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 #179 Fegmaniax Digest Volume 5 Number 179 Monday July 28 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: ------- ------- Spice Girls Re: Colourblind James Experience et al (No RH) Re: Colourblind James Experience et al (No RH) Pop culture press Re: Welcome Natalie! Cosmik Debris (RH content close to 100%) Re: H.... & That Dog Re: H.... & That Dog Tech talk Re: Tech talk Re: How do you make long CDs? (No RH) Re: How do you make long CDs? (No RH) Breaking Up Is Hard To Do ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 01:13:40 -0500 (CDT) From: John Littlejohn Subject: Spice Girls I just saw on MTV News where a guy in Hawaii sold tickets to a bogus Spice Girls show in order to pay for a sex change operation and a nose job! Comment is superfluous. JL -* "Si vous m'obstaclerez, je vous liquiderai" - Churchill -* ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 11:00:00 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: Re: Colourblind James Experience et al (No RH) On Wed, 23 Jul 1997 HAMISH_SIMPSON@HP-UnitedKingdom-om4.om.hp.com wrote: > fegs all, > > Does anyone know much about the Colourblind James Experience? I have > two albums (which are fantastic BTW) and there is no info to be found > on the web. Are they still going and how many other albums are there? there's a pretty enthusiastic review of last year's "I could be your guide" on my very own webpage. http://www.mwmw.com/pathetic/cd_c.html oughtta get you to it. they sent me a press kit which i might be able to find -- i'll take a look anyway. i seem to remember that they had about six records out... ...and for whoever was doubting those band names, there's reviews of the wannadies in there as well, and i have heard henindingera (sp) before thanks to elwoj of robyndell, if memory serves... ..i happen to actually like that dog pretty well, although i tend to get them mixed up with the murmurs, whose new record, _pristine smut_, is better (deeper, angrier) than the new that dog imho, but i have heard the theory advanced that the longevity of that dog's contract has more to do with that dogger anna waronker being the daughter of a musoindustry bigwig than a sudden compassion on the part of the david geffen corporation for the old outoffavor notion of "artistic development" but of course, that could be baseless cynicism. d. n.p. verbow "holiday" whoah, sounds like sugar! n.r. david foster wallace _infinite jest_ etc. p.s. casting back to the length of tool (woops) the longest cd i'm aware of, rykodiscs excellent and eponymous mission of burma compilation, usually shows up between 80:03 and 80:11, depending on which cd player you put it in. and no one has ever satisfactorily explained to me how *any* of them can have more than 74 minutes, still. p.p.s. robyn hitchcock? who the heck is she?? why do people mention her name every 2oth post or so??? [ 1000 x ;-> ] - oh,no!! you've just read mail from doug = dmayowel@access.digex.net - and dmw@mwmw.com ... get yr pathos at http://www.mwmw.com/pathetic/ - new reviews of: vigilantes of love, carl hiaasen, edna buchanan ------------------------------ From: tanter@econs.umass.edu Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 11:56:20 -0400 Subject: Re: Colourblind James Experience et al (No RH) On Sat, 26 Jul 1997, dmw wrote: > p.p.s. robyn hitchcock? who the heck is she?? why do people mention her > name every 2oth post or so??? [ 1000 x ;-> ] > She's a swingin' chick who hangs out in Soho (the London one) and is frequently seen in Harrod's on the arm of some Sheik or other, eats exclusively at the Savoy and purchases all her foodstuffs and sundries at Selfridge's. (she's quite picky) I understand she also plinks out the occasional tune on a piano but given the fact that her fingernail polish would get chipped, I don't quite believe it. Marcy ------------------------------ From: tanter@econs.umass.edu Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 11:58:44 -0400 Subject: Pop culture press Has anyone who ordered #40 not gotten it? I ordered it about 2 months ago and they cashed my check promptly.... Luann keeps saying it's coming but I have yet to receive it..... ------------------------------ From: SydneyC33@aol.com Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 13:14:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Welcome Natalie! In a message dated 97-07-18 10:41:17 EDT, TheQuail@cthulhu.microserve.com (The Great Quail) writes: << I suppose this means that Sydney must ready the feathers and the Egyyptian Cream again. . . . >> Ready! Natalie, would you please remove your...shoes. ------------------------------ From: "G. E. Uber" Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 10:41:07 -0800 Subject: Cosmik Debris (RH content close to 100%) fegs, A few random questions: 1. Does anyone know Robyn's method of recording? Are basic tracks laid down, followed by overdubs, vocals and solos? Or does he sing, and play on the same take with few overdubs (aside from double-tracked vocals or guitars or multiple instruments)? I know that almost all of _The Kershaw Sessions_ was live. How about everything else? 2. Is the "young black man" in "Legalized Murder" a reference to the journalist from Philadelphia (now awaiting execution) accused of killing a police officer? I know that the alleged shooting occured in 1987 or 1988, right around the time that "LM" was recorded. 3. Has there been any further word on the release of "Storefront Hitchcock"? How about the accompanying soundtrack album? 