From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@ecto.org To: fegmaniax-digest@ecto.org Reply-To: fegmaniax@ecto.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@ecto.org Subject: Feg Digest V5 #160 Fegmaniax Digest Volume 5 Number 160 Thursday July 10 1997 To post, send mail to fegmaniax@ecto.org To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@ecto.org with the words "unsubscribe fegmaniax-digest" in the message body. Send comments, etc. to the listowner at owner-fegmaniax@ecto.org FegMANIAX! Web Page: http://remus.rutgers.edu/~woj/fegmaniax/index.html Archives are available at ftp://www.ecto.org/pub/lists/fegmaniax/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Topics: ------- ------- Re: Reminder: RH wants to know Re: pink flags one more :) reminder/clarification does anyone own this RH pin Re: Reminder: RH wants to know Re: does anyone own this RH pin Re: Reminder: RH wants to know Re: Reminder: RH wants to know Boat Race Gig Re: Boat Race Gig Re: Reminder: RH wants to know 12-Bar Epiphany Hook Experiences and First Contacts Re speed of decision things Short 'story' Re: Epiphany Hook Experiences and First Contacts Re: Epiphany Hook Experiences and First Contacts Re: Epiphany Hook Experiences and First Contacts Re: Re speed of decision things Epiphanies & other consolidated tales my first... RE: Reminder: RH wants to know quickies ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 Jul 1997 23:27:27 -0500 From: LSDiamond Subject: Re: Reminder: RH wants to know At 04:38 PM 7/8/97 -0400, you wrote: >Hi to all in this Globe of Fegs, > >Just a reminder...you have until July 14th to tell Steve and Robyn, (and >me!) about your first RH experience, your first album purchase, your >first RH concert, and where you live. Here goes.. :) My first Robyn Experience was last summer. I was riding in a car with my best friend, and she popped a tape in and played a song called "Listening to the Higsons" I was hooked instantly. My first album purchase was long-distance. A fellow Feg found a copy of "Queen Elvis" for me. It's one of my fave albums! :) My first (only, unfortunately) concert was the Bluebird Cafe this February.. It was a truly memorable and wonderful experience. (with the exception of the drunk/stoned/whatever guy behind me... :) I hope he doesn't take another 5 years to come around this way again for a concert!!! I live in Elkmont, Alabama, and it was a 1 1/2 hour drive to Nashville to see the show!! :) LSDiamond ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Have you been exceptionally bad lately? Come serve your penance at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/1542/penance1.html You'll never commit THAT sin again! ------------------------------ From: Hedblade@aol.com Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 00:55:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: pink flags << someone (I forget who) was asking a couple of weeks ago about flags with pink as one of the colours (two were suggested, the former Newfoundland proposed flag and also proposals for Smaland in Scandinavia, IIRC). >> There's also the one from the former Republic of Newman which established itself around the axis of Gilbert and Lewis in 1977. It is now the United States of Gotobed. ;) Blinking On And Off, Jay ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 01:51:00 -0400 From: twofangs/randi spiegel Subject: one more :) reminder/clarification Eb correctly mentioned: >I thought Randi wanted to know the first ROBYN album you bought. This calls for one _last_ reminder/clarification: ***Steve Martin (part of Robyn's management team) and Robyn are interested in knowing... 1. The first Robyn album you purchased... 2. The first Robyn show you saw... 3. How you found out about/discovered Robyn's music - (really boring stories encouraged...Steve isn't looking for 'magical' (thanks Eb) experiences...he's just curious from a marketing and managerial point of view. Of course, if discovering Robyn happened to coincide with a wonderful mythical experience, I'm sure Steve and Robyn (and I!) would be delighted to hear all about it. 4. Steve would also like to know where you live... e-mail me at before July 14th _please_*** Many thanks go out to... Diana, Helen, lj, Russ, Tom, LSDiamond, Mike, Becky, and Dan, for their e-mails. fading back into yesterday before tomorrow *cones* (thanks woj) Randi *what scares you most will set you