From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V9 #182 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Wednesday, June 25 2003 Volume 09 : Number 182 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Seeking: the Saddest Songs on Earth, plus a couple of other items [Jo] Today's your birthday, friends... [Mike Matthews ] sad songs [adamk@zoom.co.uk] Sad songs ["Marcel Rijs" ] Re: Notes from L.A.: New Artists to Watch [Joseph Zitt ] Central Florida ecto? [Kat Walsh ] Re: saddest songs [Joseph Zitt ] new innocence mission [cjmacs ] East Mountain South ["jessica weiser" ] Ecto concerts in October? [Sander ] sad songs [dmw ] Exile in Phairedux? ["Mitchell A. Pravatiner" ] Amazing [Paul Blair ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 23:18:32 -0700 From: John Sandoval Subject: Re: Seeking: the Saddest Songs on Earth, plus a couple of other items At 01:55 AM 6/24/2003 -0400, you wrote: >Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 17:15:45 EDT >From: AzeemAK@aol.com >Subject: Re: Seeking: the Saddest Songs on Earth. > >In a message dated 23/06/2003 18:51:55 GMT Daylight Time, ToriCure@aol.com >writes: > > > I think the saddest song by Kate Bush is off of the Red > Shoes. "Moments of > > Pleasure" So good... so sad. > > > >My vote from The Red Shoes would be for "You're The One" - that's a real >gut-wrencher. I'll chime in here (I know, I don't chime in often) with another Kate song. "Never Be Mine" off The Sensual World. That gets me every time. As does "This Woman's Work", especially after having a very similar experience to Kevin Bacon in "She's Having A Baby" with our last child... Also: "If So" - Happy "Mercy Street" - Happy or Peter "Eleanor Rigby" - The Beatles "Sometimes It Snows in April" - Prince "When Somebody Loved Me" - Sarah Let's see, on to a couple of other topics... A local (non-corporate) radio station here in San Diego is airing a show Sunday-Thursday night called "Big Sonic Chill". The standard playlist includes Cocteau Twins, Hooverphonic, Massive Attack, Everything But The Girl, My Bloody Valentine, Ivy, Dead Can Dance and lots of other Ecto-friendly music. I've taken a liking to several of the groups that I've heard mentioned here on Ecto over the years but never heard. Unfortunately, they aren't streaming their feed over the net. I did exchange an email with the DJ about Happy, I need to make sure she gets a copy of the new album and maybe try to find a copy of Many Worlds to get to her. Their webpage (with playlists) is at http://www.b949.com/home/index.cfm. And finally, a tangential-Happy topic. Some of you out there know where my wife and I used to work (for those who don't, we worked with the Hubble Space Telescope). I'm doing other things now, but my wife is still using her degree. :) The small company she works for has a camera in orbit around Mars and the picture of the day today is something all the Happy fans (and Happy herself) might be interested in seeing. It's at: http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/06/23/index.html John ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 03:00:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Matthews Subject: Today's your birthday, friends... i*i*i*i*i*i i*i*i*i*i*i *************** *****HAPPY********* **************BIRTHDAY********* *************************************************** *************************************************************************** ********************** Dave Torok (no Email address) ********************** ************** Ethan Straffin (straffin@xenon.stanford.edu) *************** *************************************************************************** -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Dave Torok Mon June 24 1968 Cancer Ethan Straffin Thu June 24 1971 Cancer Kevin Dekan Mon June 27 1960 Cancer Samantha Tanner Tue June 30 1970 Wild Goose BunkyTom Tue July 02 1968 Cancer Anders Hallberg Tue July 03 1962 Cancer Kevin Harkins Thu July 05 1973 Cancer Laurel Krahn Mon July 05 1971 Cancer John J Henshon Mon July 05 1954 The Year Of The Horse / Ruled By The Moon Jim Gurley Mon July 06 1959 Cancer Lisa Rouchka Fri July 08 1960 Moonchild with Java Rising Courtney Dallas Fri July 09 1971 Catte Michael Peskura Sat July 09 1949 HallOfFamer Finney T. Tsai Sat July 09 1966 Cancer Larry Greenfield Tue July 11 1950 Virgo Rising; Gemini Moon Marion Kippers Tue July 13 1965 Kreeft Ellen Rawson Thu July 13 1961 Double Cancer Mitch Pravatiner Mon July 14 1952 Cancer R. Rapp Wed July 14 1954 On a Gray Eye Sojourn John Zimmer Sun July 16 1961 Cancer Dan Stark Sun July 16 1961 Cancer Cathy Guetzlaff Mon July 18 1955 Cancer Vlad Sat July 18 1970 Warning: severe tire damage Jani Pinola Thu July 20 1972 Jonquil - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 08:48:17 +0100 From: adamk@zoom.co.uk Subject: