From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V11 #391 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Friday, November 22 2002 Volume 11 : Number 391 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Jesus, there were a lot of posts to plow through today -- The Singles [Je] Pitchfork 80's-90's [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] Re: Icons of iconoclasm [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] Re: the miller's tale [Eb ] another load of antipodean spew [grutness@surf4nix.com (James Dignan)] no love for rockets [drew ] Re: Boredoms ["Brian Hoare" ] singin on the brain [drew ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 20:56:38 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Jesus, there were a lot of posts to plow through today -- The Singles Carnelian Buddha wrote: > > From: Jeff Dwarf > > [my list deleted for space] > > excellent list, never let it be said I can't take a compliment. > as i mentioned before, i'd probably choose _The Head on the Door_ as > the standout Cure for me, but _Kiss Me_ is notable too. I know this is heresy, but other than "Inbetween Days," "Kyoto Song," and "A Night Like This," I've never really cared for THOTD. Even "Close to Me" sounds flat without the horns. > as much as i used to dance to Ebb's "Join In The Chant" at the goth > clubs when i was a teenager, i can't see their work being influential > enough to put on a top 100 list. i like your list overall, though. :) Well, "JITC" was on That Total Age, not Belief. :P As for influence, Nine Inch Nails has always sounds more like Nitzer Ebb than Ministry or Skinny Puppy etc. At least, to my ears. ======== Miles Goosens wrote: > Add me to the "can't stand Billy Corgan's voice" brigade -- for all I > know, Smashing Pumpkins could have been the most formidable > songwriting and playing force of the 1990s, but I'll never know since > Corgan's bleat forces me to turn off their stuff in 20 seconds or > less. Nice Sonic Youth imitation on "1979," though. It's hard to listen to anything if you hate the singer's voice. I can't take Coldplay for the same reason, though with a less Dave Matthews-ish singer, I'd probably like them. "1979" pulls of the great trick of not only being a dead-on good SY impersonation, but also the best New Order song since _Technique._ and SY and NO aren't two bands that it's easy to be simulataneously. ======== Ken Weingold wrote: > Believe it or not, my first Banshees album was The Scream. Hell of > an intro, too! One of the top 5 debut albums of all time. Join Hands was truly awful, though they rebounded pretty nicely with Kaleidoscope, Juju, and finally AKITD. About the only band to go that bad on a second album after a great debut to recover. ======== "Poole, R. Edward" wrote: > [on canonical iconoclast albums opinions] > I suggest you adopt Led Zep's "Presence" and that post-Keith Moon Who > record, and Gang of Four's distressingly awful "Mall" and maybe that > new Breeders dics and "Little Creatures." While it's not as good as the first 5, Little Creatures is still a pretty damn nice albums! Then again, I like Monster. And Adore. ======== drew wrote: > On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, Aaron Mandel wrote: >> drew wrote: >>> From: Jeff Dwarf >>>> New Order/Brotherhood or Low-Life -- both are far better than PC&L >>> Really? That's disappointing. I was just about to go >>> pick up PC&L. Low-Life I'll agree with but I never liked >>> Brotherhood. >> PC&L was a nice tight album in its original eight-song form. I love >> "Blue Monday", but I don't think there's anywhere you can put it on >> the album where it doesn't break the flow. The standard solution >> ("Blue Monday" after what would have been side A, "The Beach" after >> side B) is as good as any, I guess. Anyway, don't let Drew deter >> you. Buy it. > Hey! I was the one being deterred, not doing the deterring! > I guess I've picked up a deserved reputation for negativity. > Sigh. And for the record, I wasn't, nor would I, deter someone from buying PC&L. It's a good album, but I would easily rank it behind Low-Life and Brotherhood, and about even with Technique. But it's still pretty good - -- just not great (and I would definitely skip over "Blue Monday" when listening, at least at first, not because BM isn't great, but it IS in the way). I would also say that the idea that there isn't still a Curtis shadow over parts of the album (as the review in the list claims) is pretty laughable, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. [I would probably say the Curtis shadow is relegated to being no longer imposing with "Elegia" on Low Life.] ======== drew wrote: > Interestingly, I'm not sure there is a canonical > judgement on the Cure, except that I hope everyone hated Wild Mood > Swings as much as I did. I hate Bloodflowers almost as much, but > up to and including Wish I think they're all respectable favorites. The conventional wisdom on The Cure would probably be against those two, and The Top. I can kinda go with disliking most of WMS, like The Top a lot (I tend to think of it as the better rough draft version of THOTD), and have been mostly non-plussed by Bloodflowers, though I listened to it a few days ago, and liked it a lot more than I remembered, though I'd never rate it as slightly better than okay. ======== Ken Weingold wrote: > Ummm, I lost the thread here, but anyone into New Order who doesn't > have it, pick up Movement. Dreams Never End is worth it alone. Yeah, but the rest of it is pretty boring. Better off buying the American ?