From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V13 #346 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Saturday, December 4 2004 Volume 13 : Number 346 Today's Subjects: ----------------- The right way to reform your influential rock band... [Tom Clark ] Re: old bands that I'll concede at least don't suck as bad as REM [The Gr] Re: old bands that I'll concede at least don't suck as bad as REM ["Stew] Welcome to the Bush Reich (NR) [steve ] I thought I was dreaming [Jill Brand ] Re: In the Country ["Lauren" ] RE: fegmaniax-digest V13 #345 ["Shane Apple" ] Re: Aargh! Cancellation of Northgate Mall ["Michael Wells" ] Re: Music for Chores (was Re: I like the Thrills and REM's latest) ["Laur] RE: I thought I was dreaming ["Brian Huddell" ] Re: The boy in the great curved bubble [Jeff Dwarf ] In the locust wind... [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: fegmaniax-digest V13 #345 [steve ] RE: The boy in the great curved bubble ["Marc Alberts" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 14:06:22 -0800 From: Tom Clark Subject: The right way to reform your influential rock band... http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/ 0,12102,1364503,00.html btw - The Slints? - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 11:27:12 +1300 From: James Dignan Subject: He likes Blur, too Lauren wrote: >I likely shouldn't admit to it, but Hirst is one of my favourite visual >artists. I'm a bit fascinated with death and decay. heh. I dare say you're one of those Robyn Hitchcock fans then. He's always singing about them things. James (who notes that uchamp's "Fountain" has just been voted the most influential piece of modern art) - -- 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: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 15:24:19 -0500 From: The Great Quail Subject: Re: old bands that I'll concede at least don't suck as bad as REM Rex: > Hey, just because arena rock isn't my cuppa and U2's schtick grew > tiresome to me a decade and a half ago doesn't mean I view myself as > "hip"! I've tried to bring the Light of Truth to this List on numerous occasions, and I know that it is hard work indeed. I see you wandering in the Desert of Delusions, and I say, Let the scales fall from your eyes, my brother! You don't have to be too cool for U2 -- Let the healing begin! Enlightenment is only a turntable away! Look upon me, and see the void in your soul, yearning to be filled with the music of Brother Bono. I know your type, sir, and your pretentious mojo is no match for my own! I dazzle you with Bono's sequined cowboy hat! I strike awe into you with a giant lemon! With chips of sonic mica dashed off the primordial granite of Rock, the Edge's guitar will shred the slings and arrows of your massed armies of cynicism! > Rattle and Hum sucks. Empirically. Hold your Suckometer up to it and > see what kind of reading you get. You poor fool! My suckometer explodes anywhere near it, overwhelmed by positive vibrations of non-suck! You speak of empiricism, and yet you are blind to your own lack of sight! > I like Wilco a good deal, but this whole discourse embodies the Riddle > of the Quail: just how can a man whose tastes and interests otherwise > run so deeply to the esoteric consistently champion bands that bore me > to tears? There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Rexatio. Perhaps the riddle does not lie with me at all, but curves its cosmic question mark from within your own soul? - --Q ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 17:50:41 -0500 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: old bands that I'll concede at least don't suck as bad as REM The Great Quail wrote: > > Enlightenment is only a turntable away! did you hear that? Oh, what a giveaway! He's recruiting for his weird retromechanical sect again. The only 'turntable' I use is under 50mm wide, spins intermittently at a few thousand RPM, and lives happily in my pocket. ... and anyway, Julian Koster could take on all of U2 any day. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 19:30:12 -0600 From: steve Subject: Welcome to the Bush Reich (NR) You will love Big Dubya - - - Steve - ---------- They really have no use for liberalism and democracy, but they're conquering the world in the name of liberalism and democracy. - Shadia Drury, author of Leo Strauss and the American Right, on Straussian Bushies ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:45:37 -0500 (EST) From: Jill Brand Subject: I thought I was dreaming ...so I was having a Greek salad with a just-turned-40 dance mom while we were waiting for our daughters to finish a dress rehearsal when I, turning 50 sooner than I care to think, told the other mom an amusing thing that had happened in our little hamlet of Belmont home-of-Mitt-Romney Massachusetts last night. On the first Thursday in December, they close off the town center to traffic and have a tree lighting "event." Some of the restaurants give free samples (yummy pakoras last night), and the high school Madrigal choir, bedecked in some cool velvet duds and all wearing tights (boys and girls), does an amazing job singing 15th-18th century music as it wanders through the streets. As a proud parent of a sophomore tenor, I went for the first time in years. When I saw the tree, I burst out laughing. The tree is usually about 15+ feet high, but the one they have this year is about my height, and I'm short. It turns out that there was a snowstorm where the real tree has to travel from, and it will be late in arriving. Of