sad songs Ohhh, they say so much, don't they? I have no idea where to start with this. It's not just that the songs are sad, but that there's something bitter sweet about them...they don't just bring us down, they kindle some other sensation, some longing, some yearning that pulls us along. I remember I used to get all misted up with Paul Simon's "American Tune", and in later years used to find Genesis' "Afterglow" unbearably sad, particularly the way it used to fade out at the end, ebbing, flowing, and receding into the ether far, far away. Of the Beatles, the one that always springs to my mind is "For No-one", one of their most underrated songs about a love gone stale. REM do a few great sad songs. "You Are Everything", which aches with melancholy and is redolent of empty rooms in a summer's night, while the untitled, last song from Green (#11, for want of a better name) a man singing to his family from far away, a song of loss and longing. Peter Hammill's the master of misery: His "Again", about absence and lost love, always gets me, and more recently -- on a fairly substandard album --- he did a song called "Phosphorescence", about how much we mean to each other, even though we're just...well, ships in the night. There are thousands -- the most recent addition is Juliet Turner's "Short Loan Only". I've had a lot of death and illness around me recently, senseless violent deaths. This song, set during a wake for the narrator's loved one, is a masterpiece of understated pain and quiet grief. I'd never noticed it until I put it on one day, recently, and it just hit home. The beauty of sad songs is not their sadness -- it's the aching, the yearning that reminds us we're still alive and still human. adam k. - ------------------------------------------------ This mail sent through http://webmail.zoom.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 10:08:56 +0200 From: "Marcel Rijs" Subject: Sad songs Here are my votes: Suicide song - Happy Rhodes You're the one - Kate Bush Home (especially the live version from her first ltd. ed. live cd) - Sarah McLachlan Wonderful life - Black (still gets to me after all these years) When a man is wrong + To say goodbye - Seal (from his 'Human being' album) Stars (acoustic version) - Dubstar Time and again - A-ha (from their 'Lifelines' album) Sama - Justyna Steczkowska (these lyrics are Miserable! I don't understand Polish but I read an English translation once and the whole song made much more sense after that.) I am very sure that there are many more, but these are definitely the highlights (or lowlights, depending on your view). Kind regards, Marcel Rijs - marcel.rijs@kb.nl afd. Communicatie - Communication department Koninklijke Bibliotheek - National Library of the Netherlands Website - http://www.kb.nl ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 01:54:19 -0700 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: Notes from L.A.: New Artists to Watch G. Perez wrote: > eastmountainsouth (Virginia/L.A.) - Argh... someone came into our store yesterday excited about the band but unsure of the name, though it turns out that she had at least pronounced it right. So I looked through our database for combinations of the various words "east", "mountain", and "south" and came up cold, only now to see that it's run together as one word. (Yeah, I could have tried a web search with a better search engine, but we don't have such access, nor do many other stores.) Since the band's name is spelled differently from how it sounds, they lost sales wheh they couldn't be found. A note to those who might be naming bands in the future: It can be mighty cute and cool to use wacky spellings and run-together words in the names, but if folks can't figure this out from how they're spelled, they're going to miss out. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 06:34:54 EDT From: Riphug@aol.com Subject: Re: saddest songs One that always gets me is Holly Cole singing "The Briar and the Rose." The horns just really sound so sad. I also have to submit Lisa Germano's "The Darkest Night of All." Jill :D ------------------------------ Date: 24 Jun 2003 21:55:32 +1000 From: Andrew Fries Subject: Re: Notes from L.A.: New Artists to Watch On Tue, 2003-06-24 at 13:42, G. Perez wrote: > Carla Werner (L.A. via NZ) - via Sydney, too - she used to play around our local pubs for a good number of years. > And although she's a New Zealander, her > output is essentially Brit-rock. I suspect her style has changed quite drastically compared to Carla I know, which is acoustic, and with a definite tinge of jazz... > And, if you're interested in obtaining an EP she made > a few years ago, I can point you in the right direction to purchase one (I > believe they're in limited quantity these days). Very limited, but I'd encourage everybody to try to