From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V10 #191 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Wednesday, May 9 2001 Volume 10 : Number 191 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Nickywicky [Eb ] Quality Music (tm) ["Andrew D. Simchik" ] what is art anyways [Stephen Mahoney ] milli vanilli ["Andrew D. Simchik" ] Re: fegmaniax-digest V10 #190 [Ed Poole ] It is possible to cure GOP deviation, study reveals [steve ] No politics, I think [steve ] Re: Some Gays Can Turn Straight, Study Suggests [steve ] It is possible to cure GOP deviation, study reveals [steve ] Re: fegmaniax-digest V10 #190 [Capuchin ] Re: what is art anyways [Capuchin ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 18:17:42 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Nickywicky *Much* belatedly (my gawd...I had an advance copy about three months ago!), I finally gave the new Nick Cave album an intense front-to-back listen. Shorthand review: If this album had come out last year, it would've been my #1 for 2000. You know, my 2001 has been unusually "un-Beatley," so far. I think my current favorite albums of the year would go something like Nick Cave/Foetus/Ladybug Transistor/Stephen Malkmus/David Thomas/Kristin Hersh/Tipsy/Mouse on Mars, and *none* of those albums have much to do with Beatlepop. I haven't listened to the new Of Montreal disc yet, however -- maybe that will be a winner. In other news, I saw today that the Lonesome Organist is apparently performing here on June 8th. Finally! YES!! Eb PS [re: hidden] I forgot about Luna's "Bonnie & Clyde"...yes, another good one. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 May 2001 18:42:44 -0700 From: "Andrew D. Simchik" Subject: Quality Music (tm) >From: Terrence Marks > >I gotta disagree. Medazzaland was a good album. I'm not too keen on >their other stuff, but I really liked that one. !!! >From: "Natalie Jacobs" > >I knew someone would come to the defense of Culture Club and Duran Duran. I >actually retain a sneaking fondness for the latter, but I still think they >suck, objectively speaking. Do you really listen to music "objectively"? What does that mean? Are you saying the members of those bands played their instruments poorly? I don't know enough about any instrument except voice to say, but I would say that Simon Le Bon is technically a better singer than Bob Dylan (heh), except perhaps on "Wild Boys," and Boy George sings like a dream. Are you saying that the songs they wrote were usually not meaningful, often nonsensical, and occasionally ("War Song," "Violence of Summer") downright embarrassing? Guilty as charged, but so what? I still can't listen to "Furry Green Atom Bowl" with the windows rolled down. Are you saying that their music is unpleasant and not enjoyable? 'Cause that would be a subjective judgement, and honestly it's the only one that matters. >Now, if someone comes to the defense of Howard >Jones, I think the apocalypse is nigh. I really love "The Prisoner" and "Everlasting Love," I have to admit. My six other fire-breathing, venom-drooling heads agree with me. Your turn. I don't have any guilty pleasures -- that is, I refuse to feel guilty for them -- but I bet you do. Some of them probably even suck, objectively speaking. Drew P.S. Listening to Document in the car for the first time in a while. I'd rank those first four songs as among the best REM has ever done, and among my favorite REM songs for sure. Maybe 1987 was a year for individual songs and 1984 for uniform albums? - -- Andrew D. Simchik, drew at stormgreen dot com http://www.stormgreen.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 19:05:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Stephen Mahoney Subject: what is art anyways On Wed, 9 May 2001, Andrew D. Simchik wrote: > Do you really listen to music "objectively"? What does that mean? > > Are you saying the members of those bands played their instruments > poorly? I don't know enough about any instrument except voice to say, > but I would say that Simon Le Bon is technically a better singer than > Bob Dylan (heh), except perhaps on "Wild Boys," and Boy George sings > like a dream. > > Are you saying that the songs they wrote were usually not meaningful, > often nonsensical, and occasionally ("War Song," "Violence of Summer") > downright embarrassing? Guilty as charged, but so what? I still can't > listen to "Furry Green Atom Bowl" with the windows rolled down. > > Are you saying that their music is unpleasant and not enjoyable? 