Fegmaniax Digest Volume 4 Number 93 Send posts to fegmaniax@ecto.org Send subscribe/unsubscribe commands to majordomo@ecto.org Send comments, etc. to the listowner at owner-fegmaniax@ecto.org 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: A&M Records email address Re: A&M Records email address Gimme gimme gimme those hits, Ricky baby!!!! the a&m cd LP / CD... A&M compilation A&M re-issues re: the a&m cd Re: A&M compilation Imagine the Mossibilities... Web Page VH1 Storytellers series vh1 VH1 Email=vh1@here.viacom.com Re: Web Page Great Big Hello ------------------------------ Date: 19 May 96 21:58:30 EDT From: Sillyme <102465.41@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: A&M Records email address I would assume they retain the rights to all of the B-sides from the singles associated with said A&M releases. I only have the Ultraunbelievable Love/Dark Green Energy mini-CD so I'd love to get all the others in one full length disk. Perhaps this was the plan all along.... Sillyme ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 May 1996 22:55:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Bayard Subject: Re: A&M Records email address On Sun, 19 May 1996, Aaron Finkelstein wrote: > I also wonder if A&M still owns anything useful, other than the albums > themselves, at least two of which I understand are officially out of print. > I assume they'll just compile tracks from those. We may plead with them to > be interesting with us, but they may not be able to oblige. > > Guesses, anyone? I suggested to them that they might sell more cd's to us if they included the outtakes and b sides. Though most of us have them, it would be nice to have them on cd. I like them better than the tracks that made the cut. Remember that they also have "the covers session", aka "Oscar"; and they may also have a copy of something called _Kiss Yourself_. Not sure what this last project is, but I think it's something that got aborted just before _perspex island_. I also reminded them that we all have all of the released cd's already :) If they are hoping to sell cd's to new robyn fans, they should take a lesson from rhino... there really ain't no new robyn fans, or not enough to justify a "greatest hits"; and we established fans are a tenacious collecting bunch, but even a smattering of new bonus tracks won't convince all of us to buy all the things we already have all over again.... ------------------------------ From: BLATZMAN@aol.com Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 02:56:44 -0400 Subject: Gimme gimme gimme those hits, Ricky baby!!!! I love Robyn so much cause I always thought he was capable of being the Rick Springfield of the underground scene. But he refuses the "every song's a single" type album. God, I would kill for a greatest greatest hits CD just jam packed with Balloon Man, My Wife & My Dead Wife, SYTYIL(genious, by the way), Heaven, If You Were A Priest, and all the other wimpy singles he ever put out. And if there's room, Please include Birds in Perspex!!!! IN MY OPINION, it might really help him out. After all, a greatest hits of the radio friendly singles would be VERY VERY attractive. I am hated for loving, Dave I ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 09:51:01 -0400 (EDT) From: Bayard Subject: the a&m cd with tongue somewhere in the vicinity of his cheek, dave said: > God, I would kill for a greatest greatest hits CD just jam packed with > Balloon Man, My Wife & My Dead Wife, SYTYIL(genious, by the way), Heaven, If > You Were A Priest, and all the other wimpy singles he ever put out. And if > there's room, Please include Birds in Perspex!!!! I've got a better idea-- why not compile all the alternate versions of when i was a kid, arms of love, midnight fish and groomin on an inner plane? we could call it "Gloomy Dreck-o". That should fill up all 74 minutes, but we could make it a double-cd box set and include the symptoms and maureen & the meatpackers stuff. and robyn's art school portfilio in the booklet. what do you say? Are you with me, fegs??!?! ------------------------------ From: RxBroome@aol.com Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 04:13:21 -0400 Subject: LP / CD... Even if my ears were good enough to distinguish between the intrinsic qualities of LP's and CD's to begin with, my years of playing live music have destroyed my ability to make fine distinctions still more. I'm not interested in a debate of formats. Woj is right... the people who prefer vinyl have as much a right to be cheesed off as I, CD maven, do. I would kinda expect that such folk have either gotten used to possessing multi-format music collections or undertaken the kind of collection- repurchasing- operations that only boomer dollars can finance (which would be stupid, if you've preserved your vinyl well, because the sonic differences from what I can tell ARE minimal-- I only go with CD's because the only vinyl available since I've been collecting is USED AND DAMAGED). But you vinyl guys have a (legitimate) beef with the industry in general, and one that involves, unfortunately, swimming upstream. Mine is more specific. Honestly, can any of you name a full length album by one of your favorite artists on a major label released in this decade that HASN'T seen a CD pressing? If not, "Mossy Liquor" (assuming it IS a distict entity from "Moss Elixir" as I've made it out to be) will be the first. You may think that it's appropriate for a Robyn record to be