From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V9 #99 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Thursday, April 10 2003 Volume 09 : Number 099 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Today's your birthday, friend... [Mike Matthews ] RE: Vienna at Iota ["Bill Adler" ] d. dax/h. rhodes ["Donald G. Keller" ] production and the lack thereof [dmw ] New Happy song [Tamar Boursalian ] Re: Jeff's Happy photos [cyo@landoftheblind.com] RE: Bill obsessing about guitar sounds (WAS: RE: Happy's houseconcert) [] RE: New Happy song ["William Mazur" ] This and that ["Lyle Howard" ] RE: Bill obsessing about guitar sounds (WAS: RE: Happy's houseconcert) [] RE: production and the lack thereof ["William Mazur" ] RE: This and that ["William Mazur" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 03:00:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Matthews Subject: Today's your birthday, friend... i*i*i*i*i*i i*i*i*i*i*i *************** *****HAPPY********* **************BIRTHDAY********* *************************************************** *************************************************************************** ********************** Jill Hughes (Riphug@aol.com) *********************** *************************************************************************** -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Jill Hughes Sat April 09 1955 Aries Klaus Kluge Sun April 10 1960 Unicorn Steve VanDevender Sun April 10 1966 Racer Art Liestman Fri April 10 1953 Repeat Stephen Golden Sat April 10 1971 Jokey Michael Bowman Wed April 11 1962 Aries Wolfgang Ullwer Fri April 11 1969 Widder Janet Kirsch Thu April 11 1974 Aries Jerry Tue April 13 1971 Aries Stuart Myerburg Mon April 14 1969 Aries T-Bone Wed April 15 1992 happy cat Jeff Hanson Sat April 16 1966 Aries Michael Klouda Mon April 17 1967 Aries Harry Foster Sat April 21 1956 NiceGuy Kjetil Torgrim Homme Thu April 23 1970 Taurus Jeff Burka Thu April 24 1969 GoFlyAKite Christine Waite Tue April 25 1972 Taurus Matt Adams Thu April 26 1962 Taurus Brad Hutchinson Tue April 28 1964 What sign? Geoff Parks Sun April 30 1961 Taurus Marty Lash Sat May 01 1948 Taurus Barney Parker Fri May 02 1986 happy cat Gray Abbott Tue May 03 1955 Suprised Tamar Boursalian Tue May 03 1966 Taurus Richard A. Holmes May 07 Taurus Steve Ito Fri May 08 1970 DA Bull... Brian Gregory Thu May 09 1963 Eclectic - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 09:30:11 -0400 From: "Bill Adler" Subject: RE: Vienna at Iota I'll second Jeff's remarks. Vienna's show last night at Iota was wonderful! In every way, a terrifically delightful performance. The amount of talent --and charm-- that's inside Vienna Teng is overwhelming. - --Bill n.p. October Project, "Different Eyes" - -----Original Message----- To: ecto@smoe.org Subject: Vienna at Iota Okay, look people. This setlist thing just *isn't* that hard. Marc and I just got back from seeing Vienna at Iota (well, okay, actually I walked the dog first...we're not *just* back). The set list, in order was: Gravity The Tower Homecoming Eric's Song Between Say Uncle The Boy at the Piano Shasta Decade and One Enough to Go By Lullaby for a Stormy Night Soon Love Soon Unwritten Letter #1 Encore: Momentum Now why couldn't at least *one* of y'all who made it to the House o' Muzak on Sunday manage it?! The show tonight was, as expected, fantastic. Vienna is a great performer, and a great entertainer. She chatted with the audience and introduced pretty much every song with a story about its background. There were three unreleased songs, all of which were quite good. "The Boy at the Piano," particularly stood out for me. Very jazzy with cute lyrics. Reminded me of Jewel's "A Very Big Girl" in some ways. Lots of fun. "Shasta" was an interesting song, surprisngly playful in its music, about a woman trying to decide if she should have an abortion. "Soon Love Soon" was something of a highlight, with Vienna coaxing the rather large crowd (Iota was packed) into singing the "soon love soon" and "and we will be as one god, and we will be as one people" parts while she sang the rest. I was particularly impressed with Vienna's piano playing. It was a lot of fun to watch her hands spidering across the keyboard. So I'll join in the chorus and tell people not to miss the chance to see her! jeff ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 09:46:58 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: d. dax/h. rhodes A little bit more about Danielle Dax. Anna Marie's description of her is pretty good, but the curious personal experience I had was, when I finally dug my LPs out of storage (after five years or more) and played one of my favorite Danielle Dax songs, "Up in Arms" (which I only had on a 12-inch vinyl single), I was startled to observe how much it sounded like Kristeen Young! (The song dates from 1985, well before KY's career got going.) If you played it in between, say, "Mouth to Mouth" and "...HI-TEK?" from =Enemy=, you could easily come away with the impression it was all the same artist. And for those here with really extreme