course, the first thing I thought of was the Stonehenge disaster in Spinal Tap. Indeed, when my son told his guitar teacher today about the tree, his teacher said, "Have you ever heard of a movie called This Is Spinal Tap?" Anyway, as I told the story to Mary Dancemom, age 40, I said, "It was just like in Spinal Tap." Blank stare. "You know, the Stonehenge bit in the movie This Is Spinal Tap." Continued blank stare. "Are you not familiar with the film?" No, she had never heard of it. Now I know that I am not a typical dancemom (it's like being a soccer mom but you spend a fuckload of time on make-up and hiding bra-straps), but, uh, who the fuck between the ages of 15 and 50 has not heard of Spinal Tap? I mean, if you don't know that movie, then lines like "Yes, but mine goes up to eleven" and "he spontaneously combusted" are meaningless. But really. And I'm not talking about a media-deprived area. I'm talking about 10 minutes from Harvard Square and a woman who prides herself on listening to music as varied as "Kenny G. and the Who" (no shit). So I'd like all of you who rub elbows with the common people in your work or daily life to go out there and find someone in this age group who has not heard of this movie. Born again Christians are excluded. Jill, who still doesn't have the hang of eye-liner ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 23:13:39 -0500 From: "Lauren" Subject: Re: In the Country on Friday, December 03, 2004 5:27 PM "James Dignan" wrote: > Lauren wrote: > >I likely shouldn't admit to it, but Hirst is one of my favourite visual > >artists. I'm a bit fascinated with death and decay. > > heh. I dare say you're one of those Robyn Hitchcock fans then. He's > always singing about them things. > > James (who notes that uchamp's "Fountain" has just been voted the > most influential piece of modern art) ..after I sent the e-mail and mentioned 'Joy of Life', I was alternately kicking myself / cursing Fegmaniax Mailing List's 'oversight' of a 'I take that e-mail back!' function as I had thought of Duchamp's Fountain (also, amazingly, right down the road from me...Philadelphia has its charms). It's good analogy to Damian Hirst's dead-animal work and its controvesy. That work can be taken as blunt, kind of obnoxious, and rather brutal, but still I find it strange how strongly people reacted to his dead-animal work, what with all the dead cows here, there, and everywhere. Shit, he just stuck a frame on one. It's kind of...derivative even. I actually knew nothing of Hirst until about three or four few years ago. I was visiting London with my parents and was by myself in a bookstore on a rainy Friday night. I picked up a sort-of-autobiography about Hirst and his life as an artist, sat down on the floor, and read nearly the whole damn thing. I like what interests Hirst. He's very aware of the passing of time. And the next day, I was at the Tate Modern and spent the whole time in Hirst's 'Pharmacy' (well, I took a 20 minute break to be mesmerized by that piano which hangs from the ceiling and falls every x minutes.) xo Lauren P.S. James - BTW, that Eno song is so, so lovely and serene - there are many nights I have fallen asleep to 'Before and After Science'...I love how peaceful it gets on the B side. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 04:41:39 +0000 From: "Shane Apple" Subject: RE: fegmaniax-digest V13 #345 Quail: >Makes me wonder where Wilco and Radiohead will be in ten years.... Am I the only person on the list who a) Has always thought Wilco sucked? I've NEVER understood why they get so much critical attention. b) Likes OK Computer but now thinks Radiohead already sucks? Their ultra-super-bomb-diggity experimental albums are really flat. I own their latest, but I have never gotten all the way through it. I can barely listen to anything in the Radiohead discography these days. Tom Waits has been around for almost 30 years. I thought Blood Money was weak (Alice simultaneously released, I really liked though), but he's come back strong with his latest. That guy just keeps on ticking. He'll NEVER suck. The Residents are one of the best examples of what Eddie was talking about. They just seemed to hit a wall of suck and stuck to it. A lot of those electronic guys (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher), too. Pulp, Momus, and Beck may be other sad examples. Robert Wyatt started sucking, but then re-emerged as somebody who does the opposite of sucking. The Tiger Lillies have been amazingly consistent, but they're not for everybody. Or anybody. Bob Dylan. His career, more expansively, is a lot like Robert Wyatt's. I love those 90's folk albums and think his last two are just great. (Don't miss him on 60 minutes Sunday, by the way). I think Stereolab still remains great (I haven't heard the last album at all though), but I know there are many who think they're entered suckdom. John Fahey had a very long career filled with very little sucking. Directors: What about David Lynch? Or Peter Greenaway? Or that Japanese guy who did the Spirited Away movie? I keep waiting for Pixar to stop making good movies. - --Shane - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't just search. Find. MSN Search Check out the new MSN Search! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:40:21 -0600 From: "Michael Wells" Subject: Re: Aargh! Cancellation of Northgate Mall Stewart: > chacun a son debilitating joint inflammation, Eddie. Me, I like Robyn's current folkish sound. While I still enjoy the Egyptians records more than I should, I do have to listen to them with a '*so* last century' filter on. Word. I'd much rather hear him writing music that he wants to write, rather than music he thinks his fans used to like. I think that's how he got such diverse and loyal peeps in the first place. Half of SPOOKED is old-school Robyn; songs like "Creeped Out," "Sometimes a Blonde" or "Demons and Fiends" could have just as easily been from ELEMENT or EYE or BSDR. Shuffle songs from the albums one after the other...it's perhaps subtler now, but almost startling how that same edgy vibe is still there. When he did "Sometimes a Blonde" in Milwaukee, I got a weird chill and could *see* a younger Robyn singing from inside the skin of the older one. 'Heavenly nightshade' indeed. My own insane opinion is that the rest of SPOOKED is the other good half of LUXOR that wasn't ready yet. "Flanagan's Song," "Full Moon in My Soul" and "No Way Out of Time" cover the much of the same ground...facing the realities of time slipping away, valuing ones emotional stake in things, and not necessarily giving up but becoming resigned to certain things. Fucking amazing writing. It is so far from suckdom that it does rather put LUXOR in a different light; while still enjoyable, the latter now seems transitional and somewhat incomplete. I sure would like to hear "Trams of Old London" live, tho... Michael "your mileage may vary, especially if you have a solar-powered car" Wells ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:16:31 -0800 From: "Marc Alberts" Subject: RE: fegmaniax-digest V13 #345 Shane wrote: > Am I the only person on the list who > > a) Has always thought Wilco sucked? I've NEVER understood why they get so > much critical attention. Friends tell me that there is much to appreciate with Wilco. What that might be, I also am unable to figure out. > b) Likes OK Computer but now thinks Radiohead already sucks? Their > ultra-super-bomb-diggity experimental albums are really flat. I own their > latest, but I have never gotten all the way through it. I can barely > listen to anything in the Radiohead discography these days. I never liked Radiohead all that much. To me, they were like the Flaming Lips only without any of the fun. I've tried and tried, but I just can't get excited about them at all. > Tom Waits has been around for almost 30 years. I thought Blood Money was > weak (Alice simultaneously released, I really liked though), but he's > come back strong with his latest. That guy just keeps on ticking. He'll > NEVER suck. At the risk of violating the cardinal rule of mailing lists, "I agree." > Directors: What about David Lynch? Or Peter Greenaway? Or that Japanese > guy who did the Spirited Away movie? I keep waiting for Pixar to stop > making good movies. Unfortunately, when I think of directors entering the suck phase of their career, only the Coen Brothers come to mind. Their last two films have been quite weak. But what do I know? I seem to be the only one who thinks Fargo was tremendously overrated and that Big Lebowski is only really, really funny if you're stoned. Give me the really dark and deep humor of Miller's Crossing or Barton Fink any day of the week and twice on Sundays. As for Pixar, I really did enjoy The Incredibles. I don't think I've had that much fun watching a movie in a theater full of noisy kids in a long, long time. Marc ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 00:36:59 -0500 From: "Lauren" Subject: Re: Music for Chores (was Re: I like the Thrills and REM's latest) on Thursday, December 02, 2004 8:58 AM "Miles Goosens" wrote: Subject: Music for Chores (was Re: I like the Thrills and REM's latest) > The best dishwashing music I know is My Life With the Thrill Kill > Kult's SEXPLOSION! Best vacuuming music: Raw Power by The Stooges or maybe for something a little different Funhouse by The Stooges xo Lauren, still learning 'Reply to All' ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:27:16 -0600 From: "Brian Huddell" Subject: RE: I thought I was dreaming Jill: > Indeed, when my son told his guitar teacher today about the tree, his > teacher said, "Have you ever heard of a movie called This Is > Spinal Tap?" > Anyway, as I told the story to Mary Dancemom, age 40, I said, > "It was just > like in Spinal Tap." Blank stare. "You know, the Stonehenge > bit in the > movie This Is Spinal Tap." Continued blank stare. "Are you > not familiar > with the film?" No, she had never heard of it. Now I know > that I am not > a typical dancemom (it's like being a soccer mom but you > spend a fuckload > of time on make-up and hiding bra-straps), but, uh, who the > fuck between > the ages of 15 and 50 has not heard of Spinal Tap? I mean, > if you don't > know that movie, then lines like "Yes, but mine goes up to > eleven" and "he > spontaneously combusted" are meaningless. But really. A scarier thought is that Mary Dancemom was just *pretending* not to know about Tap. But yeah, probably not. I encounter this kind of thing all the time, these huge gaps in what, to me, constitutes plain ol' cultural literacy. My favorite example: In my work I sometimes have to inform a client that a computer is not worth fixing. To me the most natural and obvious way to phrase this is to say that they have "an ex-computer". I can't help myself, despite the fact that more often than not I'm met with blank stares. Now, you'd think that "ex-computer" would be fairly descriptive even for people who somehow managed to miss the Python's parrot sketch for their entire lives. It's not. That. Right there. That's the loneliest feeling in the