hunt it out - especially if you're going to buy the new one. The contrast might prove, well, interesting! Actually she released not one, but two EPs, the first one credited to "Carla and Tim", containing mainly covers... The only time I've ever seen this one was by complete accident in a second-hand shop. I snapped it up, of course. It's definitely her, but for whatever reason she doesn't seem to like talking about it much. - --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Grrr...Arrgh!" -- Mutant - -- 17:10:34 up 9 days, 5:23, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00-- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 10:27:21 -0400 (EDT) From: Kat Walsh Subject: Re: saddest songs Greetings! Piping in with a few already mentioned -- "This Woman's Work", "Baker Baker", and the Barber Adagio. (For anyone who loves the Barber, I recommend strongly Faure's Pavane, Hovhaness' Symphony No. 6, Aaron Jay Kernis' "Musica Celestis" -- especially movement 2 -- and Arvo Part's "Fratres". Yes, I am mostly a classical music geek.) And a few more, semi-ecto: Cranes, "Are You Gone?", "Driving In The Sun" Fiona Apple, "Never Is A Promise", "Sullen Girl" Enya, " 'S Fagaim Mo Bhaile" -- on the Silent Night single, a simple and movingly done song about the Irish leaving during the Famine. On the same single, "Oriel Window" is a lovely sad instrumental. Goo Goo Dolls, "Iris" -- inexplicably, this one just does it for me. Also, some albums I listen to in a melancholy mood: Cranes, Loved Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes Low, Things We Lost In The Fire Vienna Teng, Waking Hour Loreena McKennitt, The Mask and Mirror Delurking, Kat - -- http://www.mindspillage.net *** Stetson: Box #6105, x6730 "It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing." - Gertrude Stein AIM: LucidWaking * ICQ: 83982325 * Y! Messenger:catha-edulis ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 10:37:05 -0400 (EDT) From: Kat Walsh Subject: Central Florida ecto? Greetings! I've been (mostly lurking) on this list for a while, and I hear about shows and concerts and such all the time, none of which I can ever make it to. Does anyone know of any ecto artists in the central Florida area (particularly Orlando or Daytona Beach) I should look out for? I'd love to go see everyone I think might possibly be worth seeing and be able to answer that question myself, but being without a car or much spare cash limits that somewhat. So, is Central Florida really just a breeding ground for boy bands or are there some great shows I'm just not hearing about? Thanks, Kat - -- http://www.mindspillage.net *** Stetson: Box #6105, x6730 "It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing." - Gertrude Stein AIM: LucidWaking * ICQ: 83982325 * Y! Messenger: catha-edulis ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 07:49:37 -0700 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: saddest songs Kat Walsh wrote: > Piping in with a few already mentioned -- "This Woman's Work", "Baker > Baker", and the Barber Adagio. > > (For anyone who loves the Barber, I recommend strongly > Faure's Pavane, Hovhaness' Symphony No. 6, Aaron Jay Kernis' "Musica > Celestis" -- especially movement 2 -- and Arvo Part's "Fratres". Yes, I > am mostly a classical music geek.) Ah, I'm not familiar with the Kernis, but will keep an ear open for it. I would add the Gorecki "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" and Morton Feldman's "Rothko Chapel" and "The Viola in My Life". ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 11:08:45 -0400 From: cjmacs Subject: new innocence mission apparently the innocence mission have a new album "befriended" coming out very soon! http://www.badmanrecordingco.com/bands/default.aspx?productDetail=befriended c. ***** you have received these electrons from: cjmacs@comcast.net ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 12:06:25 -0500 From: "jessica weiser" Subject: East Mountain South Ger mentioned East Mountain South in his post about up-and-coming artists and I thought I'd second the recommendation! Heard about them just before they signed to Dreamworks and was anticipating the album release... Definitely recommended for fans of Patty Griffin, imho. http://www.eastmountainsouth.com/ I personally love both of their voices (it is a guy and a girl that both sing)... I don't have the album yet cause I'm poor but you can hear some of it on their website. :) jessica - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- jessica weiser :: singer/songwriter www.jessicaweiser.