From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V10 #27 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Wednesday, January 28 2004 Volume 10 : Number 027 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [tdgroup@earthlink.net: The Bottom Line, R.I.P.] [Jeff Wasilko ] Emma Peel [breinheimer@webtv.net] "monthly" bands [Jason Gordon ] Happy Happy Joy Joy ["Doug" ] Re: Emma Peel [Neile Graham ] Strange yet interesting E-bay auction ["Wade Alberty" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 02:24:09 -0500 From: Jeff Wasilko Subject: [tdgroup@earthlink.net: The Bottom Line, R.I.P.] - ----- Forwarded message from Tim Dunleavy ----- Reply-To: tdgroup@earthlink.net X-Mailer: EarthLink MailBox 2004.0.129.0 (Windows) From: "Tim Dunleavy" To: "Believers Mail List" Subject: The Bottom Line, R.I.P. Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 21:08:40 -0500 X-ELNK-Trace: b94617ff71896538d780f4a490ca69564776905774d2ac4b4bb0cf8895 8a5f6927dabbcbc43fa59f350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c January 26, 2004 CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK The Bottom Line, a Place Where the Music Always Came First By JON PARELES Modest to the end, the Bottom Line closed quietly on Thursday. There was no big farewell concert, no tearful leave-taking. The owners, Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky, didn't wait for New York University, their landlord, to follow through on its right to evict the club. They packed up and left just weeks before the club's 30th birthday. The Bottom Line owed more than $185,000 in back rent and could not agree on a new lease with N.Y.U., which was demanding a $1.5 million renovation and an initial 250 percent rent increase when negotiations broke down. Lately the club had gathered sponsorships and promises to pay off its back rent (from Bruce Springsteen, Viacom and Sirius satellite radio, among others) on the condition that it work out a new lease, and it had offered to set up programs for N.Y.U. students. But with eviction looming, the club stopped booking shows in mid-January. For a music lover the place always seemed too good to last. The Bottom Line was a grand anomaly among clubs: a place where the music came first. In the end, it seemed, its owners weren't greedy enough. The Bottom Line amply earned its fond place in the memories of a generation of listeners. Discreetly and consistently the Bottom Line put musicians in front of audiences who came for no other reason than to pay attention to the music. The room was dark and high-ceilinged with rainbow-muraled walls, and the stage receded into the background of a performance. With a capacity of 400, the club was large enough to present nationally and internationally known musicians. Yet it was also intimate enough to confer bragging rights on the fans who saw Mr. Springsteen, Dolly Parton, Joco Gilberto or the Police perform there. The Bottom Line did the small but essential things right. Performances started promptly and were heard through a trusty sound system. The audience was comfortable, since the Bottom Line had a fixed number of seats and tables. Yet diehard fans could still get in because the club sold tickets for standing room at the bar on the night of the show. Nearly every seat provided clear sightlines to the stage despite the infamous black pillars holding up its ceiling. The club maintained good relationships with musicians, some of whom, like the guitarist David Bromberg, came back year after year. And it had a no-smoking policy well before the city's other clubs were forced to do the same. In the economics of clubs, bands are usually paid from admission receipts, while club owners make their profits on food and drink. It pays to keep people waiting and drinking, and to nurture a bar scene. But the Bottom Line didn't squeeze out its audiences' last dollars. While the club served alcohol and some well-greased food, it wasn't a neighborhood bar with a stage tucked in, or a restaurant with an entertainment annex. It wasn't a lounge, a dance club, a hangout or a posing ground for hipsters, either. It was, as billed from the start, a cabaret. During performances, conversations stopped, and waitresses became less than aggressive about pushing the next round of drinks. Last call came before the music was over. People went to the Bottom Line to see what was on the stage that night, and they left (or were sent home) shortly after the last encore. On nights when there was no show, the club was closed. When the Bottom Line opened in 1974, it quickly became a showcase for acts being touted by record companies. Corporate credit cards paid a lot of drink tabs and admissions, particularly in the club's first two decades. Executives, media representatives and freeloaders occupied the reserved tables in the back; fans were in the front, close to the musicians. It was an era of folk-pop singer-songwriters, and the Bottom Line was perfect for them, although it also presented performers as disparate as Miles Davis, the Ramones, Ravi Shankar and the contemporary chamber-music quartet Tashi (on a daring bill with the avant-garde jazz saxophonist Anthony Braxton). The Bottom Line was a civilized place to hear music for audiences who wanted to sit and listen. And that may have contributed to its troubles. Most rock clubs have moved away from the cabaret model, as concertgoing has become more of a contact sport. Folky guitar strummers, pop balladeers and jazz groups still prefer quiet, seated audiences. But they have been outflanked and outnumbered by indie rockers, hip-hop acts, punks, metal bands, rhythm-and-blues acts and jam bands, all of which are used to making their audiences move. Young music fans don't mind being shoulder to shoulder at a concert, bouncing or even moshing to the beat. The setup turns a performance into a social event. Of course standing audiences are a bonanza for club owners, who can pack more bodies into the same space. That in turn allows a club to offer bigger fees to bands, sometimes with lower admission prices, competition the Bottom Line probably couldn't match. Record-company showcases have moved to clubs like the Bowery Ballroom, which has a handful of tables on a balcony above the dance floor. In recent years the Bottom Line had less-than-packed houses and an older crowd. Its bookings had been