world. Worse than the fact that so many people don't know the parrot sketch is the fact that so many wouldn't *get it* if they did. +brian (not a Python geek, just living in the world) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 00:59:49 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: The boy in the great curved bubble James Dignan wrote: > >And while I like _Graceland,_ I do think that it's fair > >to say that the African influences on it are more > >ornamental and less fundamental than on _Remain in > >Light_ (or whatever), which offended the sensibilities > >of the "WM" evangelists. Which along with Simon > >recording in South Africa and coming off a couple > >(relatively) poor selling albums.... > > I think seriously that a lot of it was simply Simon's > choice of country. South Africa was an international > leper at the time, remember. I don't buy this, just because the musicians he was working with were the victims of Apartheid, not perpetrators or it. ===== __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 01:09:11 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: In the locust wind... The Great Quail wrote: > Rex: > > Rattle and Hum sucks. Empirically. Hold your > > Suckometer up to it and see what kind of reading you > > get. > > You poor fool! My suckometer explodes anywhere near > it, overwhelmed by positive vibrations of non-suck! > You speak of empiricism, and yet you are blind to > your own lack of sight! Surely you can't claim that _Pop_ doesn't suck. And _October_ isn't much better.... And _Rattle and Hum_ is a complete fucking mess. There are some worthy nuggets on there, but from cutting off the second half of "Van Diemen's Land" to inserting an uninteresting interview clip before "Desire" (but never any other interview clips anywhere else! not even interesting ones!!!)... They would have been better off releasing two separate albums -- one with ALL the live stuff (including the songs in the movie not on the album) and another with the new songs. And I know they were excited because Dylan wrote it with them, but "Love Rescue Me" just plain ole blows Bushistas. ===== __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 08:28:59 -0600 From: steve Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V13 #345 On Dec 3, 2004, at 10:41 PM, Shane Apple wrote: > Or that Japanese > guy who did the Spirited Away movie? You'll probably be able to judge for yourself sometime next year. - - Steve __________ maxwell thereat carefree coronate bluet baleen gemma incomparable aborning reside artemis lynch ain't bosch jackman ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 08:19:36 -0800 From: "Marc Alberts" Subject: RE: The boy in the great curved bubble Jeff Dwarf wrote: > James Dignan wrote: > > >And while I like _Graceland,_ I do think that it's fair > > >to say that the African influences on it are more > > >ornamental and less fundamental than on _Remain in > > >Light_ (or whatever), which offended the sensibilities > > >of the "WM" evangelists. Which along with Simon > > >recording in South Africa and coming off a couple > > >(relatively) poor selling albums.... > > > > I think seriously that a lot of it was simply Simon's > > choice of country. South Africa was an international > > leper at the time, remember. > > I don't buy this, just because the musicians he was working > with were the victims of Apartheid, not perpetrators or it. Victims or not, that was the controversy. The UN cultural embargo against South Africa was violated by Simon when he recorded in Johannesburg, and that Simon would do that without getting overtly political and using his stage to criticize the Apartheid regime was offensive to many parties. While the ANC publically stated that his album "might" be helping expose black South African musicians, they also were quite clear that the embargo should be enforced. James should be in a good position on this one, as NZ was a huge battleground over the cultural embargo due to the 1981 South African tour to play the All Blacks that was so controversial that divided the country. Arguments at that time that allowing the Springboks to tour NZ would help the victims of Apartheid were roundly denounced. Marc ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 15:18:29 -0800 From: Vendren Subject: Re: voodoo runs Miles down >> I have a great fear that They Might Be Giants is going that way. I've stopped buying their discs. They were once alot of fun and interesting. Now, take out the vocals and I couldn't tell you it was TMBG - it's very generic alterna-rock. Some of their stuff could be Weezer or Fountains Of Wayne filler tracks, it's so generic sounding. It's been that way for a few albums now for REM too. Take Stipe's vocals out of the first five albums and you're still left in no doubt as to who you're listening to. Take Stipe's vocals out now and it sounds like it could be almost anyone. Which to me means they've no longer a reason to exist as a band. I think the same is true for U2 now, come to think about it. The Edge now sounds like any old studio musician working for scale. What I keep thinking when I hear these bands these days, "give me a reason to listen to you guys instead of someone else. Have a reason to be in a band and selling music. There's no shortage of CDs - the world doesn't need another rock album. But music that only one band or musician could make is always interesting." Palle Now Playing: Scott Walker - Scott 3 ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V13 #346 ********************************