From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V13 #160 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, June 3 2004 Volume 13 : Number 160 Today's Subjects: ----------------- RE: REM in "not cool anymore" shocker ["Fortissimo" ] RE: REM in "not cool anymore" shocker ["Rex Broome" ] Re: designated driver ["Rex Broome" ] Re: designated driver [Tom Clark ] RE: designated driver ["Palle Hoffstein" ] Re: REM in "not cool anymore" shocker ["Fortissimo" ] alleged humpty-dumptyist tendencies ["Fortissimo" ] Eno reissues/weirdness ["Fortissimo" ] Re: Eno reissues/weirdness [Eb ] The Paw-Paw Carboard Digipak ["Rex Broome" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 07:53:53 -0500 From: "Fortissimo" Subject: RE: REM in "not cool anymore" shocker On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 12:57:34 +0100, "Matt Sewell" said: > Nat, are you writing from 1992 or something?! This delay with stuff > getting to my hotmail account is getting ridiculous, clearly... Hey - did you guys hear that the Beatles broke up? - ------------------------------- ...Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: crumple zones:: :: harmful or fatal if swallowed :: :: small-craft warning :: ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 09:05:29 -0400 From: "Bachman, Michael" Subject: RE: REM in "not cool anymore" shocker On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 12:57:34 +0100, "Matt Sewell" said: > Nat, are you writing from 1992 or something?! This delay with stuff > getting to my hotmail account is getting ridiculous, clearly... Jeff came back with: >Hey - did you guys hear that the Beatles broke up? Also, Paul is dead. If you play Revolution #9 backwards on your turntable, you can hear all sorts of bizarre shit man. I had to do it on my parents turntable as I only have an 8 track. Michael B. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2004 01:43:15 +1200 From: James Dignan Subject: Re: wasn't that a Robbie Williams song? >But we've been talkin about millennia for, erm, millennia. And there >have only been three complete CE millennia so far... sigh. I can count to 1000, but I can't count to two. > > I take it that if you were asked to count to 1000 you'd start by > > counting zero, get to 999 and then stop, then... > >No...but depending on what you're counting, you *do* sometimes start at >zero, in a sense. If I'm asked to measure out 100 meters with a long tape >measure, I begin at the zero mark of the measure - not at one. well there you go. You start at the beginning of the first metre and go on until you reach the end of the 100th metre, where the number 100 is on the tape. Do the same with years in a millennium. you start at the beginning fof the first one and go on until the end of the 100th one. In the case of the most recently ended one, that would be the end of the 200th year CE - i.e., 11:59:59.999 on December 31st, 2000. >But given these two facts, when did the first *decade* of the >twenty-first century begin? If you say 1/1/00, that would imply that that >year is part of 21c. But it sounds absurd to say that the first decade of >21c begins 1/1/10...esp. since that would mean the *last* decade of 20c >is right now. The first decade of the 21st century began on 1/01/01. However, the "naughties" began on 1/01/00. Same as the 1990s ended at the end of the penultimate year of the last millennium. It doesn't follow that decade names will automatically tie up with sections of the millennium, and there is no need for them to. >Depends what meaning you place on "millennium." One meaning is, simply, >"a period of 1000 years" - and so this year marks the millennial >anniversary of 1004. No one cares, though. true. We're talking about millennial periods of the Christian/Common era, starting at the beginning of 1 CE (or 1 AD if you prefer). Since that is the case, the first millennium of this time scale ended at the end of 1000 CE, and the second one ended at the end of 2000 CE. >When we celebrate the new year, we're not celebrating the *anniversary* >of any particular new year, such as the hypothetical* date Jan. 1, 1 CE, >nor are we celebrating anything in particular that happened that day. >We're celebrating the year itself. The thousandth such celebration* >marked the onset of the second millennium. The two-thousandth such >celebration (i.e., 1/1/2000) marked the beginning of the millennium we're >in now. this is the same as saying that when we count to ten, the first nine numbers make up the first group of ten, because the tenth one marks the start of the next group. >No one celebrated [...] anything on 1/1/2001. they might not have done where you were, but they sure did here! >What I'm really arguing is that words like "century" and "millennium" are >cultural, not scientific, terms - and therefore have their meanings >rooted in the way people actually use them in other words, you're arguing that if enough people say the same wrong thing, it suddenly becomes right. >It seems especially odd to me to insist on the "01" >formulation...for several reasons. First, of course (and here's my >asterisk) *no one in that year called it that, of course. so? It was counted back by medieval monks to arrive at a starting point for the Christian era. From that point on it has been accepted that one particular year should be regarded as the first year of the Christian era. That is still the year from which modern western calendars are based. One thoudand years from the start of that year 1 CE is thus the end of the first millennium according to our calendars. That is, December 31st, 1000. It is irrelevant whether the year chosen by those monks is the accurate date of the birth of Christ - it is relevant, however, that it is the date from which our calendars are calculated. >Second, when >the early church set the date of Christ's birth, and did so to coopt >"pagan" solstice celebrations, they didn't set it right on the winter >solstice, and I've always wondered why they didn't make things a hell of >a lot simpler and move it forward a few days...so that it was Jan. 1. >That way, the church could be happy to claim the year began the day >Christ was born. (And it's a little weird that in the very first "anno >domini" - year of our Lord - the Lord was conspicuously not born for all >but a week or so of it, even according to the date the church set for >that birth.) Actually, this isn't right, although I agree that it would have been better to put the birth a few days later. On December 31st. The original calculations deliberately set the date of Christ's birth right at the end of the year 1 BC - because, of course, that was the last year before Christ was born. 1 AD was therefore, as the name implies, the first full year of our Lord's life. His birthday was right at the end of it. Go on 1000 years from His birth, and you get to December 25th 1000. Actually Christ was probably born in March or thereabouts, according to popular theory. The feast of his birth was originally set for the very end of the year but was moved back a few days to coincide with a previously extant public holiday. >Finally, if we want to get all pedantic, there were, what, >ten or eleven days excised from the calendar in the 1700s (actual year >varied, depending where you lived), so if you want to call "millennium" >the series of thousandth anniversaries of Jan. 1, 1 CE, you'd have to >celebrate it on Jan. 11 or so. We accept that a year can be fewer than >365 days, to adjust the calendar (or more than, as in leap years) so why >not make a similar "adjustment" in defining "millennium"? 1000 years are still 1000 years, irrespective of the number of datys in those years. If you want to alter your calendar to the pre-Gregorian system and celebrate your holidays at different times of the year I won't stop you, and I will humbly offer you the crown of the list's biggest pedant if you do! James PS: >Speaking of the '70's... I feel fairly confident they actually >started in 1969 and pretty much ended halfway through '78. >Seriously. well the 60s started with "Love me do" in late '62 and ended with Altamont in '69, so that's only fair :) PPS: at least I know what a soccer mum is now. - -- 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: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 07:38:05 -0700 From: "Marc Holden" Subject: designated driver Last night a friend talked me into being his designated driver and going to see a couple of local musicians--Terry Garvin from the Zen Lunatics and Adam Jacobson from Steppchild. I really needed to review some reports that have to be checked by tomorrow, so even the prospect of listening to potentially lame musicians from bands with crappy heavy metalish names, while remaining sober, sounded good to me. He told me that last time he saw the Zen Lunatics they played the Who's "A Quick One (While He's Away)" to let me know that this might not suck too badly after all. Adam played some good originals mixed with songs by Will Oldham, Shel Silverstein, and Johnny Cash. Terry played a nice Rickenbacker hollow-body and did songs from the Byrds, Bob Dylan, Jonathan Richman, Jim Croce, the Only Ones, and in the middle of his set, he did a nice version of "Queen of Eyes". I don't recall ever seeing anyone cover one of Robyn's songs, when I wasn't expecting it--I've seen the Circle Jerks do "I Wanna Destroy You" and the Young Fresh Fellows do "Give It to the Soft Boys". It wound up being very worthwhile. Now I just need to get these damn reports looked over... Hardly working, Marc It's easy to sit there and say you'd like to have more money. And I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money. Jack Handey ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 10:03:36 -0700 From: "Rex Broome" Subject: RE: REM in "not cool anymore" shocker >>Hey - did you guys hear that the Beatles broke up? > > Also, Paul is dead. No, I swear to Christ the two of them who are still alive are touring this year. Or... am I thinking of the Who? Also, punk's not dead. - -Rex Need a new email address that people can remember Check out the new EudoraMail at http://www.eudoramail.