From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V11 #417 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Monday, December 9 2002 Volume 11 : Number 417 Today's Subjects: ----------------- top 9 [drew ] Re: Two in a year [Michael R Godwin ] Re: Two in a year/interpol/corn muffins [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: Two in a year/interpol/corn muffins [Michael R Godwin ] New Soft Boys date... ["matt sewell" ] Re: Two in a year [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] RE: Two in a year/interpol/corn muffins [Dr John Halewood ] Re: Two in a year [Miles Goosens ] Re: Two in a year [Miles Goosens ] RE: Two in a year/interpol/corn muffins [Dr John Halewood ] my dead wife and my dead wife (SOLARIS) [Miles Goosens ] Re: Thingy blah: slight return (Neil Young: Robyn ratio 2:1) [Eb Subject: top 9 I guess I do have a top nine, at least. I forgot about a lot of stuff that came out this year. 9. Andy Partridge, _Fuzzy Warbles vol. 1_ 8. Clinic, _Walking With Thee_ 7. The Church, _After Everything Now This_ 6. Rasputina, _Cabin Fever!_ 5. Aimee Mann, _Lost In Space_ 4. The Soft Boys, _Nextdoorland_ 3. Tori Amos, _Scarlet's Walk_ 2. Suede, _New Morning_ 1. David Bowie, _Heathen_ After number 6 it gets a bit arbitrary, and I didn't bother filling it out with stuff I bought but didn't really care for too much (the aforementioned Flaming Lips, Tanya Donnelly, Breeders) and the stuff I sampled in full but didn't like (enough to buy, anyway: Cinerama, Coldplay, Peter Gabriel). From the look of the top ten lists most of you are making, we listened to very different music this year. I do think my top 5 are all solid albums (the Suede is flimsy in the way they all are, and totally insidious in the way they all are), at least. - -- drew at stormgreen dot com http://www.stormgreen.com/~drew/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 11:50:31 +0000 (GMT) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: Re: Two in a year Fascinating stuff. There are loads of problems re UK / US titles and release dates (not to mention track listings). But immediate thoughts are: We only had one of those 4 Stones album titles in 65, "Out of Our Heads", and the track listing was surely different. It was preceded by "Rolling Stones No. 2", which was a pale retread of their cracking first album, and possibly bore some resemblance to your "RS Now!". According to http://www.canehdian.com/rollingstones/discography.html "12x5" was a US _1964_ release. "Magical Mystery Tour" was not issued as an album in the UK until years later. It came out in 67 on 2 EPs, featuring "Tragical History Tour", "I am the Waitress", "Your mother should go" "Fool on the pill" and I can't remember the Rutles titles for "Blue Jay Way" and "Flying". I assume that "Heaven is in your mind" is the same album as "Mr Fantasy", but I bet it had "Paper Sun" on it, unlike Mr F. As I've said before, I got my copy for Christmas 1967. Similarly, I would have said that "Axis: Bold as Love" came out in time for Christmas 1967. I certainly saw Hendrix perform "Spanish Castle Magic" at that "Christmas on Earth" gig at Olympia. Presumably "The Who Sings My Generation" is the Brunswick "My Generation" album. I wonder whether the track listing is the same? Surely "Surrealistic Pillow" is 1966? And I would have dated "Lou Reed" to 1971, but I could be wrong. I wrongly thought that "Something Else" was 1966, but I must have been thinking of the single "Waterloo Sunset". "Mirror Man" came out years after "Strictly Personal". Same sessions, but without the crazed Bob Krasnow phasing added. And I would put "Spotlight Kid" and "Clear Spot" a year apart, but I will research this. - - Mike Godwin PS Nice to see those Graham Parker and the Rumour albums in your list. I love later things like "Jolie Jolie", "Discovering Japan" and "Passion is no ordinary word", but I don't think any of the later albums had the impact of "Howlin' Wind". n.p. "I got my soul shoes on my feet" ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 04:16:40 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: Two in a year/interpol/corn muffins Michael R Godwin wrote: > Surely "Surrealistic Pillow" is 1966? Released Feb 1967, recorded in Nov 1966 (except for a couple songs on Halloween). I wonder how many of these pairings have the first release in Jan or Feg, with the 2nd late in the year (but not enough to check). Still it says a lot about how the muzak industry has changed that it wasn't too strange for a major artist to release two albums within a calender year that long ago. Now, it's a huge deal when Mariah Carey releases albums in consequetive years. np: interpol, first listen -- I can sorta see the Ian Curtis comparisons with the guys voice, mostly because it's a baritone that's mixed down to sound rather echoy. The music though sounds to me to be rather shoegazey, really Slowdive actually, maybe