From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V11 #117 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Thursday, April 28 2005 Volume 11 : Number 117 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Nice to see Ecto so active... A Happy topic ["Bill Mazur" ] RE: Ecto introductory music ["Bill Mazur" ] Lennon and Harrison remembrances ["Allison Crowe Music Mgmt" ] radio and 70's music [breinheimer@webtv.net (bill)] RE: It sure was nice while it lasted ["Matthew B. Downer" ] RE: It sure was nice while it lasted ["Xenu's Sister" ] Re: judging art [Bowen Simmons ] Re: judging art [Bowen Simmons ] Re: 70s music [Greg Bossert ] Re: Ecto introductory music [Bowen Simmons ] Re: Ecto introductory music [robert bristow-johnson Subject: Nice to see Ecto so active... A Happy topic Too bad I don't have the bandwidth right now to read everything going on and contribute as much as I would like. I have enjoyed skimming the threads. Some great discussion! Kudos to Bowen for kicking off a very interesting thread which has sparked many other interesting topics of current discussion. I have one to throw out there about Happy: I want to comment on Happy's singing and the recording of her voice on Left Hand Demos and the Find Me Sampler. I really noticed it for the first time when listening to "Now You Know Me". I absolutely love the way Happy's voice is recorded and the tonality of her voice on that song. We are all familiar with her lower tone vocals, similar in timber and tone to Annie Lennox, and her high voice that is very reminiscent of Kate Bush. She definitely uses the low voice on "One and Many" and uses the high voice on several songs on the Find Me Sampler. The new voice that I am referring to uses Happy's middle range and is very uniquely Happy to my ears. I can't compare that voice to any other artist. Happy's voice is always beautiful and impressive because of her range. But there is a new quality that I hadn't heard before in her voice. That quality is so warm and inviting and sincere. I hear that same quality in her voice on major parts of the "The Chosen One", "Can't Let Go" and "Here and Hereafter". I am curious if anyone else has noticed this quality in Happy's voice. The Happy song that has been stuck in my head for the past several days is: Phobos - I hope that we do a 15 year anniversary Ecto Happy tribute CD like we did with Dectopia. I would like to officially claim that song for a cover. I have an arrangement running around in my head that I would love to record with my friend from Of the Arcane, John Kozak, singing it. All the best! Bill P.S. - Billi is slowly but surely making progress toward recovery. Carol, Billi's sister, and I will update the Blog tomorrow night. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 23:40:41 -0700 From: "Bill Mazur" Subject: RE: Ecto introductory music Tough call, but my Top 10 Best Ecto Intro CDs (for tonight and not in any specific order) would be: 1) Happy Rhodes - The Keep 2) Kate Bush - The Hounds of Love 3) Fairport Convention with Sandy Denny - Leige and Lief 4) Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstacy 5) Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes 6) Loreena McKennitt - The Mask and the Mirror 7) Louisa John-Krol - Ariel 8) Vienna Teng - Waking Hour 9) Land of the Blind - Ordinary Magic 10) Heather Nova - Oyster A mix of classic and some very near and dear to my heart because I was introduced to them here on Ecto. I had CDs #2, #3, #4, #5 and #6 in my collection as faves before joining Ecto. - -----Original Message----- From: owner-ecto@smoe.org [mailto:owner-ecto@smoe.org] On Behalf Of Bowen Simmons Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 7:01 PM To: ecto@smoe.org Subject: Ecto introductory music > I've substituted the traditional bottle of wine with a CD > as a dinner gift when we visit friends. It's a good way to introduce > friends to new (Ectoish) music. Now that sets up an interesting question. What are good CD's to try to awaken people's dormant ecto by? Obviously if there is no dormant ecto, the attempt is doomed; but if there is, what would be good CD's to bring it to life? Bowen ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 00:48:31 -0700 From: "Allison Crowe Music Mgmt" Subject: Lennon and Harrison remembrances John Lennon, not one to dance about architecture, famously, and bluntly, said of the tendency by some to over-analyze: "Writing about music is like talking about fucking." Rex Harrison, is, no doubt, best remembered for his great comedic gifts and talents, and his wonderful stage and movie performances, including an Oscar-winning turn in the movie version of "My Fair Lady". Still, I enjoy the fun link between his performance of the Leslie Bricusse song, "When I Look In Your Eyes", in the 1967 movie of "Doctor Dolittle", and Diana Krall's career arc. Thirty-plus years after the Great Pink Sea Snail disappeared off the big screen, the Canadian jazzer looked in the eyes of a cross-over pop audience with her recording of the good doctor's song. With a little lyrical