From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V10 #183 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Monday, May 7 2001 Volume 10 : Number 183 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Non Robyn Question [Tom Clark ] Re: sss sss sex crime crime cricricricri crime [Miles Goosens ] feels like 1984 ["Andrew D. Simchik" ] Non-voting Floridians mean less trouble for everyone... [Rob Gronotte ] waters of Niagara ["Andrew D. Simchik" ] Re: Childhood Influences [Jeffrey_Rose@eri.eisai.com] Re: influences/confluences and RHE BBC1 ["brian nupp" ] what's in a name? ["Natalie Jacobs" ] The Crying Songs ["Seth Frisby" ] Re: It was a very good year.... ["J. Brown" ] Re: Balls. [Miles Goosens ] Re: CD Burning -- MAC division [Sebastian Hagedorn ] Re: feels like 1984 [HAL ] Re: what's in a name? [Aaron Mandel ] Re: waters of Niagara [Viv Lyon ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 11:22:08 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: Non Robyn Question on 5/6/01 11:36 PM, Mike Swedene at pulp_101@yahoo.com wrote: > Since we have been walking (jogging, running, sliding) > down memory lane there is one movie I saw when VCR's > were first out that my friend's grandmother owned. I > do not remember much about it but I am hoping someone > out here remembers or knows what it is. > > I believe it was a disney film with tim Conway and > possibly Don Knots.... they are detectives and there > is a character who keeps saying "Horse Nears" instead > of horse poop. My friends think i am making this up, > if anyone can help me prove that I am partially sane > please email me the title of this movie. I know it is > NOT The Ghost and Mr Chicken. > Sounds like "The Private Eyes" - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 13:29:17 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: sss sss sex crime crime cricricricri crime My own year-by-year best-ofs reside at http://www.mindspring.com/~outdoorminer/miles/mkgbest.html. I start 'em at 1980 because that year I turned 13, discovered the Clash, Bruce, and girls, all of which changed my understanding of music (and everything else!) forever. Any attempt to do pre-1980 lists would be entirely historical reconstruction rather than first-hand memory. Anyway, I'll take 1980, 1985, and 1986 over either 1984 or 1987. But them wuz all good years. Robyn standings, for those not inclined to trowel though the list: UNDERWATER MOONLIGHT (1980): #4 BLACK SNAKE, DIAMOND ROLE (1981): #5 GROOVY DECAY (1982): #11 I OFTEN DREAM OF TRAINS (1984): #1 FEGMANIA! (1985): #7 ELEMENT OF LIGHT (1986): #16 GLOBE OF FROGS (1988): #5 QUEEN ELVIS (1989): #19 EYE (1990): #5 PERSPEX ISLAND (1991): #3 RESPECT (1993): #17 MOSS ELIXIR (1996): #12 JEWELS FOR SOPHIA (no list coded yet, but it'll be #6) I really, really need to add 1988-2000 lists, too. Plus retroactively add my post-'98 obsessions, Momus and the Fall, to the standings. Someday soon, I promise... later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 11:28:10 -0700 From: "Walker, Charles" Subject: influences/confluences To the topic of influences preparing me for Robyn for me it was back in high school - '86 or '87 - and I read some top ten album list from Peter Buck in some - more than likely now defunct - rag/zine and Element of Light was somewhere in there. I'd heard the name Hitchcock and I was in my phase of 'anything that had to do with rem/athens' went in my record collection. so i think from that impulse I bought Globe of Frogs, was uttlerly stunned, rem disappeared from my life for the most part and robyn took over like some new lover stealing into a ten year old marriage/relationship, it was that powerful an impression on me. and the rest, as THEY say, is history. chas in LA --> http://theweeklywalker.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 11:38:58 -0700 From: "Andrew D. Simchik" Subject: feels like 1984 >From: lj lindhurst >#3: You must must MUST listen to the new Nick Cave album! It >fucking KILLS me. I'm gonna try before I buy. :) From: Eb >This exchange is kinda interesting, because in recent times, I've heard a >few other people say that 1984 represents "THE year" for them. I forget how old you are? I was ten in 1984 and was really just discovering contemporary rock/pop. Before that I'd been pretty much only aware of my parents' records and maybe a few bands that my friends talked about (the Human League's "Don't You Want Me?" was one of the first pop songs I remember knowing about and liking). But from about 1982 to 1984 I became aware of MTV and had a radio station I would listen to all the time that played all those early 80s tunes everyone's so nostalgic about now. That's when I first heard Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, the Eurythmics, Tears for Fears (or maybe that was a little later?), Heart, the Police, Culture Club, etc. Aside from novelty stuff ("Pac-Man