From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V8 #70 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Monday, March 11 2002 Volume 08 : Number 070 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: heather nova [badly drawn woj ] Re: BtVS plea (way OT there) [RavFlight@aol.com] Fw: BtVS plea (way OT there) ["Angel's Shadow" ] ot:domain name ["Angel's Shadow" ] Re: Fw: BtVS plea (way OT there) [Joseph Zitt ] philip glass news [Jeff Wasilko ] NPR piece on house concerts [meredith ] BtVS [irvin lin ] Re: BtVS [Joseph Zitt ] kris delmhorst, OTR, colleen sexton, n&k nields, anne heaton (long!) [mer] Re: BtVS [meredith ] Re: BtVS ["Michael Colford" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 11:39:17 -0500 From: badly drawn woj Subject: Re: heather nova when we last left our heroes, anna maria "stjdrnell" exclaimed: >Heather Nova has done a duet with swedish indie >rockers Eskobar called Someone New. Its quite nice. which reminds me: i noticed that heather will be a guess on the world cafe (david dye's program on wxpn which is carried by many public radio stations in the states) this coming wednesday, march 13th. local stations, broadcast times, online streams, etc. can be found at http://xpn.org/sites/wc/ . woj n.p. lanterna -- elm street ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 14:20:21 EST From: RavFlight@aol.com Subject: Re: BtVS plea (way OT there) Speaking of Buffy and depressing, are there any truly faithful fans who also watch Angel (I have to admit that I am enjoying Angel much more this season than Buffy.) While I thought that the last weeks was depressing, it was NOTHING compared to Monday's episode of Angel. I won't give anything away for people who might watch it at a later date, but I'm wondering if anyone else had the same reaction (or perhaps I am the only one who watches the show.) Ryan ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 11:38:50 -0800 From: "Angel's Shadow" Subject: Fw: BtVS plea (way OT there) I'd have to agree about Angel with you. Buffy has been so dark and just getting more depressing, and although I didn't like the whole Angel-Cordelia thing which I was happy got stopped, I was just wondering where they were going with the whole "baby" thing. It was nice that Angel was so happy....Grr Argh them for messing with those things! Hey, does anybody know anything about the Giles based BBC show "Ripper?" I hope they show it here... Thanks Kristen > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > To: > Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2002 11:20 AM > Subject: Re: BtVS plea (way OT there) > > > > Speaking of Buffy and depressing, are there any truly faithful fans who > also > > watch Angel (I have to admit that I am enjoying Angel much more this > season > > than Buffy.) While I thought that the last weeks was depressing, it was > > NOTHING compared to Monday's episode of Angel. I won't give anything away > > for people who might watch it at a later date, but I'm wondering if anyone > > else had the same reaction (or perhaps I am the only one who watches the > > show.) > > Ryan ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 11:55:26 -0800 From: "Angel's Shadow" Subject: ot: Domain names My brother offered to do a web page for me, and I just found out somebody registered my name for a domain name. I think it's pretty obvious that they did it specifically to take it from me by the one link on the page. I know I can use .net or whatever, but .com is usually what most people default to. Does anybody know if this happens to a lot of the artists on mp3.com who didn't register their names before they joined? Sorry just griping on why people are such scum sometimes. Sigh. Kristen ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 12:02:11 -0800 From: "Angel's Shadow" Subject: ot:domain name Zoiks...I didn't know you could search for who registered the site (I'm a total newbie in that area). My brother registered it for me, but he didn't tell me. Hitting myself on the forehead! That was sweet of him. Slinking away embarrassed. Kristen ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 14:58:17 -0600 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: Fw: BtVS plea (way OT there) On Sun, Mar 10, 2002 at 11:38:50AM -0800, Angel's Shadow wrote: > Hey, does anybody know anything about the Giles based BBC show "Ripper?" I > hope they show it here... According to an article in the latest Buffy magazine, which just hit newsstands (yes, I'm a hopeless case), the show has been delayed, due to some reworking and that Joss is now working on 5 separate shows (yow). - -- | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | New book: Surprise Me with Beauty: the Music of Human Systems | | http://www.metatronpress.com/nj/smwb.html | | Latest CDs: Collaborations/ All Souls http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 15:10:41 -0500 From: Jeff Wasilko Subject: philip glass news If you're a fan, you should check out http://www.philipglass.com/ He's got a lot going on this year, including the release of the 3rd movie in the 'qatsi trilogy. IBM Research put together a very cool tool that lets you explore Glass' work: The IBM glass engine enables deep navigation of the music of Philip Glass. Personal interests, associations, and impulses guide the listener through an expanding selection of over sixty Glass works. http://www.philipglass.com/glassengine/index.