taste, the two albums Dax made with Karl Blake as the Lemon Kittens are extraordinarily good avant-rock. Also, a few remarks about the Happy Rhodes house concert at meth@woj's. This was the fourth time I've seen her perform, twice at Ectofest and once at the Tin Angel some years ago; and as before I kind of felt like an interloper, or a foreigner (not that anyone treated me that way, mind you!) because I was sure that everyone there was more of a Happy fan than I am (shame on me). As always, I was tremendously impressed by her singing: the range from very high to very low without register breaks or strain of any kind. (By contrast, Kristeen Young pushes and distorts her voice at the slightest pretext--to equally striking effect, to be sure.) Happy's high register sounds very much like Kate Bush (even more than KY or Tori Amos, who sound like Kate Bush occasionally themselves), but her lower register sounds like nobody else. I was equally impressed by her guitar playing; it sounded to me like "straight" acoustic guitar, with no effects. She uses mostly the usual major and minor chords, but the sequences, and her fingerpicking patterns (supported by the very tasty and understated percussion), made for a texture that strongly enhanced every song. Most striking for me were "Ra Is a Busy God" (which I know because =Many Worlds Are Born Tonight= is the one album I own on CD), "Ashes to Ashes" (which I know from David Bowie, of course), and "Just Like Tivoli," which I don't recall hearing before. The part of the latter song that I particularly liked was a guitar sequence =something= like Bm/Cmaj7/Em with descending passing notes linking them. But here's the rub. I borrowed =Building the Colossus= from meth&woj in order to listen to the song again, and was disappointed to discover that the accompaniment there was all electronic, the chords in washes rather than arpeggiated sequences of notes as in the live version. Beautiful song either way, but less effective in the studio version for me. Similarly with Vienna Teng's "Unwritten Letter #1," incidentally: as performed at meth&woj's, it's a very fun tango with a piano part that skitters entertainingly all over the keyboard; but when I bought the album and played it at home, I found that the studio version has a full band (very nicely arranged, to be sure), with =no= piano audible until about halfway through, and then it's mostly buried in the texture until the very end (which is what the live version sounds like all the way through). Again, the "produced" version doesn't work as well for me as the live version. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 13:35:24 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: production and the lack thereof On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Donald G. Keller wrote: > than arpeggiated sequences of notes as in the live version. Beautiful song > either way, but less effective in the studio version for me. ... > Again, the "produced" version doesn't work as well for me as the live > version. if i had a dollar for every time i heard that, i'd have enough money to hire a lot of "studio" musicians to play on my next album! naw, seriously DGK -- i know you (and i) like plenty of produced stuff -- KrisTEEN comes to mind. but i keep hearing people say stuff about how they put drums and synth pads on records just to make 'em radio-friendly - -- when in most cases commercial radio won't touch 'em anyway, and non-commercial radio really doesn't care. i kinda think mebbe it depends on how a song was written. if it was written for one voice and a piano or a guitar, if that was really the core of the artist's vision for the song, mebbe it outta stay that way. if the artist is always kinda hearing a trumpet part (or whatever) in his/her head when playing the acoustic guitar, well, mebbe it ouhtta be that way. you can add susan werner and emm gryner to the list of folks i prefer un-gussied up, if you like. - -- d. geraldine fibbers "toybox" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 11:03:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Tamar Boursalian Subject: New Happy song Bill Mazur said: > One of the new songs that Happy did at EFW was a poignant and > bittersweet song entitled "The Lucky One" (I believe that is the correct > title). It was very beautiful musically and melodically ala Tivoli. The > lyrics are about how her life went in a different direction than most > women. It describes how she kind of longed for the wedding dress, the > house with the picket fence, etc. like some of her friends, "the lucky > ones". The lyric said something about that she would never be one of the > "lucky ones". I remember this song from EFW as well. It was called "The Chosen One" and I remember that she prefaced it by saying something like "sometimes you just want what every girl wants", regardless of being happy with the path you have chosen. After the show I told her that it was really cool of her to write a song about me and we had a chuckle. For those of you who are feeling envious of the attendees of Happy's