Fegmaniax Digest Volume 4 Number 67 Send posts to fegmaniax@nsmx.rutgers.edu Send subscribe/unsubscribe commands to majordomo@nsmx.rutgers.edu Send comments, etc. to the listowner at owner-fegmaniax@nsmx.rutgers.edu FegMANIAX! Web Page: http://remus.rutgers.edu/~woj/fegmaniax/ Archives are available at http://archive.uwp.edu/pub/music/lists/fegmaniax/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Topics: ------- ------- Re: Naff FaggMania! ISB (again, minimal Robyn) Anti-spam strategies Brian's Head? Robyn citing(sighting) other bands and haircuts continuing previous post ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 15:50:09 +1200 From: james.dignan@stonebow.otago.ac.nz (James Dignan) Subject: Re: Naff >The topic reminds me of an English term that I'd love to popularize in >America. In the liner notes to Rhino's reissue of "Hen", Robyn describes his >haircut during the live show as being "particularly 'naf', even for me". > What a great word! "Naf"... whatever could the derivation be? It only >reminds me of "Naf-Naf", which is a French line of mid-price pseudo-fashion >mostly for teenagers, roughly equivalent to Express or maybe the Gap in the >States. I sincerely doubt that there's a connection. Naff is a fairly common word in a lot of the English speaking world (but obviously not in the American speaking world) and means "distinctly unfashionable, to the point of being laughed at". For example, sitting in a carriage in the pouring rain in an anorak is a pretty naff activity. This goes to explain why the sight of clothes from a certain French pseudo-fashion house always causes a smile. Much like the smile that crosses Red Dwarf fans faces when they see electrical appliances made by that good Italian firm, Smeg. James ------------------------------ From: RxBroome@aol.com Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 00:58:41 -0400 Subject: FaggMania! Had to go back and listen to REM's "Voice of Harold" to insure that Otis Fagg wasn't the "founder and leader of the Blue Ridge Quartet". But he wasn't. That was ELMO (Elmer?) Fagg. I chalk the Encyclopedia's reference up to mischief-- musicians will often say wacky, meaningless things, just for the hell of it, in early interviews which then get recycled and requoted and taken as gospel. I figure Morris just claimed to be called Otis Fagg at some point in an article which the The Rolling Stone Don't Even Bother to Look at Any Other Rock Encyclopedias Because They Aren't Even Half as Complete or Definitive as This One Is, Pal, and Don't You Forget It, Either! Encyclopedia considered, for some reason, to be authoritative, and they rolled with that, perhaps cross-referencing it with another article where his real name appeared and considering so prosaic a monicker as "Morris" to be a secret so embarassing to a "rock dude" that he'd gone out of his way to hide it. They probably thought they had some kind of hot little expose on their hands by blowing the lid off the sordid truth... "Morris", indeed! (If this hasn't answered your question yet, Anna, no, apparently, you can't be booted off the list... or I'd be long gone for my non- Robyn- related transgressions. Could happen any day, though!) Continuing the "hairstyle" debate (yes, we are proverbially scraping the proverbial bottom of the proverbial barrel here)... I agree that the recent "touch of grey" styles have been the best. In fact, the "sexy hair-flip" thing I mentioned seems to have developed only with the more recent hairstyles, if I remember my Egyptians shows correctly (although that might be associated with doing more acoustic shows-- see my observations on the frighteningly direct correlation between onstage hair maintenance and having a rhythm section). And also, Anna... I developed a theory years ago that "Hair" was the "default" topic of modern polite conversation, much as "The Weather" was in Olden Tymes. My dear friend Nina, some months ago during a paricularly late night at the San Francisco Saloon, ammended my theory with the following corollary: "Hair is NOT in the eye of the beholder"-- which means that everyone ALWAYS thinks their hair looks bad, whereas in fact EVERYONE's hair ALWAYS looks fine. She demonstrated by asking everyone at the table how they thought their OWN hair looked-- they all said, "Awful"-- and then asking everyone else how said person's hair looked-- and we all said, "Fine!" All of which would seem to prove her point, were it not for the fact that dearest Nina, as the moderator, never had to answer her own question. And her hair never looked very good. In fact, on that particular night, it looked extraordinarily, if not singularly... naf. Rex ------------------------------ From: RxBroome@aol.com Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 02:29:37 -0400 Subject: ISB (again, minimal Robyn) ISB's "I Looked Up" is neither a duo nor a "full band" (specifically, features a "real" rhythm section on perhaps 1 + 1/2 of 6 cuts; all others are 4-piece, vox/violinx/gtr only)... did a little research on the ISB this weekend (slumming in a local bookstore) and discovered that the "full band" years didn't occur until '72 or so. Interestingly, the "full-band / folk-rock" years were the ones most highly recommended by the guide I was consulting. I'll probably pick up the other disc, '69's "Changing Horses", within the next week, and let you know what I think. Meantime, I'll be spending the weekend in Berkeley, which, in addition to enriched record-shopping opportunities, means you can all breathe a sigh of relief at a couple of digests with fewer than two posts from me... Rex ------------------------------ Date: 9 Apr 1996 10:15:07 U From: "Stein_Alex" Subject: Anti-spam strategies If the guy really has an 800 number, you could call it from a pay phone in the middle of the night, leave the pay phone off the hook and walk away. After he has to pay for a few dozen 3-4 hour calls from all over, he might rethink his activities... Not that I'd suggest such an anti-social course of action... Alex PS: Don't know if this was discussed... I just got back on the list, but I caught Robyn at the Alligator Lounge in West LA a few weeks ago... odd that he wasn't playing McCabe's which is about 100 yards away. He sounded great but the mix was messed up. Saw him beforehand smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer (sorry, not close enough to see the label)... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Apr 1996 16:01:33 -0400 (EDT) From: daramsey@vassar.edu (david ramsey) Subject: Brian's Head? Hey, have any of you fegs heard of a band called Brian's Head? I was reading Spin magazine the other day and saw an advertisement for this band, which was described thusly: "Brian's Head have created a quirky collection in the British psychedelic/eccentric tradition of Kevin Ayers, Soft Boys, XTC, Bevis Frond, with leanings towards the avant garde jazzisms of Henry Kaiser and the Knitting Factory scene" I only point this all out because of the Soft Boys comparison...at another spot in the magazine a reviewer says this of Brian's Head: "Brian's Head is a studio-only ensemble, formed by some English guys who live in the woods of Northern California and seem oblivious to all trendic currency. The band seems happy to create strange vocal collages of processed Canterbury vocalism, aggresive guitar riff-sput, and machine rhythym touches. The combination is unique and rich in the manner of a very good fondue." Has anybody ever heard this band? Are they any good? They certainly sound interesting. daveR. ---there's only one way of life, and that's your own--- Levellers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 20:03:57 -0400 From: Digital Express Subject: Robyn citing(sighting) In Washington DC's City Paper, a writer bemoaned the loss of the train between Washington and Baltimore for Baltimore Orioles games (baseball) and it's replacement with a bus. He said: Hey MARC (train company): Kids don't have bus sets, do they? Tolstoy didn't throw Anna Karenina in front of a bus! Alfred Hitchcock didn't direct Strangers on a Bus; Robyn Hitchcock doesn't often dream of buses! Hank Williams Sr. and Johnny Cash don't yearn for bus whistles, the Monkees for the last bus to Clarksville, or Cat Stevens for the Peace Bus, fer Chrissakes! And, to get this back to a baseball level, did anyone dub Walter Johnson the Big Bus? NO! Rich ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Apr 96 19:40:36 CDT From: Truman Peyote Subject: other bands and haircuts Hey again all! I'm posting after a long absence :(. First off: nope, never heard Brian's Head, but I agree that they sound intriguing. Sometimes I find, however, that comparisons such as the ones used in advertisements often aren't all that useful to me, and the better the music, the less useful they are, since the more original the band is the less likely they are to sound like anyone in particular. I was at a friend's house recently reading through a book called "the Practical Guide to Practically Everything" that gave a sort of grid that looked something like this. IF YOU LIKE: The Beatles- then you'll like: Matthew Sweet, Green Day, Robyn Hitchcock All very different, as you know, and all showing some degree of Beatle influence, however remote. But just because you like the Beatles doesn't mean you'll like Green Day! In fact, I had to think about the Green Day one for awhile, since to me they seem to show an 80s So-Cal hardcore influence more than anything, with a few Who-ish power chordings in there. I guess what I'm trying to say is that influences seem to be in the eye of the beholder. I would also say in our Robyn's case that the influences are so varied that it's hard to single out just one (off the top of me own personal head I would say Beatles and Barrett, but also Captain Beefheart, Dylan, the Kinks, Roxy Music, and well, you get the drift). I was fooling around recently with a web service called Firefly which has you rate different records and gives you reccomendations. It informed me that I would like the Beatles and Richard Thompson (well, duh!), but also that I would like Beethoven (I do, but don't ask me where they got THAT from!) and Debbie Harry's solo work (blecch!). It's awfully hard to put these things into a sort of algorithim and come out with "If you like this, then you'll like that", because as I was opining before, different people hear different influences and the better the band is the more likely they are to sound like THEMSELVES more than anything. Onward and upward (sort of)- I thought RH had very nice hair up to and including GofF. In the Queen Elvis era (and subsequently thereafter) he was sporting an absolutely hideous curly blow-dried gelled concoction. What was up with THAT? I hope sincerely that he has given that up ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Apr 96 19:44:49 CDT From: Truman Peyote Subject: continuing previous post anyways- my server cut me off before I was QUITE finished (ahem!) so, as I was saying, I hope the blow-dry do has disappeared. And finally, is it possible that the person who saw the alligator lounge gig could post a songlist, or if that's too much trouble just let us all know which of the potential "Shadowcat" songs were played? Also, even if you didn't see the beer, did you see the cigarette pack? If so, were they Camel Lights? I'd really enjoy basking in some sort of reflected glory, however faint :). Cheers all! Susan who thinks that maybe it's time to worry about her own hair and not Robyn's ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The End of this Fegmaniax Digest.