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 #172 Fegmaniax Digest Volume 5 Number 172 Tuesday July 22 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: police come with a laser gun Re: hidden tracks and such (no RH) Robyn At Sea Re: Feg Digest V5 #170 Robyn Live Update Re: police come with a laser gun Re: police come with a laser gun eddie tews must be twizzling... Re: Music Re: police come with a laser gun homerobobyn DATrade Re: Feg Digest V5 #171 Re: Music Re: Music Re: Music (no Robyn) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 17:26:46 -0500 (CDT) From: donald andrew snyder Subject: Re: police come with a laser gun On Mon, 21 Jul 1997, Eddie Tews wrote: > quail, bomb-throwing socialists only target private property, not > people. so you've no need to worry about that particular breach in > security. Well now that I can actually get some mail through I'll ask a question. Geez Mike didn't you know that in your efforts to block the unruly, several well-intentioned Midwayers got blocked as well. It's okay; I understand the whole sacrifice of the few for the many... > incidentally, the "secret track" > [digression: i'm really sick of the practice, which is all the > rage these days I've often thought that it was some way to save money if the track was a cover. Could someone verify if this is a ridiculous idea? The logic is that the cover is not mentioned on the cover, so it would not affect the purchase. For example, on San Francisco the American Music Club cover "California Dreaming," but it is only mentioned on the actual disc. It could also be that these are just bonus tracks or that they don't fit with the record title. For instance, calling an album Thirteen (Teenage Fanclub) and then putting more than 13 songs on the sleeve would be a bit confusing to the buyer. You got to hide these babies at the end. Paul Westerberg, being the rock veteran that he is, kept 14 Songs to just that. Andy ------------------------------ Subject: Re: hidden tracks and such (no RH) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 97 15:30:09 -0700 From: Tom Clark "The Lobster Gang" On 7/21/97 3:49 PM, Russ Reynolds stated emphatically: >You want to talk about ruined listening? Get a copy of Dramarama's terriffic >album "Vinyl". > >First play "Steve Is Here" (track 13, if memory serves) and watch as your >counter stays at 0:00 for the duration of the song, while the track numbers >count up to 99. > >Kinda cool, until you throw some other discs in the changer and press >"shuffle". Suddenly every other track you hear is a fraction of a second >of "Steve is Here". I have a hunch it was the reason my old Magnavox >changer stopped working. > >I'll take 10 minutes of silence over that any day. Similarly, Cracker's "Kerosene Hat" contains three lurking tracks at 69, 88, & 99. Definitely a pain in the ass during shuffle/random play. High tech workaround: Dupe the CD to a 750MB hard disk, then repress it without the silent tracks. re Dec[a,o]y: Some of my favourite RH tunes are contained on those discs. Also some of my least favourite. -tc ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 18:18:10 -0400 From: elwoj of robyndell Subject: Robyn At Sea for those of you not on antwoman's list (and why aren't you?!?)... >Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 10:46:34 GMT >From: antwoman@lloyd.ftech.co.uk (Antwoman) >Subject: Robyn At Sea > >21 July 1997 > >Hello all, > Most of you know that last year Robyn had a 'record release' >party-like gig on the Isle Of Wight whilst driving around on double decker >buses. This year, Robyn will be At Sea. > Yes. On August 16th, he's hired a boat that will leave at 5pm from >Lymington's Harbour Masters' Pier (near Southampton) and arrive back at the >harbour with enough time to catch the last train to London.There will be a >non-London priced bar on the boat, so you are not allowed to bring drinks, >but you can bring your own food. Tickets are £8 (payable to R. Hitchcock) >and need to be sent with an SAE (stamped-addressed envelope) to Antwoman/ >RAS, PO Box 14864, London, W4 2GD. Tickets are on a first come/ first serve >basis and cheques will be returned if we cannot fit you on. If you have any >enquiries, please e-mail me. >Bon voyage! >A > >My system is having real problems sending and receiving e-mails of late, so >please spread the word. . . thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 11:34:26 +0100 (BST) From: Gary Sedgwick Subject: Re: Feg Digest V5 #170 On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, elwoj of robyndell wrote: > Subject: oh yeah... > > ...so has anyone been able to make any of the 12 bar gigs? any tapes of > either them or the boat race show? I'm kicking myself for not taping the Boat Race gig. I was going to buy a small dictaphone during my lunch break that