From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V12 #318 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Monday, August 25 2003 Volume 12 : Number 318 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Reap -Belated ["Brian" ] Re: top 40 of the 80's [Michael R Godwin ] Re: The peanut gallery speaks (30% Baywatch content) [Tom Clark ] gathering more strays ["Marc Holden" ] Re: The peanut gallery speaks (30% Baywatch content) [Eb ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 06:06:14 -0800 From: "Brian" Subject: Reap -Belated ADRIAN CHARLES SELIGMAN (Matthew's Father) Professional sailor and writer Adrian Seligman, professional sailor (master mariner, Cap Horner) and writer, died on August 6, 2003 aged 93. The eldest son of the distinguished metallurgist Dr. Richard Seligman and Hilda Seligman, sculptress and writer, he was born on 26 November 1909. After education at Harrow and then failing his second-year Mays at Cambridge, and in his own words spurred on by a charmingly courteous threatening letter from his bank manager, he went to sea  first as cook in a British coaster, then for three years as seaman in Finnish square-rigged sailing vessels  Olivebank and Killoran  trading from Mariehamn to Australia round Cape Horn. After another year as third mate of a tramp steamer, he came home to find that his grandfather had left him enough money to buy an old deep-water barquentine, the Cap Pilar, and fit her out for a voyage round the world. His book The Voyage of the Cap Pilar, written in 1939 and still in print, was an instant success. It remains a sailing classic, describing how in the summer of 1936 he placed an advertisement in The Times: Voyage to the South Seas in sail schooner leaving August for about a year. SIX YOUNG MEN WANTED to crew, each contribute #100 to expenses. It led not only to headlines in the News Chronicle the following weekend and over 300 applications, but launched Adrian together with his wife Jane and 17 volunteers only two of whom had been to sea before (not to mention a pig called Dennis and a gramophone) on a remarkable journey. The last crew member joined the ship two hours before her departure on 30th September, 1936. They set off with no power but the wind and their own efforts  no engine, no radio and no electronics of any kind  to follow the sun, sailing west for Rio. After an odyssey that saw them rounding both capes under sail and included a dreamlike six weeks in the south sea islands, the Cap Pilar ended her voyage in the East India Docks in London on 24th September 1938 with 12 of her original crew (five had left the ship, but none were lost) and 14 new members picked up (or in the case of the youngest, his own first daughter Jessica, born) along the way, including one stowaway. Still mostly in their twenties when they returned to England, the ships company dispersed into a world where the giving way of sail finally to steam was a development hardly noticed by a world on the brink of war. But as Adrian Seligman himself wrote more recently: .. a sailing ships crew are more personally involved in the ships own struggle, against calms and gales and fitful weather, than steamer men. Within a year of her docking, however, even the Cap Pilar had been fitted with an engine. During the war, Adrian Seligman himself served with distinction in the Navy, in command of minesweepers, a corvette, and finally a destroyer. Less conventionally, he piloted Russian tankers by night through the Axis blockade of the Aegean. He also formed and commanded the Levant Schooner Flotilla of raiding caiques  originally fishing vessels, but refitted with Matilda tank engines  on undercover operations in the Greek Islands. Once again, his crews were volunteers and their motto was Stand Boldly On. Adrian Seligman was awarded the D.S.C. His book about these times, War in the Islands, was published in 1996. After the war he spent time in Malta where he wrote a series of childrens books about the sea. He also spent several years in Cyprus, where he continued to write and struck up friendships with, among others, Rauf Denktash. At a time of rising tension on the island, Enosis, Adrian Seligman decided to bring his family home soon after a lemon with a razor blade was thrown at him, the slogan Enosis was found written on the arm of his four year old son Simon (with Onion, presumably a misspelling of Union, on the other) and rocks were thrown into the baby, Matthews, pram. Back in London, in 1958, he founded a new type of technical press agency aimed at promoting British exports and industrial exhibitions. At a time when the normal publicity approach of British industry was to say loudly in English what it felt the foreign press deserved to hear, he took the refreshing approach of asking the editors of foreign trade magazines what they actually wanted. The answer (perhaps not surprisingly) was clear, factual texts in their own languages. Engineering in Britain later became EIBIS International and extended its coverage to technology worldwide. By finding specialised translators, and when necessary retranslating their work into English to check it, he won the trust of editors and built the company into a highly respected source of technical and industrial information. Following his retirement from business in 1991, he returned to authorship and wrote The Slope of the Wind, about his early experiences in sail, which Eric Newby described in the foreword as an epic of the sea and the men who sailed on it in the big steel barques and barquentines owned by Gustav Erikson In addition to his books, Adrian Seligman related many of his varied and often strange experiences in numerous short stories and BBC broadcasts, and continued to lecture around the country until his late eighties. One memorable tale tells of a shark, disembowelled by the crew whilst his ship lay becalmed in the doldrums, thrown dead into the sea and floating slowly around the ship before coming, full circle, upon its own entrails and consuming them. By those who knew him, Adrian Seligman will