free* - Robyn Hitchcock p.s. - I now have 42 responses...can I beg ten more people to e-mail me...please :-) p.p.s. I love this list :) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 01:53:35 -0400 From: twofangs/randi spiegel Subject: does anyone own this RH pin Hi again, Now *I* have a question to pose to you all...does anyone have a RH button that is light pink, with the name 'Robyn Hitchcock' enveloped in a white cloud of thought... I can't for the life of me remember where and when I got it...it may have been the Eye tour when I bought the "I'm Growing Betsy In A Bag" t-shirt, or the Queen Elvis gig where I purchased the "Swirling" t-shirt... Any thoughts/help/suggestions muchly appreciated as always... fading back into yesterday, Randi *what scares you most will set you free* - Robyn Hitchcock ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 23:54:02 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: Reminder: RH wants to know LSDiamond wrote: >My first Robyn Experience was last summer. I was riding in a car with my >best friend, and she popped a tape in and played a song called "Listening to >the Higsons" I was hooked instantly. Why is it that whenever someone tells the story of discovering an artist (certainly not just in the case of Robyn Hitchcock), he/she was "instantly hooked?" It's always a thunderbolt, an epiphany, a man on a flaming pie.... Doesn't anyone just hear mutterings about a band, then maybe buy one of their albums, maybe it's just OK, maybe buy one or two others before he hits upon one he really adores, etc., etc.? Acquires a taste for the act, and all that? I know *I* do.... I think there tends to be some poetic embellishment in these matters. (Not that I'm singling out LSDiamond -- I've seen similar testimonies many, many times.) Eb, who definitely wasn't instantly hooked by RH, and took quite awhile to warm up to some of his very favorite bands, like (just to scratch the surface) Talking Heads, XTC, the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Captain Beefheart and even the Rolling Stones ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 00:06:39 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: does anyone own this RH pin >Now *I* have a question to pose to you all...does anyone have a RH >button that is light pink, with the name 'Robyn Hitchcock' enveloped in >a white cloud of thought... You know, it never really occured to me to mention this before, but I think I have a fairly rare piece of pseudo-Robyn apparel. I have this promotional A&M T-shirt which came out around 1988...it's a black shirt with sort of turquoise printing, and the front of the shirt lists A&M's current alternative acts. Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians are the top name on the list!?! Then (working down), the list goes: Soul Asylum, Big Pig (remember them? their big gimmick was that they used hardly any instruments except percussion...), Iggy Pop, Paul Kelly & the Messengers, the Feelies and UB40. Some striking examples of A&M's inability/unwillingness to stick behind their artists, don't you think? (You can bet that A&M wishes they had released SA's "Runaway Train" and Iggy's "Candy"....) Oh, the back of the shirt is just solid black. Anyway, does anyone else have one of these? Eb ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 05:14:47 -0500 (EST) From: Tracy Aileen Copeland Subject: Re: Reminder: RH wants to know On Wed, 9 Jul 1997, Eb wrote: > Why is it that whenever someone tells the story of discovering an artist > (certainly not just in the case of Robyn Hitchcock), he/she was "instantly > hooked?" Maybe those are the stories worth telling? I mean, "the time my house was hit by a tornado" is a better story than "the time I ate toast for breakfast", by most people's standards anyway, even though the latter happens more often. Weirdly - and I will write this up more fully for Randi - I had *both* a low-key and a completely hooked Robyn experience; a friend had _Globe of Frogs_ and I'd heard snippets of it under non-ideal conditions and found it moderately interesting, and then I tagged along to a show and couldn't buy all the albums fast enough. I was comparably excited about Big Star under similar circumstances; maybe I should get Odious Fritter to witness ... nah. -- How is it that you fail to perceive that I did not speak about bread? - Matthew 16:11 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 