crew are a bunch of very cool people. My job was to be the "runner", i.e. a local person who knows where stores like Staples and Sam Ash are, and who can ferry people to and from the hotel and do stuff after the show like order the pizza for the load-out crew and make sure Ms. Merchant has her usual dinner of Japanese food ready when she comes off stage. (Luckily, there is a good Japanese restaurant right next door to the Palace!) That's when I finally got to talk to her. I congratulated her on a good show, and told her I really like her singing on Susan McKeown's new album (that one surprised her - she said she hasn't even heard the CD herself yet! :). I don't think I made too much of an ass of myself. I mean, it's coming up on 15 years since I first discovered 10,000 Maniacs ... that's half my life that I've been a fan of the woman! Her upcoming tour dates, in the US and then in the UK (Valerie Nozick, are you listening? :) are on her web site at http://www.nataliemerchant.com/news/tour.htm. Try to catch it if you can, it's worth it. ======================================= Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth ======================================= Live At The House O'Muzak House Concert Series http://www.smoe.org/meth/muzak.html ======================================= (: New England Patriots - Super Bowl XXXVI CHAMPIONS :) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 14:42:59 -0700 From: Neal Copperman Subject: Re: All Wound Up At 12:47 AM -0800 2/20/02, Greg Bossert wrote: >On Wednesday, February 20, 2002, at 01:39 AM, Lyle Howard wrote: >>I was spoiled in the eighties by listening to _Stay Awake_ the >>tribute to Walt Disney songs. The album has Ken Nordine, Sun Ra >>and band, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits, and other good musicians >>covering some well-known and obscure Disney tunes. It sort of >>raised the standard for children's tunes. Now I think all >>children's records should have Tom Waits doing his beatnik thing. > >not to mention great contributions from Syd Straw (yah!), Suzanne >Vega, Yma Sumac (yow!), a remarkable "Someday My Prince Will Come" >from Sinead O'Connor -- ah heck , there ain't a loser track on the >disc -- and best of all the eerie musical interludes by Bill Frisell >and Wayne Horvitz with Ken Nordine. Interesting perspective there. I don't consider that album as children's music at all. I recorded Sun Ra's version of Pink Elephants on Parade for my niece and it scared her, and I doubt I'd play the Tom Waits song for kids either (though those are my two favorite tracks on that album). I also find it to be a wildly erratic album. Sinead's Prince seems way too sleepy and understated for me, and there are a number of other performances like that too. But there are some tunes and medleys that totally bowl me over too. >Anyone heard the Hal Willner project "Closed on Account of Rabies: >Tales of Edgar Allan Poe", or his solo album "Whoops, I'm an >Indian"? and where/when's another Syd Straw album, huh? I have the Poe collection. I actually saw Willner do a bookstore appearance in Baltimore when that album came out. He talked about putting together the performances and various aspects of his career. Like most of his collections, I find that to be somewhat up and down. It's also primarily spoken word, so it's not something I listen to a lot. Marianne Faithful is perfect reading a couple of short poems, and what more could you ask for than Diamanda Galas reading The Black Cat? And JEff Buckley's contribution is haunting too. It's an interesting album to have around. neal np: Texoma - Jimmy LaFave ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 22:45:33 -0600 (CST) From: "Mitchell A. Pravatiner" Subject: Quotations germane to the "Happy's Career" thread The March 1 _Chicago Sun-Times_ has a piece on Chicago singer-songwriter Ellen Rosner which quotes her: "I would be delusional if I let my career be dependent on being signed by a major label. My desire to do what I do does not fit their template. But I'm not on any crusade. We all do what we do and can work to change the situation by getting our music out there." The complete story is on the web at: www.suntimes.com/output/show/wkp-news-ellen01south.html The liner notes to the late Eva Cassidy's final album, _Eva By Heart_, say this: "She chose songs that moved her, that allowed her to express her feelings. Record companies wanted to dictate her material, to fit her into a certain mold so they could target a specific market. But she wouldn't go along with that. She refused to compromise her music to make it more commercial." (The full text is also on the web, at: www.crosstownarts.com/CrosstownArts/client_music/eva/evabio.html ) The existential question, I suppose, is this: is "mass" popularity as an artist necessarily better than "class" popularity? Mitch ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V8 #62 *************************