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 21:57:55 +0200 From: Sander Subject: Ecto concerts in October? Hi folks, Being nearly done with a lifetime of school and study, I'm preparing to migrate to the other side of the world for a year or two of traveling and experiencing. On my way there, I'll have a stopover in Los Angeles, which I intend to drag out for about a month to go and bounce all over the USA to visit friends and see sights and do all kinds of funky stuff. (I hear driving up the coast from LA to SF over the scenic route is absolutely wonderful, so I intend to rent a car and do that. And then just bounce around all over the Bay Area, and bounce off for a sunrise over Yosemite; I did that last summer, but now I hope to do it in the fall with even better colors.) But most importantly, I want to go and satisfy this craving for live music you all have managed to induce in me. I have never attended a house concert. Six months ago I didn't even know such things existed, now one of the scarier thoughts to inhabit my brain is that of not being able to go to one when I'm over there. But of course, the window of opportunity for doing so will be exceedingly narrow. And I just *know* that I'm going to manage to plan things in such a way that I'll have a flight in or out just one day too late or too early to attend this one additional absolutely must-attend concert. So this is a semi-desperate plea for information. From what I've seen on the list so far, most shows aren't announced more than a month in advance, which will be too late to do me any good in this planning stage. But surely, so I'm reasoning, the initial plans for these concerts are made a lot earlier. If you know of such plans, no matter how tentative, I'd be very much obliged if you could tell me about it. The very broad timeperiods I'm interested in are: * October 1 through October 21 for all of California (and everything within a day driving from there; two if it's Vienna (though if she continues her current schedule I don't worry too much about being able to attend one of her concerts), Dar Williams, GEG, Jane Siberry, Terami Hirsch (not that I kow more than a handful of her songs so far, but her 'babbling' in that live version of Madeline on her site has made het a definite must-see for me), Happy (Hell, for Happy I'll drive four days - how far across the USA would that take me?) :) or someone like that). (Apologies for the run-on sentence, but just thinking about seeing/hearing these people makes me want to go all bouncing around.) :D * October 15 through October 31 for Dallas or New Orleans or the immediate surrounding areas for these cities. I'm also seriously pondering a visit to Philadelphia just to see Happy there on November 1, even though it's moving further in the opposite direction of which I should be moving, and I really can't afford it. But, but... it's Happy! *whimpers* Uhm, so if there'd be other concerts in Philadelphia around that date, that might serve to draw me over the edge...? And how big is the Tin Can / how many people really know of Happy? As in, should I order tickets a lot in advance, or could I show up on the day of her show itself and still get in? Finally I have no experience with where to look for information about shows, other than on the artists' sites or on ecto. I've signed up for Vienna's list, so that at least should be covered, but are there any places I can look at for a general overview? Thanks in advance! Sander n.p. Terami Hirsch - Madeline (live) n.r. Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson - Dune: House Corrino; almost done with this perversion. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 16:49:01 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: sad songs I've recently been listeing to a lot of Carter Family (thank you, E-music!) and man, some of those are hard-hitting. Two I've been surprised to not see (might have missed in skimming): Paula Cole, "Saturn Girl" and Dar Williams "February." Richard Buckner and Julie Doiron have a lot of good sad songs. So does Pedro the Lion. My first order from Daedalus Books (sp?) was my introduction to a couple of authors who still rank high among my favorites (most especially the vastly underrated (imho) Jean Echenoz, who writes things that are loosely mysteries but mostly surreal and hilarious character pieces. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 00:27:53 -0500 (CDT) From: "Mitchell A. Pravatiner" Subject: Exile in Phairedux? Last Sunday (June 22), the Chicago _Tribune_ ran an insightful review of the New Liz Phair album, a nice companion piece to the _New York Times_ review a week earlier. It suggests that label execs did not put her up to her artistic U turn, but that it was her idea all along. In an interview, Phair related how she had long longed for extensive radio play, and that this seemed the way to finally get it. The ultimate impetus, she said, came from hearing an Avril Lavigne song on the radio, which she found both sweet on the oe hand, and powerful and confrontational on the other. It;s on the