Adorable. I'm pretty pleased though so far (I'm up to "Stella"). For some reason, Rasputin San Lorenzo was selling it with a promo EP from someone called White Light Motorcade. Hopefully the band is better than the name. If not, at least I didn't pay for it. Stupidest thing I think I've seen in a while: at the grocery store, in nearly identical boxes from the same company (can't remember what, but it was a fairly generic, Jiffy sort of product equivolent) sitting right next to each other: Cornbread mix and Corn Muffin Mix. ===== "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: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 13:36:26 +0000 (GMT) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: Re: Two in a year/interpol/corn muffins > Michael R Godwin wrote: > > Surely "Surrealistic Pillow" is 1966? > On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Jeff Dwarf wrote: > Released Feb 1967, recorded in Nov 1966 (except for a couple songs on > Halloween). I wonder how many of these pairings have the first release > in Jan or Feg, with the 2nd late in the year (but not enough to check). Thanks, Jeff! When was the "Somebody to Love" single released? Maybe that came out before the end of 66? Otherwise all I can think is that John Peel brought a pre-release copy over to play on Radio London. ("7 and 7 is" by Love was definitely released in 66, although the "da Capo" album did not come out until 67). Needless to say the original UK version of "Surrealistic Pillow" was a complete botch-up, with a selection of tracks from "Takes Off" and "Surrealistic Pillow". "Takes Off" wasn't released in the UK until much later, when we finally got the full version of SP. - - Mike Godwin PS Final question: when did the Beatles say that the Jefferson Airplane were their favourite group? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 14:20:10 +0000 From: "matt sewell" Subject: RE: FLips and UK TV I think I remember a stand up monologue by David "wanker" Baddiel about this - he was saying that in the old days, Mrs Slocombe's pussy was merely suggestive, now, thanks to the prevalence of the American vernacular, it's just downright dirty... Cheers Matt >From: Michael R Godwin >Reply-To: Michael R Godwin >To: IncessantPumpkinRaga >Subject: RE: FLips and UK TV >Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 18:51:41 +0000 (GMT) > >On Thu, 5 Dec 2002 hamish_simpson@agilent.com wrote: > > Speaking of old UK TV shows, I was thinking of Mrs Slocombe's pussy last > > night. I used to watch this when it was first on in the UK and I don't > > remember whether "pussy" had the connotation at the time. > >Don't remember that one. The nearest I can offer is Mr Slater's parrot: >"Hallo" "Hallo" "Hallo" > "Hallo" ect ect > >- MRG - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 14:36:56 +0000 From: "matt sewell" Subject: New Soft Boys date... At the Concord 2, Brighton on Jan 28th. Cheers Matt - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 09:37:56 -0600 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: Two in a year Quoting Michael R Godwin : > Fascinating stuff. There are loads of problems re UK / US titles and > release dates (not to mention track listings). Indeed. For one thing, until the late sixties at least, albums were not the primary medium of popular music: singles were. This was true in the UK, I believe, longer than in the US. Also, the industry itself has much control over the release schedule: a major artist nowadays simply will not be allowed to release two albums in one year - hell, most often there's at least 18 months between releases. There are also far more records competing for consumers' (and the industry's promotional forces') attention. I haven't actually compared, but even someone like Robert Pollard/Guided by Voices - - who's absurdly prolific by current standards - probably would have been only about average in terms of productivity in the mid-sixties. > Surely "Surrealistic Pillow" is 1966? I just picked up the reissue (with the stereo & mono mixes), and its tracks were recorded in October and November of 1966...which brings up another factor. The album was released in February of 1967...nowadays, it would be extremely rare for an album to be released only four or five months after recording began. (Hell, Grace Slick had only joined the *band* in October of 1966...) Oh - and whoever distinguished between putting out two distinct albums in one year, and splitting up a two-disc set into two releases: yes...but again, before the seventies, albums were not always recorded as albums. They were a single or two, and a bunch of other tracks... That's part of the reason British and US releases often differ so much. (Note also that British singles, if I recall, often had more than two songs on them - this was rare for US singles.) I suppose you could argue that if the songs were recorded at the same sessions with the same personnel, it's the same album. But by that standard, then, Frank Black did release two distinct albums this year: they were recorded a few months apart, and some players are on one CD but not the other. Frankly, I'd often rather have two reasonable-length CDs than one bloated one...but we already talked about that a few months back. ..Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html :: sex, drugs, revolt, Eskimos, atheism ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 15:45:58 -0000 From: Dr John Halewood Subject: RE: Two in a year/interpol/corn muffins > From: Jeff Dwarf [mailto:munki1972@yahoo.com] > Released Feb 1967, recorded in Nov 1966 (except for a couple songs on > Halloween). I wonder how many of these pairings have the first release > in Jan or Feg, with the 2nd late in the year (but not enough > to check). Quite a lot by the look of it, which really makes it "2 in 18 months" I suppose. Also youve got the effect of a number of these being acts making their first and second albums: you can generally expect them to have more than 1 albums worth of stuff before they make the first record, so the second one is probably half written. Certainly from that list, you have Zeppelin/Jam/Strangler/KaTe Bush/Smiths/Billy Bragg/OMD all fit into that category, and most of them are in the Feb/Nov release time windows as well. This is course fails miserably to explain Julian Cope. That would take far too many drugs. cheers john ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 16:11:58 +0000 (GMT) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: Re: Two in a year On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > Indeed. For one thing, until the late sixties at least, albums were not the > primary medium of popular music: singles were. This was true in the UK, I believe, > longer than in the US. A frequent difference was that UK albums rarely included any previously-released singles. The popular press always attacked the inclusion of singles as "making fans buy the same song twice". The opposite was the case in the US, where the presence of a single or two was believed to add to the attractiveness of the album. Sometimes US albums would be named after two singles (e.g. the Electric Prunes album with the unwieldy title "I had too much to dream / Get me to the world on time") which would have been anathema in the UK. I reckon that about the time James Taylor hit big (i.e. after he left Apple) many record companies started promoting singles as tasters for the accompanying album. This in turn led to the development of separate singles artistes (Bolan, Slade, Sweet) and album artistes (Floyd, Zeppelin, Clapton). Zeppelin were famous for refusing to issue singles at all: but I have seen some LZ singles, presumably imported. A few clever acts managed to keep a foot in both markets: Roxy, Queen, Bowie, McCartney. I think one of the factors in Syd Barrett's breakdown was that he was more interested in continuing to make singles than Waters. > Oh - and whoever distinguished between putting out two distinct albums in one > year, and splitting up a two-disc set into two releases: yes...but again, before > the seventies, albums were not always recorded as albums. They were a single or > two, and a bunch of other tracks... That's part of the reason British and US > releases often differ so much. (Note also that British singles, if I recall, often > had more than two songs on them - this was rare for US singles.) Very unusual - though I think 'Brown Sugar' has both 'Bitch' and 'Let it rock' on the B-side. But there used to be a separate EP market, where you bought picture sleeve 7" records with 4 or 5 tracks on them. I think they cost twice the price of a single, i.e. 13/4, but I can't honestly remember. Many US albums were only released as EPs in the UK at the time: an example being 5x5 by the Rolling Stones (12x5 in the US). Occasionally an EP would get into the singles chart, "Twist and Shout" by the Beatles being the biggest IIRC. I was trained up to listen to music in this period, and I had to put a lot of effort into learning how to listen to a whole side of an LP. I have never really got used to listening to more than 20 minutes' recordings by one artiste. - - Mike Godwin PS I see from the Hawkwind list that Arthur Brown has been singing with them recently. Wow! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 10:31:33 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: Two in a year At 03:55 AM 12/8/2002 -0800, Michael E. Kupietz, wearing a pointy hat wrote: >Seems to me you're failing to draw an important distinction: artists who >were prolific enough to produce two (or more) worthwhile albums in a year, >and artists who thought for some reason that Bruce Springsteen's contrived >marketing gimmick of releasing a double album as "two separate albums" at >once was in some way cool enough to repeat. Now wait a doggone minute: HUMAN TOUCH and LUCKY TOWN were *definitely* two separate and distinct albums. HUMAN TOUCH is pretty much the album Bruce finally decided to go with after years of false starts and writer's block, and it's what he chose as the best tracks from that lonnnnnng creatively painful 1988-1992 period. Once Bruce decided to release HUMAN TOUCH, the pressure was off, and unsurprisingly Bruce found the writing floodgates had opened -- he wrote all of LUCKY TOWN within a few weeks. The two sound and feel like completely different projects rather than contemporaries, IMO, and they're not really contemporaries except for release date. IMO LUCKY TOWN is far superior to HT's mostly listless mish-mash, and to me the real shame of the "dual release" was that a lot of people bought only HT (which was also being emphasized by its title track being the first single), were disappointed by it and had no desire to buy the "second" release, and thus missed out on the better album. Bruce himself has said he probably should have rescued a few of the best tracks from HT and found a way to work them into a slightly longer LUCKY TOWN. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 10:31:33 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: Two in a year At 03:55 AM 12/8/2002 -0800, Michael E. Kupietz, wearing a pointy hat wrote: >Seems to me you're failing to draw an important distinction: artists who >were prolific enough to produce two (or more) worthwhile albums in a year, >and artists who thought for some reason that Bruce Springsteen's contrived >marketing gimmick of releasing a double album as "two separate albums" at >once was in some way cool enough to repeat. Now wait a doggone minute: HUMAN TOUCH and LUCKY TOWN were *definitely* two separate and distinct albums. HUMAN TOUCH is pretty much the album Bruce finally decided to go with after years of false starts and writer's block, and it's what he chose as the best tracks from that lonnnnnng creatively painful 1988-1992 period. Once Bruce decided to release HUMAN TOUCH, the pressure was off, and unsurprisingly Bruce found the writing floodgates had opened -- he wrote all of LUCKY TOWN within a few weeks. The two sound and feel like completely different projects rather than contemporaries, IMO, and they're not really contemporaries except for release date. IMO LUCKY TOWN is far superior to HT's mostly listless mish-mash, and to me the real shame of the "dual release" was that a lot of people bought only HT (which was also being emphasized by its title track being the first single), were disappointed by it and had no desire to buy the "second" release, and thus missed out on the better album. Bruce himself has said he probably should have rescued a few of the best tracks from HT and found a way to work them into a slightly longer LUCKY TOWN. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 17:44:09 -0000 From: Dr John Halewood Subject: RE: Two in a year/interpol/corn muffins Jeff so scribbled > Released Feb 1967, recorded in Nov 1966 (except for a couple songs on > Halloween). I wonder how many of these pairings have the first release > in Jan or Feg, with the 2nd late in the year (but not enough to check). ^^^^ typo of the week! 1% RH content assured. cheers john, trying to type on a keyboard that seems to have lost the apostrophe key. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 10:40:32 -0800 From: "Rex.Broome" Subject: Thingy blah: slight return (Neil Young: Robyn ratio 2:1) Eb on Wilco some more: >>My feeling has always been "Big Star's Third, it ain't." Because to >>me, this is clearly what Wilco was shooting for. Well, me too, but since I'd aleady mentioned "Kanga Roo" elsewhere in that post I elected to namedrop the other obvious antecedent. >>Then I was thinking about the *overall* best dual-releases-in-a-year, >>within the pop/rock genre. What about "solo artist and band releases within a year"? I counted "Robyn Sings" and "Nextdoorland" together this year, but there are numerous other such releases. There are simultaneous releases from Throwing Muses and Kristin Hersh due early next year. (I'm especially eager for the solo KH discs as it has Howe Gelb as her sideman and was recorded more or less live-in-studio). One might also consider the Young Fresh Fellows/Minus 5 split disc from last year... and there are those "I have a million projects so I can release as many albums as I want each year and impress critics who are into that kind of thing" people like Barlow, Merritt and Oberst. Frankly, that kind of early-career prolific-ness (prolificity?) is a real barrier to any interest on my part. Too much to absorb too soon. Overall it's kind of difficult to peg when this has *really* happened given the wildly varying gaps between recording and release of inidividual tracks on any given record, or the fact that outtakes compilations may surface years later when they would properly be grouped with