From: fegmaniax@ecto.org To: fegmaniax-digest@ecto.org Reply-To: fegmaniax@ecto.org Subject: Feg Digest V4 #110 Fegmaniax Digest Volume 4 Number 110 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: ------- ------- Ah...thought? Kershaw Sessions Poll Update Balloon Man mossy liquor Leppo, Katrina, a Jet Set Flyer & a Greasy Quiff ------------------------------ Date: 15 Jun 96 12:38:56 EDT From: Doc <75602.2577@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Ah...thought? >One thing that surprises me about this list is how little analysis is >done in individual songs (compared to some other lists). Perhaps >being one of the denser folks on this list, I must confess that many >(most?) of robyn's songs make little sense to me at a distance. I dunno...analysing stuff like Robyn's or Pat Fish's lyrics always struck me as an exercise that, while it can be done, takes the piss out of the individual song. The song's a package: it's not just the lyric, it's the way the song is played, sung, produced. I can groove for hours on "Listening To The Higsons" (in fact, I start my day with that song quite often)), but there's no way in hell I can tell you exactly why that song's good as a wake-up call. (In best Buddy Cole imitation:) It all reminds me of what E.B. White once said, "Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process." Look after yerselves... -Ed, Doc, Amazed at the mid 80-s crap they're playing on WXRT this morning... ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 12:57:12 -0900 From: BC-Radio@corcom.com (Brett Cooper) Subject: Kershaw Sessions I just bought "The Kershaw Sessions" yesterday. Very impressive album. I like it a lot, but I am not clear on one point: was the entire album made at the BBC on a portable DAT recorder? Brett ------------------------------ From: RxBroome@aol.com Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 23:12:56 -0400 Subject: Poll Update As of now, no fewer than 63 separate RH compositions have received 1 or more vote. There's a clear frontrunner and fewer ties than I would've expected. Remember, Top 5 lists are due by Wednesday! As to the lack of close song-analysis on the list, I agree with everything that's been said. With Robyn as much as any great songwriter, moreso than most, I think that if the song could be easily explained the song would be unnecessary. The idea of a pop lyric (to me) is too condense many ideas and feelings (and perhaps many other potential idea-feelings) into the simplest, most economical package possible. Robyn is brilliant at it, which is why his songs mean different things to all of us. Academic-style lyric vivisection is a bit distasteful to me-- reminds me of stoney, not-too-bright people I knew in high school and college endlessly pondering the *precise* meanings of horribly trite, hackneyed cliches in songs by the Eagles or Pink Floyd or Depeche Mode or whomever. I guess people who like Nine Inch Nails or Smashing Pumpkins still do this today. It's a fallacy to equate songwriting with prose-- to do either well takes enormous talent, but not (nececcarily) the same kind of talent. Great pop music is open- ended. More than once I've had the visceral effect of a favorite song dampened for me by hearing the artist explain what it's all about, REALLY, DEFINITIVELY. I don't mind hearing theories, and I have my own, but Terry's right: usually Robyn's songs touch so many topics as to defy easy quantification. To explain how the unsavoriness of political compromise relates to problems of personal identity (I'm paraphrasing horribly here) and the other touchstone themes of "Cynthia Mask", you coud take ages, or you could simply say, "Well, I dunno if they really relate, but they seem to go together pretty well in 'Cynthia Mask', you can say that about them!"-- what should sound like a slipshod juxtaposition instead works, makes the song unique, has more than once made me cry. As Nina would say, "It is what it is." Rex PS: no, I don't think any of you have ever met Nina. PSS: Forget I ever mentioned Oasis; I smell a "fin-de-siecle" "postmodernism" "art/author is dead" "pastiche rules/sucks/is inevitable" type of debate coming on and I don't wanna go through it again... ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 23:22:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Terrence Marks Subject: Balloon Man Hmm... I'd just like to say that I disagree completely with you, Kay..I don't see any of what you're talking about... Terrence "The Human Mellotron" Marks ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 22:01:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Eric R Neffke Subject: mossy liquor Eh, Oasis? Blur? Forget 'em both and just pick up Teenage Fanclub's "Grand Prix." Better songs and at least the lyrics are intentionally funny at times. Okay, the real reason for today's post. Does anybody have the track listing for Mossy Liquor? And which release date is correct for the disc? August 23 or 13??? Eric ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jun 96 19:45:34 EDT From: Positive Vibrations <101356.2516@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Leppo, Katrina, a Jet Set Flyer & a Greasy Quiff > I think that Leppo is about being ignored by show business... "This is about something you probably already know. The music business is corrupt. This is about a band who were eaten and spat out. I can see them behind the table there." - Robyn at an early SBs gig - can't remember the date but I can find it if anyone's really bothered. [There follows something I'm sure you all already know - sorry] Leppo & the Jooves was the original name of the early Waves line-up (Kimberley Rew - guitar & vocals, Katrina Leskanich - guitar but _not_ vocals yet, Alex Cooper - drums, Vince de la Cruz, bass). Kimberley hadn't joined the SBs at the time L&theJs was written; the Waves were the big band of the Cambridge scene at the time, and had repeatedly been signed, and dropped for being 'too weird'. Oh, and while I'm on Kimberley; _Edge of the Land_ and _Turnaround_, Kimberley's two albums from the last couple of years (both released in Germany & Finland only) have had all the non-Kimberley songs stripped off, and been merged into a single long CD released in the US & UK under the Katrina & the Waves name, called _Roses_. Oh, and it also has the Obligatory Unreleased Bonus Track, which sucks. Probably the track of most interest is 'Edge of the Land', which he wrote for Robyn in 1980 but which no recording exists of (to my knowledge) with RH on vocals. Also, if anyone has lots of money to burn, Overground in Brighton has both _Jet Set Flyer_ and _Greasy Quiff_ in stock. According to Colin, _JSF_ is priced at L250 and _Quiff_ at L650 (US$350 and US$1000 respectively), but if there are any serious completists out there this may be your only chance; there seem to be less than 50 copies of each in decent quality still in circulation. (I know that only 99 copies of _Quiff_ were pressed.) If anyone's deranged enough to spend that kind of money on a record, be warned that both of these albums are ***TERRIBLE*** - and before anyone gets set to argue, remember that I run the man's fan club and even I can't stand to listen to either. Colin's also got 'a fuck of a lot' of copies of _Bible of Bop_ at a more reasonable L3 plus postage each. N.B. According to _Record Collector_, _Greasy Quiff_ is now the third most expensive LP in their price guide. The leaders are the original _Freewheeling Bob Dylan_ and _Nostradamus_ by Dodo Resurrection (who?) Aidan ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The End of this Fegmaniax Digest. .