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 12:47:33 -0500 From: "Fortissimo" Subject: RE: REM in "not cool anymore" shocker On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 10:03:36 -0700, "Rex Broome" said: > >>Hey - did you guys hear that the Beatles broke up? > > > > Also, Paul is dead. > > No, I swear to Christ the two of them who are still alive are touring > this year. Or... am I thinking of the Who? Let's see...one band has a dead bassist and drummer. The other band has a live bassist and drummer. Meet the...Whotles? - ------------------------------- ...Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: Solipsism is its own reward :: :: --Crow T. Robot ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 11:14:13 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: REM in "not cool anymore" shocker > Let's see...one band has a dead bassist and drummer. The other band > has a > live bassist and drummer. > > Meet the...Whotles? > Hey, congrats on being the 400th person to make this joke. Or maybe the posts *are* getting held back for years? I could have sworn I saw folks debating whether the Millennium started in 2000 or 2001, too! Eb ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 11:44:39 -0700 From: "Rex Broome" Subject: Re: designated driver Marc: >I don't recall ever seeing >anyone cover one of Robyn's songs, when I wasn't expecting it--I've seen the >Circle Jerks do "I Wanna Destroy You" and the Young Fresh Fellows do "Give >It to the Soft Boys". I'll check in with having seen "I Wanna Destroy You" performed not by the Circle Jerks, but by Buglamp, which was Keith (?) Morris's post-Circle Jerks band which I believe pretty much got renamed the Circle Jerks when they "reunited" and recorded IWDY with Debbie(orah) Gibson. Otherwise... can't recall ever having a Robyn cover sprung on me in a legit concert setting. Maybe I'm forgetting something, though... - -Rex Need a new email address that people can remember Check out the new EudoraMail at http://www.eudoramail.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 12:36:48 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: designated driver On Jun 2, 2004, at 11:44 AM, Rex Broome wrote: > Marc: >> I don't recall ever seeing >> anyone cover one of Robyn's songs, when I wasn't expecting it--I've >> seen the >> Circle Jerks do "I Wanna Destroy You" and the Young Fresh Fellows do >> "Give >> It to the Soft Boys". > > I'll check in with having seen "I Wanna Destroy You" performed not by > the Circle Jerks, but by Buglamp, which was Keith (?) Morris's > post-Circle Jerks band which I believe pretty much got renamed the > Circle Jerks when they "reunited" and recorded IWDY with Debbie(orah) > Gibson. Otherwise... can't recall ever having a Robyn cover sprung on > me in a legit concert setting. Maybe I'm forgetting something, > though... > The Replacements were doing "I Wanna Destroy You" on the Don't Tell A Soul tour. That's the only time I've seen anyone cover RH. - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 12:44:43 -0700 From: "Palle Hoffstein" Subject: RE: designated driver The Replacements were doing "I Wanna Destroy You" on the Don't Tell A Soul tour. That's the only time I've seen anyone cover RH. >-tc I saw Elf Power perform "Listening To The Higsons". I think they also recorded it, but I've never seen it. They did a lot of obscure covers in their set. Palle ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 14:55:07 -0500 From: "Fortissimo" Subject: Re: REM in "not cool anymore" shocker On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 11:14:13 -0700, "Eb" said: > > Let's see...one band has a dead bassist and drummer. The other band > > has a > > live bassist and drummer. > > > > Meet the...Whotles? > > > Hey, congrats on being the 400th person to make this joke. Or maybe the > posts *are* getting held back for years? I could have sworn I saw folks > debating whether the Millennium started in 2000 or 2001, too! And I was so hoping I'd be the 1000th person. Or the 999th. Or something. - ------------------------------- ...Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: crumple zones:: :: harmful or fatal if swallowed :: :: small-craft warning :: ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 13:05:55 -0700 From: "Jason R. Thornton" Subject: RE: designated legolas At 12:44 PM 6/2/2004 -0700, Palle Hoffstein wrote: >I saw Elf Power perform "Listening To The Higsons". I think they also >recorded it, but I've never seen it. They did a lot of obscure covers in >their set. It was originally released on a tour only EP titled "Come On," but is now available on their cover album "Nothing's Going to Happen," which includes most or all of the material from "Come On." I remember the lead singer getting a little upset (not at me) when I told him I purchased "Come On" from a record store before the show. - --Jason "Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples." - Sherwood Anderson ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 15:08:05 -0500 From: "Fortissimo" Subject: alleged humpty-dumptyist tendencies On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 01:43:15 +1200, "James Dignan" said: > >What I'm really arguing is that words like "century" and "millennium" are > >cultural, not scientific, terms - and therefore have their meanings > >rooted in the way people actually use them > > in other words, you're arguing that if enough people say the same > wrong thing, it suddenly becomes right. Well, uh, yes - except sub "gradually" for "suddenly." Please consult the etymologies of various words for support: one well-known example is "nice." Or one I've just recently become aware of, "legend." The common usage of the word to mean "notable or preeminent instance of" - as in the forthcoming philatelic series "Legends of Pedantry," depicting notable pedants through the ages - is recent enough that in the dictionary closest to hand here at my lame-ass job (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1981 ed.), that definition is not even listed. One comes close - "a person or thing that inspires legends." But the transition from the Latin gerund meaning approx. "gathering," to specifically a story gathered from the past, to the sense that emphasizes the mythic quality of such stories ("people say that, but it's just a legend"), to "person that inspires legends," is a fairly major semantic shift or expansion. Presumably, those shifts were motivated by shifts in the way people used the word. (And how the meaning evolved that denotes a caption or the list of symbols on a map, I don't know...) That was "humpty-dumptyist" not "humpty-humptist." - ------------------------------- ...Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb :: --Batman ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 22:10:56 -0500 From: steve Subject: Arnold Dreyblatt Those who like minimalism might be interested in the downloads section of Mr. Dreyblatt's site. (Via Salon's Wednesday Morning Download). - - Steve __________ blumenthal gloss jenny avert cabot nuzzle bulge inconsequential bottom volterra birth alive keats absentia illegitimacy ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 23:00:02 -0500 From: "Fortissimo" Subject: Eno reissues/weirdness The first four Eno "rock" albums (Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain, Another Green World, Before and After Science) have been remastered from the original tapes (sez here) and reissued. I picked them up yesterday, and well, I'm a little disappointed. First, the packaging shows a couple of poor decisions. Each title is packaged in one of those cardboard foldout thingies with the plastic disc-holder glued on, and the cardboard package is *very* tightly shoved inside a plastic slipcase. Elegant - but I nearly wrecked my copy of HCWJ trying to remove it from its plastic housing. More importantly, this packaging concept severely limits the amount of info able to be presented. My old LPs are in the basement, and I'm too lazy to go dig them up to compare - but compared to the EG CDs I have (all bought in the late '80s, I believe), a couple of problems are immediately apparent. Virgin (who's responsible for the reissues) has elected to reproduce the original LP covers in CD size - thus rendering the print in Eno's distinctive handwriting on the reverse of Tiger Mountain completely illegible. Granted, all that info is typeset inside the package - but it looks worse than EG's idea to focus on a section of the back cover image and reproduce the handwriting legibly. We also lose one of Peter Schmidt's prints (there were 3 in the EG CD; only 2 here). Similarly, my EG CD of Science includes four drawings by Schmidt in the inner fold of the insert: these are nowhere to be found in the reissue. The standard for reissues these days has been set pretty high: even if there aren't bonus tracks (and they're out there, of course), we at least expect some sort of notes. (Perhaps some of the stuff that showed up in _More Dark than Shark_ years back?) The weirdest thing, though, is on Another Green World: two bars have been omitted from the beginning of "Everything Merges with the Night." The two bars immediately after the entrance of the bass guitars, when Eno sings "Rosalie...": gone. The vocal begins with the song's *second* line, and those two bars are just...gone. At first, I was suspecting a Sc*tt M*lleresque deletion of past life experience* - but the second "Rosalie" in the song is there. And if they only wanted to delete the name (for whatever reason), why not just omit the vocal line...and why keep it the second time? And if there was a problem with part of those two bars in the original tapes...well, there's enough repetitive material in the track (including Eno singing "Rosalie..." again with nearly the same phrasing & melody) to put together a composite that would be *close to* but not exactly as on the original tape. If an explanation were included, that would certainly be closer to "from the original tapes" than dropping out two bars entirely. (In fact, I may gum together such a composite myself...just cuz it bugs me hearing the song "wrong.") Or, it's just a fuckup. I'm thinking I should hang on to my receipt, in case later editions correct it. The good news is: the sound is clear and clean, and of course the music is brilliant as ever. Anyone else picked these up yet, and have their own opinions? (James, I know you're an Eno fan...) * In a reissue of some early songs, Miller deleted one set of backing vocals (performed by his at-the-time girlfriend) and replaced them with another set - performed by his at-*that*-time girlfriend. If they're reissued again, do we find out if his wife of 3 years or so can sing? - ------------------------------- ...Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb :: --Batman ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 22:23:07 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: Eno reissues/weirdness > The weirdest thing, though, is on Another Green World: two bars have > been > omitted from the beginning of "Everything Merges with the Night." Ugh! That's a dealbreaker, as far as I'm concerned. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2004 09:39:53 -0700 From: "Rex Broome" Subject: The Paw-Paw Carboard Digipak Jeffrey: >First, the packaging shows a couple of poor decisions. Each title is >packaged in one of those cardboard foldout thingies with the plastic >disc-holder glued on, and the cardboard package is *very* tightly shoved >inside a plastic slipcase. Elegant - but I nearly wrecked my copy of HCWJ >trying to remove it from its plastic housing. There seems to be a trend towards cardboard-ising second-time reissues these days... I suspect it being partly to simulate LP-ness for retro effect, and partly to differentiate the "deluxe" version from the original issue. Although it doesn't sound like the Eno discs are making much of a pretense of deluxe-ness. Disappointing. I never thought much of the EG issues packaging-wise, although some seemed better than others... I don't have the albums on vinyl for comparison, but I generally assumed a lot of stuff had been lost from the original packaging... the artwork just felt skimpy. But maybe the drab and uniform spine design on them is skewing my opinion; I do see the spines more frequently than the booklets. Anyway, back to the cardboard thing... the Television reissues of last year, although very nice and apparently way more respectfully produced than these, did that cardboard format as well, and, guys... they just don't hold up. My copy of Adventure arrived via mail order with an already partially-collapsed spine... major drag. And another thing... look, yeah, jewel cases are bland and kinda indifferent, but *at least they keep the actual surfaces of the artwork from rubbing up against each other when filed*. The kind of scuffing the doesn't much matter on big old 12" by 12" images totally screws up images which are 1/4 the size. Plus, and I don't know why this is, both of my children, when going through their pulling-stuff-down-off-of-shelves phases, gravitated *heavily* towards the paper-sleeved items on the CD rack. Maybe they thought they were more like books... which is cool because it indicates that they like books and all, but I now have a few outta-print digipak import singles which will never be the same. Oh well. - -Rex Need a new email address that people can remember Check out the new EudoraMail at http://www.eudoramail.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V13 #160 ********************************