relying on longtime stalwarts like David Johansen, and on series like In Their Own Words, an informal songwriters' roundtable, or Required Listening, a showcase for new songwriters, that it presented with the public-radio station WFUV. The club didn't latch onto some other performers who might have suited the cabaret setting, like neo-soul songwriters (though it recently presented Anthony Hamilton), and it clung to its longtime routine of two shows a night by the same performer. (Joe's Pub, a smaller cabaret, often has a different performer at its early and late sets, then turns into a disc-jockey lounge after 11 p.m., while Fez, another cabaret, is the basement extension of the Time Cafe, a busy bar and restaurant.) In hindsight the Bottom Line probably could also have sought sponsorships before its back rent mounted so high, or hired itself out more frequently as a broadcast studio. Fast-rising new bands are likely to appear at standing-room clubs like the Bowery Ballroom, the Mercury Lounge, the Knitting Factory, Northsix, Southpaw, Sin-e or Lit; bigger places like Irving Plaza and Roseland are also standing-room clubs. Yet there should have been room in New York for one major club that was not single-mindedly striving for the cutting edge. The Bottom Line was still the right place to hear Jane Siberry's mystical pop-folk songs or Ute Lemper's chilling modern cabaret interpretations. With the club gone, New York is considerably less hospitable to folk-circuit regulars as well as to the British trad-rockers that the club never abandoned. Its shows full of local stalwarts, like the annual "Downtown Messiah" and its era-by-era pop retrospectives called "The Beat Goes On," are unlikely to find a more congenial place to resurface. Like all venerable clubs that close their doors, the Bottom Line takes with it the peculiar confluence of real estate, acoustics, bookings, memories and lingering physical vibrations that added up to transform an empty room into a landmark. I'll miss it, and so will New York. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com - ----- End forwarded message ----- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 01:24:37 -0800 From: Ethan Straffin Subject: Gabriel & Eno launch music-download venture From the AP wire. Should be interesting to see how effectively this effort can compete against the existing pay-for-download services, which aim to work with record labels rather than sidestepping them entirely (and which therefore have much bigger marketing budgets). Ethan - -- Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno unveil digital "manifesto" - - - - - - - - - - - - - By Angela Dolan Jan. 26, 2004 | CANNES, France (AP) -- Rock veterans Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are launching a provocative new musicians' alliance that would cut against the industry grain by letting artists sell their music online instead of only through record labels. With the Internet transforming how people buy and listen to songs, musicians need to act now to claim digital music's future, Gabriel and Eno argued Monday as they handed out a slim red manifesto at a huge dealmaking music conference known as Midem. They call the plan the "Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists" -- or MUDDA, which has a less lofty ring to it. "Unless artists quickly grasp the possibilities that are available to them, then the rules will get written, and they'll get written without much input from artists," said Eno, who has a long history of experimenting with technology. By removing record labels from the equation, artists can set their own prices and set their own agendas, said the two independent musicians, who hope to launch the online alliance within a month. Their pamphlet lists ideas for artists to explore once they're freed from the confines of the CD format. One might decide to release a minute of music every day for a month. Another could post several recorded variations of the same song and ask fans what they like best. Gabriel, who has his own label, Real World Records, said he isn't trying to shut down the record companies -- he just wants to give artists more options. "There are some artists who already tried to do everything on their own," he said, adding that those musicians often found out they didn't like marketing or accounting. "We believe there will be all sorts of models for this." A representative with the venture said other musicians had expressed interest in participating in the alliance, but did not provide names. One band that has found its niche online is the jam band Phish, which sells downloads of its concerts at www.livephish.com. The band's relationship with its devoted fans is often compared to that of the Grateful Dead, and the site is another chance for close contact. But it also generates plenty of money: more than $2.25 million in sales since 2002. What's driving the movement is the success of legitimate download sites such as Apple's Internet music store, iTunes, which sells songs for 99 cents a pop in the United States. Both Gabriel and Eno started their careers in the 1960s and remain immensely influential. As a means to help unsigned artists, their effort "is certainly going to be a valuable and interesting thing to do," said Josh Bernoff, principal analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. "But for anyone (already) signed it's almost certainly a violation of their contract," said Bernoff, who addressed the conference over the weekend. "It's not in a record company's best interest to have large pieces of music out there that they don't have control of." Gabriel co-founded a European company, On Demand Distribution, which runs legal download sites in 11 European countries. The company would provide the technology for MUDDA, though Gabriel and Eno are looking for online partners. Europe's sites haven't yet caught up to the success of the U.S. portals. Apple's iTunes, for example, is planning a European launch this year, which is expected to build interest in legal downloading in a market where many people don't realize there's even such a thing. Because both legal and illegal sites offer tunes a la carte, many in the industry believe they'll make albums less important by putting the focus on catchy singles. Eno and Gabriel both suggested they'd welcome a chance to make songs that stand alone. "I'm an artist who works incredibly slowly," Gabriel said. "If some of those (songs) could be made available, you don't have to be so trapped into this old way of being confined only by the album cycle." The former Genesis singer and World Music promoter is interested in putting multiple versions of the same song online. He's also looking forward to being able to hear unfinished music from other artists. "We tend at the moment ... to try to find a moment when a song is right. You stick the pin in the butterfly and put it in the box and you sell the box," he said. "Music is actually a living thing that evolves." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 19:25:38 -0000 From: "Adam K." Subject: Carina petition I only found out about this, but it's a petition to get Carina Round on tv (well, British tv, but it's a start). Apparently it has to be in by the end of the month, so anyone else who's interested in a democratic blow for ecto, get yourself to: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ecosid03/ and who knows what may happen. adam k. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 23:17:56 -0500 (EST) From: breinheimer@webtv.net Subject: Emma Peel I know this is off topic but I trust the erudite membership here to be able to provide the kind of useful feedback one can't easily find elsewhere. I am thinking of getting the 16 dvd megaset of the complete Emma Peel episodes of the classic BBC series " The Avengers". It's $200(US) from BBC America and $180 through Amazon. What I can't figure out is how, in their new and used section, I can find the same item, allegedly new, for around $120. Also, I really wonder how safe it is to buy used over the internet as I occasionally read about problems at sites like e-bay which are apparently compounded by a lack of self policing. I believe I remember reading that seller's histories have been known to be faked. Any feedback would be highly appreciated. np: Beau Brummels-San Fran Sessions thank you Sundazed records for this wonderful 3 cd set of rarities , demos, alternate takes and unissued performances from 1964-1966. great stuff. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 15:36:01 -0500 From: Jason Gordon Subject: "monthly" bands the whole pick a song with a date in it led my mind down a parallel path...bands with months in their names...here's what I have so far: January: The Januaries - S/T January - See Thru February: February - Even the Night Cant Tell You From a Star / Tomorrow is Today March: An April March - Impatiens April March - Chrominance Decoder / Paris in April / S/T + others April: The April Tears - Consume Desire An April March - Impatiens April March - Chrominance Decoder / Paris in April / S/T + others May: Ina May Wool - Moon Over 97th Street Juliette May - Traces Merri-May Gill - This is... June: First of June - Creepy Crawly Live June - I am Beautiful In June - Exit the Blue / Give Me the World July: July - Surface for Air August: *none* pout September: September 67 - Lucky Shoe October: October Project - Falling Farther In / S/T November: *none* (of course I could go buy the november project album...) December: *none* (do I add the decemberists to my wish list...) 9/12 months covered...more music to buy i guess :) cheers jason ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:35:35 -0600 From: "Doug" Subject: Happy Happy Joy Joy I'm interested in obtaining video (VCD/SVCD/DVD/DVDR) of Happy Rhodes. Does this exist anywhere outside my tiny little brain? I have a humble little trade list I can supply if anyone has bootlegs or whatever they are interested in trading. Thanks, Doug P.S. - I'm also interested in bootlegs of Sarah McLachlan.... "Instructions are for those people who don't know what they are doing." - Bob the Builder ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 12:55:54 -0800 (PST) From: Neile Graham Subject: Re: Emma Peel On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 breinheimer@webtv.net wrote: [snip] > What I can't figure out is how, in their new and used section, I can > find the same item, allegedly new, for around $120. > Also, I really wonder how safe it is to buy used over the internet as I > occasionally read about problems at sites like e-bay which are > apparently compounded by a lack of self policing. I believe I remember > reading that seller's histories have been known to be faked. > Any feedback would be highly appreciated. Just as a data point I have been buying heavily (and now also selling) from half.ebay.com for the last year and have never run into any problems that weren't solved, and solved fairly quickly. The vast majority of my transactions have been trouble-free. I haven't done too much on ebay.com itself, but the few sales and buys from there have been trouble-free, too. As for how they sell them so much less expensively: low overhead, occasional promo copies (they should spell this out in their descriptions), sometimes price wars. I'm sure there's the occasional crook there, too, alas. I'm not sure how they screen for that. The usual caveat: of course, indie stuff/small press & label I still try to buy through more direct routes to ensure that they still exist next time I'm looking for their music/publications. - --Neile ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 16:26:21 -0600 From: "Wade Alberty" Subject: Strange yet interesting E-bay auction Canon 10D Digital SLR w/Vienna Teng CD free http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2982963019&category=43454 I though you Vienna Teng fans might find this interesting. And who knows, if you need a camera, helpful as well! :-) Actually, there is a little info in there that is interesting about her upcoming CD. Wade ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 21:41:16 -0500 From: meredith Subject: Re: "monthly" bands Hi, Jason listed: >the whole pick a song with a date in it led my mind down a parallel >path...bands with months in their names...here's what I have so far: >June: >First of June - Creepy Crawly Live >June - I am Beautiful >In June - Exit the Blue / Give Me the World June of 44 =============================================== 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 =============================================== ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V10 #27 **************************