'Cause > that would be a subjective judgement, and honestly it's the only one > that matters. i think the lyric content of pop songs of the 70's and the '80's could both be considered quite ridiculous depending on which song you are looking at so I wont try to defend/attack that one... but I must say that even though bob dylan sings off key and is not technically the most impressive singer, he does sing with more soul than *any* '80's performer pop or otherwise that I can think of! But then again its my subjective opinion...oh well! - -S. Gallons by which daily U.S. oil consumption would drop if SUVs average fuel efficiency increased by 3 mpg : 49,000,000 Source: Sierra Club (Washington) Gallons per day that the proposed drilling of Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is projected to yield : 42,000,000 Source: The White House Stephen Mahoney Multnomah County Library at Rockwood branch clerk stephenm@nethost.multnomah.lib.or.us 503-988-5396 fax 503-988-5178 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 May 2001 19:06:59 -0700 From: "Andrew D. Simchik" Subject: milli vanilli >From: "victorian squid" > >Someday I must lend you my copy of ABC's "Lexicon of Love". You will relish >it greatly. I was never really into ABC...but to me they always had this dignity about them that the Duran boys couldn't even comprehend. By now you will all have realized that I relished and relish that lack of dignity in this particular case. >From: Ken Ostrander >Subject: Re: 1984 vs. 1987 > >i guess it's too easy to pick on the wide sargasso sea of forgettable music >that was on the radio back then. at some point between these two years i >stopped paying attention to casey casem's american top fourty jerkoff and >stopped listening to the radio almost completely. Funny -- that span was exactly the music I missed. I had to go back and catch up on 1985 and 1986 later, and the changes that took place during that time were astonishing. Er, to me. >my vote for worst eighties band? way too many one-hit wonder-why type bands. Honestly I liked the one-hit wonder phenomenon. It was as if people were listening to how much fun the songs were instead of relying on "brand name" bands to show up on the radio again and again with no respite. And the hits were _weird_...not like fucking Fastball or the Verve Pipe. >i think no band typifies the uglyness of the decade quite like milli vanilli. >can we at least agree on that? I agree that Milli Vanilli were loathsome (full disclosure: I bought their cassette for 1/15 of a penny back when I was getting much better stuff as well from the Columbia House demons), but to my mind they were simply way ahead of their time. _Girl You Know It's True_ smacks of the state of music today, to my ears, which is a landscape that seems very similar to the state of music at that time. The eighties just didn't seem like a very ugly decade to me. This was probably due in large part to being young and isolated from the evils of the time, but when I look at the 90s, which were supposed to be so much better, I feel nauseated. At least in the 80s everyone wore black hats and white hats. The evil was plain. During the 90s, the evil organized Woodstock revivals and turned MTV from a music channel to a font of pure mush. >From: Tom Clark >p.s. Either the Roxy Music tour isn't selling well or I just got lucky, cuz >I scored front row seats today. I wanna go but I'm not sure it's worth the ticket price to me. Drew P.S. I didn't really care that the models in Milli Vanilli were not really the singers. Maybe if I'd truly liked the band, I might've. I gave my portion of the settlement to charity. - -- Andrew D. Simchik, drew at stormgreen dot com http://www.stormgreen.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 May 2001 22:09:56 -0400 From: Ed Poole Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V10 #190 > But anyway, this idea that felons can be denied the right to vote comes > from the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of > America (against which [the 14th Amendment, I mean] I've preached > on this list before). > [snip] > > It is, I believe, at this point in US history where we really went wrong. > > In an attempt to thwart further "revolution", several rules were passed at > the national level taking unprecedented rights from the people and their > local representatives at the county and state level into the hands of the > federal government and creating a kind of fiefdom that had never existed > in the history of this country. Jeme, I've got to take major exception to this line of argument. I know that at the tail end of your discourse, you advocate an equal protection (or was it equal rights?) amendment binding on both the states and the federal government, so I'm not about to declare you a reactionary or (worse) a militia-type states rights-er, but you are perilously close in your re-telling of history here. I will not argue with you about the "fairness" of the passage of the 14th amendment; indeed, I agree that it was crammed down the throats of the southern states, as a condition for re-entry into the union. Whatever the fairness of the process, however, the fact remains that the amendment (along with the 13th, which abolished slavery once and for all and all "incidents" thereto), were (a) necessary; (b) just; and (c) proper. The Bill of Rights was motivated by a fear of a tyrranical federal power, and so guaranteed certain rights against their being abridged by the federal government. By 1865 it was clear that the greatest threat to individual liberties