Fever") Styx's touching, subtle android love song "Mr. Roboto" was the first 45 I bought. But at the time I wasn't buying full-length LPs (oh, but I loved that Olivia Newton-John compilation with the Grease and Xanadu songs on it!), and when we moved from Florida to North Carolina in the summer of 1984 I lost track of pop music again for a couple of years. When I resurfaced it was all different (George Michael, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Poison). So there was this little New Wave bubble from my favorite childhood years that had set my tastes. So it's true -- at the time I wasn't aware of a lot of the artists I now love and whose 1984 albums are surprisingly consistent in their strangeness and authority. But I think there was something in the air that year that set it all up. Drew, looking forward to Placebo on Sunday night - -- Andrew D. Simchik, drew at stormgreen dot com http://www.stormgreen.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 14:49:13 -0400 (EDT) From: Rob Gronotte Subject: Non-voting Floridians mean less trouble for everyone... OK, I am way behind on the digest, so I apologize if these stats have already been talked about but... I don't really see your point here, was wondering if you could explain the juxtaposion of these two figures. Rob Why don't you come up and surf me sometime? --> http://www.patriot.net/users/rob > From: Stephen Mahoney > ... > > Number of Floridian ex-cons denied the right to vote last November because > of felony convictions : 525,000 > > Source: Brennan Center for Justice (N.Y.C.) > > Number of times a Floridian can be convicted of DUI before the infraction > becomes a felony : 3 > > Source: Mothers Against Drunk Driving (Irving, Tex.) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 13:49:26 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: sss sss sex crime crime cricricricri crime At 06:31 PM 5/6/2001 -0400, lj lindhurst wrote: >Echo and the Bunnymen simply RULED my high school years-! I didn't discover them until near the end of the first incarnation of the group... I had never heard a note by them, but was always intrigued by what I gleaned from reviews, and those wonderful ROCK YEARBOOK things that were culled from UK sources and issued at the holiday season in time for me to wheedle my mom to put one under the Christmas tree... The day I arrived in London in July 1987, Echo and the Bunnymen played a rooftop gig at HMV in Picadilly Circus, stirring up publicity for the next Monday's release of their self-titled album. Of course I didn't know about it until later that week, when the NME and MELODY MAKER ran stories on the gig. All I could find on UK radio when I had time for the Walkman (all the listings I found were by DJ rather than *describing* the shows in question - -- and I couldn't name a BBC DJ other than "John Peel") was the new American stuff at the time, like the current Neil Young, Zevon's SENTIMENTAL HYGIENE, etc. -- in other words, stuff I could get easily at home in the U.S. So the Bunnymen remained unheard by me. When we got back to the US, our group had to spend the night in LaGuardia Airport (another very long though amusing story). I managed to find a good underground station and listened to it through the sleepless night. They played three or four Bunnymen songs during the course of the night ("Lips Like Sugar," "The Cutter," "Do It Clean," and "The Killing Moon" if I recall), and I was in love -- but far away from London where I could have had all their stuff on CD! But within a few months, the Bunnymen catalog came out on CD in the US, and I snatched them all up. The following February, my cousin Rusty and I drove three hours to James Madison University to see them, and they played a tremendous show, with at least four cuts from every Bunnyman album. I'm so glad we got to see them, especially since Pete DeFritas wasn't long for this world. I think a little less of Echo and the Bunnymen nowadays, especially after reading Julian Cope's autobiographies with their devastating critiques of Mac, but that won't keep me from buying the boxed set when it comes out soon (June? Rhino?). >1984 was also the year that David Bowie released probably his WORST >record, "Tonight" (although I think that "Loving the Alien" is one of >his most excellent songs). Worse than the ironically-titled NEVER LET ME DOWN? No way. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 14:53:21 -0700 From: The Great Quail Subject: It was a very good year.... For me, I always dig 1980, which saw the release of a few of my favorite albums from that time.... King Crimson "Discipline" David Bowie "Scary Monsters" Talking Heads "Remain in Light" Soft Boy's "Underwater Moonlight" U2 "Boy" Bauhaus "In The Flat Fields" Rush "Permanent Waves" The Cure "Seventeen Seconds" Police "Zenyatta Mondatta" Must have been something in the water.... - --Quail PS: Oh, and the fact that LJ thinks Nick was inspired by Dan Bern.... What can I do? What can I do? - -- +---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ The Great Quail, K.S.C. (riverrun Discordian Society, Kibroth-hattaavah Branch) For fun with postmodern literature, New York vampires, and Fegmania, visit Sarnath: http://www.rpg.net/quail "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: Mon, 07 May 2001 11:58:50 -0700 From: "Andrew D. Simchik" Subject: waters of Niagara >From: Jeff Dwarf > >Hyaena isn't uneven? I can't decide. I was probably cheating, though, and thinking of Juju. >i've always favored 1987 actually. granted Ocean Rain kicks the grey >albums ass, but give me Strangeways Here We Come, Document, Kiss Me3, >Music for the Masses, Pleased to Meet Me, Darklands, maybe even The >Joshua Tree (though I like Unforgettable Fire better than it). and even >though it's a compilation, Substance. I'll give you Kiss Me and Music for Them Asses, but you are on your own favoring Strangeways and Document. I cannot even bring myself to remark on that U2 album. Besides, I spent most of 1987 waking up to "Rock Steady" and "Head to Toe" on my radio alarm, so my memories of that year are not pure. >probably a function of being the right age that year though. Could be -- I was waking up to those songs in order to go to middle school. Not the best years of my life. >From: Viv Lyon > >Is it somewhat silly, then, to nevertheless give a shit about what the >person onstage might be thinking? Yeah, probably. But I can't help it. That isn't the part that seemed silly to me. To reiterate: whether you like your fans or not, isn't it a high compliment when people in the audience are moved to tears by your music? I understand why you feel self-conscious about it. I'm just offering a different point of view. I've been really pleased when people have told me they cried at one of my performances (they are discreet about whether or not they are tears of agony :)), but maybe it's different because I didn't write the music. Drew - -- Andrew D. Simchik, drew at stormgreen dot com http://www.stormgreen.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 15:01:41 -0400 From: Jeffrey_Rose@eri.eisai.com Subject: Re: Childhood Influences And who mentioned Tom Lehrer? When my parents bought That Was the Year That Was (fondly known as TW3), we wore the grooves out. That's how I found out about Mahler, Gropius and Werfel. Alma! I played my parent's Tom Lehrer records constantly. A little late for this thread but anyway... Humor: I grew up on MAD magazine and Python then graduated to National Lampoon/SCTV/SNL. TV: Watched all the Sid & Marty Kroft stuff, Rocky & Bullwinkle, classic Bugs Bunny, George of the Jungle, Groovy Goulies, Lost In Space, Night Gallery, Fawlty Towers. Music: Listening habits went from "Hair" to AM pop to Elton John to Jethro Tull to Zeppelin to Doors to Allmans to Hendrix to Dead. I was a big 60s -early 70s music buff (hated new wave, REM etc) until a friend dragged me "Stop Making Sense" in 1984. Then I picked up the Trouser Press Record Guide and, only occasionally looked back. Robyn, REM, Talking Heads, Marshall Crenshaw, college radio 80s stuff, and melodic power pop took me to the present and set me off on a seriously warped musical collecting adventure (2200+ CDs and counting). Jeffro ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 15:11:02 -0400 From: "brian nupp" Subject: Re: influences/confluences and RHE BBC1 >To the topic of influences preparing me for Robyn > >for me it was back in high school - '86 or '87 - and I read some top ten >album list from Peter Buck in some - more than likely now defunct - >rag/zine >and Element of Light was somewhere in there. I'd heard the name Hitchcock >and I was in my phase of 'anything that had to do with rem/athens' went in >my record collection. so i think from that impulse I bought Globe of Frogs, >was uttlerly stunned, rem disappeared from my life for the most part and >robyn took over like some new lover stealing into a ten year old >marriage/relationship, it was that powerful an impression on me. and the >rest, as THEY say, is history. >chas in LA --> http://theweeklywalker.com Wow. I have almost the same story. I was sooo into anything Athens, GA. Difference is my older brother read the same article Peter Buck was involved with, and after I heard Flesh #1 (Beetle Dennis), I said REM who? And that was that. The RH collecting began, and still hasn't stopped. On a different note, I was listening to a copy of Robyn H. and the Egyptians on Mark Radcliffe Show BBC1 11/15/93 earlier for the 1st time. This was interesting cause it was the pre-end to the egyptians and Sean Lyons was adding to the group with a 2nd guitar. It's weird to hear them talking about getting back in the studio to record a new Egyptians album, which they never did. Instead the Soft Boys reunited breifly with 3 guitarists, 2 