From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V11 #116 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Wednesday, April 27 2005 Volume 11 : Number 116 Today's Subjects: ----------------- 70s music [Adam K ] Veda. Veda Veda VEDA! [Neile Graham ] Re: judging art [Bowen Simmons ] Re: 70s music [Bernie Mojzes ] Re: 70s music [Bernie Mojzes ] Re: 70s music [Bowen Simmons ] Re: judging art [Bernie Mojzes ] and... [Bernie Mojzes ] Re: Veda. Veda Veda VEDA! [Damon ] Re: Veda. Veda Veda VEDA! [Kjetil Torgrim Homme ] Re: Veda. Veda Veda VEDA! [Neile Graham ] RE: 70s music and Judee Sill ["Bill Adler" ] Re:70s music and... [Robert Lovejoy ] It sure was nice while it lasted ["Xenu's Sister" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 20:04:09 +0100 From: Adam K Subject: 70s music Jeez, I go away to work for a day and everyone starts talking about my favourite decade behind my back. I'm biased, of course, as this is where I grew up and started listening to music, but I'd just like to say: Go, Bernie!!!! And bless you, Mr Bristow-Johnson for mentioning Finch. Crikey, I used to have an album by them. Did anyone mention Nektar? How about Eloy? (although that's a bit of barrel-scraping, I fear). I'd like to take this opportunity to say that you chaps in the colonies are blessed, not only with good memories and good taste, but a good range of radio stations. I no longer listen to the wireless, especially since GLR changed format and stopped playing music; while Xfm, which promised to be everything a radio station should be, got bought out by Capital and became the playground of cretins like Christian O'Connell, who seem to think that the AM disc jokey style (gabbling and playing sound effects over songs) is IT. Unfortunately, many agree with him. Late night Xfm is, actually, decent, but by then I'm usually tucked up in bed with a mug of cocoa and a good book. If I had sense, I'd explore internet radio, of course, but I feel it lack the romance of my childhood. (Everything does, these days, and I surprise myself with what a romantic childhood I must have had). the other thing that gets my already much-gotten goat is the way, in England, that the past is airbrushed, unless it can by recycled ironically. Therefore, original 70s music is sneered at, while ripoff merchants like the Darkness and Scissor Sisters are raved over. This myopic determination was demonstrated by Mr Tony Wilson, erstwhile music mogul, putting his tuppence worth in during the snatch of Channel 4's The Greatest Albums of All Time (and, no, Television weren't in there) in which he introduced the section on Patti Smith's "Horses" (still beaten by Oasis and Alanis Morisette) by insisting that early 70s music was dreadful, the whole scene dominated by bands like ELO until Ms Smith came along. Little things like facts and history didn't faze him at all, and that's the English attitude towards the 70s. So, it's good to hear it bigged up by people who know what they're talking about. Oh, I'm coming over all misty now. Time for a lie down... adam k. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 12:30:21 -0700 (PDT) From: Neile Graham Subject: Veda. Veda Veda VEDA! Saw Tori Friday night and enjoyed the show a hell of a lot more than I ever thought I would given that I have owned _The Beekeeper_ since the day it came out and have only played it once. I've probably played _Scarlet_...um...a dozen times at most. She's still terrific live. However, Veda. Veda squared, and worth any road travel to see. Her music is so grounded, emotional, and smart. There are so many reasons why I consider Veda my favourite artist and they were all reinforced by seeing her twice, once with band and once solo, this weekend. On Saturday, we (meaning Jim, JoAnn, and I, and meeting up with our friend John from Victoria, Jan Horne, Art Liestman, Damon, Keri, and some of Damon's friends) drove up to Vancouver to hear Veda Hille's cd launch concert for _Return of the Kildeer_ at her home-ground venue, The Vancouver East Cultural Centre. This was a terrific concert. Veda loves playing with a band and has a ton of fun with them. She was her own opening act, and played songs from all over her oeuvre (nothing from her first folkier disc, but songs from all the rest). Then after a short break she came back and played the new disc in its entirety. Wow. The songs are mostly fairly short, rather like tone poems. Veda is art-songy, but she has such a gift for melody that the songs are crisper and more catchy than than "artsong" implies. And more emotional. I need time to absorb the album (Veda's one of those artists whose work becomes richer and more interesting the more you hear it) but I really like it so far. Many of the songs have implicit story lines. She also has a couple of songs about living in Vancouver. And there are several witty songs. After the show we drove home (3 hours) and felt the trip entirely worth it. Sunday after lots of sleep we (Jim, me, our friend John, and the not-invisible-except-when-she's-Violet Tamar Boursalian) drove down to Olympia to catch a solo show Veda did in an art gallery music space. Very casual, only about 40 people there, but damn what a show. Veda gives her all no matter how many people are there and her songs are just as rich without a band. Each show is different