be remembered not only for his books but also for his zest for life and boundless generosity of spirit. In many ways, he embodied his own description of sea people: They are humble at heart, like the ships themselves. And a sailing ship at sea is one of Gods most patient, yet most steadfast and courageous creatures. So those who live with her, who watch her day by day, running bravely, lying becalmed for weeks or yielding with grace to the slope of the wind, such people learn from her in time Adrian Seligman is survived by his wife Rosemary (nie Grimble) and their two sons, Simon and Matthew, and by the four daughters of his first marriage, Jessica, Nicola, Wendy and Erica, and their mother Jane Seligman, together with 13 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. And of course by memories, of which he once wrote: They were memories - not of hardship, stress and ocean solitude but of crowded life, the life of a seafarer, diverse yet conventional, requiring no justification, because of the singleness of its purpose and the unmistakable quality of its achievements in a world where success can be so difficult to prove. London, 15th August 2003 - -- Brian nightshadecat@mailbolt.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 17:07:38 +0100 (BST) From: Michael R Godwin Subject: Re: top 40 of the 80's > >Mike Godwin: > >Bonnie Tyler - Faster than the speed of night > On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Eb wrote: > You're a brave, brave man. Though I think Nora still may be *the* > bravest, for listing Lionel Richie. ;) All right, I'll back down. I've only got the "Have you ever seen the rain" and "Total eclipse of the heart" singles (with de luxe poster sleeves!) and I admit I've never listened to the album all the way through. Even though HYESTR is a brilliant reading of the old Creedence classic, I've just remembered that Syd Barrett's 'Opel' was released in the eighties , so I'll choose that instead. - - Mike Godwin, slightly worried that Tom Clark's list has so many similar records to his own. n.p. Act Together - Ron Wood (& Keef) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 10:20:50 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: The peanut gallery speaks (30% Baywatch content) On 8/22/03 6:33 PM, "Sebastian Hagedorn" wrote: > -- Tom Clark is rumored to have mumbled on Freitag, 22. > August 2003 11:08 Uhr -0700 regarding Re: The peanut gallery speaks (30% > Baywatch content): > >>> I don't get this sentiment, which seems to be prevalent in the US. They >>> are still critically acclaimed in Europe, at least in Germany. >> >> So is David Hasselhoff! > > Where did you get that particular bit of info? What's true is that he used > to be (and maybe still is) *popular* as both an actor and a singer. But I > *never* read any positive reviews or articles about him ... > > I guess you were kidding? Sort of. I guess I mentally substituted "popular" for "critically acclaimed". It's just a common joke in the U.S. about Hasselhoff being popular in Germany as a singer, while he could barely get a gig here. I think it started with Norm MacDonald on Saturday Night Live, who would throw out the occasional "Germans love David Hasselhoff!" - -tc, off to my Fantasy Football draft. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 10:48:01 -0500 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: Reap -Belated Quoting Brian : > (not to mention a pig called Dennis and a gramophone) Now that seems quite the fegly detail! ..Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html :: This album is dedicated to anyone who started out as an animal and :: winds up as a processing unit. :: --Soft Boys, note, _Can of Bees_ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 12:00:39 -0700 From: "Marc Holden" Subject: gathering more strays Not that I have the time for it at this moment (I've been dealing with a crisis at work this week, and clocked in over 100 hours in the last 7 days), but I'd like to start getting together a list of odd vinyl Hitchcock/Soft Boys tracks that never made it to CD. Please feel free to post the list or me directly with your suggestions/requests. I'll post the list when I get it compiled and ready to distribute. Where possible, please list the vinyl source, if known. ex: Soft Boys: A Deck of Cards--Bucketful of Brains (flexi) BOB 17 1987 Robyn Hitchcock: Creatures of Light--Ptolemaic Terrascope POT 18 1995 This will save me A LOT of time when I go to put the set together. Thanks for your participation, Marc Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus's-flytrap. The flytrap can bite and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has little tiny plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen and it could be like ambition. Jack Handey ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 13:07:15 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: The peanut gallery speaks (30% Baywatch content) >Sort of. I guess I mentally substituted "popular" for "critically >acclaimed". It's just a common joke in the U.S. about Hasselhoff being >popular in Germany as a singer, while he could barely get a gig here. I >think it started with Norm MacDonald on Saturday Night Live, who would throw >out the occasional "Germans love David Hasselhoff!" Look up the Amazon customer reviews for Hasselhoff's oeuvre sometime...damn funny. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 10:16:59 -0400 From: "Bachman, Michael" Subject: RE: Twang & Jang Rex wrote: >I mean, this stuff has always been around; a lot of the bands showing up on >our '80's lists did country-esque numbers, but I think those songs were >often viewed as goofs or borderline parodies. I almost included Rank and File's Sundown on my 80's list. Rhino's Hand Made divsion just came out with Rank and File - The Slash Years, which contains both Sundown and Long Gone Dead. Rank and File's style was refered to as country punk by some folks. Michael ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V12 #318 ********************************