tweak, the original last lines, "Your eyes, so warm, so wise, so real / Isn't it a pity you're a seal?", were dropped in favour of "I love the world your eyes reveal." cheers, Ad ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 05:26:48 -0700 (PDT) From: "Xenu's Sister" Subject: Re: It sure was nice while it lasted - --- Xenu's Sister wrote: > 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. Maybe not! The developer of Indy let me know that the most recent version (build 6 of v0.1) will automatically route songs through "Coral" (http://www.coralcdn.org/), a free distribution network designed to take the load off of servers experiencing heavy bandwidth. That version will be released later today. Since 2 gigs of Happy's music was downloaded just since midnight, that's a good thing. These are all amazing people. All for the love of music. Wow. Vickie 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 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 11:45:22 -0400 From: robert bristow-johnson Subject: Re: 70s music on 04/26/2005 13:44, Bowen Simmons at bowen@mac.com wrote: > On Apr 26, 2005, at 9:27 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: > >> on 04/26/2005 09:40, Bowen Simmons at bowen@mac.com wrote: >> >>> I made some highly negative >>> remarks about the general state of music between 1971 and 1975, >> >> Todd Rundgren >> Yes >> Led Zepplin >> Blue Oyster Cult (before they went commercial with the Reaper song) >> Wishbone Ash >> Cream (White Room) >> Ten Years After add to that Supertramp (Crime of the Century) Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (and some of their solo stuff) Janis Joplin and, of course, Joni Mitchell (she's the sorta Happy of her era, unless you say KaTe is, BTW, shame on me but i never heard of KaTe until i discovered Happy and got The Keep, some things i missed). >> com'on! > > With that best-of-the-pentade it might not be the "best of" but "good stuff that i can remember at the moment". i *liked* the music that came from those artists. but i *did* hate most of the stuff on the radio. nearly all of it. > list I'm not at all sure which side of > the argument you're on. > > Seriously, though, how does your own music collection stack up? Do you > have more albums from that pentade than earlier or later ones? The > same? Fewer? You tell me. definitely more than eariler (i'm 49, so you can calculate how old i was in thge 60s), dunno about later. in the 80s, i have only about a dozen or two vinyl albums, many are Windham Hill, some others. the pop music of the 80s, sucked too. - -- r b-j rbj@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:23:30 -0400 From: breinheimer@webtv.net (bill) Subject: radio and 70's music Isn't most of the criticism of 70's music focused on top 40 and so called commercial radio. And for anyone old enough (and serious enough about music) to have "outgrown" this kind of thing, isn't that a legitamate complaint about radio regardless of the era? As far as radio being an insufficient source of new music I know that I've got a reasonably sized music garnered mostly as a result of listening to non commercial radio. I also have a couple of small notepads full of "to buy" items gleaned this way. If I had enough money to get all this, listening to it could take up all available time and then some. Perhaps I have more options in that regard living in connecticut. I know that when I've driven through the southeastern usa it's been difficult finding quality music on the radio. Finally some more good music from the 70's, some ecto some not. Nick Drake (I don't think he was mentioned) John Martyn-Nick's good friend. Good stuff solo and two great albums with then wife Beverly. Bill Nelson- some of us are big fans Duncan Browne- although his 60's albums are better Jimmy Spheeris- He is sorely missed Al Stewart- check out Past, Present and Future. Renassaince- could we have really failed to mention this? John Cale- imho his solo career has produced a far superior body of work than Lou Reed's has. Ironic considering he went solo as a result of Lou forcing him out of the Velvets. Kevin Ayewrs- maybe not as inspired as his Soft Machine days but lots of good stuff anyway. Dan Hicks- got to mention him Marianne Faithful- got her start that decade Steely Dan- like the Talking Heads some bands are so good they survive overplay and for prog fans: Happy the Man National Health Quiet Sun too much jazz to list but a couple of persona faves Pat Methany Group's first album came out here. Brian Auger's Oblivion Express- spotty but Straight Ahead and Closer To It are classics. And it's not music but didn't Firesign Theatre do so much for 70's radio? Sorry for the length but I probably left out more than I included. Being a college radio dj back then is probably one of the many reasons I don't have a degree. np-Patti Smith- Gone Again ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:53:21 -0500 (CDT) From: "Matthew B. Downer" Subject: RE: It sure was nice while it lasted > Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:41:27 -0700 (PDT) > From: "Xenu's Sister" > 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. > > I just checked it and 16% of my 60gb limit has been used! > Nearly 20gb of Happy songs have been downloaded in 4 days. > If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Keeping in mind that I'm on the digest, so I haven't seen any replies yet to Vickie's email, here's what I think: 1 ---- Scale back to 1 - 3 songs that you and/or Happy feels are most representative or likely to hook new listeners. (Sounds like you're already going down the path). If you can get the Indy rankings to use as a metric, maybe going with the highest rated songs within the system is the way to go. 2 ---- Come up with some WAG (wild ass guess) as to how much bandwidth the above 1-3 songs might consume vs. the much larger selection you initially had available. (This is the hard, fuzzy part) 3 ---- Find a host to put the 1-3 songs on. Find out how much it will cost per month and what happens if bandwidth is exceeded, and whether that's measured on a monthly or daily basis. 4 ---- In a perfect world, hosting of songs for systems like Indy would be a business expense that artists would pay for out of the considerable proceeds from their well deserved CD/merchandise sales and live performance revenues. In the case of Happy, who I'm guessing is operating on a shoestring budget [or more likely, subsidizing her music out of her "day job" paycheck:( ], would it be feasible to find twelve ectoheads to each pay for a month of bandwidth for the Indy Happyness Project? If the cost is reasonable (which I think of as being $25/month or less) and we can find 12 (well, 11 if you count me) ectoheads who are willing to fund a month's worth of bandwidth, then we could run the Indy Happyness Project for a full year, then give Happy the option of taking it over (if she thinks the cost/benefit ration is there) or pulling the plug (if c/b isn't there or if she plain doesn't want to mess with it). matt - -- Matt Downer NP: Mary Lydia Ryan hachiman@io.com NR: Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 14:37:50 -0700 From: Bowen Simmons Subject: Re: judging art On Apr 26, 2005, at 2:06 PM, Bernie Mojzes wrote: > > You mentioned earlier that you had a theory of art. I don't think I said anything of the kind. I mentioned a theory of art and said that I did not subscribe to it. That is a very different thing than claiming to have a theory of art yourself. I'm sorry if you were misled into thinking I had a theory of art to propose; I have thoughts and ideas on the subject, but they wholly lack the coherence to be considered a theory of art. >> 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. This sounds more like perspectivism than relativism. But I won't quibble about names, and given that I am quite sympathetic to the perspectivist view, this is not a point with which I would argue. >>> 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. It is a variant on an old saying. I think the original goes "Everything looks like a nail to a man who just bought a hammer". What is has to do with is whether your interest in politics causes you to fail to understand music: music can be used for political ends, therefore it is political; a chair can be used to build a fire, therefore it is firewood. Yours, Bowen ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:19:32 -0700 (PDT) From: "Xenu's Sister" Subject: RE: It sure was nice while it lasted I'm cc'ing to Matthew and to ecto. - --- "Matthew B. Downer" wrote: > Keeping in mind that I'm on the digest, so I haven't > seen any replies yet to Vickie's email, here's what I > think: The developer of Indy, Ian Clarke, wrote in the Indy discussion group that they're going to be using a service called Coral (http://www.coralcdn.org/ ) which is a "...peer-to-peer content distribution network, comprised of a world-wide network of web proxies and nameservers). I take it that every file will be marked for distribution via Coral. The way I understand it, anyone can use Coral by just appending ".nyud.net:8090" to the hostname of any URL. So http://happyrhodes.org/indy/HappyRhodes_Ecto_Ecto.mp3 would become http://happyrhodes.org.nyud.net:8090/indy/HappyRhodes_Ecto_Ecto.mp3 Whether it works or not, I don't know, and I have no way of telling at this point. I've never heard of Coral. I was poking around their site and started reading their discussion list archives, starting with the most recent first. I saw a post from March 28, a question from a man who said he hosted audio and zip files at (http://thermalandaquarter.com). Just because I'm a nosy wench, I clicked on the URL and saw this: Bandwidth Limit Exceeded The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later. Ha! Oh. Uh oh. Either he quit using Coral for some reason or they didn't work for him. Pause for thought. I've come up with a short-term solution, until I can find out if Coral really does work. I've put half the songs on wretchawry.com, to split the load. Since many fewer people wanted the concerts I put up, I have a lot of bandwidth left