another, earlier body of work... etc... this excercise is perhaps too academic even for me. _______ Caroline, hi! (Or, as one is tempted to say, Caroline No): >>I'm looking forward to reading Shakey, Neil Young's biography. I have some issues with it but it was a really compulsive read. Somewhat disturbing in a way that's different from most rock bios. But it really did change my understanding of Neil as a guy... essential stuff. __________ Mac recording: I'm far from an expert, but I have an ancient demo version of ProTools that I'm still totally happy with. I initially used it to make continuous-mix discs or digitize and edit vinyl, but earlier this year I started using it for home demos and it was incredibly easy. No eq's and scant MIDI features, but also no limit on the number of tracks or run time. I can hunt down the specs if you're interested. Cheers! Rex ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 14:37:50 -0600 From: "Brian Huddell" Subject: Robyn's "Diary" Robyn Hitchcock is doing this week's "Diary" feature for Slate: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2075161&entry=2075197 +brian in New Orleans ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 14:52:28 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: my dead wife and my dead wife (SOLARIS) A few, hopefully non-spoileriffic SOLARIS notes: * Nine people at our screening, including us. Two left around the 35 minute mark. It would have been interesting to see the ratio last weekend, which one assumes would have been attended by many more "look! Clooney and a girl kissing on the poster! Awwww!" sorts of viewers. To be fair to them, the TV advertising does make it look like the space version of GHOST. * It's actually way shorter than Tarkovsky's 1972 version. * It's far more focused on the backstory of the Kris-dead wife relationship than the first one. In a way, Clooney's Kris gets off the hook much more lightly than Banionis' Kris, at least as far as his perceived culpability in his wife's death. This is not entirely dissimilar from how OPEN YOUR EYES' selfish and shallow Cesar became VANILLA SKY's merely roguish David, though Soderbergh doesn't go overboard with the sanitization/sanctification of his lead character, a temptation to which Crowe et Cruise succumbed wholesale. * Have no memory of reading the book (though I wouldn't swear that I didn't, given the huge amount of SF I consumed between the ages of eight and twenty-one), so I can't offer any comparisons to the source material. I'm 100% sure I've read something by Lem, but I couldn't say what. * Clooney does a superb job, as he usually does when working with a good director. In fact, it's maybe his best performance, as it asks more of him than any other role I've seen him in, and he delivers on all counts. Nevertheless, I'd be shocked if he gets any formal recognition for it, given that the movie is already being talked about as an epic flop. * Natascha (2002) and Natalya (1972) playing resurrected-by-Solaris wives. Just interesting to me that the female leads had close to the same name. * Overall, I prefer the 1972 movie (now conveniently available for purchase/rental in a typically excellent Criterion DVD edition), which IMO had more memorable scenes. As noted, I really can't say which is more true to the book, but the 1972 movie had more than a half-dozen incredible scenes (the prelude at Kris' father's house, Berton's ride back into the city, Gibaryan's "visitor" walking around behind him visibly and blithely on his recording, the torn steel doorway, the liquid oxygen scene, the beautiful weightless-in-the-study interlude, the final scene) that have stuck with me. Not that Soderbergh should have attempted a scene-by-scene remake, but the things he did come up with (which only includes one of the above scenes, plus a split-second of another as a possibility glimpsed by Kris) don't measure up. * Nevertheless, I was glad to have seen the movie, and can't imagine walking out of it! You do have to be the kind of person who's happy with a moviegoing experience that's more suggestive and evocative, leaving plenty of loose ends and room for interpretation. If you want a whodunit or a neat ending, that's fine, but neither SOLARIS is going to offer you those things. Maybe Lem's book fills in the "why" and "how" parts, but both movies offer provocative journeys for the willing viewer. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 12:50:11 -0800 From: Eb Subject: Re: Two in a year >M. Godwin: >We only had one of those 4 Stones album titles in 65, "Out of Our Heads", >and the track listing was surely different. It was preceded by "Rolling >Stones No. 2", which was a pale retread of their cracking first album, >and possibly bore some resemblance to your "RS Now!". According to >http://www.canehdian.com/rollingstones/discography.html >"12x5" was a US _1964_ release. Yeah, I think you may be right about this. AllMusic says 1964 for 12x5, too. I'm going to change my database info. I was a bit puzzled while making that list to see that the Stones released all those albums in 1965. That didn't seem right, somehow. >I assume that "Heaven is in your mind" is the same album as "Mr Fantasy", >but I bet it had "Paper Sun" on it, unlike Mr F. As I've said before, I >got my copy for Christmas 1967. http://azstarnet.com/~bobbieg/discog/traffic.htm confirms your memory, though it does say the revised US version didn't come out until 1968. And the two albums do have significantly different track listings. > Similarly, I would have said that "Axis: >Bold as Love" came out in time for Christmas 1967. It seems like my database *used* to have Axis: Bold as Love listed as 1967, and I found information somewhere along the way which made me switch the year to 1968. Hrm. I'm getting some webpages which say 1968, and other webpages which say 1967. Anyone have a definitive resource? >And I would have dated "Lou Reed" to 1971, but I could be wrong. http://www.loureed.com/discography/index.html says June, 1972. >"Mirror Man" came out years after "Strictly Personal". Same sessions, but >without the crazed Bob Krasnow phasing added. Yes, I should have remembered this. The reason for the confusion: I date a small number of albums in my collection based on the recording year, when the gap between the recording and release dates is especially large. See The Basement Tapes (1975-->1967) and The Velvet Underground 1969 Live (1974-->1969), for instance. > And I would put "Spotlight >Kid" and "Clear Spot" a year apart, but I will research this. http://beefheart.com/datharp/albums/index.html says they're both 1972. CDNow would have been a great resource to test these questions...Amazon tends to list the *reissue* date on their oldies rather than the original date. Bad. Speaking of the '60s, I saw a gen-oo-ine relic last night: Eric Burdon & the Session Hacks Disguised as "The Animals." Burdon's voice was still in good shape, actually, but his players had *no* '60s sensibility to their playing at all and ruined the music. The poodle-haired keyboardist looked more like he should be with Deep Purple. Jeez. About the only interesting program note is that Burdon now does "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" as a reggae song. Note to Burdon: You're too old and homely to dress so badly onstage. Sleeveless gray sweatshirt? Come on mate, this is a gig, not a sparring match. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 12:56:16 -0800 From: Eb Subject: Re: Thingy blah: slight return (Neil Young: Robyn ratio 2:1) >Rex: > >>Then I was thinking about the *overall* best dual-releases-in-a-year, >>>within the pop/rock genre. > >What about "solo artist and band releases within a year"? I counted "Robyn Sings" and "Nextdoorland" together this year I wouldn't have ruled this eligible, because wasn't much of Robyn Sings recorded ages ago? Half the songs were on an old Warner Bros. promo, right? Eb PS to previous post: Did some quick CD-shopping before the Burdon gig. I was looking to fill in some gaps in my 2002 collection, but the only missing item I found at a decent price was the recent Of Montreal album. At Rockaway, I bought Belle & Sebastian's Boy With the Arab Strap ($8) and Chumbawamba's Readymades ($3...probably about what it's worth), and at Amoeba, I bought the Of Montreal ($9), Snakefinger/Greener Postures ($8), the Mingus tribute "Weird Nightmare" ($6) and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic/Dancing on A'A ($8). Amoeba costs too much, damn it.... That makes *five* different Birdsongs items I've bought at Amoeba, now...strange fluke. Already had Weird Nightmare on cassette, but I've been wanting to upgrade that for years. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 16:41:40 -0500 (EST) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: Thingy blah: slight return (Neil Young: Robyn ratio 2:1) On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Rex.Broome wrote: > and there are those "I have a million projects so I can release as many > albums as I want each year and impress critics who are into that kind of > thing" people like Barlow, Merritt and Oberst. Maybe I'm missing out on stuff, but I think in Merritt's case, the profusion of projects went along with a substantial *slowdown* in release frequency, and IMHO a drop in quality. He's put out two half-assed records this year (a "soundtrack album" with a few songs on it, and the Future Bible Heroes album); the last time he did even that much in a given calendar year was 1995. Unless you count 69 Love Songs, but, long as that was, it was presented as one album. Though I think I heard he was doing a few individual songs for the books-on-tape version of those Lemony Snicket books. a ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V11 #417 ********************************