09:51:13 -0700 From: mrrunion@tng.net (Runion, Michael R.) Subject: Re: Reminder: RH wants to know Eb wrote: > Doesn't anyone just hear mutterings about a band, then maybe buy one of > their albums, maybe it's just OK, maybe buy one or two others before he > hits upon one he really adores, etc., etc.? Actually, I can't think many bands with whom I've become "instantly hooked", at least not among the few that have risen to the top to become lifelong faves. Maybe Nirvana's "Nevermind", or REM's "Murmur". Perhaps Peter Murphy's "Love Hysteria". I wouldn't consider Robyn in this category. I got fairly into EoL and GoF, but Queen Elvis was a letdown (I ended up selling my first copy). I picked up Eye when it came out, but even that wasn't thrilling to me at the time, as I was deep into an industrial/angst phase. I'd have to say that it wasn't until seeing Robyn again during the Respect tour that things really turned around for me. I repurchased all my old cassettes and vinyl on CD, found QE in a used bin, and found Black Snake Diamond Role out in Denver. Now I was hooked, and it hasn't let up since. Same general story with Julian Cope. I guess with me, it's just luck of the draw whether or not a particularly great artist will happen along at a time when I'm "into" that sort of music. Generally, if the artist can stick around long enough for my inconsistent music fetishes to swing their way, they have a good chance of dropping into the right slot and becoming firmly entrenched. The select few who are firmly entrenched, meaning "give me everything!" (if anyone cares to know): Robyn, Julian, REM, Bauhaus/Peter Murphy/L&R, Michelle Shocked, Sinead, NIN, Chris Connelly, J&M Chain. U2 used to be here prior to Pop, and Radiohead is rapidly approaching entrenched status. Sorry to babble, Mike Runnnnnion (a pathetic hanger-on from the heyday of 80's "120 Minutes"-brand alternative) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 14:25:00 +0000 (GMT) From: "NORMAN PARKER +44 (0)1473-222478" Subject: Boat Race Gig At last, we get to see our glorious cult leader again ! Any plans for a pre-show meeting of the fegs before the Cambridge gig ? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 15:57:52 +0100 (BST) From: M R Godwin Subject: Re: Boat Race Gig On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, NORMAN PARKER +44 (0)1473-222478 wrote: > At last, we get to see our glorious cult leader again ! > Any plans for a pre-show meeting of the fegs before the Cambridge gig ? I was thinking of going to the WOMAD show which is easier for me. Anyone else fancy that one? - Mike Godwin PS Was anybody at the 12-Bar last Wednesday? I haven't seen a set list posted. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 10:24:52 -0500 From: LSDiamond Subject: Re: Reminder: RH wants to know >Why is it that whenever someone tells the story of discovering an artist >(certainly not just in the case of Robyn Hitchcock), he/she was "instantly >hooked?" It's always a thunderbolt, an epiphany, a man on a flaming pie.... >Doesn't anyone just hear mutterings about a band, then maybe buy one of >their albums, maybe it's just OK, maybe buy one or two others before he >hits upon one he really adores, etc., etc.? Acquires a taste for the act, >and all that? I know *I* do.... Thanks for not singling me out. :) But no, that doesn't happen to me that often .. Generally speaking, I know what I like when I hear it.. If I hear something I don't particully LOVE right away, I'll give it a few times to see if i can aquire a taste for it... I didn't particularly love SDRE right away, but now they're one of my absolute faves... It just *happens* with some bands and some people, I guess. *shrug* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Have you been exceptionally bad lately? Come serve your penance at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/1542/penance1.html You'll never commit THAT sin again! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 10:53:17 -0500 From: Hal Brandt CC: fegmaniax@ecto.org Subject: 12-Bar M R Godwin wrote: > Was anybody at the 12-Bar last Wednesday? I haven't seen a set list > posted. I saw this at the WB site: > FROM: Zoe > DATE: Thu Jul 10 04:40:21 PDT 1997 > Saw Robyn for the 4th time last night--at the 12 Bar Club in London. A beautiful set with > an enchanting Chinese Bones and a fab cover of Tired of Waiting. > Now I'm planning on catching ALL the rest of the dates in this run! Robyn, if you're reading > this--thanks for loveliness and laughs. Zoe hal ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 97 09:29:00 -0800 From: Russ Reynolds >Why is it that whenever someone tells the story of discovering an artist >(certainly not just in the case of Robyn Hitchcock), he/she was "instantly >hooked?" It's always a thunderbolt, an epiphany, a man on a flaming pie.... I think it's risky to declare yourself "instantly hooked" on an artist based on one song. If I'd done that I'd have the entire 1910 Fruitgum Company catalog. You hear a song. You think it's great. But like most of us, you're going to want to hear a few more songs by this artist before we're willing to make that commitment. So you buy the album. You think it's great. Still, becoming hooked on an artist is a big step and you want to make sure you're ready for it. Should you leap into it on the basis of the one album? You've been burned before by Billy Joel's "Nylon Curtain"...best to play it safe and wait to hear another album. By this time you have a pretty good idea whether or not it's going to last. One thing to watch out for: the rebound artist. You stick with Queen for seven or eight albums because you loved the first four, then you realize they've been putting out crap for several years without telling you. You feel betrayed. They've dumped you. You turn on the radio and you hear a Night Ranger song that sounds pretty good to you, so you jump right into the record store and buy all their albums. Bad move, you soon find out, and before you know it you're out scanning the dial again for a new favorite artist. I urge all of you to listen to new music carefully, and above all, WEAR HEADPHONES! -rr ------------------------------ Subject: Epiphany Hook Experiences and First Contacts Date: Thu, 10 Jul 97 13:38:38 -0000 From: The Great Quail Eb, ever willing to gleefully wield the Eb-brand balloon-inflating pin(TM), writes: >Why is it that whenever someone tells the story of discovering an artist >(certainly not just in the case of Robyn Hitchcock), he/she was "instantly >hooked?" It's always a thunderbolt, an epiphany, a man on a flaming pie.... Hmmm . . . well, for some of us, it is something that borders on a religious experience. Oddly enough, all my favorite bands are ones that I was instantly hooked: Robyn, Hawkwind, King Crimson, U2, Phish, Rush. . . As a matter of fact, I really couldn't resist Robyn. My friend had loaned me a copy of Fegmania! and told me to play it. (Well . . . naturally.) I popped it on the turntable and from the first note, amazing things happened. The walls began to breathe. The sky turned yellow and the sun turned blue. As the first song progressed, I heard the sound of women outside my dorm room, their voices raised in a fearful ululation. (I clearly remember thinking, "Hmm . . . that fearful ululation of the women outside my dorm room sounds exactly like the cries of the dying Martians in H.G. Well's "War of the Worlds.") And then - when Robyn's voice entered the song - my brain simply exploded in a riot of psychedelically colored streamers that, er, streamed (rather Hendrix-like, if I may add) from my skull and splattered the ceiling with Playskool colors. Then, lo and behold, a rather unusual angel decended in a shaft of light. He was riding a flaming pie (Though, due to budget cutbacks from the sixties, no doubt, *my* angel was riding a Macdonald's Apple Pie powered by a tin of Sterno.) The angel - who spoke through a trout mask replica - then said to me in a thundery voice, "Oh Allen! Thou art having an EXPERIENCE, and thou and thine shall forever more be fans of ROBYN, and Ye shall gobbleth up ALL his musical pearls and LIKETH them ALL, which doth includeth 'Wafflehead,' 'Mellow Together,' 'Midnight Fish,' and 'Superman.' Oh, yes, and 'Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus,' which I probably shouldn't mention, considering my delicate position and already somewhat dodgy relationship with the Management." Flabbergasted, I said, "Uhhh . . . .'Midnight Fish?'" "YES!!!! *Especially* 'Midnight Fish!'" The angel then removed the fish mask, winked, and expoded in a burst of cinnamon-scented strands that looked a whole lot like "crazy string." His last words came from the beyond, as a ghostly, sepulchral afterthought: "Ohhhh, yesss . . . and bell-bottoms will be coming back in ten years or