From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V7 #141 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Sunday, April 12 1998 Volume 07 : Number 141 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: fegmaniax-digest V7 #138 ["Capitalism Blows" ] Re: Rik Mayall hurt [tanter ] Re: Real Ramona [Ner ] Re: fegmaniax-digest V7 #138 [Ner ] oscar wilde (-0% RH) [tanter ] Significant Others [Ner ] Dan Bern interview [tanter ] Oh the humanity..... [Chris ] Re: Oh the humanity..... [Sean Hennessey ] San Francisco concert-goers [Carole Reichstein Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V7 #138 what about a happy mayday for all the pinkos?? jeez james [sniff], us [sniff] "bomb-throwing socialists" [sniff] have feelings too, you know! [sob] "The Dude abides"...I don't know about you, but i take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there, "The Dude," takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shesh...I sure hope he makes the finals. --The Stranger ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 15:47:18 -0400 From: tanter Subject: Re: Rik Mayall hurt At 11:34 AM 4/11/1998 -0700, you wrote: > >On Sat, 11 Apr 1998, tanter wrote: >> RIK Mayall, the actor and comedian, was in intensive care last night with >> serious head injuries after an accident > >> Mayall bought the farm last year > >This just goes to show that dead people shouldn't engage in motorsports. > > >Sorry, Rik. Couldn't resist. Ouch, that smarts! Marcy ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 16:21:35 -0400 From: Ner Subject: Re: Real Ramona Eb wrote: It wasn't me who said that. > >also sprach Eb: > >"I'm in total agreement with ya, woj. Although I think the production on "The > >Real Ramona" is pretty abysmal some of the songs are gems and they still shine > >through. The only reason I'd recommend this album as a first purchase is > >because > >I think it's more accessible than alot of their stuff - and only because the > >first album is still only available on import. Anyone who's never heard that > >first Throwing Muses album - seek it out - I don't think you'll be > >disappointed." Hey, quit putting my words in Eb's mouth. ;) - -Ner ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 19:10:36 -0400 From: Ner Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V7 #138 James Dignan wrote: > >n.p. Godley and Creme, _Freeze Frame_ > > ah, a man after my own heart... is the gold in Fort Knox happy gold? You guys are making me feel all weepy and nostalgic with these references. - -Ner "No choice for sugar But what choice could there be But to drown in coffee or to drown in tea The frustrations of being inanimate Maybe it's better that way The fewer the moving parts The less there is to go wrong I wonder about these things" ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 19:58:33 -0400 From: tanter Subject: oscar wilde (-0% RH) I was listening to an NPR story today, talking about the resurgance of Wilde's popularity and it struck me that he would have made a great Feg. (no, that's not meant to be a cute play on a slang word for a homosexual, by the bye.) He was witty and loved word play and confusing his audience. He also liked to ramble on about various things. I believe he was also fond of fruit and fish. Ah well, Happy Day. Marcy ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 19:59:43 -0400 From: Ner Subject: Significant Others amadain wrote: > I know we've had a thread about this before, but I dont really recall what > the consensus was, if any, on this issue, namely- how many people's SOs > like and/or appreciate RH. Okay, my SO (very soon-to-be wife), Rosie, is into alot of different types of music. She leans somewhat towards acoustically based music probably because she is a violin player (plug: played with the Low Road, a former Philly based band, released 3 CDs on Passenger/Caroline) but really likes a broad range. Some of her faves are R.E.M., Tom Waits, Neil Young, Kim Deal, Stephane Grappelli - but I digress. Before she met me, Rosie wasn't really familiar with RH. Once she got to know me she, of course, got exposed to pretty much all of his post-Soft Boys work. I didn't try to force it on her at all, she was around my place often enough that she heard most of what I was listening to. At the time I was listening to quite a bit of RH - I was listening to quite a bit of music in general but RH was in the mix. Anyway, looking at the above list of her faves, it's not surprising that she took to the aforementioned Mr. Hitchcock. She doesn't like his music anywhere near as much as I do but she does think he's pretty good and she loves 'Eye', and much of 'EoL' along with a scattering of his other tunes. She