there. Even with the concert downloads, only 13% of my bandwidth was used. > 1 ---- > Scale back to 1 - 3 songs that you and/or Happy feels > are most representative or likely to hook new listeners. > (Sounds like you're already going down the path). If > you can get the Indy rankings to use as a metric, maybe > going with the highest rated songs within the system is > the way to go. I can't get the rankings, they're not releasing that info yet. Maybe on down the line. I only know how many songs have been accessed. Cutting down the number defeats the whole purpose. The more songs, the more chances Happy's music will come up. If people don't like Happy, they click 1 or 2 stars. If the like her, they can click 3, 4 or 5. They can listen to the song in full, or they can immediately go on to the next song. Having a lot of Happy songs isn't bothering anybody and shouldn't be a problem for anyone but me and my bandwidth. I couldn't possibly cut it down to 2 or 3, unless there was a dire necessity for it. I'm trying many other things before it gets that dire. Chris always tells me I would suck at being an editor, and boy is he right. I *live* for the more the merrier. When Indy is released (a real release, not the beta version they have now), it's going to get written up and talked about. I wouldn't be surprised at articles in Salon and other online magazines. I also wouldn't be surprised at articles in print and maybe even some television coverage (a section in a "new gizmos for the geeks" piece). Hey, if the RIAA tries to stick their nose in it, Indy will be more popular than ever! Especially since the RIAA will fall flat on its ugly face, and everybody likes to see that happen. (in the first place, Indy is perfectly legal, because the artists *choose* to put their songs on it, and in the second place, Indy is based in Australia, so the Indy people can thumb their noses well and good.) The publicity would be priceless. A segment of the population would race to download Indy just to spite the RIAA. There oughta be a LOT of Happy songs waiting for those unsuspecting unHappy people. It's a perfect lead in to the album, when it comes. A lot of new fans, in a short amount of time, could possibly come from it. That's all I care about, getting Happy's music heard by more people. "Making it" is not an option. Getting new fans is. > 2 ---- > Come up with some WAG (wild ass guess) as to how much > bandwidth the above 1-3 songs might consume vs. the much > larger selection you initially had available. (This is > the hard, fuzzy part) Very, and they'd look awfully lonely too. > 3 ---- > Find a host to put the 1-3 songs on. Find out how > much it will cost per month and what happens if > bandwidth is exceeded, and whether that's measured on > a monthly or daily basis. I can only give as an example the web host I just changed to (from teemingmillions.com), StartLogic. At teemingmillions I was paying $17.95 a month for 500mgs of space. (it's even worse than that. I was paying that for *2* accounts, vickie.teemingmillions.com and equipoise.teemingmillions.com, both of which came with 500 mgs, *and* $7.95 a month for happyrhodes.org, which came with 50mgs of space. Talk about pathetic. Almost $500.00 a year for a lousy gig and change). I don't know what the bandwidth was. I never thought about it and I obviously never went over it because they never said anything. At StartLogic, I pay (paid, a year in advance) $7.50 a month, per account, for 2gb of space and 60gb of bandwidth a month, per account. I got wretchawry.com and moved happyrhodes.org there, and even with 2 accounts I'm paying less than half of what I paid at teemingmillions. Straight Dope my ass. Obscure the Dope until someone figures out how stupid they've been! Bandwidth is cheap now as long as it comes with the account. Adding bandwidth later is very expensive. A StartLogic account itself is so cheap (relatively, and considering the space and bandwidth) that another ectophile just bought an account that will be used for nothing but sharing Happy concerts (and oh how I love him for it!!), so those interested should be on the lookout for, hold on, happyshows.com, coming soon to a browser near you. :) > 4 ---- > In a perfect world, hosting of songs for systems like > Indy would be a business expense that artists would pay > for out of the considerable proceeds from their well > deserved CD/merchandise sales and live performance > revenues. In the case of Happy, who I'm guessing > is operating on a shoestring budget [or more likely, > subsidizing her music out of her "day job" paycheck:( ], Yes, I do believe you're right there. > would it be feasible to find twelve ectoheads to each > pay for a month of bandwidth for the Indy Happyness > Project? If the cost is reasonable (which I think of > as being $25/month or less) and we can find 12 (well, > 11 if you count me) ectoheads who are willing to fund a > month's worth of bandwidth, then we could run the Indy > Happyness Project for a full year, I wouldn't ask, but I would gladly accept. (they're having a special now, no