anachronistic in such a way, but actually, it's SOOO trendy. I mean, following Pearl Jam's lead, fer Chrissakes! Woj, how many swings has the pendulum taken, by your count? I see the initial swing to digital, the swing back to vinyl as a sonically superior medium, then the swing of reissues and improved quality CD's, followed by the Pearl Jam/Sonics/Robyn/local-band 7"'s movement of actually issuing new vinyl, followed by my cry in the dark that it costs way too much money to keep up with such nonsense-- quoth Rodney King, "Can't we all get along?" Of course, if CD's folded and all future Robyn releases were on vinyl... I'd still buy them, along with the Rhino Vinyl reissues of "Queen Elvis" and "Respect", probably at $25US a pop... Rex PS now that I'm suitably riled up, can someone repost that Warners e-mail addresss? PPS Thanks to those who got the Miles Hunt / Electrafixion joke... felt like a stab in the dark when I wrote it... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 May 96 09:00:00 -0800 From: Russ Reynolds Subject: A&M compilation <<. there really ain't no new robyn fans, or not enough to justify a "greatest hits"; >> with a new album coming out on Warner Brothers in the summer, there COULD be new fans by September. Aparently the folks at A&M think it's a possibility. -russ ------------------------------ From: SPIFFINGNY@aol.com Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 16:51:33 -0400 Subject: A&M re-issues Here's the thing with the whole A&M compilation. And it has happened to people like Julian Cope and no doubt a host of others, but I know Cope's story well and Hitchcock had mentioned this once or twice in conversation....Cope was dropped from Island for being an "unsellable" artist, and Hitchcock met with the same fate. All of the records were quickly deleted and not re-pressed. So why is A&M releasing a "new" album by an unsellable musician, why waste more money? I have no reason to rant on about the hypocrisy of the music business or the life of the indentured servant-musician. But the real problem with all of this is, why release what's already available? I get a bit annoyed when I hunt down these bizarre singles for years, get the higly sought after b-side and all of a sudden it's on CD! All the songs listed are already out there, you can pick them up for an adjustment of listening medium, but A&M no doubt has gobs of stuff in their vaults and probably paid for the recording (or whomever did owns the material) so with a bit of effort and exertion, they can pull off a masterful coup, damnit. And on that ELECTRAFIXION note, sure Burned sucked, but wait until you all hear the new stuff.... Carl of SpiFFinG ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 16:55:37 -0400 From: gene@cadmus.com (Gene Hopstetter, Jr.) Subject: re: the a&m cd with tongue dangling out of his mouth, bayard said: >I've got a better idea-- why not compile all the alternate versions of >when i was a kid, arms of love, midnight fish and groomin on an inner >plane? we could call it "Gloomy Dreck-o". That should fill up all 74 >minutes, but we could make it a double-cd box set and include the symptoms >and maureen & the meatpackers stuff. and robyn's art school portfilio in >the booklet. what do you say? Are you with me, fegs??!?! I'm with you, but *only* if it's one of them newfangled multee-meed-ia CD-ROMS and features a QuickTime movie of Robyn thanking us fegs for his popularity and directing all new fans to the Warner Brothers sponsored World Wide Feg Web, while singing a new, naff version of "How Do You Work This Thing" with a modems falling all over his head, like the carrots in the "Madonna Of The Wasps" video. Uh oh. Maybe it's time to get away from the 'puter for a while... +++++++++++++++++ Internet Publishing Specialist + Gene Hopstetter, Jr. + Cadmus Digital Solutions +++++++++++++++++ http://cjs.cadmus.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 17:19:11 -0400 (EDT) From: Bayard Subject: Re: A&M compilation I cynically said: > <<. there really ain't no new robyn fans, or not enough > to justify a "greatest hits"; >> russ optimistically said: > with a new album coming out on Warner Brothers in the summer, there COULD be > new fans by September. Aparently the folks at A&M think it's a possibility. But what will be the song to reel 'em in... of the past singles only "BM" really scooped up a bunch of new people, right? Will 'DeChirico' or one of the others be radio-palatable? Predictions?... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 02:00:15 -0500 From: JH3 Subject: Imagine the Mossibilities... This post might end up sounding like the e-mail equivalent of a bucket of cold water, but I can never resist an opportunity to rail in disgust against record company behavior. The fact is, in recent years labels have come up with lots of new ideas for grabbing extra money from the once-ignored collectors market. The most egregious of these is the "two-part CD single" in which two discs are pressed/priced/sold as two separate discs, each containing three songs with only one non-LP track, when it would be much less greedy of them to simply release one three- or four-song CD single. On the other hand, one reason labels release vinyl versions of albums that differ from the CD versions is because the possibility exists that the vinyl sales won't break even unless the collectors market is exploited by releasing a different version. It doesn't mean they're not greedy of