came not from the central government (which had, until the civil war, been pretty weak), bu t from the states. (just ask any black southerner). Did the 14th amendment work a revolution of American democracy? No doubt about it, it did. Has the federal government abused the ever-increasig power it has reserved unto itself? Again, no doubt it has. But, these are epiphenomena of the essential aim of the 14th amendment, which was to guarantee that the states did not trample the very same rights guaranteed by the bill of rights to be free of federal interference. Indeed, the "lazy" judges you criticize were responsible, largely through "incorporation" of the Bill of Rights as "rights" guaranteed by the 14th, for the greatest progressive revolution in the history of the country -- namely, the civil rights jurisprudence of the Warren-era supreme court. You mention Roe -- but how about Miranda v. Arizona? Or Carr v. Ohio? Or Brown v. Board of Education? Or Duke Power v. Griggs? (OK, that was a Title VII case). The point of the 14th Amendment is that there must be, in a federal system, a means of protecting individual liberties agaist the tyrrany of the majority. In particular, just because, say South Carolina majorities favor a poll tax, or Texas sees no problem with confessions otained through torture, doesn't mean it's OK. A federal court, which stands outside the petty prejudices of the court system run by the individual state, can guarantee that those rights are protected. Whatever, I'll stop. Whatever harm yu feel has come from the 14th cannot possibly stand up to the all the progress it has enabled. - -ed ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 21:31:34 -0500 From: steve Subject: It is possible to cure GOP deviation, study reveals http://www.buzzflashcom.bigstep.com/generic.html;$sessionid$MOKV4HIAACKCHWGIHUXXBMWYZA4S1PX0? pid=9 - - Steve __________ Is this thing on? Sent via OS X Mail. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 May 2001 22:34:43 -0400 From: "Seth Frisby" Subject: Badly Drawn Boy and Hair Metal Hey Folks, That Brookings cd does sound intriguing, in fact i'm a fairly big fan of the Gadfly label in general. A really good friend of mine, Jean, works for them which I didn't know for a while until we took a trip with her and she said "you like Robyn Hitchcock right?" and I of course said yeah. She told me he was on the Western Electric album which she later gave me, and it is pretty good. We were both on a barge going across lake Champlain incidentally. She then told me the list of people on Gadfly until she came to Kimberley Rew which stopped me in my tracks "Kimberley Rew? Do you know who that is?", and of course she did "yeah and I've talked to him a lot and he has the funniest accent". She then did a spot on silly Kimberley impersonation, which I thought was a little over the top until I actually heard that cute voice. Actually I think I'll giver her a call tonight... and yes kids think its funny to like Hair Metal now. I was at a party recently where someone tried to put on Def Leppard and was luckily stopped. But I don't think its just hair Metal because he played Ice Ice baby a few times so its probably that whole cheesy era they grew up with that everyone's nostalgic for, whether or not they should be. I saw Badly Drawn Boy last week and he started his show with a clip that at first stated "He is a Legend" then "He is a Star" and then had Jon Bon Jovi jumping off the stage in full Mulleted glory (though his haircut might fall out of the Mullet category) and of course everyone cheered. It turned out to be a mockumentary about Bon Jovi's skinny British pool cleaner and about how proud he was to serve Jon. The most memorable line was "people are always saying 'but you're just a pool cleaner' but i'm Jon Bon Jovi's pool cleaner Bitch!" which certainly amused the crowd. Good show too, he seemed happy and drunk and kept on changing his lyrics to show how much he loved "Boston Town". There was another rude audience member though who kept on heckling him, yelling obscenities, and trying to ruin a nice quiet a capella moment(don't you hate that?). Damon ended up throwing something at him and singing about how he loved everyone except "that guy". I bet that hurt. Well since I feel long winded i'll run away while I have my dignity.... Seth p.s. Mark my words GnR will be popular once they reemerge. You should hear the way some talk about them...man oh man... _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 21:34:43 -0500 From: steve Subject: No politics, I think http://strider.animenet.org/fight.swf - - Steve __________ Never underestimate the power of a Dark Clown! - Darph Bobo http://www.trippingtherift.