bassists, Morris, and Jim Melton on harmonica. But after that the Egyptians were no more! I wonder if they even started to record a new album or not? Not that I'm complaining, I've already said before that Moss Elixir is one of my favs. I guess this is when Morris and Sean formed the Gliders. Anybody know any more of the details between Respect and Moss Elixir? Not that it really matters. It all for the music, man, dude. Like peace, it's free... nuppy _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 12:15:12 -0700 From: "Natalie Jacobs" Subject: what's in a name? >Is there anyone else out their raised by such old-fashioned proper > >parents that they find calling someoneone whom they dont know by >their >first name abit cheaply over-familiar? As in "Robyn." Yeah, I sort of feel that way, especially with an artist I'm not overly familiar with. It's like I have to get to know them before I call them by their first names. There aren't many artists I refer to in such a familiar manner - mostly just Robyn and the members of XTC, and some E6 band members (but not all... I don't talk about "Jeff," for instance). I've always had this sense that more female artists than male artists get called by their first names - e.g. Tori, Ani, Kate, Kristin, Sarah, etc. For instance, the perpetual signs up in Ann Arbor record stores: "All Ani records on sale!" But say, if Elliott Smith records were on sale, I don't think there would be signs saying "All Elliott records on sale!" Is this just me? n. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 15:20:17 -0400 From: "Seth Frisby" Subject: The Crying Songs ahh..sweet grief, I try to cry when I can, and yet there are still only a few songs that I can categorize as good "crying" songs. Throughout High School it would have been Love Reign O'er Me, for some reason it spoke to all of my Seventeen year old confused spiritual yearning...and of course it still rocked. I would sit in dark cars listening to Quadrophenia all the way through as some sort of healing meditation and yes tears would be shed. I wish I could still do such things as an older person but I don't take myself as seriously as I did then..... Recently (actually about a year ago) I used Five years left as a weeping aid. We were just about to put our twelve year old cat to sleep and I was a bit freaked about the whole thing. Somehow he had gotten Cancerous Tumors exactly where the rabies vaccination had been administered and indeed the Vet didn't think it a coincidence as she had heard of other cases. But once Time has told me was playing it soothed a lot of the worry and pain away..and yes I'm a softie when it comes to cats, I'm often a bit of a mother figure with my Cats (except for the beard of course)...I hope stating your love for Nick hasn't yet become cliche but when in the mood he does echo any pain you might be feelling and in many cases make it better. In Hitchock's case No, I don't Remember Guildford slays me. It reminds me of all those beatiful girls and places that I fall in love with in Dreams and awake to find to find missing from the waking world. ahhh...man am I wishy washy today or what? oh and yes Zabriskie Point is crap. High brow italians should never touch Hippie propaganda..and did anyone else think that the plane in the movie would never land? Back and forth, back and forth, over the car for what seemed to be an eternity...though Pink Floyd saves the movies last Ten minutes gracefully. That's it for now... Seth _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 12:37:36 -0700 (PDT) From: "J. Brown" Subject: Re: It was a very good year.... On Mon, 7 May 2001, The Great Quail wrote: > For me, I always dig 1980, which saw the release of a few of my > favorite albums from that time.... > > King Crimson "Discipline" > David Bowie "Scary Monsters" > Talking Heads "Remain in Light" > Soft Boy's "Underwater Moonlight" > U2 "Boy" > Bauhaus "In The Flat Fields" > Rush "Permanent Waves" > The Cure "Seventeen Seconds" > Police "Zenyatta Mondatta" Add- The Clash - Sandinista Elvis Costello and the Attractionbs - Get Happy!! the first Pretenders album Squeeze - Argybargy and the best album of 1980.... Paul McCartney - McCartney II Jason Wilson Brown - University of Washington - Seattle, WA "Put your faith in death because it's free" -Robyn Hitchcock ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 14:40:29 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: Balls. At 04:56 PM 5/2/2001 -0500, GSS wrote: >On Wed, 2 May 2001, Capuchin wrote: >> R.E.M. in 1988 came out and played Stand (very poorly) and then said they >> were going to get on with the show. > >In 89 with RH, after a few other songs, stipe said "this is the stupidest >song ever written by a man" and went right into stand. Beautiful number. I thought I had REM's appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show on tape, but I can't find it right