also likes 'ML/ME' alot but she has some bias there since she knows Deni Bonet. Rosie had never seen RH live before she met me. That has since changed. She was willing to travel with me from Philly to New York to see both of the Friday night shows at the Knitting Factory last year. She would only go to the two Saturday shows at the Tin Angel in Philly a couple of years back - I went to both of the Friday shows as well (or was that Saturday and Sunday night?) some I'm somewhat more hardcore than her. Her attitude towards my association with the Fegs when it began almost two years ago was, for a long time, bemused ambivalence. Sometimes she would read a few posts and make a comment about it all being a little 'geeky'. But I think we've grown on her as a group - like a fungus, y'know, like athlete's foot or something. Now she thinks we are a pretty interesting group but she still sometimes complains when I let our email get backed up and the inbox fills up with dozens of Feg posts. If I make it to the Feg gathering on 5/23 it looks like she will also attend - that never would have happened a year ago. - -Ner n.p. nothing - the disc ended a few minutes ago ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 20:05:03 -0400 From: tanter Subject: Dan Bern interview Not the new Dylan Copyright © 1998 Nando.net Copyright © 1998 The Associated Press NEW YORK (April 11, 1998 4:02 p.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) -- For a man who proclaimed himself the Messiah on the first song of his first album, Dan Bern is reluctant to be compared with a musical god. Most critics can't resist the parallels: Jewish guy from the Midwest, strums an acoustic guitar and occasionally plays harmonica, sings in a nasal whine and is a prolific writer of stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Let's see. Who does that remind you of? Yet a Bob Dylan comparison is not only an unfair burden for any songwriter, it's also a little lazy. Bern's brash, occasionally profane and often witty songs actually have more in common with the work of Ani DiFranco, who produced his latest album. Bern even took a preemptive strike against a "new Dylan" tag on the same song in which he introduced himself as the Messiah -- tongue-in-cheek, most people thought. He said if people were going to put him in a box, then they should at least put him in one with a lot of windows and room to move around. "I generally say very little in terms of self-description, mainly because I don't like to do it for myself," said Bern, as he ate breakfast in a coffee shop off Times Square. "Once you start saying, 'I'm this or I'm that,' you're limiting yourself." The son of a classical pianist and brother of an opera singer, the 32-year-old Bern grew up in Iowa learning to play the cello. Since that's not really an instrument for someone who likes to open his mouth a lot, he switched to guitar. His models were writers who liked to use words and music to say something, like Woody Guthrie, Lightnin' Hopkins, Hank Williams, the Beatles and, yes, Dylan. A Bern song is usually a mouthful, equally able to scorch and soothe. And, in one instance, scare Sony's lawyers. The opening song on his new album, released last week, is "Tiger Woods." After making an offensive anatomical reference that's often used to convey extreme confidence, the song's narrator swings between boastfulness and insecurity in describing that sweet time when a man has the world at his feet. "Sometimes I wish I was Tiger Woods," Bern sings. Lawyers for his record company wish he hadn't included that lyric, and Bern said they pressured him not to name the song after the golf Wunderkind because they were afraid of a legal entanglement over use of his name. The alternative idea for a title -- the anatomical reference -- was not much better. Bern seethed. "Without getting grandiose about it, it would seem like it's my First Amendment right to call it that," he said. "I'm not saying I don't want to be like Tiger Woods. The only thing the song says about him is I'd like to be like him, and that's what the Nike ad says. But I'm not paying $18 million." A Sony spokeswoman said the "Tiger Woods" issue was not a serious concern. "It never went any further than just talking about it," said Lisa Millman. "It was even less than a discussion. It was just a thought and it was gone." Lawyers didn't even bother with the verse in "Tiger Woods" in which Bern describes a man who fulfilled his life's ambition to have sex with Madonna, only to be plunged into depression with his most important goal fulfilled. Bern has a habit of writing about celebrities. His song, "Marilyn," is about Marilyn Monroe. "Kurt" is about Kurt Cobain. "Monica" is