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 21:21:04 -0500 From: steve Subject: Re: Some Gays Can Turn Straight, Study Suggests On Wednesday, May 9, 2001, at 03:37 PM, Poole, R. Edward wrote: > There are even mass-produced videos (straight from Colorado Springs, home > of > Americans for Family Values, or whatever the name of that organization > that > sponsored the Colorado constitutional amendment about eight years ago that > would have prevented Colorado lawmakers from passing anti-discrimination > laws based on sexual orientation)................... There are a number of fundie organizations in Colorado Springs. They cluster around the king daddy of such groups, Focus On The Family, run by James Dobson, would-be Ayatollah of the USofA. Just for fun, here's one of Dobson's pals: http://www.pointofview.net/ - - Steve __________ Never underestimate the power of a Dark Clown! - Darph Bobo http://www.trippingtherift.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 19:37:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Mike Swedene Subject: Re: Secret tracks Well... depending on what book you read, like Mark Lewson (sp?) Sessions book (oop), the "Her Majesty" was NOT supposed to be on the album at all.... It was a "left over" track that Paul wanted to bring home. As per the book, each of the members brought home a copy of the original master tapes for them to listen to and paul asked the engineer to throw that song at the end of his recording so he could have it. Supposedly the tapes got switched and Paul's copy of "Abbey road" ended up as the official release. Just something I read. whatever that is worth. Peace, love and Threatles, Herbie np - The Beatles "30 days" Disc 4 "Don't Be Cruel" - --- HAL wrote: > > How many CDs do you know of with the pre-track 1 > hidden track? > > > >At the risk of drawing the ire of the anti-Dead, > I'll mention that there > > >is a pre-track 1 hidden track on the Grateful > Dead's "Infrared Roses". > > > I'll have to investigate that, I always start IR > at track 2 to avoid the > > rather tedious crowd noise thing. > > Whoops! The hidden track I was thinking of is NOT on > "Infrared Roses", > but instead it can be found on John Oswald's > "Plunderphonics" Dark Star > magnum opus "Grayfolded" (it's on the second disc > "Mirror Ashes", > pre-track 1). Sorry for any confusion. > > Ross: > > > those hidden tracks-- > > > "Her Majesty" Beatles, Abbey Road > > I know this was listed but it sounds like a hidden > track. > > It was *not* originally listed on the first LP > pressings. The Fabs did > intend it to be a surprise; a way to take the wind > out of their own > sails following the grandeur of the Side 2 medley. > (On the subject of > Beatle Easter Eggs, the "inner groove" and the > "music for dogs" tracks > on Sgt. Pepper could qualify as well.) > > /hal Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 21:41:33 -0500 From: steve Subject: It is possible to cure GOP deviation, study reveals http://www.buzzflashcom.bigstep.com/generic.html;$sessionid$MOKV4HIAACKCHWGIHUXXBMWYZA4S1PX0? pid=9 - - Steve __________ Never underestimate the power of a Dark Clown! - Darph Bobo http://www.trippingtherift.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 20:07:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: It is possible to cure GOP deviation, study reveals On Wed, 9 May 2001, steve wrote: > http://www.buzzflashcom.bigstep.com/generic.html;$sessionid$MOKV4HIAACKCHWGIHUXXBMWYZA4S1PX0? > pid=9 I read some of the other articles at this site. All I have to say is that I've never seen as much rose-colored crap in one place. Clearly it's an east coast operation (or firmly midwest). J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 23:08:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Jill Brand Subject: Re: Some Gays Can Turn Straight, Study Suggests My kids are 9 and 12, and the big thing these days is for kids to try to insult each other by calling others "gay." I've told my kids that the suitable response to this is "Thank you." Jill ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 20:11:00 -0700 From: Eb Subject: You say Milli Vanilli, I say Haysi Fantayzee...you spin me 'round, I eat cannibal >>my vote for worst eighties band? way too many one-hit wonder-why type bands. The worst '80s one-hit wonder which leaps to my mind is Felony. Remember "The Fanatic"? Eeeeek. Astoundingly wretched. But there are plenty of loathesome nominees from that anyone-with-a-synthesizer-and-a-silly-hairstyle-can-have-a-hit era. As for *sustained* worst '80s acts, I don't have a firm choice. However, I can certainly rattle off some artists who really drove me nuts at the time: INXS, Billy Idol, the Cult, the Alarm, Falco, the Fixx, Missing Persons, Spandau Ballet, the Thompson Twins, Wang Chung, Robert Palmer.... I'll resist saying the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sisters of Mercy, just so I won't ruffle any feathers. Oops, too late. ;) Eb ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 May 2001 20:12:49 -0700 From: "Andrew D. Simchik" Subject: Re: what is art anyways on 5/9/01 7:05 PM, Stephen Mahoney at stephenm@multcolib.org wrote: > but I must say that even though bob dylan sings off key and is not > technically the most impressive singer, he does sing with more soul > than *any* '80's performer pop or otherwise that I can