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 15:19:29 -0500 From: meredith Subject: NPR piece on house concerts Hi, NPR aired a piece on this morning's Weekend Edition Sunday about house concerts. (As luck would have it, the artist performing at the Miami house concert the reporter attended was none other than Susan Werner. :) The piece is online at http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/wesun/20020310.wesun.10.ram. Whee! ======================================= 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: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 12:33:27 -0800 From: irvin lin Subject: BtVS Grrr. I have to say, this season has been a really REALLY bad season for BUFFY. I have to disagree with whoever said that HELL's BELL's had some drop down funny lines. It wasn't funny enough in my book, and just utterly depressing overall. And not in a good way. I think that TABULA RASA had the funniest moments this season, though the three villains are pretty darn hilarious. Next week's show looks interesting though - and it's an interesting way to bring JOYCE back. I do wish that GILES hadn't left. With no "adult" around in the show anymore, no one is grounded, and the show is left to flounder. XANDER seemed to have tried to take over in the "responsibility" sense, but all it's done is sort of turned him into a shadow version of his comedic self. And WILLOW is just boring now. And DOUBLEMEAT PALACE has to go down as one of the worse episodes of BtVS ever. Worse than GO FISH or BEER BAD. Blech. My boyfriend turned to me halfway through the episode and said "I don't like this episode" and he's NEVER said that about a BUFFY show. He's almost as fanatical as me. Ugh. Hopefully next season will be better. I know that UPN already committed to it, but if it stays as horrible as it already is, I would rather see it put out of it's misery than continue. Irvin Ps. GREG I would offer to send you tapes of the episodes, but I think someone else beat me to the punch. If you get desperate, feel free to give me a holler. Or check out http://www.scoopme.com/tapes/default.asp where they have a pretty good archive of episodes of all sorts of shows including BtVS. I have never used this service, but it seems pretty nifty. Does anyone have an opinion about it? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 16:45:35 -0600 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: BtVS On Sun, Mar 10, 2002 at 12:33:27PM -0800, irvin lin wrote: > Grrr. I have to say, this season has been a really REALLY bad season for > BUFFY. I have to disagree with whoever said that HELL's BELL's had some drop > down funny lines. It wasn't funny enough in my book, and just utterly > depressing overall. And not in a good way. I think the season is somewhat better than season 4, where she went off to college. They also have pretty much the same theme: getting the Scoobies to have to function on their own, without, in that season, the structure of high school, and, in this one, the grownups. > I think that TABULA RASA had the funniest moments this season, though the > three villains are pretty darn hilarious. Next week's show looks interesting > though - and it's an interesting way to bring JOYCE back. I do wish that > GILES hadn't left. With no "adult" around in the show anymore, no one is > grounded, and the show is left to flounder. XANDER seemed to have tried to > take over in the "responsibility" sense, but all it's done is sort of turned > him into a shadow version of his comedic self. And WILLOW is just boring > now. Well, pulling the grownups away and having the Scoobies flounder was sort of the point of the season -- but it really feels like it's gone on too long without any glimmer of hope. What drove me nuts in "Hell's Bells" was that they ignored completely the possibility of, once they realized that what was happening was due to the meddlings of a demon (well, and the way that that exploited the character's fears and weaknesses), Tara -- or maybe even Willow, having to balance the perils of again using magic versus the effect of standing back on her friends -- doing a spell to make what the demon did not have happened. (I dare you to parse that sentence :-] ). Or even to make the critical people forget it happened -- we know that both of them know how to do this, and the possibility wasn't even mentioned. Not to mention that Xander should have asked, when the supposed future self introduced himself, "OK, so I get older -- but why did my nose get so pointy? Is this a Pinnochio spell or something?" Maybe they should have brought back Nicholas Brendon's twin brother, who doubled him in an earlier episode, in aged makeup to make the ruse believable. On the whole, I'm uneasily reminded of how Twin Peaks fell apart when David Lynch wandered off. Maybe Joss is needed more than he thought. But I'm hoping it's a blip, like the weak stretches earlier on, and the occasional weaker sections of Babylon 5, and that it's a setup for things to get better. BTW, someone (Meth?) had mentioned a good Buffy mailing list a while back. Pointers? - -- | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | New book: Surprise Me with Beauty: the Music of Human Systems | | http://www.metatronpress.com/nj/smwb.html | | Latest CDs: Collaborations/ All Souls http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 17:10:48 -0500 From: meredith Subject: kris