From Jemiah.Levon.Jefferson@altosax.reed.edu Tue Jun 8 17:14:13 1993 Received: from dharma.reed.edu by wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (5.65/4.0) with SMTP id ; Tue, 8 Jun 93 17:14:13 -0400 Received: from 134.10.2.28 by dharma.reed.edu (/\==/\ Smail3.1.25.1 #25.21) id ; Tue, 8 Jun 93 14:14 PDT Message-Id: <14760@altosax.reed.edu> Date: 8 Jun 93 14:04:06 PDT From: Jemiah.Levon.Jefferson@altosax.reed.edu (Jemiah Levon Jefferson) Subject: Robyn in skintights To: fegmaniax@gnu.ai.mit.edu (society of dark birds) I think the idea is intriguing, if only for horror value. Hey, I'm of the Clive Barker state of mind -- fat is a wonderful, hot malleable substance, and if it grosses you out, keen, more book sales for the rest of us. MAybe we can convince Bob to come out and play acoustic and nude. It sounds like he eats the same sort of things as me. Hmmm, wonder if he's got a fetish for fig bars? NutraSweet is the devil, eeyore From stewarte@sco.COM Tue Jun 8 19:38:41 1993 Received: from relay1.UU.NET by wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (5.65/4.0) with SMTP id ; Tue, 8 Jun 93 18:22:22 -0400 Received: from sco.sco.COM by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA16791; Tue, 8 Jun 93 18:23:10 -0400 Received: from xlax.sco.COM by sco.sco.COM id aa21989; Tue, 8 Jun 93 15:26:55 PDT From: Stewart Evans To: fegmaniax@gnu.ai.mit.edu Subject: Soft Boys LPs X-Mailer: ScoMail 2.0 Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1993 15:10:42 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <9306081512.aa15324@xlax.sco.com> ->From: MARTINP@cgsvax.claremont.edu ->So far we've had votes cast for "Can of Bees," Invisible Hits" and ->"Underwater Moonlight" as the "best" Soft Boys LP. May I respectfully ->submit for your consideration "Live at the Portland Arms", an album ->inexplicably overlooked by all of you? It's raw, it's witty, and it ->is unquestionably the oddest album in their catalog. Oddest, perhaps. Best? I think not. LatPA is a lot of fun, but it's also really quite sloppy; that's part of the fun, I s'pose, but to my mind it doesn't even come close to Underwater Moonlight. (How many of y'all have the original cassette version of LatPA? I'm one...) Speaking of LatPA, I recently stumbled across the original version of "I Like Bananas (Because They Have No Bones)". Amazingly, the lyrics that Robyn sings were not changed from the original! It's by a group called the Hoosier Hot Shots, a sort of country cousin (and predecessor) to Spike Jones. This song is on a CD recently reissued in the Columbia Country Classics series, called "Rural Rhythm". The band's lineup was guitar, bass, clarinet and slide whistle (!!). -- Stewart "We need a good bar and a whiteboard. In that order." -- Chris Stuart (cs10@cornell.edu) /* stewarte@sco.com is Stewart Evans in Santa Cruz, CA */ From @mitvma.mit.edu:REWOICC@ERENJ.BITNET Wed Jun 9 00:47:59 1993 Received: from MITVMA.MIT.EDU by wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (5.65/4.0) with SMTP id ; Wed, 9 Jun 93 00:19:31 -0400 Message-Id: <9306090419.AA09309@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu> Received: from MITVMA.MIT.EDU by mitvma.mit.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8157; Wed, 09 Jun 93 00:16:26 EDT Received: from ERENJ.BITNET by MITVMA.MIT.EDU (Mailer R2.10 ptf000) with BSMTP id 4708; Wed, 09 Jun 93 00:16:24 EDT Received: from ERENJ (REWOICC) by ERENJ.BITNET (Mailer R2.05) with BSMTP id 1848; Wed, 09 Jun 93 00:16:04 EDT Date: Wed, 09 Jun 93 00:15:51 EDT From: goya! Subject: april 1993 spin To: fegmaniax@gnu.ai.mit.edu (April 1993 Spin) by Jim Greer Professional eccentric Robyn Hitchcock is one of the few quirk-rockers (They Might Be Giants, Too Much Joy, Danzig, etc.) with the talent to justify, or at least make palatable, the annoying wackiness. That's partly because Hitchcock is more smart than clever, but mostly because he's an amazing songwriter. There's usually a discernable cool to his weirdness, beyond the kind of shallow, predictable zaniness of some of his would-be confreres. 