think of! That's a perfectly defensible opinion. I can't think of an 80s performer off the top of my head I'd pit against him in that arena. Which is why I specified "technically." We can come up with some pretty objective criteria to talk about technical singing ability. "Soul" is a little more subjective, and when you get into tricky territory like "quality" you're in trouble. I'd argue that Duran Duran filled the role they aimed for and did so admirably. Oh, I just thought of another artist with nonsensical and sometimes embarrassing but incredibly pleasurable songs: T. Rex. Do you notice that, with the exception of Culture Club, we're mainly discussing glam and its descendents? Drew ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 21:03:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V10 #190 On Wed, 9 May 2001, Ed Poole wrote: > Jeme, I've got to take major exception to this line of argument. I > know that at the tail end of your discourse, you advocate an equal > protection (or was it equal rights?) amendment binding on both the > states and the federal government, so I'm not about to declare you a > reactionary or (worse) a militia-type states rights-er, but you are > perilously close in your re-telling of history here. First of all, I'm quite sympathetic to the "militia-types", so don't hold your hatred quite yet. At the same time, the point that local populations can be easily exploited by powerful external forces or miss the bigger picture on things like land use and species preservation is understood and well taken. The 14th Amendment is a poor excuse for an equal protection clause. It limits rights to "citizens" as it re-defines them and, for the first time in US legal history, claims all of these citizens as subjects of the federal government. This should rightly be replaced by a more broad and complete protection clause (with due process) and the definition of citizen and person should be made to exclude corporations from the rights granted to persons. Corporations should, however, be subject to the responsibilities of persons. The apparent "unfairness" of subjecting a corporation to responsibilities without granting the rights and privileges of individuals is falacious, I think. It is possible to consider a corporatioon as an entity and grant it rights within a business context (contract, property holding and distribution, etc.) without granting the rights of free association, speech, and arms granted to individuals and non-corporate organizations and that recognition (of what is essentially a fictional individual) alone is a reasonable balance against subjecting a corporate entity and its human proxies to the laws of the local jurisdiction. I firmly believe that corporate crime should be defined as violation of criminal or civil statute by a corporate entity. Punishment for ALL corporate crime should include fines against the corporation as well as equivalent and equal criminal charges against all three of the following: the individuals responsible for directly committing the crime, their immediate supervisors, and the chief executive or executive of record of the corporation. Section two destroys the civilian rights of those who have repaid any and all debts to society for their actions and severely limits their ability to reshape what they may perceive to be an unjust system. The apportioning of representatives should be defined more succinctly and the right of a citizen to vote should be part of the equal protection clause and uninfringable. The third section removes the ability of revolutionaries and former revolutionaries to seek public office even if the people support it. I firmly believe that the right of revolution is inalienable. See the Constitution of the State of New Hampshire for a well-written Right of Revolution. It goes on to not just invalidate the debt of the southern states to their various creditors, but uber-validate the "legitimate" debt and claim that it is unquestionable. This was a ploy by the northern landed gentry to protect their own right to repayment for those credits extended to the union during the Civil War. This should be stricken and replaced with a balanced budget amendment. I mean, what the FUCK does "shall not be questioned" MEAN, anyway? > I will not argue with you about the "fairness" of the passage of the > 14th amendment; indeed, I agree that it was crammed down the throats > of the southern states, as a condition for re-entry into the union. Actually, they were already let back in... they just weren't allowed into Congress (physically, though through no actual legal act) until after the northern state representatives ratified the amendment. Johnson signed it without blinking. (Lincoln signed a 13th amendment that said more or less the opposite of what our 13th says today, but it was never ratified.) > Whatever the fairness of the process, however, the fact remains that > the amendment (along with the 13th, which abolished slavery once and > for all and all "incidents" thereto), were (a) necessary; (b) just; > and (c) proper. there is nothing just or proper about removing the voting rights of those who have supposedly repaid society for their crimes. There is nothing necessary about removing the right of the people to question their government's debt. > Did the 14th amendment work a revolution of American democracy? No > doubt about it, it did. Has the federal government abused the > ever-increasig power it has reserved unto itself? Again, no doubt it > has. But, these are epiphenomena of the essential aim of the 14th > amendment, which was to guarantee that the states did not trample the > very same rights guaranteed by the bill of rights to be free of > federal interference. You're only refering to the first section of the Article. The other three sections cannot be similarly justified. > Indeed, the "lazy" judges you criticize were responsible, largely > through "incorporation" of the Bill of Rights as "rights" guaranteed > by the 14th, for the greatest progressive revolution in the history of > the country And nearly every horrific act against democracy and the environment has been done in the name of protection corporations as persons under this Article. The Granger Cases made it clear that the railroads were as important as people... without it ever being argued! And by the time it got to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, Cheif Justice Waite simply said that he would not hear ANY argument about whether or not corporations are protected "we believe that they are". That's lazy and irresponsible. > -- namely, the civil rights jurisprudence of the Warren-era supreme > court. You mention Roe -- but how about Miranda v. Arizona? Or Carr > v. Ohio? Or Brown v. Board of Education? Those are clearly important and right-thinking cases. But which of them would not have been served by merely an equal protection amendment without the attendant bullshit? > The point of the 14th Amendment is that there must be, in a federal > system, a means of protecting individual liberties agaist the tyrrany > of the majority. I don't believe that this is the intent or the effect of the 14th Amendment beyond the first section and don't believe that the first section is particularly meaningful or concise in its delivery of that message. > In particular, just because, say South Carolina majorities favor a > poll tax, or Texas sees no problem with confessions otained through > torture, doesn't mean it's OK. A federal court, which stands outside > the petty prejudices of the court system run by the individual state, > can guarantee that those rights are protected. Absolutely. And that was certainly the intent of the Bill of Rights and it is not immediately clear that the rights reserved in the Constitution explicitly (and implicitly in the 9th Amendment) should also not be infringed by the states. So be it. And I reject the notion that the 14th Amendment has done more good than harm. There is no telling what the MILLIONS of Americans denied their right to vote would have done to change this country for the better. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 May 2001 21:14:48 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: what is art anyways On Wed, 9 May 2001, Andrew D. Simchik wrote: > on 5/9/01 7:05 PM, Stephen Mahoney at stephenm@multcolib.org wrote: > > but I must say that even though bob dylan sings off key and is not > > technically the most impressive singer, he does sing with more soul > > than *any* '80's performer pop or otherwise that I can think of! > > That's a perfectly defensible opinion. As you went on to show, Drew, it's not a defensible opinion at all! It's an unassailable belief based on nothing quantifiable or describable. "more soul"? Bah. I've long maintained that "soul" in your singing is just an attempt to make up for music or lyrics incapable of evoking emotion by handing the emotions to the listener in the most obvious way possible. > I can't think of an 80s performer off the top of my head I'd pit > against him in that arena. I'd also say that none of the 80s pop acts discussed so far were really all that intent on emotional manipulation. They were working on a completely different level. Except for some R.E.M. stuff... and I wouldn't say that Stipe got "soulful" really at all until Automatic For The People. It's a bit like saying you can't think of a single professional golfer that could challenge Scotty Pippen at the free throw line. No shit. And how long has it been since I said something about Elvis Costello's "crappy sentimentality"? While I've always appreciated some of his work and have come to appreciate much more given my current living situation and partnership, I think he is at his absolute worst when he puts too much "soul" in his voice. Oh... and I really like some MoTown stuff... some. > Do you notice that, with the exception of Culture Club, we're mainly > discussing glam and its descendents? With the EXCEPTION of Culture Club? J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V10 #191 ********************************