first house concert, consider how I feel: I used to live in that very apartment!!!!! That's *my* living room and I wasn't there!!!!! Those are even the couches I left behind!!! Hopefully she'll make it all the way out to Seattle. Sigh. - --Tamar ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2003 11:35:24 -0700 From: cyo@landoftheblind.com Subject: Re: Jeff's Happy photos thanks for the photos of the Happy concert Jeff, now I felt like I was sitting next to Meth instead of out in Cali! Much love to entire list! peace, the freaky one in SF ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 12:29:30 -0700 From: "Phillip Hudson" Subject: RE: Bill obsessing about guitar sounds (WAS: RE: Happy's houseconcert) Those who know Bill will understand that he's not really obsessing about the guitar sounds, etc., but simply pursuing his chosen craft. Bill is extremely modest about his talents, but his attention to detail in sound and timbre is quite simply amazing; he hears stuff in both individual sounds and music mixes that I only hear when he points them out (one of these days I'm going to sneak up on him with an ultrasonic dog whistle). A lot of what Bill does involves meticulously analyzing mixes and sounds right down to their component parts, and he really enjoys figuring out how particular sounds are produced and how different musicians approach these issues, hence the Happy guitar sound questions. We've had long discussions about production and vox/instrument effects over the years, and I have known him to spend many hours fine-tuning specific guitar sounds for each individual song in a set. This impresses me very much, as I have the attention span of a small hamster, and can only commit about 15 minutes to such a narrowly focused pursuit before my interest wanders off to play another song or go for a little run in the wheel. I don't like to do a studio session without Bill and his magic ears, even if he's not even scheduled to perform. (Fortunately for me, he loves the studio environment, and takes a 3-hour round trip to attend). He's also very good at quietly keeping unruly studio engineers from taking over the mix. So thanks for doing it the way you do, Bill. "Ears" to you, my friend:) Phil - -----Original Message----- From: owner-ecto@smoe.org [mailto:owner-ecto@smoe.org]On Behalf Of William Mazur Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 9:12 PM To: ecto@smoe.org Subject: Bill obsessing about guitar sounds (WAS: RE: Happy's houseconcert) Yes, I did mean to send it to you and the list. Thanks for the forward Meth! Thanks for the lowdown on Happy's guitar sound. Yeah, you are definitely right about Kevin's effects on his guitar work on The Keep. In fact, Carl is using effects on his bass as well. That whole album has a dreamy quality to it because of the really spacey approach they all, including Happy, used on their instruments. I am always curious to hear about how other musicians I respect approach different environments. Vienna can pull it off with just a piano and her voice. Her playing, singing and songs are so strong. However, her arrangements on the CD are great because of all the extra instruments and more evolved arrangements. I would love to hear her with a full band sometime as well. Another example would be what I saw last night with Duncan Sheik. He had an unexpected (at least to me) basic rock and roll set up. There were two guitarists, bass and drums. No keyboards at all. No orchestration. The one twist was that, most of the time, Duncan played an acoustic guitar versus a rhythm electric guitar. The arrangements of his songs were really interesting in the stripped down format. Yet the songs didn't lack for anything with these arrangements. The lead guitarist made interesting use of effects and guitar echo looping techniques to create atmosphere that normally a keyboard would provide. Because Happy has such an amazing vocal presence and her lyrics are so strong she probably doesn't need too much in the way of musical accompaniment to bring her songs to life. As a backing instrumentalist to a number of pretty talented singers, I am always looking for ways to make the music sound full even in a stripped down fashion. I always want to enhance their vocals. I am obviously very curious about Happy's guitar sound. When I play electric guitar I use many different effects to create different moods. When Phil and I play out live as a duo, he normally plugs his acoustic guitar directly into the board without effects (perhaps a little reverb) to get a more natural sound. I also play acoustic guitar but I put it through the POD to add chorus, DDL and reverb to add more depth to the overall sound. Our guitars tend to blend more that way and provide a fuller sound. I hope I am not boring everyone too much with all of this stuff. Thanks, Bill M. - -----Original Message----- From: owner-ecto@smoe.org [mailto:owner-ecto@smoe.org] On Behalf Of meredith Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 4:34 PM To: ecto@smoe.org Subject: RE: Photos from Happy's houseconcert (Bill, I'm assuming you