course (after all it's not like they've lowered CD prices to reflect lower production costs), but before you complain about The Vinyl LP Currently Known As "Mossy Liquor," be aware that the usual practice is to release a vinyl version with only ONE extra track instead of an entire LP of different tracks/takes. This happened with the last Catherine Wheel album, for example. I suspect Robyn will do whatever he can to prevent his fans from getting ripped off, so I doubt we'll see any two-part CD singles, or any singles without his usual high-quality bonus tracks for that matter. (And personally I think it would be great to have a *completely* different vinyl version of whatever the new album's going to be called.) But that's not to say that different bonus tracks for a particular single won't be released in other countries, as has happened with Robyn's stuff in the past. And while I hate to sound pessimistic, I think we can also expect that A&M's "plans" to release a Robyn compilation will be quietly dropped if "Moss Elixir" (or whatever this week's title is) fails to produce a hit single, or at least a popular video. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't bombard them with various forms of mail trying to cajole them into releasing a rarities CD rather than a Best Of -- I doubt it matters to them what goes on it, as long as they can ride Warners' promotional coattails for all they're worth without having to spend any of their own money. --John H. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 08:48:07 -0700 (PDT) From: Griffith Davies Subject: Web Page Sorry to interrupt the flow of the discussions, but I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to reach the fegmaniax web page. Does anyone know the status of it? I'm sure woj is working on it. please continue without any further commerical interruptions. one more thing.... Isn't Jagermeister really a Moss Elixor? gdd3 ______________________________________________________________ Griffith Davies griffith.davies@csun.edu ------------------------------ From: msandonato@kpmg.com Date: Tue, 21 May 96 09:33:58 EST Subject: VH1 Storytellers series Hi fegs, Over the weekend I saw a couple of adverts for the VH1 Storytellers series, and of course RH would be ideal for this series, as someone on this list has already suggested. Some of the artists already slated for this series are Ray Davies (yaaaay!!!), Elvis Costello (Right on, Daddy-o), and that old women beater Jackson Browne (Booooooo!!!). So, I'm wondering a) Has any one an e-mail address for VH1 so we can inundate them with suggestions for their very interesting program, and b) has any one gotten a response from those wacky folks at VH1 in regards to RH. Just wondering, Matt (who is hot as heck in Boston--87 degrees at 9:30 a.m., ouch!!) ps hi cheri!! Whadzup!! Are you still out here?? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 09:41:57 -0500 From: gokhman@zakuski.math.utsa.edu (Dmitry Gokhman) Subject: vh1 I don't know the VH1 e-mail address, but they have a page on their web site, where a visitor can leave a message. http://www.vh1.com/ Can somebody tape Ray Davies? - D -- Dmitry Gokhman http://www.math.utsa.edu/~gokhman/README.html Brahms Gang/Mathematics/UT San Antonio ------------------------------ From: rooneya@pilot.msu.edu Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 12:19:19 +0000 Subject: VH1 Email=vh1@here.viacom.com Choose or Lose! Only the stones refrain, - A & W ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 17:39:49 -0400 From: flaky white stuff Subject: Re: Web Page Also sprach Griffith Davies : >Sorry to interrupt the flow of the discussions, but I have been >unsuccessful in my attempts to reach the fegmaniax web page. Does anyone >know the status of it? I'm sure woj is working on it. remus.rutgers.edu (and the affiliated machines) were down for an upgrade monday and a fair amount of tuesday. i foolishly ignored the warnings (mostly cos the silly sysadmin posts the news to a local newsgroup instead of sticking it in the motd like a good sysadmin should) and was taken by surprise. things should be back to normal now, but if anyone has any problems, drop me a line. woj ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 16:04:15 -0700 (PDT) From: Marc Horton Subject: Great Big Hello Greetings all-- I've been on the list for a while but this is actually my first post. First of all, does anyone know if Robyn ever had anything to do with "the Young Ones?"(the early-80's British TV show, that is.) The accent RH affects on "Mellow Together," from IODOT, seems a direct tribute (or spoof, I haven't yet decided) to the character of Neil, played by Nigel Planer. Also, does anyone know if Robyn did any exhibitions of his artwork anywhere in the US? I've heard much talk of it, but I don't know if it ever actually happened. Finally, is anyone out there into the Verlaines? For those of you who are predisposed to enjoy ornate Smiths-like pop with Nick Drake-style melancholia and literate lyrics, they are well worth checking out. Also, they are wont to include at least a couple of songs on every album featuring bassoon and oboe. Oh yeah--if the official animal of the kingdom of your dreams is the paramecium...you might be a feg. Most gregariously yours, Marc Horton / "Everything is beautiful, but babe, Diablo Valley College / not you or me..."--M.Eitzel ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The End of this Fegmaniax Digest.