now. Anyway, Arsenio's musical guests almost always got to do two songs. REM played "Stand" first, then the show went to commercial. When they came back from commercial, Arsenio was sitting amidst the members of REM, and saying something like "Let me get this straight... You just played your huge hit song and... you say it's a 'Big dumb pop song?' What's up with that?" Stipe: "Yep. And we're going to play another one." The band then played "Get Up" as their second and final selection. Irony continues to baffle Arsenio. I *do* have Tom Waits' Arsenio appearance on tape (I taped in 6-hour mode in those days 'cos I was even poorer than now, and needed to eke out the max from each tape, though now I wish I had found the money to do everything in SP), where he said about writing with Keith Richards: "Some nights, you finish the song and not the bottle. Some nights, you finish the bottle but not the song." feeling very '89, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 21:49:41 +0200 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: CD Burning -- MAC division > Anyone know of a MAC product to replace the lousy adaptec/roxio toast > audio extractor? I have no problems BURNING with toast, but my rips > (using Toast Audio Extractor) frequently are full of clicks, pops, > static, etc (but only with tracks that are on the last 1/3 of a given > CD's playlist). I have a workaround, using my multitracking audio > workstation software, but that is really slow, and I'd like to find > something that is quick and reliable. You're using the TAE overlap function (safer but slower), right? If you do and you still have problems, IMHO, your CD-ROM is broken. I've never had problems with it. It rips perfectly as far as I can tell... Cheers, Sebastian - -- Sebastian Hagedorn Ehrenfeldg|rtel 156, 50823 Kvln, Germany http://www.spinfo.uni-koeln.de/~hgd/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 16:00:34 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: Re: sss sss sex crime crime cricricricri crime On Mon, 7 May 2001, Viv Lyon wrote: > On Sun, 6 May 2001, Andrew D. Simchik wrote: > > > > From: Viv Lyon > > > > > > I always feel sort of dirty for crying at shows, I suppose because I don't > > > feel I have the right to react that strongly to music I didn't write. > > > > That's kind of an odd point of view. Don't musicians usually want you to > > get your own personal emotions and meaning out of their music? What > > musician would really be disappointed or freaked out by having moved > > someone to tears? Isn't that (a good part of) the point? > > Well, I'm an odd person, apparently. I don't know what musicians want, not > being one myself. I assume different musicians have differing reactions to > their audience/fans. Some of the people whose music moves me seem not to > like their fans very much, and this makes me extremely self-conscious > about my reactions to their music. Of course, it doesn't make me so > self-conscious that I fail to react (as Jeme will attest, being next to me > as I run the complete emotional gamut quite visibly and enthusiastically). > Is it somewhat silly, then, to nevertheless give a shit about what the > person onstage might be thinking? Yeah, probably. But I can't help it. s'funny thing. There was a time in my life at when I used to cry a lot -- early adolescence, I s'pse. I was consequently belittled and mocked for crying a lot, by adults as well as peers, and at some point, I more or less lost the ability -- I can't remember the last time I did cry, and there have been a lot of times when I really wanted to. Several times, for example, after the woman I had been living with for nearly seven years and I split up. I wrote a song about the aftermath of that break up. I played that song at the first paying gig I had, and someone in the audience started blubbering in the middle of it. I was thrilled beyond words. It was like she was shedding the tears that I had been unable to, and it was the first best proof I had that my songs could really *work.* - -- d. np merrie amsterburg _little steps_ - - oh no, you've just read mail from doug = dmw@radix.net - get yr pathos - - www.shoddyworkmanship.net -- post punk skronk rawk = the new thing - - www.pathetic-caverns.com -- books, flicks, tunes, etc. = reviews - - www.fecklessbeast.com -- angst, guilt, fear, betrayal! = rock music ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 14:12:49 -0600 From: HAL Subject: Re: feels like 1984 > from about 1982 to 1984 I became aware > of MTV and had a radio station I would listen to all > the time that played all those early 80s tunes everyone's > so nostalgic about now. That's when I first heard > Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, the Eurythmics, Tears for > Fears (or maybe that was a little later?), Heart, the > Police, Culture Club, etc. My very first radio job was from 1980-1986 at an album oriented