1991's _Perspex Island_ was a move away from the bizarre--the most emotionally direct, mature record Hitchcock's yet made. Which is why it's somewhat disappointing that _Respect_ sees a partial return to the goofiness of yore, especially on such exercises in frivolity as "The Yip Song" and "Wafflehead." But there's enough genuine inspiration here, especially on the rollicking "Driving Aloud (Radio Storm)" ad the pretty, wide-eyed "Arms of Love," to redeem the lapses. Whlie nothing on _Respect_ equals Perspex's poignant "She Doesn't Exist," it's still a worthy offering. From @mitvma.mit.edu:REWOICC@ERENJ.BITNET Wed Jun 9 01:06:22 1993 Received: from MITVMA.MIT.EDU by wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (5.65/4.0) with SMTP id ; Wed, 9 Jun 93 00:15:45 -0400 Message-Id: <9306090415.AA09288@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu> Received: from MITVMA.MIT.EDU by mitvma.mit.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8156; Wed, 09 Jun 93 00:15:53 EDT Received: from ERENJ.BITNET by MITVMA.MIT.EDU (Mailer R2.10 ptf000) with BSMTP id 4706; Wed, 09 Jun 93 00:15:52 EDT Received: from ERENJ (REWOICC) by ERENJ.BITNET (Mailer R2.05) with BSMTP id 1846; Wed, 09 Jun 93 00:15:29 EDT Date: Wed, 09 Jun 93 00:15:18 EDT From: goya! Subject: may 1993 stereo review To: fegmaniax@gnu.ai.mit.edu (May 1993 Stereo Review - a Best Recording of the Month) Robyn Hitchcock: A Pop Eccentric Tackles the Big Themes by Parke Puterbaugh If you were to envision the wild kingdom of rock'n'roll as a menagerie of earthbound boars and bovines, Robyn Hitchcock would be a toucan perched high above it all. Certainly no other currently active musician possesses such an unfettered imagination. For him the kaleidoscopic palette of possibilities pioneered by the late-period Beatles, Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, the Byrds and their generation didn't go gray at the end of the Sixties. After a series of magnificent albums that combined equal parts of strangeness and carm, deploying the melodic gifts of a Paul McCartney' in the service of lyrics that scanned like Lewis Caroll fixated on the biological realm, Hitchcock hit a plateau with 1989's _Queen Elvis_. For the first time he began to sound compulsively eccentric, even a little self-conscious. He's since side-stepped that pitfall, much as Peter Gabriel did around the time of _So_, by taking a more user-friendly tack, skirting accessibility without surrendering his essential nature. Hitchcock's latest, _Respect_, follows his Beatlish pop exercise, 1991's _Perspex Island_, with a a set of songs that are more introspective than usual, addressing the issue of mortality with sober intent and brittle wit. There are only two up-tempo songs in _Respect_: "The Yip Song," an explosive number that allides the medical agonies of his late father final days, and "Driving Aloud (Radio Storm)," a quasi-acoustic number in which disembodied verses build to and unearthly and strangely hypnotic chorus. Most of the album is quieter in tone, musically experimental (with preference given to unamplified instruments and found percussion) and the emotionally naked songs do strange things like changing tempo in the middled of a chorus, as in "Railway Shoes." You'll never hear a track odder than "Waffledhead," in which Hitchcock purges his prediliction for the far side in one Captain Beefheartian exhalation. Hitchcock tackles the big themes, variously meditating on death, urvival, love and wisdom. He and the Egyptians transform themselves into The Band in "Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom," a song that sounds like it was written with the voice of the late Richard Manuel in mind. "Railway Shoes," on the other hand, features some lovely three-part harmonies, sung in unconventionalintervals that have a Crosby, Stills & Nash cast tho them. A more direct musical allusion can be found in "The Wreck of the Arthur Lee," an ode to the one-time leader of the West Coast band Love that breifly quotes a haunting melody from that band's classi "Alone Again Or." "Believe in love," goes the chorus and you can read that either way you like. Long-time Hithcock fans may wonder where all the wasps, squids and creepy-crawlies have gone, but his turn here toward themes with a more human face, with no less in vigorous creativity, may be his greatest accomplishment yet.