soooo. . . . " I later learned that around the world at that same moment, other portentious events were happening: In Seattle, a mother gave birth to a child that immediately could play guitar and sing in a gravelly voice about his alienation; In Shropshire-On-Snipe, England, a whole flock of cows suddenly took to the sky and headed to the Battersea Power Station, and a RUC policeman vacationing in New Delhi has his shadow permanently switched with Bill Gate's. And I believe - correct me if I am wrong - Tracy Copeland ate her fisrt peice of toast. Weird. So how could I *not* like Robyn? Eb goes on: >I think there tends to be some poetic embellishment in these matters. Why do you say that? Never. >Eb, who definitely wasn't instantly hooked by RH, and took quite awhile to >warm up to some of his very favorite bands, like (just to scratch the >surface) Talking Heads, XTC, the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Captain >Beefheart and even the Rolling Stones Actually, it took me a very long time to embrace REM . . . I love them now, but like the Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, The Grateful Dead, and The Beastie Boys, my first reaction was something akin to touching a dead thing. Funny old world, innit? Actually, my favorite "first contact" was Laibach, the Slovenian Industrial group. I had never heard of them prior to the summer of 1992. Then, during the middle of an intense, um, er, let's just say "psychedelic experience brought on by ingestion of something that Syd knew a lot about," my one friends traps me in a room, and says: "You are a Beatles fan. Well, sit down and listen to this!" and he threw on Laibach's "Let it Be," a CD where they cover (almost) the whole Beatles album, but make it sound rather like a fascist factory out of control. . . . He thought I would recoil in terror, but instead I laughed my ass off . . . and to this day, I LOVE Laibach. . . . The Quail PS: All of the above is true, including the whole Robyn thing. Well . . . except for the part about the women outside my dowm room. That was actually a "Take Back the Night" march, and had nothing to do with my experience. ---------------------------------+-------------------------------- The Great Quail, K.S.C. | TheQuail@cthulhu.microserve.com | "Keeper of the Libyrinth" | Sarnath - The Quailspace Web Page: riverrun Discordian Society | http://www.microserve.net/~thequail 73 De Chirico Street | Arkham, Orbis Tertius 2112-42 | ** What is FEGMANIA? ** "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." -- H.P. Lovecraft ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 18:49:37 +0100 (BST) From: M R Godwin Subject: Re speed of decision things I used to decide pretty quickly whether I liked something or not, but I made the decision on live performances. You can often tell whether a guitarist has got it within seconds of the solo beginning, and singers are usually easier. It used to be possible to tell how good people were from their recordings, but the technology can now cover up an awful lot of inadequacy. That's one of the reasons that live tapes are worth listening to and trading - you hear what the band sounds like in front of an audience without the chance to go back and correct all the mistakes. Bands that I liked virtually instantly included The Pink Floyd (literally 16 bars into 'Candy and a Currant Bun'), Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Cream, Blossom Toes, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Little Feat, and (slightly more recently) Rockpile, Rain Parade and the Egyptians. On the other hand, some people don't make such an instant impact: Traffic, Gong, the Attractions, Love. And on the third hand, there are bands that are so big that it's very hard indeed to make any sensible judgement about them: the VU, Hendrix, Dylan, the Doors, the Who, the Stones, those sort of acts. I really didn't like Dylan at all until he went electric, and even then he took me a long time to come to terms with. And I still haven't made up my mind about the Who - I'd like them a hell of a lot better if they had broken up when Keith Moon died, though. - hssmrg ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 19:17:00 +0000 From: am@enterprise.net (Aidan) Subject: Short 'story' Well, here's Robyn's art-school effort... Punctuation, spelling etc as on the original. Single queen james has been shot by a hamfisted neckbreaker in the desert. Last