rock station that played this stuff and worse. It didn't take long for my initial "Almost Famous"-esque idealism to wake up to the Reality of commercial radio. At the time, I was always thinking (generally a bad idea as I grudgingly forced myself to traffick in "theatre-of-the-mind" larger-than-life bullshit SELLING of this fodder for the lemmings) that the actual kids listening (hell, devoted) to the radio station and forming their musical opinions would grow up eventually, and this short-shelf-life JUNK would be their Nostalgia. Their childhood musical memories, for God's sake! I remember "seeing into the future" and getting an overwhelming sadness at the emptiness of that legacy. (<--whatta sourpuss!) I intend this with no disrespect meant to the original poster, who is an unwitting casualty of that Era Of Radio Consultants and Playlist Restrictions, but the following quote is confirmation that my discontented instincts at that time were unfortunately correct: > Styx's > touching, subtle android love song "Mr. Roboto" was > the first 45 I bought... /hal =========== "...and the third guy was a Music Director for a radio station who kept saying 'I'll put it in next week!'". (<--the end of an old industry dirty joke) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 16:24:31 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: what's in a name? On Mon, 7 May 2001, Natalie Jacobs wrote: > I've always had this sense that more female artists than male artists > get called by their first names - e.g. Tori, Ani, Kate, Kristin, > Sarah, etc. For instance, the perpetual signs up in Ann Arbor record > stores: "All Ani records on sale!" But say, if Elliott Smith records > were on sale, I don't think there would be signs saying "All Elliott > records on sale!" yeah... i go back and forth between thinking this is a subtle form of sexism (gently belittling female songwriters) and thinking it's the result of women's names being more varied than men's names. i mean, i know who "Kate", "Kristin" and "Sarah" are from context, but i'd be surprised by a sign that just declared a sale on "Sarah CDs". unless they were talking about the record label. the latter theory is buttressed by the fact that Robyn and Rufus get this treatment. Elton too, probably. but John and John and John and Jon, not so much. a ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 13:38:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Viv Lyon Subject: Re: waters of Niagara On Mon, 7 May 2001, Andrew D. Simchik wrote: > >From: Viv Lyon > > > >Is it somewhat silly, then, to nevertheless give a shit about what the > >person onstage might be thinking? Yeah, probably. But I can't help it. > > That isn't the part that seemed silly to me. To reiterate: > whether you like your fans or not, isn't it a high compliment > when people in the audience are moved to tears by your music? > I understand why you feel self-conscious about it. I'm just > offering a different point of view. Do you accept compliments from people you don't like? I mean, do you take them to heart? Or do you distrust them, discount them, do they perhaps make you feel slightly icky? I think that if an artist doesn't like their fans, then they probably don't like to think about the emotional reactions their unlikable fans are having to their music, which is after all the fruit of the soul. Having to parade your soul for people you don't like mightn't be the pleasantest of experiences, and to watch these people (who frighten/bemuse/bore you) laughing, crying, dancing, or whatever, to music you write and perform for your own private reasons and not to entertain them, must be nauseating. Are there musicians who feel this way? I don't know. Do I suspect that there is at least one musician who feels this way? Yes. > I've been really pleased when people have told me they cried > at one of my performances (they are discreet about whether > or not they are tears of agony :)), but maybe it's different > because I didn't write the music. I don't think it makes a difference, because clearly people can form unreasonable attachments to performers (actors, chanteuses) as well as creators. If you'd had several crazy fans decide, on the basis of your creative or imitative output, that they had a special connection to you, and they tried to get close to you, and freaked you out considerably, you might find yourself becoming wary of all your fans, wondering which ones are "normal" and which ones are going to act bizarrely and make you uncomfortable. You might start to resent these people, and you might start to not want them at your shows. You might also be a big damn fool who needs to grow the fuck up and stop being so paranoid, but then who am I to say?* Vivien *a big damn fool who needs to grow up and stop being so paranoid, probably. ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V10 #183 ********************************