4. Robyn's mother's second name was Joyce. What was her first name? Thanks for tuning in. That's all we have time for today. Toodles, --g If I want to hear the pitter patter of little feet around the house, I'd put shoes on my cat. *************************************************** Glen Uber ~ism~ Digital Media glen@metro.net Santa Rosa, CA http://metro.net/glen/ism/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 11:52:31 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: H.... & That Dog >...and for whoever was doubting those band names, there's reviews of the >wannadies in there as well, and i have heard henindingera (sp) before >thanks to elwoj of robyndell, if memory serves... I can't spell it either, but by coincidence, I saw the above "H-band" on a web page just a day after posting about it. It was on a page of band links with a heavy Celtic-folk slant. I think it might have been a website devoted to Maddy Prior. (No, the page didn't have any Hitchcock links.) >i have heard the >theory advanced that the longevity of that dog's contract has more to do >with that dogger anna waronker being the daughter of a musoindustry bigwig >than a sudden compassion on the part of the david geffen corporation for >the old outoffavor notion of "artistic development" but of course, that >could be baseless cynicism. I'm sure that Lenny Waronker's fame helped That Dog get their foot in the door (as well as the fame of the twins' father, jazz legend Charlie Haden), but that doesn't mean the label had to stick with them. I mean, Geffen also released an album (ONE album, just one!) by Ceremony, who featured Chastity Bono. And did Nelson ever release a second album? (Heck, that might've been on Geffen too!) Geffen easily could've dumped That Dog after the first record, which only sold about 10,000 copies, I think. But they saw potential and stuck with them. Anyway, I think That Dog has genuine talent (Petra is a GOOD violin player...no doubt!) and I like the new album a helluva lot. You need to have tolerance for bubblegum pop however, and a lot of music fans today don't. Personally, I think it can be tremendously refreshing, pitted against all the hundreds of "cynical" albums which I own. Speaking of which, I heard the Hanson album yesterday and there are far worse things in this world. >p.s. casting back to the length of tool (woops) the longest cd i'm aware >of, rykodiscs excellent and eponymous mission of burma compilation, >usually shows up between 80:03 and 80:11, depending on which cd player you >put it in. and no one has ever satisfactorily explained to me how *any* >of them can have more than 74 minutes, still. The MoB compilation is one of the longest, although I think it's now out of print -- Rykodisc just reissued the (really really good) MoB albums individually. However, I believe that the longest CD's ever fall into two basic categories: techno compilations and classical music. Just recently, I saw a page on the Web somewhere which supposedly listed the longest 50 or so CDs. The longest was something like 80:54 -- none of them hit the 81-minute mark. Your last comment puzzled me. You understand how a CD can hold 74 minutes, but not 75 minutes? Why do you put the "comprehension threshold" there? Eb ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 17:57:08 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: Re: H.... & That Dog On Sat, 26 Jul 1997, Eb wrote: > but that doesn't mean the label had to stick with them. I mean, Geffen also > released an album (ONE album, just one!) by Ceremony, who featured Chastity > Bono. And did Nelson ever release a second album? (Heck, that might've been > on Geffen too!) Geffen easily could've dumped That Dog after the first > record, which only sold about 10,000 copies, I think. But they saw good point. > Your last comment puzzled me. You understand how a CD can hold 74 minutes, > but not 75 minutes? Why do you put the "comprehension threshold" there? well, you asked -- the nonobsessive may want to quit reading at this point. i promise no non-nerd content below -- but -- since i'm the bizness, i tell you truly that cd-roms come in two sizes: 60min and 74min (650MB). redbook audio is sampled in stereo, 16bit, at 44.1khz with no compression. some fooling with the calculator gives us: 1 second 1 min 74 min 80 min 176400 bytes 10584000 bytes 783216000 bytes 846720000 bytes ~.168 MB ~10.094MB ~746.933MB ~807.495MB (that's exclusive of the space required to store the catalog information, of course, which seems to be very different for cd's and cd-roms -- music cd's, as far as i know, have a maximum of 99 tracks, although i don't know how many index points each can have, whereas i've made cd-roms with thousands of different files.) you'll note that the difference between the storage required for 74 and 80 min. is substantial. in the analog days it was easier to see how a record side could not have a single fixable length. the grooves could be packed more densely; the music could track farther in toward the spindle and start nearer the rim, etc. i keep hearing stories of albums sides with two different grooves, although it's a little hard to imagine the mastering process for these. cd's on the other hand, start with the catalog on the inside, in a fixed location to the best of my knowledge. my hypothesis is that the 'extra' music must get crammed -- but i've never run into an otherwise functional cd-player that refused to play the MOB disc, or stopped 6 minutes before the end, in the same way that record owners w/o auto cue features got to hear more of the fadeout track on _abbey road_ or _the clash_ than others. so if all cd's can hold 80 minutes, why don't we call them 80 minute blanks? it seems certain that one of my fundamental assumptions about redbook format must be wrong, but