day, but then thought better of it. Do you know if you can get good recordings from this sort of thing? The one I was looking at was very much like a walkman and takes normal size cassettes. If I do get one I'll tape the gig at the 12 Bar this Wednesday! Gary ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 18:38:42 -0400 From: elwoj of robyndell Subject: Robyn Live Update more info from antwoman. note that i've corrected the date of the junction show -- i wasn't thinking when i updated the page last friday. sorry about that. is there anyone out there *not* on antwoman's list? if so, i'll continue to forward her mailshots to the list. +w >Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 20:35:32 GMT >From: antwoman@lloyd.ftech.co.uk (Antwoman) >Subject: Robyn Live Update > >21/7/97 > >Update on upcoming live dates: >* 23 July, 12 Bar Club, London (NOT CAMBRIDGE AS FEG SITE SAYS) > special guests: Andy Metcalfe and Tim Keegan > support: Tim Keegan > >27th July, WOMAD, Rivermead Leisure Centre, Richfield Ave, Reading > (Day tickets available) > > >* 30 July, 12 Bar Club, London > special guests: Morris and Tim Keegan > support Dear Janes > >*Those who have been there before will know that you REALLY should buy your >ticket in advance (at least the day before the gig). If you can't do that, >doors are at 8pm and people start arriving around 7-7:30 and if there are >any tickets left, it's first come first serve. > >16th Aug, Robyn At Sea, limited seater boat trip (you should have received >an e-mail on this, if not e-mail me with the subject: RAS) > >23rd Aug, The Junction, Cambridge (part of the Millennium Festival !?! ) > >30th August, Bumbershoot Seattle Arts Festival, Seattle, WA, USA > >This is all that has been confirmed as of today. . . A ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 16:06:45 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: police come with a laser gun >I've often thought that it was some way to save money if the track was a >cover. Could someone verify if this is a ridiculous idea? That's probably true. If the track isn't listed, the band probably doesn't have to pay royalties. I THINK. Eb ------------------------------ From: Mark_Gloster@3com.com Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 16:49:24 -0700 Subject: Re: police come with a laser gun >>I've often thought that it was some way to save money if the track was a >>cover. Could someone verify if this is a ridiculous idea? >That's probably true. If the track isn't listed, the band probably doesn't >have to pay royalties. I THINK. I'm guessing that this strategy would not hold up well in court. I imagine that this is a way of avoiding fabricating separate CD's (eg. Spectre Respect) for airplay. The problem is that when we sell recordings of songs copyrighted (and I am using the correct word here) by other artists, we are supposed to pay royalties. I don't think that there is much gray area here in copyright/performance rights law. I like the idea of adding hidden tracks before songs, and even liked the IDEA of the secret track on _Nevermind_. I did happen to have a bad experience with it, and didn't care for that song. So if you decide to try it, please put on a good song. I wanted to put an interview before my track 1 of my wonderful CD for radio, and my own 'cultish' following, but there were some technical challenges associated with this- so when you all buy it, you also won't likely find the secret point-of-know-walrus-gumboo-surround-yourself- with-yourself-spinal-tap-esque-freeform-jazz-folkalbilly-version of "Severe Tire Damage." Please do try, however. I'd love to hear if that rascal somehow sneaked on there. Happies, -Mark Gloster Funny, my 'intellectual' property isn't usually called that. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 17:18:29 -0700 (PDT) From: Refugees on 45 Subject: eddie tews must be twizzling... hi all-- in random orbit of the plant boredom here, i ran across an issue (current i think, but can never be sure here) of 'ray gun'. it claimed to have a list of various peoples favorite movies--including our own mr. H. has anyone seen this can they post it. i looked for the life of me (not hard really, but i have a worthless life now, so it was short), but could not find it. in part this is because there is no index and any part of the magazine is indistinguishable from any other part of it--it almost makes me sick, but is generally a good thing because the magazine is generally indistinguishable from any of the other "mac-press" trash published. and how does this compare to eddie's list of list favs?? over, .chris ------------------------------ From: Terrence M Marks Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 00:02:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Music > On Mon, 21 Jul 1997, Terrence M