From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V13 #161 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Friday, June 22 2007 Volume 13 : Number 161 To unsubscribe: e-mail ecto-digest-request@smoe.org and put the word unsubscribe in the message body. Today's Subjects: ----------------- RE: true songwriting... [kerrywhite@webtv.net (kerry white)] Re: Smacking myself upside the head (was Re: True songwriting accomplishments) [Neile Graham ] Re: true songwriting... [Timothy Jones-Yelvington ] Re: true songwriting... [Neile Graham ] RE: true songwriting... ["Michael Colford" ] Re: true songwriting... [Timothy Jones-Yelvington ] Re: true songwriting... [kerrywhite@webtv.net (kerry white)] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 01:02:00 -0500 From: kerrywhite@webtv.net (kerry white) Subject: RE: true songwriting... Hi, "The Ballad of Casey Deiss" by Shawn Phillips, a man whose vocal range is close to Happy's. With him they call it falsetto. Bye, me KrW I'm Peter Pan! I'm perpetually young!! OW!! What's wrong with my back? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:17:04 -0700 (PDT) From: Neile Graham Subject: Re: Smacking myself upside the head (was Re: True songwriting accomplishments) I'm with Meredith here. "26 Years" is one of my favourite songs of all time for a marriage of music and great lyrics. THe whole of Veda's Emily Carr album is so evocative for me I can hardly bear it, it's so wonderful. Veda's recent, increasingly different work still powerfully affects me. For me its the music first, then the lyrics (great lyrics with lousy music, well, I still won't listen). I'm also very picky about what I consider good, because like with music I have strong preferences and years of study of poetry to prejudice me still further. Mostly the simpler, more allusive the lyrics the better. Some other songwriters/albums I find particularly effective: Jane Siberry's The Walking, When I was a Boy Lamb Carina Round's The Disconnection Sandy Denny, especially Sandy Nick Drake Leonard Cohen's early work Scott Merritt, especially Violet and Black David Usher's first album These are albums I can put on and they will dramatically affect my mood. Of course there are some people who can do this with their voices, like Inge Liljestrom and Feist... - --Neile On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, meredith wrote: > Hi, > > Reading through the additions to this thread today, I am smacking myself soundly upside the head for > omitting my two all-time favorite compositions by anyone, ever: > > Veda Hille, "26 Years" > Veda Hille, "Boat Ride To Skidegate" (and by extension its lyrical cousin, "Meeting The Group of 7") > > Both (all three? :) of these are, in a word, perfect. And I'm pretty sure that 20, 30, 40 years > from now I will still be able to say that nothing has been able to top them. > > And that's what I get for posting on way too little sleep, I guess... geez. > > - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:24:50 -0500 From: kerrywhite@webtv.net (kerry white) Subject: Questions for the Wiki-Ecto Hi, If I wanted to save money getting a round trip airplane ticket from KC to Boston for, say, Sept 7 , back the 9th, which way is the cheapest: Orbitz, Travelocity or some other DIY? Would there be a small(?) group looking for a place to 'crash' or will there more likely be a looking for hotel/motel rooms? Ride(s) to and from the airport? How high is up? What is the difference between an orange? [ If you grew up in my neck of the woods, you'd know the answer to the last question.] Bye, me KrW I'm Peter Pan! I'm perpetually young!! OW!! What's wrong with my back? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:01:16 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: Questions for the Wiki-Ecto Hi, For Kerry and anyone else looking to make travel plans: kerry white wrote: > Hi, If I wanted to save money getting a round trip airplane ticket > from KC to Boston for, say, Sept 7 , back the 9th, which way is the > cheapest: Orbitz, Travelocity or some other DIY? As someone who arranges travel for a living (among other things), my greatest godsend is kayak.com. Kayak is an aggregator that does all the work of checking the various travel web sites for you -- all you have to do is enter in the dates you want to fly, preferred travel times, and how many people are going, and you're off and running. You can customize the results pretty much any way you want to find the absolute lowest fare out there. The only results it doesn't pull in are the ones from Southwest.com, but that's easy to look up separately. But Southwest doesn't fly directly into Boston, so you probably won't want to go with them for Ectofest anyway. And if Kayak still doesn't bring up a fare you like, there's always Priceline.com... - -- =============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth =============================================== hear at the HOMe House Concert Series http://hom.smoe.org =============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:18:32 -0500 From: Timothy Jones-Yelvington Subject: Re: true songwriting... Some songs that have come to mean a great deal to me, both compositionally and lyrically (nearly all of these are songs that sort of destroy me, haunt me, chill me or cut me open... That's sort of what I go for): - -Oedipus, Regina Spektor - -Ohio, Over the Rhine - -Nietzche's Eyes, Paula Cole - -Cloudbusting, Kate - -Living it Up, Rickie Lee Jones - -Go or Go Ahead, Rufus Wainwright - -Every Little Bit, Patty Griffin - -Rear-View Mirror, Patty Larkin - -Map to the Treasure, Laura Nyro ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:48:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Neile Graham Subject: Re: true songwriting... On Thu, 21 Jun 2007, Timothy Jones-Yelvington wrote: > Some songs that have come to mean a great deal to me, both compositionally > and lyrically (nearly all of these are songs that sort of destroy me, haunt > me, chill me or cut me open... That's sort of what I go for): > > -Oedipus, Regina Spektor When I first got _Songs_ I couldn't get past this and "Samson"--I found them so compelling I had to listen to them over and over and over. I liked the rest of the album, it wasn't that, it was just these two songs made me need to hear them again the instant they were over. I also feel somethwhat that way about "Chemo Limo" too. - --Neile ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:06:43 -0400 From: "Michael Colford" Subject: RE: true songwriting... I'm not really a lyrics guy, although I do come to appreciate a beautifully written turn of phrase, it's usually after I already love a song. There are a lot of songs that move me intensely, and while lyrically these songs are all sublime, it's usually the melody and the way the song is constructed that hit me first. We'll start with the more obvious choices. The Walking (And Constantly) - Jane Siberry Suspended in Gaffa, Hounds of Love, Night of the Swallow (and lots more) - Kate Bush Save Our Souls - Happy Rhodes Oyster - Bel Canto A category of song that I really enjoy, and thrill to when I hear them, I call perfectly written pop songs. There are a lot of songs in this category, but I'm just going to list the ones that spring to mind right away. Disco Lights - Emm Gryner Before You - Chantal Kreviazuk Because of Love - Mae Moore Good Mother - Jann Arden People of Earth - Syd Straw This Mourning - Chalk Circle Love this Life - Crowded House Dreaming - Blondie Dancing Queen (yes, Dancing Queen) - Abba Oh, there are lots more, but I'll stop here. Michael R. Colford Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film, President P.O. Box 301237 Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 781 526-5384 colford@chlotrudis.org http://www.chlotrudis.org/ "Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!" - -- Kittie Farmer, Donnie Darko ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 21:03:17 -0500 From: Timothy Jones-Yelvington Subject: Re: true songwriting... I guess it also kind of validates Aristotelian dramaturgy and psychoanalytic theory, that that particular story can continue to be so compelling in so many different manifestations. "Chemo Limo" is fantastic, but I think "Us" was my first-impression favorite on "Soviet Kitsch," musically. "Chemo Limo" hit me later, once I realized what she was saying and how intense it is. We used to have a cleaning lady named Barbara, and every time I thought about her, it would trigger me to start singing "BARBARA! She looked just like my mom..." On 6/21/07 5:48 PM, "Neile Graham" wrote: > On Thu, 21 Jun 2007, Timothy Jones-Yelvington wrote: > >> Some songs that have come to mean a great deal to me, both compositionally >> and lyrically (nearly all of these are songs that sort of destroy me, haunt >> me, chill me or cut me open... That's sort of what I go for): >> >> -Oedipus, Regina Spektor > > When I first got _Songs_ I couldn't get past this and "Samson"--I found > them so compelling I had to listen to them over and over and over. I > liked the rest of the album, it wasn't that, it was just these two songs > made me need to hear them again the instant they were over. > > I also feel somethwhat that way about "Chemo Limo" too. > > --Neile ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 21:21:30 -0500 From: kerrywhite@webtv.net (kerry white) Subject: Re: true songwriting... Hi, A song I always loved and then had to edit my memories due to lyric content was: CRAZY EYES by POCO! A slightly countrified Prog song that has some epic moments, that was a head-phone favorite for some time before I finally -Listened- to the lyrics. Morose Existentialism was not something I wished to , even temporarily, identify with. After I really learned the words, it was no longer any fun. Bye, me KrW I'm Peter Pan! I'm perpetually young!! OW!! What's wrong with my back? ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V13 #161 ***************************