i've never figured out which. any help welcome. d. n.p. verbo _chronicles_ - oh,no!! you've just read mail from doug = dmayowel@access.digex.net - and dmw@mwmw.com ... get yr pathos at http://www.mwmw.com/pathetic/ - new reviews of: vigilantes of love, carl hiaasen, edna buchanan ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 16:25:01 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Tech talk >but -- since i'm the bizness, i tell you truly that cd-roms >come in two sizes: 60min and 74min (650MB). redbook audio is sampled in >stereo, 16bit, at 44.1khz with no compression. You ARE the bizness?? Wow! ;) >some fooling with the calculator gives us: > >1 second 1 min 74 min 80 min >176400 bytes 10584000 bytes 783216000 bytes 846720000 bytes >~.168 MB ~10.094MB ~746.933MB ~807.495MB I'm a little fuzzy on this. How do you get from 1 second, 16 bits and 44.1 khz to 176400 bytes, etc.? What's the equation? And if you're saying CDs only hold 650MB maximum, why isn't your "comprehension threshold" around 65 minutes instead of 74? >my hypothesis is that the 'extra' music must get crammed -- but i've never >run into an otherwise functional cd-player that refused to play the MOB >disc, or stopped 6 minutes before the end. Hmm...interesting. I wondered if your doubts were based on some sort of technical/mathematical information like this. I guess I wonder if you're correct in putting musical CDs and computer CD-ROMs in the same conceptual basket. I have a very hard time buying your "crammed" theory -- if there's "cramming" involved, I would expect it to be evenly distributed through the entire CD. But that's just my instinct. How IS a CD physically structured, anyway? Is it an outward-spinning spiral, just like a record except reversed? Is the spiral then broken into tiny consecutive cells of information? If so, could the cell size be slightly "pushed" one way or the other? I notice your above definition of Redbook audio contains the phrase "with no compression." Maybe with longer CDs, there IS compression? Clueless in these matters, Eb PS The Supergrass show was great last night. :) ------------------------------ From: tanter@econs.umass.edu Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 23:48:43 -0400 Subject: Re: Tech talk On Sat, 26 Jul 1997, Eb wrote: > PS The Supergrass show was great last night. :) Whereas the TAFKAP/Prince/whatever you want to call him show was not. Marcy ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 05:23:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: How do you make long CDs? (No RH) On Sat, 26 Jul 1997, dmw wrote: > p.s. casting back to the length of tool (woops) the longest cd i'm aware > of, rykodiscs excellent and eponymous mission of burma compilation, > usually shows up between 80:03 and 80:11, depending on which cd player you > put it in. and no one has ever satisfactorily explained to me how *any* > of them can have more than 74 minutes, still. You kids of the analog age miss out on the benefits of being digital. (I was adopted and have next to no information about my birth parents, but I can't shake the suspicion that Nicholas Negroponte did some philandering in Portland, Oregon in the early/mid-Seventies.) There's one crucial piece of information that makes this all clear and if I combine that with general knowledge of the analog media and a bit of common sense and math, I can probably say something sensible here. Let's talk for just a moment about digital information. [Negroponte mode on] The best thing about digital information is its ability to carry information about itself in the form of headers. This meta-information can be used in a wide variety of ways from telling your PC whether the binary data in a particular file is text or an image or executable to telling your TV (when that's digital, too) what aspect ratio to view the movie you're downloading. A CD is NOT an LP. There's not a dial to flip between rotation speeds. There is, however, a header on the innermost part of a disc that tells the following information: how many tracks are on the disc, how far from the center each of those tracks begin (roughly where to find the index marker for that track), and HOW FAST TO SPIN TO PROPERLY READ THE DATA IN THAT TRACK. There's room in that header for data of different types as well, like file structure information for CDROMs and different header types altogether for these hybrid 'enhanced CDs' (and the inability of the HARDWARE to identify such headers is the reason some CDROM players will not read the data portion of an enhanced CD... because the enhanced CD standard was created as an add-on to the audio CD format and the data headers are ignored by players that do not recognize them as proper audio disc headers). So there we have it. I'll now attempt to explain why this makes a huge difference. On an LP, you have grooves whose cross-section look very much like the wave form created by the sounds recorded. However, as we get closer to the end of this line (the middle of the disc), the waves are more compressed. That's because less disc is covered in the same amount of time in the middle of the disc than at the end. To clarify the previous sentence, think about a disc rotating on the turntable. It takes a disc going at 33 1/3 RPMs just under two seconds to go through one rotation. So toward the outside of a 12" LP, something like 37 inches of disc contain that two seconds of music or whatever. Toward the inside, you're looking at more like 15 inches to play the same two seconds. That means the waves have to be scrunched up tight to fit all two seconds of wave into 15 inches and they have to be stretched around the outside to fill 37 