night all the peasants were in mourning one of them a man of about 40 Threw himself into his fishpond. Rumoured it is that they are gonna build a new crematorium next door as the capacity of the old one is insufficient. I put in mu claim last week by walking into local ofices and beating the janitor to death with a watch chain after which the chief came up to me with all his hands in my pocket saying "Why'd you do it, boy?" I broke down and raved right there on the table they fetched in a nurse who emptied my head very discreetly & then proceeded tell everybody present that my brain was missing! well well well! I said tell me then what this is? For a few seconds she breathed heavily & said then that it was frogspawn. So that was the end of the matter. when I got out again there was nobody to meet me & just to be spiteful they had taken up the pavement so I had to get home by plane which was a fucking stupid thing to do as I only lived about 200 yards from the offices anyway. Perhaps the literary types among us may be able to find some refeeming feature in this outpouring - personally, I think I can safely see why he doesn't want it released. Aidan ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 97 11:15:00 -0800 From: Russ Reynolds Subject: Re: Epiphany Hook Experiences and First Contacts Said the Quail to the Tomato: >Actually, it took me a very long time to embrace REM . . . I love them >now, but like the Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, The Grateful >Dead, and The Beastie Boys, my first reaction was something akin to >touching a dead thing. Funny old world, innit? Saw REM open for Lords of the New Church circa 1981(?...pre-Chronic Town) and liked them instantly (they may have been a "rebound artist", since the Soft Boys had recently broken up). I Actually bought every one of their albums as it came out in anticipation of greatness. HOWEVER, I found their recorded work extremely disapointing up until "Life's Rich Pageant." So I guess I was hooked at first sight by the live performance, but not by the recordings. Anybody check for that photo of the Marquee with the Soft Boys on the same bill with Sham 69? I keep forgetting to look. Maybe it was the Damned or the Dead Boys instead. -rr (wow! two Stiv bands mentioned in unrelated paragraphs!) ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Epiphany Hook Experiences and First Contacts Date: Thu, 10 Jul 97 12:08:12 -0700 From: Tom Clark "The Lobster Gang" On 7/10/97 12:15 PM, Russ Reynolds stated emphatically: >Anybody check for that photo of the Marquee with the Soft Boys on the same >bill with Sham 69? I keep forgetting to look. Maybe it was the Damned or >the Dead Boys instead. Is the photo you're talking about the one from Invisible Hitchcock? That's the one of him with pen and paper in a cafe. For some reason I think the marquee lists Jethro Tull, Patti Smith, and The Damned. -tc ******************************************* Tom Clark Apple Computer, Inc. tclark@apple.com http://www.netgate.net/~tclark "Cheez Whiz is not something you eat... It's something you see a urologist for." - Dennis Miller ------------------------------ From: "Percy Thrillington" "The Lobster Gang" , Tom Clark Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 12:26:50 -0800 Subject: Re: Epiphany Hook Experiences and First Contacts On 10 Jul 97 at 12:08, Tom Clark said something to the effect of: > On 7/10/97 12:15 PM, Russ Reynolds stated emphatically: > > >Anybody check for that photo of the Marquee with the Soft Boys on > >the same bill with Sham 69? I keep forgetting to look. Maybe it > >was the Damned or the Dead Boys instead. > > Is the photo you're talking about the one from Invisible Hitchcock? > That's the one of him with pen and paper in a cafe. For some reason > I think the marquee lists Jethro Tull, Patti Smith, and The Damned. > I checked the picture on the inside sleeve of the vinyl copy of Invisible Hitchcock. Because of the increased size, the picture is much easier to make out than in the CD. The marquee lists Dickey Betts, Chic Corea [sic], Manfred Mann's Earth Band, The Damned, The Soft Boys, Jethro Tull, Patti Smith, and another that I can't make out. The last one looks like Prof and the Prophets. Definitely prophets, though I'm not sure about the Prof part. Please excuse my anal retentiveness, but I was just trying to help ;). I turn myself on in the dark, --g "Americans love