setup fee and no domain name charge, she said, innocently) > then give Happy the option of taking it over (if she > thinks the cost/benefit ration is there) or pulling the > plug (if c/b isn't there or if she plain doesn't want to > mess with it). I don't think she would want to mess with it. These things don't concern her much. She just gave happyrhodes.net to me, (she offered, I didn't ask) and I'll be putting up a pointer to auntiesocialmusic.com as soon as I get the info. An aside: that jerkoff in Canada just renewed happyrhodes.com for another year, and he's not even using it! I wrote him an angry letter, but it bounced back to me. I was biting my tongue, thinking maybe he was going to let it go, but no, he did it on purpose, because it was renewed more than a month before the renewal date. So, I'm looking at the various options. Splitting the songs between my two accounts is only a start. I looked into archive.org, but they're a frigging nightmare. I love what they do, and who they are, but I don't want to be a part of it. It wouldn't work for this purpose anyway. The songs can't be archived, they have to be available at a moment's notice. Just the naming conventions alone would be very bad for the Indy project. Coral might still work, but I'd sure like an explanation as to why one of their users has exceeded his bandwidth, if that's the very thing they're supposed to stop from happening. Vickie (I haven't heard Happy for a while, but that might be because I accidentally gave one of her songs 2 stars. Indy was behind another window and I went to click to bring it to the front just as the song was ending, and clicked on the 2nd star. Ouch. No can undo once the song's been played and disappears from the UnRated folder.) This is a signature. It's a friendly signature. But it doesn't like seeing SPAM next to its owner's name. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Make Yahoo! your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:32:41 -0500 From: "Green, Patrick" Subject: RE: judging art For what it's worth, and for anyone reading through to this point in this thread, it seems that art has turned into the definition of a thing to give it credibility, context or value. As a periodic dealer in art, it is my job to find a buyer's personal definition of art and repeat it back to them in a slightly more eloquent and expert manner so they can find comfort in a purchase. Art is made. Artificial artifiacts of artifice are made. They are art. Their significance might be their beauty, rarity, distinction among other made forms, or similarity to other made forms. For some, art is safely known as valuable because others have deemed it valuable and put money against that belief. For others, art is valuable because it is made, yet communicates something not made, but rather experienced. The best art lives in both places, the heretofore unknown made known by the actions of the artist... An experience captured in form. A thing of beauty that needs no explanations or airtime or prevost or price-tag to be appreciated is the best art, regardless of context, for anyone who experiences the made thing as beauty and finds joy in its being there to be shared. Or so it seems to me at this point on a Wednesday afternoon. psg > ---------- > From: owner-ecto@smoe.org on behalf of Bowen Simmons > Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 4:37 PM > To: ecto@smoe.org > Subject: Re: judging art > > On Apr 26, 2005, at 2:06 PM, Bernie Mojzes wrote: > > > > You mentioned earlier that you had a theory of art. > > I don't think I said anything of the kind. I mentioned a theory of art > and said that I did not subscribe to it. That is a very different thing > than claiming to have a theory of art yourself. I'm sorry if you were > misled into thinking I had a theory of art to propose; I have thoughts > and ideas on the subject, but they wholly lack the coherence to be > considered a theory of art. > > >> 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. > > This sounds more like perspectivism than relativism. But I won't > quibble about names, and given that I am quite sympathetic to the > perspectivist view, this is not a point with which I would argue. > > >>> 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. > > It is a variant on an old saying. I think the original goes "Everything > looks like a nail to a man who just bought a hammer". What is has to do > with is whether your interest in politics causes you to fail to > understand music: music can be used for political ends, therefore it is > political; a chair can be used to build a fire, therefore it is > firewood. > > Yours, > > Bowen > > [ALERT] -- Access Manager: This email is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure. Dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail or the information herein by anyone other than the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify us by calling our North American Help Desk at (972)506-3939. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:44:39 -0700 From: Bowen Simmons Subject: Re: judging art I would agree with much of this: that somewhere in a good theory of art should be the idea of communication between the artist and the audience and the centrality of experiencing art. A definition that is social or political rather than private in nature (emphasizing what the audience may or may not do as a result of the experience rather than the experience itself) is I think missing something vital about it. Yours, Bowen On Apr 27, 2005, at 1:32 PM, Green, Patrick wrote: > For what it's worth, and for anyone reading through to this point in > this thread, it seems that art has turned into the definition of a > thing to give it credibility, context or value. As a periodic dealer > in art, it is my job to find a buyer's personal definition of art and > repeat it back to them in a slightly more eloquent and expert manner > so they can find comfort in a purchase. > > Art is made. Artificial artifiacts of artifice are made. They are art. > Their significance might be their beauty, rarity, distinction among > other made forms, or similarity to other made forms. For some, art is > safely known as valuable because others have deemed it valuable and > put money against that belief. For others, art is valuable because it > is made, yet communicates something not made, but rather experienced. > The best art lives in both places, the heretofore unknown made known > by the actions of the artist... An experience captured in form. > > A thing of beauty that needs no explanations or airtime or prevost or > price-tag to be appreciated is the best art, regardless of context, > for anyone who experiences the made thing as beauty and finds joy in > its being there to be shared. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:41:31 -0700 From: Bowen Simmons Subject: Re: judging art On Apr 27, 2005, at 1:56 PM, Bernie Mojzes wrote: > I would be interested in hearing your incoherent ideas. *grin* There is a certain redundancy here with my recent reply to Patrick Green. Rather than repeat myself, I'll refer you to my initial comments there. > The idea there is that we can't get a wholly objective > view of any thing, only perspectives of that thing. But the thought is > that by getting as many perspectives as we can, we can sort of > triangulate > in on what that thing is. I think this may be too strong. We accumulate perspectives, but we can never get enough of them so that we really know what a thing is other than what our perspectives of it are. I wouldn't say that all perspectives are equal either: some people can see better than others (and can communicate what they see to others so that they can see it too) while some people's perspective is so poor that they can really see very little (or even not be able to distinguish what is part of the thing and what isn't). > Yes, we only have perspectives of a thing (in this case a song). But > we > also bring to our experience of the song our own life history, our own > wisdom and prejudices, and the wisdom and prejudices of the culture > within > which we operate. We also bring to our experience of the song any > knowledge of the subject that we have, or any knowledge we have of the > artist and the conditions within which the song was created. I think the "also" here is redundant - you're working on defining what it means to say we have our perspectives on a thing, not offering something else in addition to it: your comment makes sense to me if instead of saying "But we also bring to our experience of the song" it were to say "Our perspective on the song consists of such things as..." > The truth and the value of the song for me is the story (or stories) > that > I can tell about the song that are justifiable within the internal > constraints generated by the text of the song and the available > information. I don't think you can justify an interpretation of Tori > Amos' song "Me and a Gun" that says it's about the wreck of the Edmund > Fitzgerald. But the song can^H^H^Hwill mean different things to a > person > who has been raped than to a person who has not. And that meaning > will be > specific to that person's lived experience. There is something important here that I agree with. A problem with the idea of "the author's intent" is its tendency to invalidate the experience. A work of art is I think not a mathematical formula; there is some sense of communication of the artist's experience that is SUPPOSED to be different for different people (and even for the same person at different points in their lives). Of course there are still mis-experiences of the Emily Litella variety ("What's all this I keep hearing about Soviet Jewelry?"). > I do think that all music has as part of it's > character an aspect that is political, and is making a political > statement > if we are interested in hearing it. How confident are you about this: do you think you can get any sequence of musical notes and derive a political statement from it? Or would doing so in at least some cases constitute just imagination at play? Yours, Bowen ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 