From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V9 #39 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Monday, February 10 2003 Volume 09 : Number 039 Today's Subjects: ----------------- another Vienna mail (02/15/03 8PM @ Little Valley Winery) ["Troy J. Shadb] MUSIC REVIEW: Sarah Fimm, "A Perfect Dream." [Craig Gidney ] Re: ecto-digest V9 #38 ["dave" ] New album from Wendy Rule ["Anthony Horan" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 23:47:46 -0800 From: "Troy J. Shadbolt" Subject: another Vienna mail (02/15/03 8PM @ Little Valley Winery) Hey, for those of you in the SF bay area; Vienna's got a gig next Saturday (the 15th) at the Little Valley Winery in Sunol. It's a great little place, holds about 50 and they appreciate good music. I reserved a table if anyone wants a place to sit. It's only $5 for the show; and LVW has some great wines under their own label, White Rabbit. If you want a seat, send a message to Sandi @ javafixx@tdl.com . The food's good too. - -troy (pushing 'cause the owners are friends of mine) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 09:17:50 -0800 (PST) From: Craig Gidney Subject: MUSIC REVIEW: Sarah Fimm, "A Perfect Dream." Sarah Fimm, "A Perfect Dream." Personnel: Sarah Fimm, Peter Geraghty, Jim Perry, Mac Ritchey 1. Be Like Water 2. Wrong Side Up 3. Virus 4. SETI 5. Alien Boys 6. Smoke 7. David Johnson 8. Spit Trap Ghetto 9. Lioness 10. In the Red 11. A Perfect Dream 12. Shadows and Dust 13. Salvia Path http://www.sarahfimm.com The first time I heard the word 'fuck' in a pop song was The Pretenders eponymous debut, where Chrissie Hynde utters *that word* in a her slick, too-cool to care vibrato. She imbued 'fuck' with magic power. Subsequently, the word has lost some of its power in pop music. Hynde was quoted once, saying something to the effect that you'd be hard-pressed *not* to find to find a pop artist that uses it. It's an easy way to gain an edge. Sarah Fimm, a New York-based artist (band?) *loves* the word fuck. It is sprinkled liberally throughout her songs, and in the samples that she uses. Her utterances don't have the power of Hynde's groundbreaking use of the word. However, it's an honest use of the word, and contextually makes sense. She has found "the tao of Fuck." True, there's a bit of shock value: Ms. Fimm has a beautiful voice that reminds one of Sarah McLachlan, one that belies her dark imagination, and her pottymouth. Her lyrics are fanciful, barbed confessionals, in which no stone--rage, humor, pain, and sex--is unturned. One of the predominate themes on this album is of self-loathing. The narrator(s) of "Smoke", "Be Like Water" and "Virus" are introspective misfits, "holding the charred remains of the last dirty joke." They are uncomfortable in the world at large, as well as uncomfortable in their own skin. The song-cycle forms a wonderful exploration of female rage, not unlike of the work of Kristen Hersh (Throwing Muses). The frank sexuality of Hynde is evoked in the whispered "Lioness"is predatory; you can see her licking her jowls of the blood, after purring in the sunlit veldt. All of her songs are drenched in a stream-of-conciousness poetry, full of pulp horror imagery, crude jokes, slang, and sly references to mythology. Imagine Kate Bush hanging out in Soho with Patti Smith, you might get the idea. Fimm's compositions are piano-based, with forays into spacy ambient, dubby triphop, and an occasionally nod to the swampy alternarock of Smashing Pumpkins. The triphop band Ruby is a good reference point. My favorite song, "Spit Trap Ghetto," is loungey hot jazz; in it, she catalogs the eccentricities of a bunch of beautiful losers as saxes wail and Monster-Mash rhythm plays. Beauty and the beast live side by side in these songs; in Fimm's world, Beauty's gown is tattered, and the Beast is a wimp. - --Craig ===== Reviews of esoteric, atmospheric literature, music and movies: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ethereality/ Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 10:08:47 -0800 (PST) From: Ellen Rawson Subject: Re: more 2002 albums - --- JoAnn Whetsell wrote: > > The Be Good Tanyas - Blue Horse > > They're playing at the Bottom Line in NYC next > month. Is anyone planning on > going? I haven't decided yet. Their new album comes out here tomorrow. The