(Best Of), which has "Dreams Never End" (which, incidentally, features lead vocals by Peter Hook!), the single version of "Touched by the Hand of God," and the two good songs off of _Republic_ ("Regret" and "Ruined in a Day"). ===== "If we don't allow journalists, politicians, and every two-bit Joe Schmo with a cause to grandstand by using 9-11 as a lame rhetorical device, then the terrorists have already won." -- "Shredder" "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt . Yahoo! Mail Plus  Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 23:30:23 -0600 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Pitchfork 80's-90's Quoting drew : > > From: "Michael E. Kupietz, wearing a pointy hat" > > > > True, although my opinion is that looking solely at the widely, > > commercially popular music, every decade has it's cheese, lots of it, but > > the '80s pop music scene was particularly abysmal compared to decades > > before or since. I think popular music in the '90s, f'rinstance, has had > > its share of moments of true excellence. > > I dunno...I think it depends on where the cutoff for "widely, > commercially popular music" is and what country you're looking > at. I heard piles and piles and piles of shit in the 90s on > commercial radio, personally, and am going to have real trouble > trying to be nostalgic for that decade in the future, at least > as far as music is concerned. Thinking back on some of the > major trends -- grunge, generic alternarock, ska, swing revival, > nu-metal, the rise of Mouseketeer pop -- I just get a horrible > aftertaste in my mouth. Every decade is full of shit. Every decade has great stuff in it. This should surprise no one. I think distinctions need to be drawn between the overall quality of a decade's music (as if this is possible, given the huge quantities of music, not to mention the arbitrariness of "decades," not to mention that who cares?), the quality of its best-selling albums, the quality of its best-selling/most-played songs, the quality and character of its most influential recordings. And, on a personal level, whatever combination of ex-girlfriends, chemical intake, and idiotic political leaders one might associate with the music. Me, I think that the second half of the nineties, and the uh-ohs so far ('00s), have been pretty miserable in terms of chart songs. The first half of the nineties was a veritable golden age in comparison: at the time, I remember thinking, "oh Christ, is there anything more bland than Gin Blossoms and Bush?" (not that they sounded alike). Now, either act would be a fucking glass of cool water in the middle of a white-hot desert compared to nearly anything popular on the radio or MTV of the last five years or so. What's also interesting (to me, but I'm the guy with the keyboard right now) is the way popular memory of a decade changes dramatically from what that decade felt like to those who lived through it. I'm 40, so I remember the '80s - and when people imagine that The Human League and "Tainted Love" characterized the decade...uh, no: lots more hair metal, for example - and it's amazing, and sad, how much popular accounts overlook American indie rock (R.E.M.: whatever you think of them now, the '80s would have been radically different without them, and the Replacements, etc.) and hardcore punk LA-style, and much else besides. Oh: Love and Rockets have never done anything for me at all. Maybe it's all the reverb on 7th...but it reminds me of bad Moody Blues. And wotzisname the singer is utterly characterless. And in honor of my now-playing list: how can Pitchfork's list not include either the first or second Psychedelic Furs albums? Geez...and I'm thinking no Echo & the Bunnymen, no Teardrop Explodes/Julian Cope...sorry, guys & gals, gotta call you on that. Oh yeah: what's with a (presumably) white guy, on a list that (judging from every picture I've ever seen) is 90% (at least) white, complaining about "white-boy indie rockers" or whatever the phrase was? What, one is supposed to listen to music *solely because* it's done by folks of ethnicities other than our own? Isn't that as lame as *not* listening to it for similar reasons? I don't really feel any need to pretend that I don't listen most often to music that happens to be by white boys (and white girls): not that I think other music is worse is any objective way (as if there's such a thing), it's just not (as often) what I like. Much respect, but I'm not going to say (as someone else said) "better get some black music on here." The way to do that, if you're a magazine, is to make sure your staff has people who like all kinds of music on it. ..Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html :: we make everything you need, and you need everything we make np: Psychedelic Furs _Talk Talk Talk_ (remastered ed.) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 23:45:02 -0600 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: Icons of iconoclasm Quoting "Rex.Broome" : > Ed prescribes for Eb: > >>I suggest you adopt Led Zep's "Presence" and that post-Keith Moon Who > >>record, and Gang of Four's distressingly awful "Mall" and maybe that new > >>Breeders dics and "Little Creatures." > > Oooh, the Reed-less VU album. And Cut the Crap. How about "Reverberation" > by the Bunnymen? A born-again Dylan album or two? McCartney's classical > records? Clapton's techno LP? I humbly suggest that _True Stories_ is a way weaker Talking Heads album than _Little Creatures_. ..Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html :: When the only tool you have is an interociter, you tend to treat :: everything as if it were a fourth-order nanodimensional sub-quantum :: temporo-spatial anomaly. :: --Crow T. Maslow ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 21:44:44 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: the miller's tale >Jeffrey: >I'm not sure what Eb meant by "short melodic attention span" You know exactly what I meant. Burt Bacharach, he ain't. Would you prefer that I used a phrase like "riddled with spiraling, recursive series of left turns"? >since I can think of >several Miller melodies that are archetypally well constructed in >terms of theme >and variation of melodic shape over the course of a phrase. You mean his 20 years of songwriting have produced several melodies which *don't* bump and sputter around like a toy motorboat in a bathtub? Glad to hear it! ;) (I'd be curious to see your list anyway, though.) >Of course, those >phrases (in classic style derived from early Beatles) are often a >bit off-kilter >to fit lyrics... Of course, indeed. One of the chief reasons why so many of his songs are painfully awkward and "off-kilter." And that strained attempt to drag the Beatles into the debate won't wash. To claim this is a characteristic trait of the Beatles is pure hooey, regardless of "She Said She Said," "All You Need is Love" or whatever other scant examples of knotty-meter-which-fits-lyrics examples you can dig out. >I forget the other criticism...I think it had something to do with >"he can't be as >good as you people say, since lots of people haven't heard of him, even people >who'd be expected to have done so." This is a deliberately obtuse, muddled statement designed to depict my views as the same. Also won't wash. Especially since I never said anything about people who haven't heard of him. What I said was that people *don't have interest* in him. > Is not the subject of *this* list currently >out of any solo label record contract? I guess he must not be as >good as we say >either. Hey, I'm the last one to get self-righteously indignant if someone dismisses Hitchcock's recent material. >Oh yeah: what's with a (presumably) white guy, on a list that >(judging from every >picture I've ever seen) is 90% (at least) white, complaining about "white-boy >indie rockers" or whatever the phrase was? What, one is supposed to listen to >music *solely because* it's done by folks of ethnicities other than our own? This is a pretty sleazy retort. The Pitchfork list is glaringly narrow in scope, and that's apparent to almost anyone. Twisting my previous description into a strident call for "Affirmative Action" is just a ruse, and you know it. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 19:02:05 +1300 From: grutness@surf4nix.com (James Dignan) Subject: another load of antipodean spew >Ed prescribes for Eb: >>>I suggest you adopt Led Zep's "Presence" and that post-Keith Moon Who >>>record, and Gang of Four's distressingly awful "Mall" and maybe that new >>>Breeders dics and "Little Creatures." > >Oooh, the Reed-less VU album. And Cut the Crap. How about "Reverberation" >by the Bunnymen? A born-again Dylan album or two? McCartney's classical >records? Clapton's techno LP? > >This could be a great list. hm. It could at that. Blondie's final album? Kate Bush's "Never for ever"? Bowie with Tin Machine? Any Genesis post-1977? Jethro Tull's "A passion play"? Van Morrison's "A period of transition"? I have a question for y'all. I have tried listening to Pearl Jam, and never made it through more than two or three songs of an album. Yet I love their collaborations: their work with Crowded House, "Long road", with Neil Young, andEV's song with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on the "Dead man walking" soundrack. I also like the very obviously NFAK inspored sound of the track "Who you are". What's the solution? Is there a PJ album which sounds more like this work, or am I going to have to take the 90% bad with the 10% good? >... That was supposed to be "Marty" Willson-Piper records, and here I am >talking about them... I was going to ask about that, but you answered before I got a chance. An answer without a question, rather than "Questions without answers"! If you like the Church but feel there's somethingg missing in their sound or unachieved which could have been achieved (good summary, Jim), I'd suggest trying the two Jack Frost albums (Jack Frost, and Snow Job). Jack Frost is Steve Kilbey and the Go-betweens' GW McLennan. You might find it more to your taste. FWIW I like the melodic Church (including Of Skins and Heart, Seance, and my favourite - The Blurred Crusade) a bit more than