wanted to send that last reply to the list too...) >Thanks Meth! From what I can see Kate looks very beautiful in the >picture. Happy looked beautiful in all of Jeff's pictures. Yeah, it's a nice shot of Kate. And Happy did look great in Jeff's photos (though #5288 absolutely cracked me up -- I think that's when she was making fun of Bob for trying to take a picture from his vantage point). >There was a cable coming from her Ovation guitar in one picture. >So based on what you are saying, Happy probably plugged the guitar >straight into the P.A. for some minor sound re-enforcement. Right. >Effects such >as chorus or DDL on her guitar which would make it sound more watery and >ethereal. Did it sound like straight acoustic guitar or did it have the >other quality I am describing? It sounded like straight acoustic guitar to me. She was having a little trouble with feedback in the beginning, but they got it taken care of pretty early on. >That effected acoustic guitar sound is >what she used on The Keep. Kevin also used quite a few effected electric guitar sounds on _The Keep_... =============================================== 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://muzak.smoe.org NEXT UP: Sloan Wainwright, 4/13 =============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 19:39:58 -0700 From: "William Mazur" Subject: RE: New Happy song Thanks Tamar! I knew something didn't quite sound right about the song title I had mentioned. - -----Original Message----- From: owner-ecto@smoe.org [mailto:owner-ecto@smoe.org] On Behalf Of Tamar Boursalian Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 11:04 AM To: ecto@smoe.org Subject: New Happy song Bill Mazur said: > One of the new songs that Happy did at EFW was a poignant and > bittersweet song entitled "The Lucky One" (I believe that is the correct > title). It was very beautiful musically and melodically ala Tivoli. The > lyrics are about how her life went in a different direction than most > women. It describes how she kind of longed for the wedding dress, the > house with the picket fence, etc. like some of her friends, "the lucky > ones". The lyric said something about that she would never be one of the > "lucky ones". I remember this song from EFW as well. It was called "The Chosen One" and I remember that she prefaced it by saying something like "sometimes you just want what every girl wants", regardless of being happy with the path you have chosen. After the show I told her that it was really cool of her to write a song about me and we had a chuckle. For those of you who are feeling envious of the attendees of Happy's first house concert, consider how I feel: I used to live in that very apartment!!!!! That's *my* living room and I wasn't there!!!!! Those are even the couches I left behind!!! Hopefully she'll make it all the way out to Seattle. Sigh. - --Tamar ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 04:30:48 +0000 From: "Lyle Howard" Subject: This and that Buenos Noches, Jeff did an excellent job of documenting the concert at Woj and Meredith's place. Those are the best shots of Happy I have seen. I'm always curious to see what the audience looks like, so could have used another shot or two of bystanders. I was laughing as I went through the pictures because Kate Bush was the presiding genius hovering over Happy as she sang. Maybe next concert W&M can add Bowie, Mercury, and Gabriel to the demi-gods benignly staring down from Mount Olympus onto the stage we mortals tread. I was surprised to see Happy playing an Ovation. I thought she was auctioning that guitar off on E-bay. Maybe it is a new one. I'm partial to mine, as it is a powerful guitar with lots of mid-range sound. It projects like crazy. The only problem is it slips off your lap due to the round back. I'm surprised she didn't bring along her nylon-string guitar for a bit of contrast. I was heartened at and distraught by Ms. Rhodes use of barre chords. Heartened because anyone can learn to play barre chords, given enough time. Distraught because my barre chords don't sound as good as Happy's barre chords. I suppose the secret is in the right hand-- the picking hand. You have to sequence those six lovely notes right or you get nothing. I thought she might be using secret chords, but they look awful normal to me. Did Happy ever use a pick at that concert? Hearing about the song _Lucky One_ brought to mind _Lucky Guy_ by Todd Rundgren: <> etc. It is hard to imagine the songs from _Many Worlds_ without loops encircling them. I'll be curious to hear acoustic only versions. Oh, and we have to take into account the capo when we try to figure out Happy's chords. Bye, Lyle _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 22:15:11 -0700 From: "William Mazur" Subject: RE: Bill obsessing about guitar sounds (WAS: RE: Happy's houseconcert) Phil, Thanks for the kind words! Meth and Donald, Thanks for the additional lowdown on Happy's guitar sound and on the show in general. Bill - -----Original Message----- From: Phillip Hudson [mailto:aiku@pacbell.net] Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 