but it's always rich and engrossing. Also 100% worth it and more. I could go on and on with the superlatives. More people need to know about Veda. With the two shows, we were treated to a couple of Duplex (Veda + several people and children) songs from their new album, _Ablum_. Really delightful. If you're a kid or have kids, I highly recommend it. And the new Veda album? Buy it now. - --Neile ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 12:55:03 -0700 From: Bowen Simmons Subject: Re: judging art In embarking on a discussion of this sort, we have even less chance of reaching a resolution than as to the merits of 70's music. After all, better men than we have tried but not have not succeeded. Still, that doesn't mean that the experience cannot be rewarding, even if a resolution must remain elusive. With that thought, I begin. On Apr 26, 2005, at 9:09 AM, Bernie Mojzes wrote: > It's my position that art should be judged by a confluence of criteria > that, some of it brought to the table by the artist, some by the genre > and > scene within which they operate, some by the individual viewer or > listener, and some by the wider social sphere. So I'd say that its a > mistake to use the same criteria to judge Gang of Four's > "Entertainment" > and and Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra's performance of > Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." I once read a review of a Chick Corea > album > where the reviewer criticised the artist for failing to play with the > precision and tonal clarity that even a mediocre classical pianist > manages, and proceeded to condemn the whole of jazz for this failure. > Umm. Right. This is not the relativist talking; from a relativist perspective, his criteria for judging Chick Corea are no less valid than your own. Within relativism, there is no "right" or "wrong" way to do it: relativism applied thusly leaves us all absolute monarchs of our own islands, but each of us alone. > I also hold that every work of art is a political statement, > regardless of > the intention of the artist. Everything can look like a nail to a man with a hammer. > but that's just the relativist in me... Relativism can be a position of convenience. We adopt it is useful to us, and discard us when it is not. Of course, if you're also a pragmatist, there may not be anything wrong with that. Yours, Bowen ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:01:52 -0400 (EDT) From: Bernie Mojzes Subject: Re: 70s music >This is true of the 70's, but I think it is generally true of music in >the modern era; it could be said of the 50's, 60's, 80's and 90's as >well. The tension between art and commerce neither began nor ended in >the 70's. The fact that experimentation exists however does not >automatically mean that it was successful: some experiments fail. most experiments fail, that is the nature of experimentation. but the successes stand on the shoulders of the failures. and sometimes the failures are more interesting than the successes. >I would not argue with your point about different genres. I am an >incompetent critic of rap music because I have a strong negative >reaction to all of it, which leaves me unable to distinguish between >good rap and bad rap (I believe it goes back to having to endure Rex >Harrison talking his way through songs in 60's musicals; an experience >that left permanently unable to endure anyone talking to music)*. heh... me, i blame william shatner. (speaking of failed experiments) >However, this does not apply to the matter of the music of that decade. >My problems with the first pentade are not genre problems as such. > >> I think a blow by blow debate would be both unmanageable and >> uninteresting, because that would end up just having us figure out that >> our tastes are not identical. > >Actually we haven't yet even figured out if you de facto agreed with my >assessment of the decade: whether your collection of music from 1971 to >1975 is substantially smaller than your collection of music from 1976 >to 1980 (this comparison does of course assume roughly equal >familiarity on your part with both halves of the decade). If your >collection is not in a database it would of course be tedious and time >consuming to figure it out and I wouldn't blame you a bit for not >trying; I only did it because once my music was in iTunes it was >trivially easy to do. i keep my music in multiple physical databases. in other words, i have a bunch of CDs, a bunch of vinyl albums, a bunch of cassettes, and a bunch of songs downloaded from napster from before the copyright police got involved. the content distribution in these databases are divergent, depending on what my particular tastes were at the time, and what cash-flow constraints i had. i guess to answer this, i have to get somewhat autobiographical myself. when i was little, my favorite music was beatles, beach boys, led zeppelin, and this seseme street album that i had. 