inches with two seconds of music. Old discs way back when spun at 78 RPMs. That's because they needed to use up more linear groovespace per second. That's also why singles spin at 45 RPMs: more linear groovespace per second means more sound data per spiralling inch. Modern LPs (if that's not an oxymoron) are made for modern turntables with much more sensitive styli and all kinds of electronics to amplify sound (remember also that higher volume means deeper grooves that have to be spread out so that the stylus doesn't jump over every loud sound and the early phonograph had no amplifier whatsoever so the grooves had to be good and deep). So we have that. An LP spins at one speed and the waves are either scrunched or stretched to fit the disc and play back at the proper itch. Now think of a CD. Imagine the long tracks on a CD laid out in a line like you've unraveled the spiral. The amount of data per inch doesn't necessarily follow the same geometric progression as you follow the track from begining to end. In fact, it's totally possible (though pretty impossible with most CD players and their not-so-complete control over their motors) to build a CD on which every rotational inch of track contained exactly the same amount of data (note this would require that WITHIN A GIVEN TRACK you slowly alter the rotational velocity so that as the lens moves along the disc, the disc spins so that the same amount of data is always passing through the beam, hence my earlier caveat). Usually on a CD, the speed of rotation varies per track but remains constant throughout that track. That means that since CDs are read from the middle out, the end of a track contains less data per inch than the begining, but with not nearly the variation between begining and end as it would be if the disc rotated at a constant speed as with an LP. So get this, if you really didn't mind scrunching your data together and putting more optical pips per inch (a more difficult mastering and duplication process, I'd imagine), you could make it so that every track moved at the minimal rotational velocity and that each track began as near the end of the disc as possible. Also taking liberties with the previously established standards for distance between tracks (which was established really before any commercial players were built and therefore far underestimate the technology) can give you a few more precious seconds. All of this can add up to as much as seven minutes of space that the ol' CDA format created by Phillips and Sony didn't think was mechanically and electronically feasible. As I understand it, CDROMs are less forgiving when it comes to these things. I'm not sure of the details there. I'm also pretty sure that the blank CDs you buy somehow give you less control over header information. I have no idea why this is. So yeah, CDs don't spin at a constant speed. 650Mb DOES translate to 74 minutes of digital audio at the CD Standard (44whatever MHz, 16 bit, stereo). You can also squeeze more than 650Mb on a CDROM, but as I said, not THAT much more and apparently not with conventional writable media. There's some guesswork in here, but it all makes perfectly good sense to me. J. ________________________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 13:49:17 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: How do you make long CDs? (No RH) >There is, however, a header on the innermost part of a disc that tells the >following information: how many tracks are on the disc, how far from the >center each of those tracks begin (roughly where to find the index marker >for that track), and HOW FAST TO SPIN TO PROPERLY READ THE DATA IN THAT >TRACK. > >So get this, if you really didn't mind scrunching your data together and >putting more optical pips per inch (a more difficult mastering and >duplication process, I'd imagine), Well, that's what I was theorizing, only you're using the correct terminology.... >So yeah, CDs don't spin at a constant speed. >650Mb DOES translate to 74 minutes of digital audio at the CD Standard >(44whatever MHz, 16 bit, stereo). I still want someone to show me the equation for this. Thanks for the interesting post. The stuff about the CD spinning at inconstant speed was obvious, but I didn't know the part about "header information." Eb ------------------------------ From: "G. E. Uber" Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 15:20:25 -0800 Subject: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do fegs, Does anyone know if there has ever been reasons given for the breakups of The Soft Boys and The Egyptians? The reason I ask is because of the recent spate of appearances Robyn has made with Andy, Kimberley and/or Morris. I just wonder if, at the times of the breakups, there were any bad feelings amongst the fellows, or if they felt as though they had done all they set out to accomplish? It seems that none of them would be too receptive to the idea of playing together if bad feelings existed between any of the parties. Am I incorrect in my assumption? When Robyn formed the Egyptians, he was essentially reforming the Soft Boys. What is the possibility that they'll record and/or tour again under those or any other names? Anyone? Anyone? Love on you all, --g "The Rolling Stones are now the world's most authentic Stones tribute band. They sound remarkably like themselves, even if they have to sample the cowbell in "Honky Tonk Women." from "In search of the greatest rock band" by Andy Smith, Providence Journal-Bulletin, July 20, 1997 *************** Glen Uber glen@metro.net http://metro.net/glen/ *************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The End of this Fegmaniax Digest. *sob* .