12:30 PM To: William Mazur; ecto@smoe.org Subject: RE: Bill obsessing about guitar sounds (WAS: RE: Happy's houseconcert) Those who know Bill will understand that he's not really obsessing about the guitar sounds, etc., but simply pursuing his chosen craft. Bill is extremely modest about his talents, but his attention to detail in sound and timbre is quite simply amazing; he hears stuff in both individual sounds and music mixes that I only hear when he points them out (one of these days I'm going to sneak up on him with an ultrasonic dog whistle). A lot of what Bill does involves meticulously analyzing mixes and sounds right down to their component parts, and he really enjoys figuring out how particular sounds are produced and how different musicians approach these issues, hence the Happy guitar sound questions. We've had long discussions about production and vox/instrument effects over the years, and I have known him to spend many hours fine-tuning specific guitar sounds for each individual song in a set. This impresses me very much, as I have the attention span of a small hamster, and can only commit about 15 minutes to such a narrowly focused pursuit before my interest wanders off to play another song or go for a little run in the wheel. I don't like to do a studio session without Bill and his magic ears, even if he's not even scheduled to perform. (Fortunately for me, he loves the studio environment, and takes a 3-hour round trip to attend). He's also very good at quietly keeping unruly studio engineers from taking over the mix. So thanks for doing it the way you do, Bill. "Ears" to you, my friend:) Phil ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 22:25:21 -0700 From: "William Mazur" Subject: RE: production and the lack thereof When a song is really strong, the singer is incredible and able to deliver the emotional content of the song, and the basic accompaniment (guitar or piano) is well done you don't necessarily need anything else. I personally run the gamut of liking completely sparse production with just the artist and their instrument (some of Nick Drake's recordings come to mind) to a completely intricate and evolved production ala Dark Side of the Moon or OK Computer. One thing I feel about a lot of Happy's material is that her songs can go either way when it comes to production. You referred to "Just Like Tivoli". Her performance of that song at EFW was more stripped down to the basics. However, I really like the arrangement and production on the studio version. On "Temporary and Eternal" I prefer the version on The Keep versus the original, more arranged and produced version on Equipoise. My guess is it that comes down to how the song hits you emotionally. A bare essential approach may touch you deeply because it is simple and direct. The more produced song can create more of an atmosphere or mood. When that happens, then that song may speak to you in a different but just as powerful way. - -----Original Message----- From: owner-ecto@smoe.org [mailto:owner-ecto@smoe.org] On Behalf Of dmw Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 10:35 AM To: ecto@smoe.org Subject: production and the lack thereof On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Donald G. Keller wrote: > than arpeggiated sequences of notes as in the live version. Beautiful song > either way, but less effective in the studio version for me. ... > Again, the "produced" version doesn't work as well for me as the live > version. if i had a dollar for every time i heard that, i'd have enough money to hire a lot of "studio" musicians to play on my next album! naw, seriously DGK -- i know you (and i) like plenty of produced stuff - -- KrisTEEN comes to mind. but i keep hearing people say stuff about how they put drums and synth pads on records just to make 'em radio-friendly - -- when in most cases commercial radio won't touch 'em anyway, and non-commercial radio really doesn't care. i kinda think mebbe it depends on how a song was written. if it was written for one voice and a piano or a guitar, if that was really the core of the artist's vision for the song, mebbe it outta stay that way. if the artist is always kinda hearing a trumpet part (or whatever) in his/her head when playing the acoustic guitar, well, mebbe it ouhtta be that way. you can add susan werner and emm gryner to the list of folks i prefer un-gussied up, if you like. - -- d. geraldine fibbers "toybox" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 22:30:34 -0700 From: "William Mazur" Subject: RE: This and that Lyle, That was one of the bonus point opportunities of my question. Factoring in the capo was an important element. ;-) Bill - -----Original Message----- From: owner-ecto@smoe.org [mailto:owner-ecto@smoe.org] On Behalf Of Lyle Howard Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 9:31 PM To: ecto@smoe.org Subject: This and that Oh, and we have to take into account the capo when we try to figure out Happy's chords. Bye, Lyle ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V9 #99 *************************