delmhorst, OTR, colleen sexton, n&k nields, anne heaton (long!) Hi, It's past time to write up the shows we've seen recently. Last weekend was One Of Those Weekends ... Natalie Merchant on Friday, then two shows at the Iron Horse on Saturday night (Kris Delmhorst early, Over The Rhine late), then Colleen Sexton in our living room on Sunday afternoon. Oy!! I already posted about Natalie, so I'll pick up the action in Northampton. I discovered Kris Delmhorst at the Acoustic Cafe almost two years ago now, and I've been enjoying her live performances more and more since then. Her new album, _Five Stories_ is rather uneven, but the best tracks really rock. We saw her open for Suzanne Vega (also at the Iron Horse) a few weeks ago, and the new songs didn't quite work solo, but she's so cute and giggly and fun to see, I still wanted to see her do a full set on her own. This turned out to be a very good thing, because she was accompanied onstage by Mark Erelli, who is generating quite a buzz as a singer, songwriter and bandleader in his own right. He is a great guitar player, and proved himself to be quite the harmonica player as well. He has been playing in Kris' band lately, and together they *rocked*, particularly on the new songs. At one point he played three harps at once, all in different keys, one note at a time. (I think the next time I see Trina Hamlin, I'll have to raise that as a challenge. ;) After that was over (to a thunderous ovation from the sold-out crowd), woj, JeffW and I went back outside and met up with Mike Curry and his friend Jenn in line for the late show, Over The Rhine. The doors were supposed to open at 9:30 for a 10 pm show, but they didn't open until almost 10. This meant that the show itself didn't end until 1 am, but seeing OTR is always such a magical experience, it didn't matter. As Paul Blair mentioned in talking about the NY show, they are a trio on this tour. The stripped-down acoustic versions of the songs on _Films For Radio_ were all revelations in their own way, particularly "The World Can Wait". Karin has such a mesmerizing voice. We had managed to get the table that's pushed up right next to the center of the stage too, which made the whole experience that much more intense. :) I should also mention that night's opening acts: a newcomer from Phoenix named Samsi (I think that's how it's spelled ... I was having a mental block all night and kept almost referring to her as "Sashimi" :}) opened for Kris Delmhorst, and she emphatically did not suck. She did an effective a cappella rendition of "Strange Fruit" that showed she has quite a voice. She did a couple songs written by her brother (apparently he's in a band of his own in Phoenix), but the songs she wrote herself were the most successful. She was accompanied by a slacker-looking dude on electric guitar, which gave her an indie-rock sound that fit well with her songs. I wouldn't go out of my way to see her again, but I'd be interested to see her in a few more opening slots to see how she develops. Opening for OTR was a duo, a married couple named Jennie and Richard Stearns (interestingly, only Jennie was given billing, though her husband sang and wrote just as many songs as she did). Richard Stearns mentioned that he used to be in a group called the Horseflies that was based in the Northampton area. Together they were a lot like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, doing some very rootsy Americana (one of Richard's songs was an attempt at writing a Depression-era coal miner story song). Not usually my thing, but pleasant enough to listen to for 40 minutes. Moving on to Sunday: we had a distressingly low number of reservations for Colleen Sexton's house concert, but it ended up being a good afternoon anyway. We didn't bother to move any furniture -- she set up in the corner in front of the TV, and I got a fire going in the fireplace and it was a mellow time. I hadn't seen her perform before, but she more than delivered on the promise indicated by her _Live_ CD, which was itself recorded at a house concert. She's got a very strong, expressive voice, and does material that has a lot of jazz and blues influences. This sets her apart from the pack of acoustic singer/songwriters that are seemingly a dime a dozen these days. Colleen also turned out to be a very cool person, too. We turned out to have a lot in common (among other things, she was a German major too :), and had a good time hanging out after the show. Her road manager lives literally a block away from us, so she spends a lot of time in New Haven. Who knows, we might see her here as a spectator for a future performance. I definitely want to have her back to play, too. I would highly recommend checking her out. Next: To celebrate the release of their new CD _Love and China_, Nerissa and Katryna Nields did an in-store performance at Cutler's Records in New Haven on Wednesday afternoon. I sneaked out of work to attend (had to hand out flyers for the New Haven show, you know :). They were completely unplugged, standing in the back of the Singles section surrounded by about 30 admirers. They did 6 songs from the album, and afterwards signed copies of the CD. While they were performing, I had the distinct honor of getting to hold little Amelia Nields Chalfant. :) Their manager Patty Romanoff had the babysitting duties, and as we were standing in the back chatting Amelia decided she wanted to be as close