From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V13 #116 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Monday, May 7 2007 Volume 13 : Number 116 To unsubscribe: e-mail ecto-digest-request@smoe.org and put the word unsubscribe in the message body. Today's Subjects: ----------------- MPress May 5 shindig ["Paul Blair" ] Haley Bonar and Rachael Cantu [Ruby ] Now playing in my head... [andrew fries ] Zazie - 'Totem' (it's difficult being a new album) ["Karen Hester" Subject: MPress May 5 shindig I got to see part of last night's MPress New Arrivals Tour event at Mo Pitkins. First thing: Rachael dedicated her performance of "Wildflower" to meth, who wasn't able to make it owing to an emergency. I arrived late and left early, so I missed Andy Mac, Natasha Alexandra and Jill Sobule. I regretted missing NLX; instead the first performer I heard was Jenny Bruce. She really didn't do much for me, the kind of earnest folky music on the guitar that makes me tune out as soon as I hear "singer-songwriter." All the sets were half an hour, though, which helped. Noe Venable went on next. Her performance was great despite the venue doing all it could to defeat it: Kitchen door repeatedly opening to the crash of large quantities of silverware being dumped into something (that also happened toward the end of the set when silverware was dumped into a drawer up near the stage), a table in the back where people were speaking with raised voices, someone who fell out of her chair and couldn't stop giggling with the rest of her party about it, and various other mayhem that I forget now. Noe closed with "Sparrow," but as entrancing as it was I got the feeling that many people in the audience had tuned out. Rachael went on next for a fun set, but she also had to contend with the house. There was a woman at the back yelling "I love you, Rachael!"--a whole conversation between her and the stage developed in which we discovered that this woman: 1) was inebriated, 2) was there with her three daughters (one of whom was the one who had fallen out of her chair), 3) was a musician too, 4) has three CDs, 5) "am not a heckler." She finally let Rachael start but still piped up mildly a few times during the song. When Rachael went on she asked the audience how they liked the venue and explained why they'd chosen it (I think mainly for the food). For my part, I didn't like it. It was a pretty small dining room, with very little room for people to stand when there were no more seats. Seating was pretty inefficient as much of it was large booths, but patrons seemed willing to share them with people they didn't know. The booths wrapped around in such a way that some people couldn't face the stage, or couldn't see it without twisting uncomfortably. I went through all three sets without a waiter even asking me if I wanted something to drink (which was OK with me; I could have flagged him down if I'd really wanted something). And then there was the noise. I believe Mo Pitkins has a downstairs area which probably would have been a better place to have the thing. So that's the wrap-up. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 17:18:10 +0100 From: Ruby Subject: Haley Bonar and Rachael Cantu Hi Ectophiles, I'm just emerging momentarily from lurking to suggest that people listen to Haley Bonar. I think she's rather talented, and I haven't seen her mentioned on this list. http://cdbaby.com/cd/haleybonar2 I'd also like to put in a good word for Rachael Cantu, whose debut album last year (Run All Night) didn't seem to get as much attention as it deserved. I highly recommend it. Aside from some wonderful melodies and intriguing lyrics, there's a subtle, hard-to-describe quality in her voice which I find very captivating. http://www.qdivision.com/cantu/index.html (try the 'Recordings' link for some samples) Best wishes, Ruby ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 07:58:53 +1000 From: andrew fries Subject: Now playing in my head... It's been a while since I've been so obsessed about a single song - probably not since Sarina Simoom's "thread" got stuck on high rotation in my head, oh, sometime in 2001 or so... http://www.users.on.net/~afries/npimh.html ... What do you think? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 23:07:59 -0400 From: "Karen Hester" Subject: Zazie - 'Totem' (it's difficult being a new album) All I ask of a new album * That it be better than the previous one. * That all the things I wanted more of from the last album, I get more of. * That it be different in unexpectedly wonderful ways. * That there be a perfect balance between loud stuff (that makes me want to fling myself around the room), melancholy stuff (that makes me want to stand perilously close to the edge of cliff tops during storms), beautiful stuff (that makes me want to position myself poetically in rose gardens) and catchy stuff (further room flinging, with more joyous expression) (note: 'loud' etc are assessed by artist, e.g. not same criteria for P.J. Harvey and Lisa Gerrard) * That the packaging design be gorgeous and cutting edge and fit nicely in the drawer where I'll forget about it. * That it obsess me until an album able to take its place is released and does so. Zazie's 'Totem' measures up nicely, not by fulfilling my requirements (though it does, some), but rather by reminding me of how stupid my demands are. 