Marks wrote: > > Is it just me, or has 90s music been notably les s impressive than 80s and > > 70s and 60s music? > > > It's you and your aging, stagnating mind. I'm only 19. > > There's heaps of new music that's fantastic and good and fun and poignant > and wonderful and ridiculous and bad and everything else. I was talking (and forgot to say) about mainstream music. I don't want to argue Pixies v. Electric Prunes or Madness v. Yellow Number Three. > Music hasn't become essentially better or worse. There are trends and > there are ages. If you're a genre-oriented type of being, then you're > just bound to be disappointed as the swell of popular themes ebbs away > from those you find pleasant. But that just displays, to me, a rigidity > and inflexibility in your core so that the unhappiness is caused by your > flaw, not one in the world at large. While I'm the last to say it's > important to follow the way the trends of the world push, I would say that > growth requires change and lack of growth in an expanding universe is > functionally equivalent to decay. Hmm...if you change the scale of that, it basically boils down to "It's your fault that you dont' like a song." There's sucha thing as a bad song, a bad album and bad music. It's more common than most people would like to admit. Popular music has declined, my friend, and it's not because I'm too inflexible to prefer MMMBop to All SUmmer Long. > Folks that say things were better in the past are simply lacking > adaptability, tolerance, and forward momentum. Folks that say things are better now tend to be enamoured with newness and overlook quality. What I'm saying is that there hasn't been a single as good as Der Kommissar, Stray Cat Strut, Last Train to Clarkesville, Bang a Gong, Panic in Detroit or Ride My See-Saw in this decade. (I mean a single that good that has received comparable radio play) > It's not a personal attack, it's an attack on anything that doesn't look > to the future, relish the present, and dwells needlessly on things gone > by. You can't ignore the past by saying "Oh, it's the past, let's ignore it." Terrence Marks Remember-Jesus is your friend. normal@grove.ufl.edu ------------------------------ From: Terrence M Marks Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 00:04:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: police come with a laser gun So...Why not release an all-cover record with nothing but secret tracks? Free Money. On Mon, 21 Jul 1997, Eb wrote: > >I've often thought that it was some way to save money if the track was a > >cover. Could someone verify if this is a ridiculous idea? > > That's probably true. If the track isn't listed, the band probably doesn't > have to pay royalties. I THINK. > > Eb > > > Terrence Marks Remember-Jesus is your friend. normal@grove.ufl.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 00:37:55 -0400 (EDT) From: Bayard Subject: homerobobyn DATrade Would someone be so kind as to make me a DAT clone of the dylan anniversary gig (the DAT version)? I'm pretty sure i have a backup but can't find it. lots of interesting digital Robyn to trade. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 17:07:29 +1200 (NZST) From: james.dignan@stonebow.otago.ac.nz (James Dignan) Subject: Re: Feg Digest V5 #171 >>Aha, here's my chance to advance my Robyn Hitchcock imprinting theory: >>in my experience, the first few RH albums a person listens to becomes >>special favourites regardless of quality. For me, Queen Elvis was the >>second, and it still occupies a special place in several of my internal >>organs. > >Which ones? Isles of Langerhans, vena cava, lumbar vertebrae, what?? A >nation holds its breath. Has Mr Runion put the Islets of Langerhans on the Fegmap yet? (I think they're part of Denmark...:) >PS- Food item, for whoever it was that was asking for recipes: peanut >butter surprise: > >place a loaf of bread next to a jar of Jif. Dip a standard kitchen knife as >far down into the jar as possible and pull up the biggest gob of peanut >butter you can. Glance at the bread as you put the peanut butter directly >into your mouth. Have milk handy. Repeat until full or until jar is >empty. Note: do not try this trick in New Zealand! (In NZ, "Jif" is a brand of household bleach. Have LOTS of milk handy!) James James Dignan___________________________________ You talk to me Deptmt of Psychology, Otago University As if from a distance ya zhivu v' 50 Norfolk Street And I reply. . . . . . . . . . Dunedin, New Zealand with impressions chosen from another time steam megaphone (03) 455-7807 (Brian Eno - "By this River") ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 22:11:34 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: Music The flower of brash youth wrote: >What I'm saying is that there hasn't been a single as good as Der >Kommissar, Stray Cat Strut, Last Train to Clarkesville, Bang a Gong, Panic >in Detroit or Ride My See-Saw in this decade. (I mean a single that good >that has received comparable radio play) What bizarre examples of "good" singles. DER KOMMISSAR? STRAY CAT STRUT? Eek. "Der Kommissar" would make a lot of folks' all-time WORST lists (probably mine too)! >So...Why not release an all-cover record with nothing but secret tracks? >Free Money. Well, you also would get no songwriting royalties of your own that way. Not to mention the fact that the record would be impossible to promote. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 01:44:42 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Music On Tue, 22 Jul 1997, Terrence M Marks wrote: > > It's you and your aging, stagnating mind. > I'm only 19. That doesn't mean you don't have an aging, stagnating mind. > > There's heaps of new music that's fantastic and good and fun and poignant > > and wonderful and ridiculous and bad and everything else. > I was talking (and forgot to say) about mainstream music. I don't want to > argue Pixies v. Electric Prunes or Madness v. Yellow Number Three. Well, that's a horse of a different color and largely irrelevant. Does popularity make a big difference? Why do you make such a distinction between the music other people like and the music they don't? Isn't your own tastes that matter? So what it comes down to is that you think your tastes have swayed from those of the mass market. But since you're 19, you've spent more or less all of your reasoning, conscious life in this decade and so you've really NEVER had the same tastes as the mass market. It's very difficult to distinguish the effects of popular culture and the tendency to reject it out of hand. You've already expressed regard for mass opinion (making a distinction between 'mainstream' music and music as a whole expresses such consideration) so there's no telling what you're doing with those divisions. Separate is inherently unequal. > Hmm...if you change the scale of that, it basically boils down to "It's > your fault that you dont' like a song." Um... only if 'changing the scale' means calling the whole of contemporary music a particular song. That sort of generic falsehood arises every time you scale down 'everything' into 'one thing'. The reverse is why you can't make every particular case a general statement. > There's sucha thing as a bad > song, a bad album and bad music. It's more common than most people would > like to admit. Actually, I like to admit that it happens almost all the time. My personal opinion is that roughly 95% is garbage and 5% is good. That breaks down nicely across all the major categories: 5% of rock is tolerable, 5% of hip-hop, 5% of country, 5% of pop... and so on. But that's just my opinion. There is, indeed, bad music, but to say all the music being produced today is bad is an act of laziness. You couldn't possibly listen to all the music produced today, let alone form an intelligent opinion about it. It's the same sort of ignorance shown in statements like 'all men are pigs' and 'French people are rude.' You can't say something like that until you've tried all of them. But of course, you're welcome to say anything you like about what you have tried. > Popular music has declined, my friend, and it's not > because I'm too inflexible to prefer MMMBop to All SUmmer Long. Well, I make a distinction between pop music and popular music and decline is a matter of taste and your flexibility is entirely up to you. But as for MMMBop and All LSummer Long, well, that's just more of that 'scaling down' you were doing before. You're talking specifics while I'm talking about the whole enchilada. > Folks that say things are better now tend to be enamoured with newness and > overlook quality. Wow, it's a good thing I'm not one of those folks that say things are better now! All I said was that there's a problem with dwelling in the past and not giving proper consideration to the present and the future. At the risk of sounding terribly cliche, the future is where we shall spend the rest of our lives, but it will always be right now and it will never ever be then again. > What I'm saying is that there hasn't been a single as good as Der > Kommissar, Stray Cat Strut, Last Train to Clarkesville, Bang a Gong, > Panic in Detroit or Ride My See-Saw in this decade. (I mean a single > that good that has received comparable radio play) Those are a few specific maybes, but I'll bet there have been dozens if not hundreds of album tracks at least as good. Singles go where the high volume sales lie and frankly that has very little to do with your personal tastes. > You can't ignore the past by saying "Oh, it's the past, let's ignore it." Sure you can, it's just not very smart. I guess I just wanted to make these four points: The music that the largest number of people like will flow and change as do the tastes of each individual in the population so it stands to reason that every person will find themselves nearer and further from the majority at different points in time. Some people seem to make an effort to avoid aligning with the majority on principle and it yet remains to be seen whether or not you're one of those people because you haven't yet been aligned with the majority at a single point in time. Sometimes it's better to just forget what everyone else is doing or has done and use your own judgment. It's fairly pessimistic and backward-thinking to say the present is just a declining state of past glory instead of seeing the present as just what evolved from the past and finding the good and bad it carries without prejudice or unnecessary comparison with something as alien and impossibly unattainable as a previous era. But aside from those points, I'd say it's easier to find cool things outside the mainstream today because everything of today is still in print. It's far more difficult to find non-mainstream music from decades past because it has fallen out of print or been destroyed by various methods and accidents. We won't have this problem in thirty years because the idea of being 'out of print' is passe. Digital media means never being out of print because duplication doesn't require massive money and equipment. Source recordings, if digital, will not decay if properly backed up because each successive generation retains 100% of the original recorded data. If this had always been the case, we would have much more of the past to draw upon than simply those recordings with the serendipitous quality of having been released when huge groups of people were willing to listen. I'm going to sleep now. J. ________________________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 08:41:37 -0700 From: mrrunion@tng.net (Runion, Michael R.) Subject: Re: Music (no Robyn) No comments on the back and forth's of this short thread, but I do have a few of my own opinions to mention. Without giving it too much thought, I'd tend to yes to Terry's original question of whether 90s music has been "notably less impressive" than 80s or 70s or 60s music, especially when he clarified it by adding "mainstream". I myself, for various reasons among which are aging, getting married, having kids, pursuing a Masters, listening to the radio less, almost never catching 120, do feel like I/we are in a horrible slump right now musically. Sure, there is some great great stuff being created, maybe the 5% Capuchin mentioned, but it's less visible, less readily accessible and I still feel we're in a wayward time right now. With that said, I do think the initial start of the 90's was tremendous. Though I consider myself to have evolved in the 80's (high school and college), I would dare say my music collection leans heavily in the 89-93 time frame. Also let me clarify...despite all the reasons above, I buy more music now than ever, go to just as many concerts, and hear/read more about new music than ever...and what with having a teenage step-daughter in the house, I get a fairly decent exposure to what's "popular" and "mainstream"...especially the dreaded "Oh, I LOVE them!" this week and "Ugh, change it!" the next. I think one sign of a depressed musical period is the number of bands that make an awesome splash with their first record, first single but then disappear completely after their second album. A corollary to this would be the small number of albums that sells truckloads and dominate the top spot for months and months. Call me ignorant, but I think that is the state of things today. Nothing wrong with it at all, it's just the evolutionary cycle of popular recorded music, a cycle that's been rolling now for decades. Moving away from the mainstream idea, I tend to side with Capuchin. Music trends may change, but at its core, the quality has remained pretty well constant. I can mention (but won't) many artists that I absolutely adore and worship in an almost juvenile way right now (Robyn among them)...probably more so than back in the 80's... Eh, I rambling and I don't know where I'm going with this. I think I agree with both of you. By the way, I like ATF's Der Kommissar and am proud to say I have the 45. Mike babbling-incoherently Runion P.S. On the age thing, I think that the older you get, the easier it is to step out of the present and get the bigger picture. Things begin to seem a little less immediate. A long history of experiences tends to mute the fresh ideas since they don't seem so fresh anymore. But I guess that's inertia, or at least entropy. The old man speaks. (Somebody please shut him up!) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The End of this Fegmaniax Digest. *sob* .