From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V9 #341 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Thursday, December 4 2003 Volume 09 : Number 341 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: If music be the food of love, play on! ["Xenu's Sister" ] Susan 'n Johnny free in DC TONIGHT [burka@jeffrey.net] RE: the pop market [dmw ] Re: the pop market [Ethan Straffin ] Re: the pop market [glenn mcdonald ] The Ecto list & the pop market [Neile Graham ] Talk me into going to see Jane Siberry ["Xenu's Sister" ] Re: Talk me into going to see Jane Siberry [meredith ] Judge orders Bottom Line eviction [DanStark <2003.carnivore99@verizon.net] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 05:28:56 -0600 From: "Xenu's Sister" Subject: Re: If music be the food of love, play on! At 10:04 AM 12/2/2003 +0000, Rita wrote: ...and while I'm on the subject of outstanding music, Happy's vocals in the title track of "Many Worlds are born Tonight" are transcendent. That sound is like audio velvet. It reminds me too of First Nations traditional singing, which employs tone clusters to great effect. When I'm working on my art, I listen to that cd more than any other--that groove so fits my creativity. So now a confession, I first bought a cassette of Rhodes Songs in 1993 and played it until I wore it out, and never replaced it. I finally purchased the cd earlier this year, and hearing it anew was such a revelation that I purchased "Many Worlds" right away. What should I buy next? Any advice? Obviously, I need to buy them all. I'm in the process of buying Many Worlds cds for my nearest and best on my Christmas list. >It's too good not to share. Because the needy is everyone. ===== Good for you! If I might suggest, you should buy "The Keep" next. It's so quietly gorgeous and achingly beautiful, I can't imagine anyone not loving it immediately. Then alltherest :) If I were you, or any newish fan, I would seriously consider snatching up the earlier albums while they can still be had for a reasonable price. Ecto's all sold out, so those are going to start showing up on ebay at horrendous prices. Again. (before Happy started selling them on her web site, I know of someone who paid $40.00 for an Ecto CD, and I know they've gone for more). I don't know numbers, but the others aren't going to last forever. There weren't that many pressed to begin with. (Lovely story about your neice!) Vickie ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 05:36:47 -0600 From: "Xenu's Sister" Subject: Re: Lotr (offtopic) At 03:25 PM 11/29/2003 -0800, Karen wrote: LOTS of great stuff! I envy you getting to see all this in person! I hunted down some photos of a few of these things. Here's one of the airplanes: http://www.theonering.net/scrapbook/group/741/view/6254 The Gandalf stamp: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/031129/481/wel10111290359 The Fell Beast on the Embassy: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/031129/481/wel10211290400 Advance word from press and Guild screenings is ecstatic and everyone who's written a review (or just thoughts) is enthusiastic about the movie's Oscar chances. I want it to win every single award imaginable, but I'm most happy that people who've seen it are so joyful. Trilogy Tuesday can't come too soon! Vickie ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 05:22:50 -0800 (PST) From: burka@jeffrey.net Subject: Susan 'n Johnny free in DC TONIGHT Oy. Through chunks of october and november I was remembering to check Susan McKeown's website to see if she was doing her annual show with Johnny at the Kennedy Center's Millenium Stage. It kept not showing up on the intinerary. On a lark, I checked it this morning...and she appearing tonight! (I really can't complain; I have no other plans tonight, and I would have been *really* upset if I'd thought to check tomorrow!) Anyway. 6:00pm at the Kennedy Center. My partner and I will be there. For those not in the DC area, Millenium stage still webcasts and archives all of their shows, so tune in or catch it (or one of the previous years' performances) from the archives: http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/millennium/ jeff n.p. _Here is a Picture (Songs for E Carr)_, Veda Hille n.r. still slogging through Stephenson's _Quicksilver_, and almost finished with Gregory Maguire's latest, _Mirror Mirror_ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 09:29:18 -0500 (EST) From: dmw Subject: RE: the pop market On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, William Mazur wrote: > Many of Ecto's former darlings now get a good deal of negative press > here. Examples being Sarah, Jewel and even Tori. Do they get the > negative press because their music is really not that good anymore OR > because they have gained mass acceptance and they aren't OUR darlings > anymore? Now we have to share them with the world and the reason is > because they SOLD OUT to commerciality. That is why they now have this > wider audience. I really wonder sometimes. Perhaps the answer is > somewhere in between. this comes up a lot, but in these cases, i really don't think so. i think one of the things that drives this perception most -- and makes this a divisive issue on ecto -- is the nature of the lyrics written by these artists. i think a lot of people on ecto are happy listening to something centered around an enjoyable voice, a strong melody and an appropriate supporting arrangement. as a student of music engineering and production i can even find a lot of things to admire in the craftsmanship applied to platinum artists. but for me to really _love_ something i have to be able to either accept the words (or be unable to understand them! cf cranes, cocteau twins, etc.). kilcher's early material -- before _pieces of you_ -- was funny! sharp and witty as often as it was poignant. i didn't care much for the first record NOT because it was popular, but because it only showed one side of an artist who was capable of more diverse (and, to me, more fundamentally inteesting) work. the first time i heard mclachlan's "i will remember you" i thought it sounded like the result of a contest to write a high school graduation theme song. it's pretty, but says almost nothing. it didn't seem to have any of the passion that underlay "fumbling." amos is a little different, i admit. i don't hear the tendency toward unchallenging lyrical material that i have with the other two; instead she seems to get more and more eliptical. i think she continues to be more interesting as an artist, but it seems unlikely to me that she'll release another record with the immediacy (and lasting appeal) of "earthquakes." all personal opinyuns and ym will almost certainly v - -- d. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 07:44:13 -0800 From: Ethan Straffin Subject: Re: the pop market On Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at 06:29 AM, dmw wrote: > the first time i heard mclachlan's "i will remember you" i thought it > sounded like the result of a contest to write a high school graduation > theme song. it's pretty, but says almost nothing. it didn't seem to > have > any of the passion that underlay "fumbling." This is true. FWIW, I coincidentally put on my MiniDisc Sarah mix last night for the first time in a long while, and it did pretty much what she meant it to do. I figure I should probably add "Stupid" and "Train Wreck" from the new album. Agreed that "I Will Remember You" continues not to need to apply. > amos is a little different, i admit. i don't hear the tendency toward > unchallenging lyrical material that i have with the other two; instead > she > seems to get more and more eliptical. i think she continues to be > more interesting as an artist, but it seems unlikely to me that she'll > release another record with the immediacy (and lasting appeal) of > "earthquakes." Hrm...my own opinion is that equating "immediacy" and "lasting appeal" is somewhat dangerous when it comes to Tori. Not that _Little Earthquakes_ isn't one of the best albums ever. Still, that was then, this is now, and _Scarlet's Walk_ is pretty damn amazing in its own right. As for _Tales of a Librarian_...good stuff also. Not uniformly, and some of the remixes fail terribly -- but when they work, they work. The fun part for you is getting to decide which are which. > all personal opinyuns and ym will almost certainly v But of course, and likewise. Ethan ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 10:51:04 -0500 From: glenn mcdonald Subject: Re: the pop market I don't know if this lyrical explanation, which makes sense for you individually, really holds up as an explanation for the general list behavior. Rachael Sage, Trina Hamlin and Vienna Teng (to pick three random artists who have been favorably mentioned recently) are good performers but hardly world-class lyric poets, and I don't think Sarah's lyrics for Afterglow are somehow qualitatively worse than those. And Ecto has a long history of supporting earnest young performers whose earnest young lyrics are far more earnest and young than insightful or original. For that matter, I don't know if I actually buy the decline argument for Sarah and Jewel, either. Is "I Will Remember You" really that much worse than "Trust" or "Into the Fire"? It doesn't seem that way to me. And I thought there were some great passages on 0304, too. But maybe it's not that "we" turn against artists when they become popular, it's that people are more likely to voice their dislike of an artist they perceive to be part of the list's canon. There are probably lots of people on the list who don't or wouldn't like Vienna Teng very much, for example, but what would be the point of attacking her? She's not threatening anything, and nobody ever suggests that if you don't love Vienna you don't belong on this list. Whereas Tori and Sarah, at least, have been explicitly cited as exemplars of what "ecto" means, so if you don't like them, you might feel like your dislike has to be defended (and thus voiced). Or maybe there's no general rule at all. Sarah has settled on a very specific style and is doggedly not deviating from it, and artists always lose a few old fans to restlessness when they do this. Tori won early fans with quiet piano-centric music, and lately has been touring and recording louder trio work, so it shouldn't be at all surprising that some people like one and not so much the other. Every Jewel album has been dramatically different from the others in some way, so it's probably much more common to like one or two of them than all of them. Hell, "we" probably couldn't agree on Lionheart and The Dreaming, or Warpaint and Many Worlds Are Born Tonight, either. There's really no "we" here, just a theme and a running compilation of individual enthusiasms. Follow any leads that seem promising, and don't sweat the ones that don't. glenn ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 09:26:25 -0800 (PST) From: Neile Graham Subject: The Ecto list & the pop market I think Glenn is absolutely right in his message on this subject. For me, lyrics are the added bonus (or the added thing I detest about a song). It's the overall sound first that either interests me or doesn't. > But maybe it's not