the atmospheric Church, but I'd still say that Priest=Aura is one of my favourite Church albums. And the covers album, A Box of Birds, is intriguing for both the performances and the peculiar yet impressive choices of songs to cover. >i gotta say, though i've never been a Durannie, i've always been a big fan of >the Monkees - i was a pre-teen during their 80's resurgence, and almost 20 >years later, i'm still terribly fond of _Head_, and most of Nesmith's songs. >i tend to skip over the majority of Davy Jones songs these days, though. >euuuugh. me too. And a lot of the songs are so damned catchy. You should catch Alice and I doing a two part harmony version of "What am I doing Hangin' Round?" on car journeys. Well, maybe not. Everyone picks on the Monkees for not playing instruments and not writing the songs either. Yet the same can be said of many 60s artists - from Tom Jones to the Supremes. And by the end of the band's career a sizable amount of the instrumentation and a large number of the songs were written by the Monkees themselves. The main difference with the Monkees was that they were hand-picked by someone outside the music industry, rather than being a group of neighbourhood friends, or picked by interview by other band members. Hardly a big enough crime to write them off for that reason alone. James James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand. =-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= .-=-.-=-.-=-.- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-. -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= You talk to me as if from a distance =-.-=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time -=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 17:41:37 -0800 (PST) From: drew Subject: no love for rockets > From: Miles Goosens [Earth Sun Moon] > Not even "The Mirror People"? (I like the faster electric-er version > best.) "Here on Earth"? "The Telephone Is Empty"? Waaah. I barely remember what those songs sound like. Sorry. :) [Express] > death. Is "Ball of Confusion" on your copy? Yep. I'll get these albums out for tomorrow. The usual pattern for me is that I dis something and then listen to it again to make sure I was right, and then find something I really like about it. So I might be posting "I was wrong" tomorrow, who knows? But then again I might not. > "New Moon" was the beginning of the end for me -- I remember seeing the > video for it (which also meant hearing it for the first time) and thinking > "man, this is some endless, directionless, boring crap." Wow. I can't relate to that impression at all. To me it's wonderful, spine-tingly pop, irresistibly singable and just about the only really terrific track on its album. I don't hate Seven and the Ragged Tiger; I just think it's full of fairly anonymous songs. I've always loved the minor-major key change in "I Take the Dice," though. As long as we're on the subject, I might as well sketch my Duran polarities. The debut and Rio are great fun. We just talked about Seven. I've never heard Arena; I'm afraid to hear Le Bon outside the studio. "A View to a Kill" is fabulous. Notorious is eh; "American Science" gives me chills, and while I can enjoy the rest of the album it feels like being home sick from school to me -- pleasant, but not easy to actively enjoy. Then there's Big Thing, which I find weirdly interesting but not especially good. I must admit I love the singles from it, especially the implausible "All She Wants Is." The less said about Liberty the better; whoa jesus was that a pile of crap, even for Duran. The second self- titled album we'll come to in a minute. I never bought Medazzaland (reviewed it for the radio station; it slid by without a hook in evidence), but thanks to Greatest I now LOVE "Electric Barbarella." A bit of a rip on "Every Dream Home a Heartache," in a way, but it sums up everything Duran Duran are about (including the name) AND it has a killer tune. Very, very fun to sing in the car, and let me admit right now that singability carries a lot of clout with me. And yes, I eventually picked up Pop Trash for next to nothing, and what do you know, the title is correct, but not in a good way. I've never heard Thank You and I suspect that's for the best. As I mentioned before, I like the Arcadia album an awful lot, and would place it at least on par with Rio. > FWIW, I think the two '90s "comeback" singles, "Ordinary World" and "Come > Undone," are just transcendently good, among the best things they've ever > done, and, heck, among the best singles of the decade. Man, I don't know if I'd go that far, but they convinced me to buy the album. As you say, the album itself is better than expected, but unfortunately still not so great. I find it hard to recall the songs on it. > From: "Michael E. Kupietz, wearing a pointy hat" > > To me, "widely, commercially popular music" generally means what I, is a > move about in my little personal Mikeycosm, hear on the radio and TV when > I'm not going out of my way to look for the "alternative" - college radio, > highly specialized or narrowly focused formats, etc., and includes anything > I might hear a randomly on the street or in a club that I didn't go to > specifically for a certain band or type of music. > > In the '90s, that would include: Radiohead "OK Computer", Liz Phair "Exile > In Guyville", G. Love & Special Sauce (first album), just off the top of my > head - three albums I consider unqualifiedly great. Well, see, the funny thing is I define "widely, commercially popular music" pretty much the same way, and I had to actively seek out both Radiohead and Liz Phair based on more word-of-mouth-type recommendations and music magazines. All of the music I heard in the passive way you describe sucked, sucked, sucked. It was horribly depressing...a very frattish era, it seemed to me. Not a lot of yin going around and an awful lot of yang, Lilith Fair be damned. I think I must have heard some G. Love and Special Sauce at some point and loathed it. Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that Weezer easily make my list of annoying bands. Lordy, I hate that crew. > Plus the continued happenings on the Hip Hop front Here's where I would buy your argument (if I were more hip-hop literate). > I don't get into electronica/club/DJ music, but I respect it on certain > levels as a very interesting phenomenon - I feel it's exactly where rock > was in the mid '60s, a genre where it was possible for teenaged kids to > start in their garage and become a (relative) superstar on the strength of > their skill and a little bit of luck, without requiring corporate backing > to make it big. I like that aspect of it a lot, but I'm just dismayed that for all the inspiration and experimentation it remains, to me, stultifyingly boring in terms of the actual music. Part of it is that, as far as club dancing is concerned, it really doesn't matter a whole lot what's in the mix as long as there's an inspiring beat. And it's cool that instrumental music appeals to kids, I guess, except that I'm disturbed by how apolitical and, in a way, unemotional that makes pop music... advertisers already put any song they want behind a pitch, but if there are no vocals and no real moods (besides dance dance dance!!!) it's even easier for the music to be bent to any purpose. I know this doesn't make much sense, and I know there are exceptions to these generalizations, but that's how I feel about it. I love synthesizers, I love beats, I love sampling (to a point), but I just don't thrill to anything the kids are doing with them these days. Outside of a dance floor it does nothing for me. The 90s were the decade I started to turn off the radio and TV and find all my music through word-of-mouth, magazines, or working college radio (and I was the only person playing the stuff I liked). I haven't regretted this move. [Miles:] > I'd even take the Breeders if it wasn't produced by St. Albini Really? Are there songs on that album I missed somehow thanks to Albini? Maybe that's not clear...are there *songs* on that album? > From: Aaron Mandel > > I remember hearing a convincing identification of who the girl in "Pink > Triangle" was, but I don't recall it leading to any good behind-the-scenes > gossip. God, I hate that song. My dislike of Weezer is 2/3 their music and 1/3 Rivers Cuomo's repulsive lyrics about women. Ugh. > From: "Rex.Broome" > > The Monkees also had some good songs. I'll admit I like bad '60's pop > better than okay-ish new wave, for a host of reasons possibly more social or > sociological than anything else. That's pretty telling. I think I'm the exact opposite for the same reasons. - -- drew at stormgreen dot com http://www.stormgreen.com/~drew/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 08:41:42 +0000 From: "Brian Hoare" Subject: Re: Boredoms Eb: >Well, it definitely wasn't a mellow show. I think this was around the time >that Reprise had released Pop Tatari. I could look up the exact date if >it's important. Current album is easier info to digest. I don't tend to remember release dates but I do remember the order stuff was released in. Pop Tatari is the earlist album of theirs I have. Their last two releases have seen them move towards longer, better structured, rhythm based songs with more singing/chanting and less screaming. VisionCreationNewsun is miles away from Pop Tatari. Super Ae (or Super Are) bridges the gap. Of these 3 albums I would rate Super Ae as the clear winner. >I liked the concert better than the album...the show seemed to pluck out >all the big, bludgeoning Buttholes-like bits, and leave out the CD's vacant >noodling. That's good to know. Listening to the album I imagined the shows could be very messy indeed. Although I like to play sections of the album from time to time I don't have the stamina or interest to play the whole thing. brian - in the town where Eddie Cochran died. pitchfork lists: 80s : Own 10, play about 5 90s : Own 3, play 0 _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 01:10:34 -0800 (PST) From: drew Subject: singin on the brain > From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey [I snarked:] > > I'd like to think that the top album of all time would > > have a vocalist who could sing on it. > > So you must have a problem with the Pitchfork list too, then? Lee can sorta sing, > Thurston talks in tune fairly well, and Kim...oh geez, she's got Billy Corgan > disease, in that she's okay if she keeps it low and doesn't amp up the volume but > turns