17:46:47 -0700 From: Greg Bossert Subject: Re: 70s music this is an interesting discussion, and i mean no criticism by the following, but i do find it curious that people find it useful to categorize musical trends (ditto cultural, political, economic, etc.) by decades. it's hard to think of a single natural or man-made cycle that actually works on ten year periods (e.g. elections, schooing, el nino, sunspots, locusts, hair styles, etc.). and the fact that some years end in zero in some calendar systems is of course entirely arbitrary. i'm into my fifth decade in terms of personal lifespan and calendar divisions, and have yet to see a meaningful trend start or end on that sort of schedule. and of all fields, popular music seems farthest from behaving so neatly (which is, of course, a Good Thing). some pop cycles work on yearly or even monthly time frames, and on the other hand, well, look at David Bowie (and marvel...!) while i do see some trends over the years in my buying habits -- swinging, say, from solo to group music, or from "ethnic" to electronic - -- i can't say that i honestly see *any* significant change (from year to year or decade to decade) in the "Sturgeon Law" ratio: 90% of everything is crap. but there is wonder to be found in the remaining 10%, and when it comes to popular music, a lot of that 10% gets mention here on ecto. and the nature of that 10% always cuts across stylistic boundaries, and usually defies any wisdom about trends and fashions. i suspect that far from now, this hundred years or so will be loosely labeled the Beatles era, or some such. look at the hodgepodge of styles and composers crammed into the Baroque, Classical, or Romantic periods for example -- followers of Wagner and Brahms could get into brawls on the street, and now they're lumped together... - -g - -- "i've never been afraid to change the circumstances of the world" - -- Happy Rhodes ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 18:59:04 -0700 From: Bowen Simmons Subject: Re: Ecto introductory music > Tough call, but my Top 10 Best Ecto Intro CDs (for tonight and not in > any specific order) would be: > > 1) Happy Rhodes - The Keep > 2) Kate Bush - The Hounds of Love > 3) Fairport Convention with Sandy Denny - Leige and Lief > 4) Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstacy > 5) Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes > 6) Loreena McKennitt - The Mask and the Mirror > 7) Louisa John-Krol - Ariel > 8) Vienna Teng - Waking Hour > 9) Land of the Blind - Ordinary Magic > 10) Heather Nova - Oyster > That's a nice list. I don't have a list, but I maybe have some ideas to filter what should go on it: (1) It should be by an artist who is reasonably prolific: if the recipient's interest is sparked at all, they will want more by the same artist and there should be more for them to get. An artist with five or more CD's would be preferred. (2) An artist with variation in style. An inner ecto is in part a spirit of adventure: surprise as a part of delight. Commercial radio specializes in not providing choice while seeming to (not unlike American democracy). (3) One of the artist's more accessible CD's. Let them work on the less accessible ones after they've already become familiar with the artist. (4) Make it a great CD; there shouldn't be anything on it you would want to apologize for. (5) Not an artist they're likely to have heard much (if at all). (6) It almost goes without saying that they should be an ecto artist. With that in mind, some US artist suggestions (filter 5 would eliminate some of them in some other countries and no doubt add others): Happy Rhodes Jane Siberry Kate Bush Kirsty MacColl Saint Etienne Of course in any case, you can tailor the choice to what you know about the recipient. Yours, Bowen ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 01:41:55 -0400 From: robert bristow-johnson Subject: Re: Ecto introductory music on 04/27/2005 02:40, Bill Mazur at wpm@value.net wrote: > Tough call, but my Top 10 Best Ecto Intro CDs (for tonight and not in > any specific order) would be: > > 1) Happy Rhodes - The Keep > 2) Kate Bush - The Hounds of Love > 3) Fairport Convention with Sandy Denny - Leige and Lief > 4) Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstacy > 5) Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes > 6) Loreena McKennitt - The Mask and the Mirror > 7) Louisa John-Krol - Ariel > 8) Vienna Teng - Waking Hour > 9) Land of the Blind - Ordinary Magic > 10) Heather Nova - Oyster can i add a suggestion of Vas - Feast of Silence. "In our Faith" is a breathtakingly beautiful layered piece of music on the CD. i heard it on Hearts of Space, and like first hearing "Save our Souls" (on Echoes), it was a jaw-dropping, attention focusing moment. also Trance Mission - Meanwhile is a good '90s ectoish CD with a little edge. ya gotta like really good didg to like this stuff. "Every Stone's Dream" is the classic on that CD. - -- r b-j rbj@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V11 #117 ***************************