Independent gave it 4 1/2 (out of 5) stars. I'm seeing them next month in Basingstoke. I caught them at Union Chapel in London last summer; I dearly want to see them again -- at a venue with better sound quality. Ellen ===== "Literature stops in 1100. After that, it's just books." - -- JRR Tolkien ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 15:05:07 -0500 From: "dave" Subject: Re: ecto-digest V9 #38 Yngve writes: #ecto on dalnet seems to be registered, but I've lately not seen anyone around there. I'll hang around hoping someone will show up ... =============== Dalnet has been the victim of some serious DDOS attacks lately, I haven't been able to get on there for about a month now.. the few servers working are usually full. Hopefully they'll get it straightened out soon. For more info see http://www.dal.net/index.php3 In the meantime, I've registered an ecto channel on Starchat (irc.starchat.net) so you can try that one. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 16:06:58 +1100 From: "Anthony Horan" Subject: New album from Wendy Rule It's been a while since I last said hello to Ecto, though I have been reading...! The various things of life and work seem to keep me from spending enough time at my computer actually replying to mailing list stuff (or, for that matter, personal emails!) way too often. But I'm still here, though now using a Hotmail address for Ecto because the list seems to be being echoed as a newsgroup on the servers I use, and me and spam don't get along.. :) What's prompted me to actually say something for a change (aside from the list messages I've been tagging for reply recently, which I'll get to... err, soon!) is that Melbourne-based singer and songwriter Wendy Rule, who some of you will be very familiar with, finished recording her fourth studio album last week. It's called "The Lotus Eaters", and was recorded partly last year before Wendy's overseas travels, and then completed over the past few weeks. The finished, mastered album runs for just under 67 minutes and contains 15 songs (a new record!) The release date should be somewhere around April. Wendy has asked me to make one of the new songs available online to give people a taste of the album, and the initial idea was that I would do so via her page at mp3.com. However, to my dismay, mp3.com has gone slowly and inexorably down the gurgler the past year or so, and their new limitations - including having only 3 songs listed on an artist's page, where previously Wendy had 9 or 10 - is the last straw. I'll be removing Wendy's page from their site within the next week or two, so if you wanted to order a copy of the CD available on that page, do so now as it's about to be made permanently unavailable :-) But I digress. Shortly Wendy's downloadable music will move to a new home on www.mp3.com.au (an unrelated site, despite the name, and *not* owned by Vivendi Universal!) but that requires a bit of preparation. So here's something just for Ecto in the meantime... :) I've encoded the song - "Penelope" - as an OggVorbis file and made it available here: http://www.wendyrule.com/audio/Penelope.ogg This one's for Ecto only, and won't be there permanently; eventually the rest of the world will get to access it via the new MP3 page. I'll be very interested to find out what you think of this one; bear in mind that it's only one facet of what is quite a diverse album. Wendy's web site is in serious need of an update, as many will have noticed. The idea a while back was that I would hand over the site to a new web person as I didn't have the time needed to give it the attention it deserves, but with the new album approaching I'll quite likely be back in webmaster mode and getting the site in order in the near future. New album cover art may appear there as early as tonight :) I'd also like to shamelessly plug site I've been working on more recently, for another Melbourne singer-songwriter named Monique Brumby. There's plenty of music to listen to (all in Ogg format!) and even a full music video in a 5MB file. Gotta love technology, even if the video technology has to come from Microsoft :) The site's at http://www.moniquebrumby.com, and once again I'd love to hear your comments... - - Anthony ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V9 #39 *************************