as possible to my bright-red coat. (She is a criminally cute kid. In just 9 1/2 months, she's managed to accrue as many fans as her parents and auntie have in a span of over 10 years. :) I picked up the CD there, and it's immediately taken up permanent residence in my car. It's a very twangy record, complete with prominent steel guitar on some tracks, but I think even the most rabid anti-twang crusader would crack under the pressure of the sisters' gorgeous harmonies. And the title track is addictive. I'd love it even if its first line weren't "Sky is gray coming into New Haven". Finally, on Friday night we attended Anne Heaton's CD release party at The Space in Hamden, CT. The Space is a tiny room in a converted train station in an industrial park about five minutes away from our house. It's completely illegal, so not many people know about it and are trying to keep it that way. It's run by Steve and Joe Rodgers, who used to front a band called Mighty Purple that gained a certain amount of notoriety in the region and put out a few CDs on a moderately-sized indie label in the mid-to-late 1990's. The band used to live in the building (I think the brothers might live there still), and for a while they were running a small record label out of the room that is now the performance area. They host open mics there every Tuesday, which end with a full-length set by an established artist (Sloan Wainwright will be there on March 26), and on Fridays they bring in someone to do a show of their own. The place is smaller than our living room and dining room put together, which is to say the 47 people who showed up to see Anne were pretty packed in. It's a cool room, decorated with all sorts of random antiques, LPs and random specimens of yard-sale chic, and lit by Christmas lights strung all over the ceiling. A fixture of the open mics (and someone who has attended pretty much every local acoustic music event I've been to in the past couple years) named Alison Wittenberg opened. She hasn't been doing this very long and it showed, but her songs weren't embarrassingly bad and she had a nice voice that sounded a lot like Rebecca Hart. She is a longtime loyal Anne Heaton fan, so she was positively giddy to be opening, which was rather sweet to see. Anne was accompanied by her longtime co-conspirator Frank Marotta Jr. on guitar, and together they made much more music than one would expect from just two people. They performed almost everything from her new CD _Black Notebook_, as well as a few brand-new things. The highlight of the set for me was when she did a short medley of bits of hits by Dave Matthews, Mary J Blige and Shawn Colvin, which segued immediately into "Black Notebook" (as cheezy as it may sound, in reality it was very, very cool). She also did a couple new songs that she said were inspired by the writings of Joseph Campbell, and when she jokingly said she could do an entire Joseph Campbell set "but I'll spare you that", I wasn't sure if she was really kidding or not. (I would actually pay money to see that, but I don't know if many others would. :) Her new songs showed continued maturity in her writing, too. She just keeps getting better and better. The new CD is by far the best-sounding thing she's done, and I think she's in an excellent position for her career to really take off. Radio stations have been latching onto it, and for good reason. I know some people here were turned off by her first recordings -- don't let that keep you from checking _Black Notebook_ out. It's very well produced, and has a good lush sound. She's got some great guest musicians on it, including Mike Visceglia on bass, Rob Curto (of Rachael Sage's band) on accordion, and the various members of the Live From New York crew providing backing vocals. It's a good disc to put on in the car when driving around on an early spring day. So there we go. If you're still with me after all this, well, then you must be an ectophile or something. Susan McKeown is up next tomorrow night ... yay! ======================================= 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: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 17:27:36 -0500 From: meredith Subject: Re: BtVS >Well, pulling the grownups away and having the Scoobies flounder was >sort of the point of the season -- but it really feels like it's gone >on too long without any glimmer of hope. Yes, I keep waiting for the turnaround, and it's just not happening. I'm not ready to write off the show yet, though. >What drove me nuts in "Hell's Bells" was that they ignored completely >the possibility of, once they realized that what was happening was due >to the meddlings of a demon (well, and the way that that exploited the >character's fears and weaknesses), Tara -- or maybe even Willow, >having to balance the perils of again using magic versus the effect of >standing back on her friends -- doing a spell to make what the demon >did not have happened. (I dare you to parse that sentence :-] ). Or >even to make the critical people forget it happened -- we know that >both of them know how to do this, and the possibility wasn't even >mentioned. Anya knows from the incident where they all were trapped in Buffy's house that asking Willow to do magic at this point is a waste of time. And Tara probably doesn't want to do magic in Willow's presence, out of fear that it may cause a relapse. >Not to mention that Xander should have