'Totem' has more loud crunchy guitar songs and catchy silly pop songs than 'Rodeo' - "it's all so mid-tempo", I moaned back then, before deciding 'Rodeo' was Zazie's best album ever. So now that that (=guitars, frivolity) which I missed but then decided wasn't necessary is back, do I want it? Yes, after the initial "but I want Rodeo part II" tantrum. If I could bend time I'd put this before 'Rodeo', but I'll learn to live with this version of the time continuum. Opener 'Des rails' is a simple fun rock song with a false start and silent pause long enough to be amusing; 'Jet lag' is dark and bristly like earlier 'Craque monsieur' and much of 'Made in love'; cute 'Na' is the silliest thing ever ("Na na na, na na na") with silly voices and silly key changes and a silly childlike keyboard break. 'Totem' and 'J'etais la' remind me of 'To bring you my love' era P.J. Harvey's pared back sound, powerful simplicity. 'Totem' maintains its drowsy menace and 'J'etais la' builds to a too-short explosion; both are a bit predictable but I very much like them. The music includes some things I was glad she had moved away from - airy tuneless ballads ('Vue du ciel', 'L'ange blesse'), which are probably very moving if you speak French. '07 Dec' isn't helped with the English lyrics "and I luuuv yooo" and later "you doooooon't luuuv me". Still, the delicate choral 'Ca' now seems sweet, and my heart may melt elsewhere, and then I'll have to re-listen to her older albums and discover where else grumpiness has prevented me from liking the ballads. 'Je suis un homme' is incredibly gorgeous and despite the chiming chorus not living up to the dark driving verses, it's now one of my favorite Zazie songs. 'Yin yang' reminds me of Mylene Farmer's 'Peut-etre toi' in that they're both late album out-of-place dance tracks. 'Duo' is a duet with Paolo Nutini and at first I found his voice almost repellent - it was such a surprise that I had to run to the stereo to skip tracks. He's a pretty pouty boy in the youtube video, but I expect his appeal is more his distinct voice - reminds me of Aaron Neville, something you love or hate. [Scratch that, been to his myspace page and his fans are all girls, so it's the pout :] The packaging is stunning, with a large booklet of sublime wilderness photos taken in [Iceland or similar] and a dinky mini-CD with three demos using stand-in English nonsense lyrics, but I've left all that in a drawer half-way round the world. So, an album I'm enjoying very much, and it's okay that it doesn't have the same emotional impact as 'Rodeo'. Karen ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 21:55:15 -0700 (PDT) From: "Xenu's Sister" Subject: rhodeshows.com and suspended-in-gaffa.com shutting down I can't keep those hosting accounts, though I am going to try and keep the domain names and move them to the hosting service I use for wretchawry.com, but everything's up in the air right now, so I can't guarantee if they will work properly, if at all, or when. I am working on it. I just want to give a heads up so people can download. http://rhodeshows.com will be shutting down, uh, tomorrow, I think (I can't find the warning letter and I don't know if there's a grace period), and it's where I host RhodeShows as well as some other things. I never completely finished RhodeShows but no one ever seemed too interested in it anyway, however there are some pretty cool pictures there that people might want to download. I deleted everything on that account except the RhodeShows stuff, so scripts to get the entire website shouldn't be a problem regarding bandwidth. suspended-in-gaffa.com won't shut down until the end of the month, so there's a little more time to get the 8 shows that are already up, plus there are copies of videos that are on YouTube. Here are some things that people might want to get before it all disappears. The bandwidth available there is huge (10 gbs a day, I think) so no one should worry about downloading a bunch of stuff, though, since there's a few weeks before the account closes you don't have to worry about getting everything right away. http://www.suspended-in-gaffa.com/happy/video/ http://www.suspended-in-gaffa.com/video/ http://www.suspended-in-gaffa.com/mmoh http://suspended-in-gaffa.com/terra http://suspended-in-gaffa.com/happy/banter http://suspended-in-gaffa.com/happy/lyrics http://suspended-in-gaffa.com/music http://suspended-in-gaffa.com/christmas http://suspended-in-gaffa.com/SIGKC If I think of something else that's there that people might want to get, I'll post. Vickie - -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Music's the way, the only way I know... Happy Rhodes MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/happyrhodes Happy Rhodes song samples: http://wretchawry.com/happy/samples Happy Rhodes on YouTube: http://wretchawry.com/happy/rarities/videolist.html Happy Rhodes Subtitled videos: http://wretchawry.com/happy/rarities/googlevideo.html Suspended In Gaffa: http://suspended-in-gaffa.com Streaming audio: http://www.myspace.com/gaffashow - -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V13 #116 ***************************