guns. Americans love cars. That's why drive-by shootings could only have been invented in America." --Bill Maher ********************* Glen E. Uber glen@metro.net http://metro.net/glen ********************* ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:28:45 +0300 From: Noah Shalev CC: fegmaniax Subject: Re: Re speed of decision things M R Godwin wrote: > > I used to decide pretty quickly whether I liked something or not, but I > made the decision on live performances. You can often tell whether a > guitarist has got it within seconds of the solo beginning, and singers are > usually easier. It used to be possible to tell how good people were from > their recordings, but the technology can now cover up an awful lot of > inadequacy. That's one of the reasons that live tapes are worth listening > to and trading - you hear what the band sounds like in front of an > audience without the chance to go back and correct all the mistakes. > > Bands that I liked virtually instantly included The Pink Floyd (literally > 16 bars into 'Candy and a Currant Bun'), Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, > Cream, Blossom Toes, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Little Feat, > and (slightly more recently) Rockpile, Rain Parade and the Egyptians. > > On the other hand, some people don't make such an instant impact: Traffic, > Gong, the Attractions, Love. > > And on the third hand, there are bands that are so big that it's very hard > indeed to make any sensible judgement about them: the VU, Hendrix, Dylan, > the Doors, the Who, the Stones, those sort of acts. I really didn't like > Dylan at all until he went electric, and even then he took me a long time > to come to terms with. And I still haven't made up my mind about the Who - > I'd like them a hell of a lot better if they had broken up when Keith Moon > died, though. > > - hssmrg hi i used to think the same. actually i still think there is alot in what u say, yet u shouldn't forget that the 'technology' (i.e. - recording thechnics, and the whole concept of electric music), hass formed some completly new aspects in the so called srt of music. therefor, a live music can tell u about how the musicians play and about there stage persona. a recorded piece has it's own qualities, even if it can't ever b played live or even if that particular band/artist can't perform it live. i think this is the most important revolution in the music field around the last five decades. the use of technology not only as a recording tool, but as part of the work itself,is the main idea. this all started i think, in zappas freak out, and was folowed quite succesfuly by the beatles and others. thus, thechnology is taking part even in live shows. and i mean more than rappers scratchings, i mean all guitar effecs and pedals, i mean all the electic gears that create sound noe ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 13:50:46 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Epiphanies & other consolidated tales Tracy buttered and chomped: >Maybe those are the stories worth telling? I mean, "the time my >house was hit by a tornado" is a better story than "the time I ate toast >for breakfast", by most people's standards anyway. Wait a minute, stop the presses! WHAT kind of toast??? Then Russ offered some personal anecdotes.... Queen? Night Ranger? Billy Joel? I think we may be grooving on a different plane, Russ. ;) >I urge all of you to listen to new music carefully, and above all, WEAR >HEADPHONES! Huh? Why? Then the Great Quail wrote, wrote and wrote, causing isolated Fegs to wail, "There he GOES again....": >Actually, it took me a very long time to embrace REM . . . I love them >now, but like the Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, The Grateful >Dead, and The Beastie Boys, my first reaction was something akin to >touching a dead thing. Funny old world, innit? I *definitely* should've mentioned REM in my initial post. I didn't like REM until the Life's Rich Pageant era. Before that, I thought their songs were too samey, too humorless and too derivative of my beloved Byrds. But then I saw them live at an outdoor concert IN THE RAIN (of course, the place was about a third full, because of the weather), and was "instantly hooked"...about five years after I first heard the group (instantly *soaked* too, I might add)! They opened their set with CCR's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" -- so