'round 9th grade i came to the sudden realization that it was all crappe, and that good music started with "In the Court of the Crimson King" and ended with "Red." i sold all my Beatles and Zeppelin and bought Yes and King Crimson and Genesis and Gentle Giant and anything else progressivish i could find (early Rush comes to mind). everything else was crappe. in other words, i was a musical snob. one day in '82 a friend was playing a tape he had of stiff little fingers, gang of four, and the specials, and i realized that i had made a mistake, and that there was more to music than musicianship and intricate songs with weird chord changes and songs in 17/16. so my vinyl collection is primarily early 70s prog (and Gabriel and Kate and others who were building on that genre), jazz fusion, plus some punk and post-punk. it was ok, because very few people were listening to punk at the time, so i could still be a musical elitist. :) my CD collection started out more geared toward getting the essential vinyl replaced (gabriel and kate), and toward filling in some stuff that had been out of print in vinyl, and toward post-punk (birthday party, bauhaus, gang of four) and industrial (einsterzende neubauten, skinny puppy) and so on. later, i filled in other stuff. my tape collection was basically stuff that my friends had, that i didn't think sucked too bad, but wasn't worth spending money on. mostly this was contemporary stuff - Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, Men Without Hats. and reviewing what i taped, i was mostly right. i think that i shall have to pick up a copy of "Rio" tho. it wasn't until the 90s that i realized that there was some really really good stuff out there that i'd ignored because it was contemporary, or because it was neither pretentious nor ridiculing pretention. Hendrix, Zeppelin, Janice Joplin, Rickie Lee Jones, some Dylan and Rolling Stones. The Guess Who had some great songs. Blondie, Talking Heads, stuff like that (that i had dismissed as mere "pop"). so i'd say i have a pretty good distribution of music from the mid-60s up. what this means, in a practical sense, is that i like a wide variety of music, all of it "good" for various reasons. and that, happily, allows me to remain a musical elitist. :) my itunes list - well, at least 50% of that is Happy, Boiled in Lead, and Warren Zevon (i had something of an obsession with him around the time he died - something to do both with the public disclosures at the time and with his longstanding relationship with death as a subject - and ended up sticking everything i owned of his on my pooter). regardless, i don't think you can extract any useful statistics from it. > >The difference between the pentades in my collection is quite real. It >is not caused by differences in familiarity; I know both halves of the >decade about equally well. Nor is it caused by prejudice - I did not >decide in advance to buy less music from 1971 to 1975 than from 1976 to >1980 out of an a prior judgment regarding their merits. It may of >course just be a peculiarity of taste on my part, but I don't think so. well, one thing i'd like to say is that i find the division of music into decades or pentades as being somewhat artificial. i mean, "80's" music started in '69 with iggy pop, and made an impact in 77 and 78. "60s" music really started with the beats. in the decade of the 70s, the most dismal years, commercially speaking, were around '74-77, around the point where "60s" music became fully appropriated and commodified, to the point where the public rejected those forms of commodified musical product. by '82/83, the industry once again had appropriated and commodified the rebellion, and it remained that way until nirvana threw it into a tizzy. they've gotten a lot better over time at handling, and even controlling, these rebellions in real time. hopefully the new modes of distribution enabled by the Internet will reverse that trend. verbosely yours, brni > >Yours, > >Bowen > >* That is of course a joke. As lamentable as Rex Harrison's musical >performances were, I don't believe that they actually are responsible >for my inability to appreciate rap music; the cause is obscure but is >probably related to my inability to tolerate talk radio. > - -- brni i don't want the world, i just want your half. www.livejournal.com/~brni ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 16:08:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Bernie Mojzes Subject: Re: 70s music On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, Adam K wrote: > I'd like to take this opportunity to say that you chaps in the colonies colonies? i'm not in iraq. oh, wait, you meant something else... - -- brni i don't want the world, i just want your half. www.livejournal.com/~brni ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 13:53:03 -0700 From: Bowen Simmons Subject: Re: 70s music On Apr 26, 2005, at 1:01 PM, Bernie Mojzes wrote: > well, one thing i'd like to say is that i find the division of music > into > decades or pentades as being somewhat artificial. Of course. We are taking a continuum and cutting it into neat pieces that are unrelated to nature of the thing being cut. Even calling it butchery (as opposed to surgery) is an insult to butchery. Still, inveterate categorizers that people are, we proceed anyway. There is some difference between the music of one period and another that I think survives such crude divisions and it can be an educational exercise to try to get at what it is, though we must bear in mind the arbitrary nature of the divisions we are making. > they've gotten a lot better over time at handling, and even > controlling, > these rebellions