into screeching hell if she tries to be "intense." That said, except for > that screeching, the voices in SY work very well with the music - and I like that. Well, so the thing is that Sonic Youth are doing something very different than what the Stone Roses were doing. With the latter you're talking about some songs whose primary value was attitude and a lead singer with an incredibly wishy-washy voice. "Elephant Stone" is a great pop song just begging to be sung by a great pop singer (but it's not quite something you'd cover). "I Wanna Be Adored" just falls flat to me on record. "Fools Gold" doesn't really need to be sung well, but it just sounds like baggy-shuffle-shuffle really. Compared to the first Blur album and Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches (but those were 90s, right?), The Stone Roses always seemed pretty bland to me. Whereas Sonic Youth are all about making interesting noise, apparently, and it would be strange to expect them to be fronted by, say, Gene Pitney. The fact is that I'm not a fan and I've never heard Daydream Nation, but I don't have anything against them. And I listen to and enjoy a fair number of singers who are subpar: Peter Murphy, Robert Smith (bless him), that awful chick from Switchblade Symphony (it's all about the music there, let me tell you), even PJ Harvey in her way...it's not so much that Ian Brown is technically lacking, it's that he doesn't pull his own weight or project any charisma to speak of. I'm perfectly willing to forgive poor or self-indulgent vocals (paging Jarvis Cocker) if they *fit*, knowmean? > From: Eb > > Parade, Around the World in a Day, Black Album, Sign o' the Times > (the best...and yes, it's BIG!) and Lovesexy. WOW. Those are underdog choices for sure. I love "Alphabet St." but the rest of Lovesexy doesn't do it for me, and the sequencing as one long track irks me. Around the World in a Day I just got recently and am still feeling my way around. I don't listen to the Black Album much. But the other two are sure things. > I'd still buy secondhand copies of Dirty Mind > and Controversy if I saw them I just got Dirty Mind recently myself and I'm glad I did. It's *odd* and short but splendid. I still want to get Controversy but the presence of "Ronnie, Talk to Russia" is disturbing. > From: Aaron Mandel > > I liked Linnell's solo album, as I expected, but found most of his songs > on Mink Car disappointing. Flans seems to have picked up some of his > better habits (like writing about death). That's funny, I liked Linnell's Mink Car songs and found some of Flans's irritating. I've said it before, but Factory Showroom has really grown on me, to the point that I think it's one of the best things they've done. > Re: the Cure, I liked Wild Mood Swings. I've probably only listened to it > twice, but it reminded me of all the parts of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me > that I hadn't trained myself to associate with teenage misery. Crazy. I like a couple of the songs, but most of them make me miserable, and not in that lovely melancholy Cure way. In particular I think "Strange Attraction" is one of the worst songs Robert's ever written, not because it's so pop (I still like "Friday I'm In Love") but because it's so crap. Ugggh. Most of the songs just feel really weighed down, like that moment in "Watching Me Fall" where I think, okay, it's ending, and then I realize it's only half over. I do like "The 13th," "Mint Car," and "Jupiter Crash", though. > From: "Eclipse Tuliphead" > > despite being a dyed-in-the-wool 80's/goth girl, i gotta say this: Eminem > (while i don't care for his subject matter) has got some serious mic skills, You know...I liked "The Real Slim Shady" more than I probably should have, but to be honest with you every time I hear someone say this about Eminem I mentally add "for a white guy." I heard one of his album tracks the other day and he just sounded like a mediocre talent to me, even before I recognized his voice. I can't help feeling that everyone is just relieved he's not Vanilla Ice II, and I'm sorry, but I can only overlook his seriously fucked-up themes and lyrics for so long. I feel CERTAIN there are plenty of other rappers who have better "mic skills," I really do. > From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey > > Of course, Eb's got every right to dislike Miller's voice - then, such likes or > dislikes are utterly subjective. Welllllll, not *utterly*. I mean, although I like Billy Corgan's voice just fine -- he sounds, or makes himself sound, just like an electric guitar to me -- I can easily see why other people find it unbearable. > From: Ken Weingold > > Ummm, I lost the thread here, but anyone into New Order who doesn't > have it, pick up Movement. Dreams Never End is worth it alone. No kidding. That reminds me, I really need to get that on CD... I only have it on cassette. My favorite New Order stuff (besides "True Faith") is that early "are we going to still be Joy Division or not?" phase. I'm glad they developed into their own band, but the overlap in sensibilities was really exciting. - -- drew at stormgreen dot com http://www.stormgreen.com/~drew/ ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V11 #391 ********************************