much for being humorless. :) I posted a more detailed account of this night to the REM newsgroup once, and someone saved it in the permanent FAQ under "First REM Experiences." Heh heh. I STILL feel like I'm "touching a dead thing" when I hear the Grateful Dead, however. And I always will. And actually, I *was* "instantly hooked" on Laurie Anderson. I can vividly recall my excitement upon hearing Big Science for the first time. Who the heck are "Blossom Toes," Mike? Regarding the short story: Slip that snippet into Dylan's "Tarantula," and no one would notice a thing. ;) Singing "1-2-3 Red Light" under my breath, Eb ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 10:53:00 -0700 (PDT) From: misplaced joan of arc Subject: my first... Gosh, this seems so self-indulgent to write all this about little old me. My first Robyn Hitchcock experience?...hmmm... Well, I guess it would have to be when I was a Sophomore in High School and I bought a Thomas Dolby album called _The Flat Earth_ (some may scoff, but it's actually got some pretty good songs on it). Robyn does this tiny little spoken bit on one of the songs, I think the song is called _Dissidents_ (he says something about some guy named Keith, talking in alphanumerals - his typical themes, but it mostly gets eaten up by the music). I thought it was REALLY wild at the time. I had read about him in a fanzine somewhere too, so I had his name on the brain. I then found _Element of Light_ at the neighborhood library, checked it out and taped it (still have the tape; still haven't actually purchased the album, naughty me). I bought a couple more of his albums, over the next few years and saw him open for REM (most arena shows are pretty unmentionable, though, no matter who's playing). I didn't truly appreciate the depth of his songwriting until I borrowed _Eye_ from a friend and then saw Robyn play accoustically at this tiny pub in Toronto. It still stands as the best performance I've seen him do, but this may be simply because I was starstruck and overeager, you know? But the stories he told that night outdid Keith and the alphanumerals. Oh, I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota. ------------------------------ From: Cynthia Peterson Subject: RE: Reminder: RH wants to know Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 11:04:08 -0700 Poetic embellishment? Not so, not so. I don't get instantly hooked to every band, not even many, but it was so with Robyn. I should also add that I don't subscribe to any other list. I'm here because music is important to me, and Robyn's music most important of all. Everyone needs a favorite, right? A "top of the charts," so to speak? Robyn is it for me, because his music affected me the way it did. It *was* magical, and still is. And poetic!! But I would not so embellish any such stories concerning Billy Bragg, for example. It took me a long time to get hooked on those tapes, and with the new stuff, it has mostly worn off...so I guess Robyn's the exception. Cynthia >-----Original Message----- >From: Eb [SMTP:gondola@deltanet.com] >Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 1997 11:54 PM >To: fegmaniax@ecto.org >Subject: Re: Reminder: RH wants to know > >... > >I think there tends to be some poetic embellishment in these matters. > (Not that I'm singling out LSDiamond -- I've seen similar >testimonies many, many times.) > >Eb, who definitely wasn't instantly hooked by RH, and took quite awhile to >warm up to some of his very favorite bands... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 18:14:44 -0400 From: the woj of noise Subject: quickies mike godwin hat gesagt: >Was anybody at the 12-Bar last Wednesday? i believe jonathan turner was there, but he's been tied up with jury duty lately and may not get a chance to post anytime soon. julie hat gesagt: >Well, I guess it would have to be when I was a Sophomore in High School >and I bought a Thomas Dolby album called _The Flat Earth_ (some may scoff, >but it's actually got some pretty good songs on it). some? except for "hyperactive", that's a damn fine album and one of my all-time favorites. the song that robyn speaks on is "the white city". i actually didn't know that robyn was on it until after buying it -- and recognized the voice instantly, but it was a bit of an unexpected shock. +w ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The End of this Fegmaniax Digest. *sob* .