asked, when the supposed future >self introduced himself, "OK, so I get older -- but why did my nose >get so pointy? Is this a Pinnochio spell or something?" Maybe they >should have brought back Nicholas Brendon's twin brother, who doubled >him in an earlier episode, in aged makeup to make the ruse believable. I don't know, some people change radically when they get very old. I've seen photos of my grandfather when he was Xander's age, and he looked *nothing* like he did as I remember him, when he was in his 70's. Practically speaking, maybe Nick Brendon's brother wasn't available. >On the whole, I'm uneasily reminded of how Twin Peaks fell apart when >David Lynch wandered off. Maybe Joss is needed more than he thought. That, I agree with. Marti Noxon is brilliant, but season 4 proved that Joss really does need to be paying closer attention. He came back from concentrating on getting _Angel_ off the ground, and the show rebounded quite well. I'm hoping the same thing happens again next season, though he'll be trying to get a brand new franchise started on a brand-new network (_Firefly_, which from all accounts is going to be amazing) so who knows? >But I'm hoping it's a blip, like the weak stretches earlier on, and >the occasional weaker sections of Babylon 5, and that it's a setup for >things to get better. Hear, hear. If _Xena_ could survive its fifth season, *anything* is possible. >BTW, someone (Meth?) had mentioned a good Buffy mailing list a while >back. Pointers? It was me. E-me directly for info. ======================================= 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: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 18:12:31 -0500 From: "Michael Colford" Subject: Re: BtVS Trying not to get sucked into the Buffy thread and failing... - ----- Original Message ----- From: "meredith" > >Well, pulling the grownups away and having the Scoobies flounder was > >sort of the point of the season -- but it really feels like it's gone > >on too long without any glimmer of hope. > > Yes, I keep waiting for the turnaround, and it's just not happening. I'm > not ready to write off the show yet, though. It's too bad they yanked Tara from much of the season. She seemed to be the only one behaving in a responsible manner, both the way she handled the Willow/witchraft issue, and the way she was the only one who seemed to care what was happening to Dawn. > >What drove me nuts in "Hell's Bells" was that they ignored completely > >the possibility of, once they realized that what was happening was due > >to the meddlings of a demon (well, and the way that that exploited the > >character's fears and weaknesses), Tara -- or maybe even Willow, > >having to balance the perils of again using magic versus the effect of > >standing back on her friends -- doing a spell to make what the demon > >did not have happened. (I dare you to parse that sentence :-] ). Or > >even to make the critical people forget it happened -- we know that > >both of them know how to do this, and the possibility wasn't even > >mentioned. Well, I'm usually opposed to tampering with people's memories, or altering time to make things not have happened. Besides, I don't really think it was necessarily the demon's vision that made Xander come to his decision. That event merely crystalized his own fears that he's been wrestling with for weeks. The fact that he and Tara will become like his own parents. Judging by the whole possibility of Anya returning to her demonic ways, and the way they kept looping around the whole, Anya becoming subservient to Xander/Anya struggling with her vows stuff, I will tell you where I think they should go next. It's time for Xander to be heroic. I think Anya will become a demon again (causing a little tension, etc.) then Xander will realize that he loves Anya, despite her demonic ways and will marry her as a demon. Xander needs to accept Anya for what she is totally... not just the part of her that is missing something. Just my thoughts. For some reason, I just think they're still going to end up married this season. And I just have to comment on irvin's comment about the three arch-villains. I have hated each and every one of their appearances and did not find them amusing in the least. They would have been fine in a one-off appearance, then caught, but I particularly disliked the recent dark turn involving them and regret that we will have to see them again. And I'm a HUGE Buffy fan. > >On the whole, I'm uneasily reminded of how Twin Peaks fell apart when > >David Lynch wandered off. Maybe Joss is needed more than he thought. > That, I agree with. Marti Noxon is brilliant, but season 4 proved that > Joss really does need to be paying closer attention. He came back from > concentrating on getting _Angel_ off the ground, and the show rebounded > quite well. I'm hoping the same thing happens again next season, though > he'll be trying to get a brand new franchise started on a brand-new network > (_Firefly_, which from all accounts is going to be amazing) so who knows? My biggest problem with this season is most definitely the writing. The characters just don't seem like themselves at all. I mean, they say the write things, but it just doesn't really seem all that believable anymore. Other than the musical episode, of course. Ah well, still a Buffy fan... Michael C. ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V8 #70 *************************