about Monica Seles. "Too Late to Die Young" references Elvis Presley, James Dean and Pete Rose. Things that happen to public people often affect him personally, he said. On the poignant "Monica," Bern writes about the spark disappearing from the tennis star's eyes after she was stabbed. He compares her to Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King and John Lennon as someone who had to pay for the public's fascination with celebrities. "A lot of the tension in modern life is between these two things -- what's private and what's public," he said. "These people do belong to us, and at the same time they belong to themselves. Part of the reason these people get to live the lives they're leading is because they've given over some of their privacy to us." Bern lifts the cover on his own privacy by writing a lovely tribute to his sister. "I hope you meet some nice guy who treats women better than I do," he sings. "I don't even care if he's a Jew." On the song "Cure for AIDS," Bern dreams of having sex with as many women as possible as soon as a magic pill is invented to eliminate the risk of getting the disease. Bern sounds like the kind of guy who's been slapped a few times. Even when he writes a heartfelt tribute to talented women musicians like Courtney Love and DiFranco, he can't resist calling it "Chick Singers" and musing about what it would be like to have breasts. He follows "Chick Singers" on his album with "Different Worlds," a song about the barriers that exist between blacks and whites that many people seem to accept without question. Bern doesn't believe the humorous songs undercut his serious ones, or vice versa. "It's an awfully limiting thing to think if you do a funny song that that's all you can do," he said. "If I was restricted to doing only this kind of song or that kind of song, I don't think it would hold my interest for very long. And why would it hold anybody else's?" By DAVID BAUDER, The Associated Press  ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 23:01:05 -0400 (EDT) From: Chris Subject: Oh the humanity..... On 10 Apr 1998, james.dignan@stonebow.otago.ac.nz (James Dignan) warbled- >I've been slowly inculcating my >girlfriend in music since we started going out together a couple of months >back, starting with the fairly unweird and working my way up. Having just read High Fidelity (after everyones recommendations), this strikes me as quiet amusing. :) And then on 9 Apr 1998, M R Godwin spake- > >All rock bands are remembered for the wrong things >I've been wondering about this too. Suggestions: > _Wrong thing_ _Right thing_ >Devo Coming from Akron Coming from Akron I think the right thing should actually be wearing upside-down flower pots on their heads. Chris ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 00:31:46 -0400 (EDT) From: Sean Hennessey Subject: Re: Oh the humanity..... On Sat, 11 Apr 1998, Chris wrote: > > >All rock bands are remembered for the wrong things > >I've been wondering about this too. Suggestions: > > _Wrong thing_ _Right thing_ > >Devo Coming from Akron Coming from Akron > I think the right thing should actually be wearing upside-down flower pots > on their heads. I always prefered the plastic 'radiation suits' from the first album and the way to underrated 'Duty Now for the Future' (the first album I ever bought with my own money at 8!), or even the plastic hair from New Trads. That all said, the right thing is for making some of the most influential, exciting, new wave/pop music ever. Duty Now remains one of my top ten of all time, one of the few to actually make it through the ages, along with the Beatles and Madness... Too many people mistake them as a 'gimmick' band, completly ignoring their songsmithship (I think I made that word up!:), the tightness of the performances, and the electricity of their live performance (at least what I've seen on video: hey, I was a kid when they were at their peak!:). On the other had, the could be damn erratic, couldn't they... :) tara - Sean ******************************************************************************* Sean Hennessey, Bassist in Slippy Keane and President of the Boston Reds, an 'unoffical' Manchester United Supporters' Club url: http://members.tripod.com/~boston_reds/red_army.html email: suggs@tiac.net, ICQ#: 9288628 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 12:34:20 -0700 (PDT) From: Carole Reichstein Subject: San Francisco concert-goers ...are any Pacific NW Fegs besides Eddie going to the SH movie/gig? Just curious and living vicariously. Carole .. who has already used up her vacation time and savings... ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V7 #141 *******************************