in real time. hopefully the new modes of distribution > enabled by the Internet will reverse that trend. There is a hope we can share. Yours, Bowen ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 17:06:24 -0400 (EDT) From: Bernie Mojzes Subject: Re: judging art On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, Bowen Simmons wrote: > In embarking on a discussion of this sort, we have even less chance of > reaching a resolution than as to the merits of 70's music. After all, > better men than we have tried but not have not succeeded. Still, that > doesn't mean that the experience cannot be rewarding, even if a > resolution must remain elusive. With that thought, I begin. You mentioned earlier that you had a theory of art. I'm curious as to how that applies to the question at hand. > On Apr 26, 2005, at 9:09 AM, Bernie Mojzes wrote: > > > It's my position that art should be judged by a confluence of criteria > > that, some of it brought to the table by the artist, some by the genre > > and > > scene within which they operate, some by the individual viewer or > > listener, and some by the wider social sphere. So I'd say that its a > > mistake to use the same criteria to judge Gang of Four's > > "Entertainment" > > and and Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra's performance of > > Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." I once read a review of a Chick Corea > > album > > where the reviewer criticised the artist for failing to play with the > > precision and tonal clarity that even a mediocre classical pianist > > manages, and proceeded to condemn the whole of jazz for this failure. > > Umm. Right. > > This is not the relativist talking; from a relativist perspective, his > criteria for judging Chick Corea are no less valid than your own. > Within relativism, there is no "right" or "wrong" way to do it: > relativism applied thusly leaves us all absolute monarchs of our own > islands, but each of us alone. I'll need to disagree with you here. There are (of course) different conceptions of relativism. I would claim that there is no absolute "right" interpretation or way to judge the merit of a work of art, based on some objectively knowable properties of the artwork. There can, in fact, be multiple good interpretations and multiple valid judgements. But this does not mean that all interpretations and judgements are valid. > > I also hold that every work of art is a political statement, > > regardless of > > the intention of the artist. > > Everything can look like a nail to a man with a hammer. I've heard that said, but I doubt it's truth. It seems unlikely that a man with a hammer would say that a pancake or a waterfall looks like a nail. Regardless, I'm not sure what you are trying to say with your metaphor. > > but that's just the relativist in me... > > Relativism can be a position of convenience. We adopt it is useful to > us, and discard us when it is not. Of course, if you're also a > pragmatist, there may not be anything wrong with that. *smile* > > Yours, > > Bowen > - -- brni i don't want the world, i just want your half. www.livejournal.com/~brni ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 17:25:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Bernie Mojzes Subject: and... ...and while i'm spending the day being overly verbose about stuff, i'd just like to say that i still take it as a personal insult that grocery stores put stickers on fruit. if you run a store, you shouldn't need a sticker to tell you that it's a tomato. you should know what a tomato looks like. - -- brni i don't want the world, i just want your half. www.livejournal.com/~brni ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 15:20:41 -0700 From: Damon Subject: Re: Veda. Veda Veda VEDA! On 26 Apr, Neile Graham sort of made me wish i'd made the road trip down to olympia to catch veda's show there. ah well, i'm on a limited budget right now anyway - i just went to zulu (local second-hand / import store) and limited myself to *one* single $4 cd. EWS-b-gon! but... i can of course only second all neile's comments about veda's show at the cultch saturday. a grand evening was had by all. veda just makes me *happy*. i think she's my hero. - -damon - -- dl+ecto@usrbin.ca: protecting my real address since 2002 (too late!) > EWS starts here! < ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 00:33:01 +0200 From: Kjetil Torgrim Homme Subject: Re: Veda. Veda Veda VEDA! [Neile Graham]: > > And the new Veda album? Buy it now. oh I wish, I wish! does anyone know an alternative to sending money orders to Veda herself? - -- Kjetil T. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 17:40:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Neile Graham Subject: Re: Veda. Veda Veda VEDA! On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Kjetil Torgrim Homme wrote: > > And the new Veda album? Buy it now. > > oh I wish, I wish! does anyone know an alternative to sending money > orders to Veda herself? It should have some European distribution through APE records, eventually. - --N - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- neile@drizzle.com / neile@sff.net .... http://www.sff.net/people/neile Editor, The Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music . http://www.ectoguide.org Workshop Administrator, Clarion West ...... http://www.clarionwest.org ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:38:21 -0400 From: "Bill Adler" Subject: RE: 70s music and Judee Sill I've missed a few messages on this thread, so apologies if somebody else has already mentioned Judee Sill. If Judee Sill were alive (she's said to have ODed on heroin in 1979 at the age of 34) she would be on the top ten Ecto list. Judee Sill had an amazing voice (silky and with perfect pitch) and wrote brilliant, spirited, somewhat mystical and even cryptic lyrics that are hard to describe in an email. Judee Sill's music was recently re-released on a double album entitled "Dreams Come True," but it is her album, "Heart Food," (available again at www.rhino.com) that destroyed several needles on my turntable before it was released on CD. Run, don't walk, don't even skip, and get "Heart Food." It's a keeper. The song, "The Phoenix," is one of my desert island tunes. The other songs on this CD are also on the far side of incredible. Here's an excerpt from "The Phoenix:" The sun was red and the fires were roaring Stars aligned and our webs were spun. I could have sworn I heard my sprit soaring. Yes, I'm always chasing sun, hoping will we soon be one Till it turns around to me and I try to run. For more on Judee Sill: http://www.kneeling.co.uk/pages/jsill/default.asp. - --Bill n.p. Jade Redd, "Rivers of Stone" ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 22:29:12 -0400 From: Robert Lovejoy Subject: Re:70s music and... First off, I'm always happy to see Gentle Giant mentioned on Ecto. They were my favorite band from the decade. Last time I listened to them was this morning ("Free Hand"). I just made a compilation CD of some of my favorites of theirs. I'd also like to give a nod to Caravan, one of the great Canterbury bands I enjoy. And did anyone mention Procol Harum? They started in the sixties but some of their best work was from the seventies. And then there was Mike Oldfield and that Tubular Bells album. Santana was starting his career. Anyone here remember the band "Carmen"? Flamenco-Rock. Talk about fusion. Lots of great music. But I don't dwell in the past exclusively. I have ecto to thank, and my son Richard. I'm always hearing about new music, and most of it is fine! There's a scene in "The Big Chill" where one of the characters actually brags that he doesn't listen to music made after the sixties. Tsk. Every decade has great music. Finally, brni, the tags are on the fruit so the consumers can use the self service scanners in the supermarkets. They can't barcode the fruit, so the four digit code is entered manually at the self service checkout. At least I think so. Bernie Mojzes wrote: >...and while i'm spending the day being overly verbose about stuff, i'd >just like to say that i still take it as a personal insult that grocery >stores put stickers on fruit. if you run a store, you shouldn't need a >sticker to tell you that it's a tomato. you should know what a tomato >looks like. > > ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:41:27 -0700 (PDT) From: "Xenu's Sister" Subject: It sure was nice while it lasted Sigh... I'm going to have to take down a big chunk of the Happy songs within a few days. My bandwidth is taking a beating. It's been fun, and I'm thrilled to death that more people are getting to hear Happy's music, but the software isn't even officially released yet. I can't even imagine what will happen when it is. A lot of/most artists are going to get hammered. I'll bet there won't be any artists at all on Indy within hours of the "official" release. On Friday, only 2% of the 60gb allotment was taken. That mainly came from people downloading the Find Me Sampler mp3s they'd bought, which I offered to host for Happy. On Sunday, 4% had been taken. I just checked it and 16% of my 60gb limit has been used! Nearly 20gb of Happy songs have been downloaded in 4 days. Amazing. This is a sample of how some songs are doing. The last number is how many people heard that song as of a few minutes ago. All the songs have been downloaded, but those are the most dramatic numbers. 111/148/219 people have heard The Flight 63/100/274 people have heard Words Weren't Made For Cowards 0/60/213 people have heard Summer 0/35/345 people have heard The Chariot 0/26/164 people have heard Save Our Souls (Acoustic) 0/25/287 people have heard In Hiding (Acoustic) 0/25/147 people have heard Mother Sea 0/23/181 people have heard When The Rain Came Down 0/22/102 people have heard Phobos 0/21/114 people have heard Off From Out From Under Me 0/?/134 people have heard Don't Want To Hear It That just warms my heart to no end. Even if only a handful of those people gave Happy 4 or 5 stars and became fans, that's a handful of people who hadn't known about her before, and that's wonderful. I am checking into archive.org, but I don't know if they do this sort of thing and even if they do host songs, if they would be able to withstand the bandwidth requirements. Their website sure is awfully slow just bringing up text pages! If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them. V This is a signature. It's a friendly signature. But it doesn't like seeing SPAM next to its owner's name. Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V11 #116 ***************************