that "we" turn against artists when they become > popular, it's that people are more likely to voice their dislike of an > artist they perceive to be part of the list's canon. This is true, I think, but what is more true for me is that I'll speak out if part of an artist's work _has_ interested me and parts have not, especially if is an artist who has been popular on ecto. I will occasionally give an dissenting opinion about a new artist (like my recent mixed review of the Missy Higgins ep), but mostly if I'm not interested in the artist, I just won't bother saying anything. The three artists Glenn mentions--Rachael Sage, Trina Hamlin, and Vienna Teng--are perfect examples. I'm not personally drawn to these artists' music, but I'm happy for their success, particularly Vienna Teng as we knew her when her first disc first came out and Rachael Sage, whose dedication to her work is pretty inspiring. (Trina Hamlin has less of a presence in my consciousness.) What I find heartbreaking is absolutely loving an artist's work and then being disappointed by their later work. For me this has nothing to do with their popularity on ecto or in the wider world, but in my own ears and head. A good example for me is Sarah's work. I liked the promise in _Touch_ and loved _Solace_, which is the album I've had the strongest connection with. _Fumbling_ for me was a split, where half of it I found cheesy and off-putting, and a disappointing harbinger of the softening of her sound. The soft Sarah does nothing for me, so much so that I'm not even interested in hearing her new album. I loved _Solace_ so much, though, that I'm annoyed that I don't care for her later work. Jewel is the same thing. It was a hard one for me because I'm not generally drawn to the folky singer-songwriter thing, but the Innerchange tapes charmed me. I could see so much potential for her doing work that would knock me out. Her story songs are amazing, like "Painters" and "Nicotine Love", where she paints portraits of individuals that seem truly real. But she went another direction, emphasizing the side of her music that I didn't much care for (her deliberately naive songs and her didactic preachy songs), and I found that disappointing. It's a burr under my saddle when I'm so drawn to an artist's work for a while and then not. My original liking for their work hasn't gone--it's not that they just haven't worn well with me, though that does sometimes happen--because I still like to listen to the Innerchange tapes and _Solace_. Tori for me is less of a disappointment. I haven't loved her later work as much as I love _Boys for Pele_ which is so over the top it knocks me out, but I still find her work interesting. _Scarlet's Walk_ is too much for me as a whole (it just feels repetitive and indistinct when I listen to the whole album), but when I listen to it broken up I love the parts of it. (Interestingly, this happens to me with _choirgirl_, too, but there the album doesn't particularly draw me to play it, but when I do I really like each song individually). Ecto has also a strong soft pop & folkie singer-songwriter emphasis of latter years, and this isn't the kind of music I personally like to listen to much. Of late I have been discovering more music through an another music list, (electroambientdreampop). This is where I heard of recent favourites Daughter Darling, Petracovich, Speaker Bite Me, and Under Byen. And through reading the reviews in _Mojo_ magazine, which is where I first heard of Thea Gilmore, Jim Moray, Fiery Furnaces, and some other recent favourites. A few really cool things have come through The Ectophiles' Guide for review, like Kat Terran and Reba Hasko. My tastes have tended to veer more toward electronic-based music like Lamb (I love their first two, find the third a little dull, but again love their brand new one) or weird stuff (I highly recommend the wildly idiosyncratic Fiery Furnaces' _Gallowsbird's Bark_). Noe Venable's _The world is bound by secret knots_ is definitely one of my favourite albums of this year, and that I did hear of through ecto. - --Neile - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- neile@drizzle.com / neile@sff.net......http://www.sff.net/people/neile The Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music ......... http://www.ectoguide.org Co-Administrator, Clarion West ............ http://www.clarionwest.org ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 12:28:31 -0600 From: "Xenu's Sister" Subject: Talk me into going to see Jane Siberry You know, it's funny. I can't believe I'm even asking. Once upon a time, Chris and I flew from Kansas City to Chicago to see Jane in concert. Once upon a time, Chris, Charley and I drove to Detroit to see Jane in concert. Once upon a time, Chris, Charley and I drove to Toronto to see Jane in concert (granted, she was with Mary Margaret O'Hara, Victoria Williams, Holly Cole and Rebecca Jenkins, but still...). Once upon a time, we gladly paid to see Jane right here in Chicago. A few times. Now, my fervent desire to see Jane (performing with Tim Ray, Rebecca Campbell and Amanda Homi) at the Black Orchid on the 14th is clashing loudly and uh, uglyly with my deep, abiding hatred of Ticketmaster. It's **IMPOSSIBLE** to get tickets to this show except through Ticketmaster. There are no tickets being sold at the venue. I called the venue and the person I spoke with was unsure, but thought that maybe, if it didn't sell out, maybe the day of the show, they might have tickets at the door. Maybe. If it doesn't sell out. Tickets are $25.00 each. Jane's worth it, of course. Ticketmaster is charging $17.30! THEY'RE not worth it! I'm not cheap, that's not the point. Jane and the band are not going to get that extra $17.30. The venue is not going to get that extra $17.30. Ticketfuckingmasterbastards are getting the $17.30. And for freaking WHAT? It costs me that much if I buy them on line, typing in the information. It costs that much if I buy them over the phone (and not even while talking to a real person anyway). If I go to a Tower Records, I'd buy them from a real human being, but that person would be an employee of TOWER, not Ticketmaster! I guess it costs that much to print them out and stick them in an envelope. Oh. God. ARGH! Do I give into extortion? sigh....probably. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 11:14:18 -0800 From: Damon Subject: Re: Talk me into going to see Jane Siberry hi vickie - > You know, it's funny. I can't believe I'm even asking. given your reasons, i'm not surprised. i wrestled with the same question a couple of weeks ago before going to see her at st andrews-wesley here in vancouver. and here the ticketmaster charge was `only' a `mere' $10! $30 to see jane in a church was a no-brainer. $40 with 25% of it going to ticketmaster caused me some angst. in the end i (and a bunch of friends) went anyway, and it was worth it, but it was a close call. the thing that *really* gets me about ticketmaster is their new `print your own ticket' service - which presumably saves them money on printing etc - for which they want to charge you an extra $2. what on earth is that?! anyway, if it helps, the show was worth it, though i must confess, as one friend put it, i'm not really certain jane should be trying to wrap her voice/style around handel's messiah. her backing vocalists certainly helped pull it off though! i did note that the applause went on much longer when she performed a few of her own songs, even a new one that presumably no one or precious few in the audience knew by heart. ;) at st andrews-wesley they were selling tickets at the door, though of course i've no idea if that will apply to your venue. the actual ticket price was $27.50, with all the ticketmaster charges it was $37.25. apparently at the door they were selling them for $30. all CDN$ of course. if only i'd waited. ticketmaster needs some serious competition. - -damon - -- dl+ecto@usrbin.ca: protecting my real address since 2002 (too late!) > EWS starts here! < ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 20:28:57 -0500 From: meredith Subject: Re: Talk me into going to see Jane Siberry Hi, Vickie posted: >Now, my fervent desire to see Jane (performing with Tim Ray, Rebecca >Campbell and Amanda Homi) at the Black Orchid on the 14th is clashing >loudly and uh, uglyly with my deep, abiding hatred of Ticketmaster. I feel your pain. My deep, abiding hatred of Ticketslime has been well documented in these pages over the years, and for the most part I've been able to keep up my boycott (though I will confess I have gone to shows and sporting events where the tickets were bought through Ticketslime, though not with my money). >It's **IMPOSSIBLE** to get tickets to this show except through >Ticketmaster. There are no tickets being sold at the venue. I called the >venue and the person I spoke with was unsure, but thought that maybe, if >it didn't sell out, maybe the day of the show, they might have tickets at >the door. Maybe. If it doesn't sell out. What is the venue, and how big is it? Do you think it's realistic that it might sell out? (I've heard that the shows on this tour haven't been packed ... here in New Haven we only had half the audience we needed, sadly. :/) I might be inclined to hope for at-the-door ticket sales, but then there's the fact that this is a transcendent show that shouldn't be missed. I haven't had time to post anything lately, so I haven't even written anything about the New Haven show ... but suffice it to say that once Jane and her ensemble took the stage, I didn't care any more about how much money our organization was losing in the show. :) (Afterwards it turned out that woj and I were two of the three members of our organization who actually liked the performance ... but then we're two of the three Jane fans in the group. Everyone else is a bunch of traditional folkies who really do define the term "musical elitism", but I'm not going to rant about that here. :) I agree that the performance would be lessened without the presence of the backing vocalists -- but Jane's voice meshes so well with that of Rebecca and Amanda that it became another instrument entirely. And what can I say about Tim Ray -- the man is a genius. The content is almost entirely Christian sacred music, which in any other context would have driven me shrieking from the room, but it was all so beautiful I was able to ignore the words and just let the whole experience wash over me. Far be it from me to recommend compromising one's principles, but this is the kind of show that might just merit that if the situation remains dire... =============================================== 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 =============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 21:45:16 -0500 From: DanStark <2003.carnivore99@verizon.net> Subject: Judge orders Bottom Line eviction I've been a critic of their business practices but it really doesn't bring me any joy to relay the news. I was really hoping for a turnaround of their management style as well as their fortunes. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--thebottomline1203dec03,0,3588608.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V9 #341 **************************