web--free for the next few days--at: chicgotribune.com/features/arts/chi-0306220354jun22.1,7812376.story Mitch ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 01:46:23 -0400 From: Paul Blair Subject: Amazing Some preliminaries. Last night (Monday) I went to the Knitting Factory to see Beth Sorrentino. After four songs, I left, bored out of my mind. Girl with keyboard; I couldn't see it. As alternative entertainment I spent a few hours reading Aristotle's ethics. Go figure. I had planned on seeing Vienna Teng at the Bitter End--my calendar said she went on at 10:30. Unfortunately, she had apparently gone on at 8:00, so I missed the show. A second reason to regret having gone to see Beth Sorrentino. Tonight was the big Fez gig with Dorothy Scott, Susan McKeown and Sloan Wainwright. I had invited several different people, all of whom turned me down. The one person who was going to come with me stood me up at the last minute. So I was feeling peevish even before I got in the door. When I descended into the dark cavern, I discovered that there was an opener. An all-girl Go-Go-wannabe band was jumping up and down on stage: the Screaming Orphans < http://www.screaming-orphans.com/ >. Overamplified airheadedness. I sat at the bar, turned my back, tried to ignore the deafening volume, and read a few more pages of Rider Haggard's *She*-- 19th-century airheadedness of a somewhat higher caliber. I was annoyed at the whole world. I didn't stay that way. Here's the set list: Set 1: 1. I think this one was "Be My Husband" < http://www.boscarol.com/nina/html/where/bemyhusband.html > with Dorothy singing lead and Susan and Sloan doing a hell of a job on backing vocals. Let's see and I think we had Denise Jolbert on drums, Peter Kiesewalter on piano, and... was it Stephen Murphy and Doug Wray on guitar and bass? 2. I think this one was Van Morrison's "Caravan," and I think it was the same lineup. 3. Sloan sang "Summertime" off her new album, with Susan and Dorothy ("the Summerettes") doing backing vocals. 4. Sloan sang "Cool Morning" off her new album. 5. Sloan sang "Between the Lines" 6. Susan sang "Because I Could Not Stop for Death." Peter Kiesewalter took up the accordion and Jon Spurney was playing piano. 7. Susan sang "Salome." 8. Susan sang "South" in a double-acoustic arrangement (Jon Spurney on the other guitar); when it started I was wondering if they could pull it off since the electric guitar is what makes it sound so dark and haunting. In fact, it came off amazingly well, though in the "refrain" part (what is this called musically?) I still missed the power of the electric guitar. Otherwise it was fantastic. 9. Dorothy on solo acoustic singing "Pass It On." 10. Dorothy on electric (with piano and drums backing) singing "Heartbeat." 11. Dorothy on electric, with Susan and Sloan backing, accompanied by accordion and drums, on "Julie Sings." This one kicked butt all kinds of ways. 12. Special guest: Jane Kelly Williams < http://wfcf.freeservers.com/jkw.html > did a solo singing something that sounded like its title would have been "Just for This Day." Quiet song but it came off fine *** End of set 1 **** Set 2: 1. Dorothy, on solo piano, covered something I didn't know at all. 2. Dorothy invited up Joseph Mahan < http://www.josephmahan.com > who sang an amazing cover he said was first made famous by Nina Simone--I later found it was "Wild Is the Wind" by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington < http://www.boscarol.com/nina/html/where/wildisthewind.html > 3. Sloan sang "The Word of the Day" 4. Sloan sang "Illinois" 5. Susan sang "Curiouser" 6. Susan sang "River" with Sloan backing 7. Dorothy sang "Three Like One" with backing from Susan and Ombrey (sp?), to whom she had dedicated the song. 8. Dorothy sang "Down Into the River" with Sloan and Susan. Amazing. *** End of set 2 **** Encore: 1. A Capella trio. I have down "And It's Only Love." Anyway, it was stunning. 2. Neil Young's "From Hank to Hendrix" by all three. I was suitably blown away. Some other news: 1) Joseph Mahan is going to be playing at the Living Room in NYC on August 7 at 8pm, not on July 23 as it says on his website. 2) Liadain Clancy, who I got to meet for the first time, will be doing some backing vocals for--I think this is right--Marion LoGuidice < http://www.dirtygoddess.com/ > at Joe's Pub in NYC on August 4. 3) Susan mentioned to me that she and Sloan (wasn't sure if this included Dorothy too or not) will be playing upstate in New York in September. I mentioned the duet they had done of "Meet on the Ledge" at the 1999 ectofest and she said maybe they might do it again. I would have titled this email "OK I can die now," except I can't, with the possibility of this in the future! Amazing. ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V9 #182 **************************