From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V14 #91 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Friday, April 8 2005 Volume 14 : Number 091 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Test this theory [Dolph Chaney ] Re: Test this theory [Dolph Chaney ] a misunderstanding [Jill Brand ] Re: Test this theory [2and2makes5@comcast.net] Re: Test this theory [Jeff ] Re: meta-reap ["Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus" ] Re: Test this theory [FSThomas ] Re: Test this theory [Sebastian Hagedorn ] Re: Test this theory [2and2makes5@comcast.net] Re: Test this theory ["Stewart C. Russell" ] and...? [Jeff ] Re: Test this theory [Tom Clark ] Rapture [The Great Quail ] meta-rap [Jeff ] Re: meta-rap ["Lauren Elizabeth (gmail)" ] Re: meta-rap [Jeff Dwarf ] T shirts, Small countries, Blondie, the Pope, and handclaps. [James Digna] Re: Test this theory [Vendren ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 20:28:08 -0500 From: Dolph Chaney Subject: Re: Test this theory At 08:21 PM 4/6/2005, Eb wrote: >A windy friend claims all songs with handclaps are good. No exceptions. > >Counterexamples? She already nixed my "Mickey" suggestion. ;) The Magnetic Fields - "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 20:28:43 -0500 From: Dolph Chaney Subject: Re: Test this theory At 08:28 PM 4/6/2005, Dolph Chaney wrote: >At 08:21 PM 4/6/2005, Eb wrote: >>A windy friend claims all songs with handclaps are good. No exceptions. >> >>Counterexamples? She already nixed my "Mickey" suggestion. ;) > >The Magnetic Fields - "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure" Oh, wait, she said ARE good. Geez. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 21:30:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Jill Brand Subject: a misunderstanding Last week I posted something that was misunderstood by enough people that I need to publicly clarify what I meant. I wrote that I had just seen RH, and if anyone wanted to talk about it, to contact me off-digest. Something in the post led a fair number of people to write me telling me that they were interested in getting a copy of the concert from me. I don't have a copy of the show. My post was written tongue in cheek during the middle of the Eb-Rex-Quail lovefest, and I was implying that any discussion of Robyn Hitchcock probably would have to be made off-digest. I *had* planned on downloading it from easytree, but............... Jill ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 01:52:40 +0000 From: 2and2makes5@comcast.net Subject: Re: Test this theory > A windy friend claims all songs with handclaps are good. No exceptions. > > Counterexamples? She already nixed my "Mickey" suggestion. ;) > > Eb "Safety Dance"--though there's got to be sometheing a lot worse. Jon, now forced to rephrase the old rhetorical question as "Is the Pope dead?" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 21:22:15 -0500 From: Jeff Subject: Re: Test this theory On Apr 6, 2005 8:52 PM, 2and2makes5@comcast.net <2and2makes5@comcast.net> wrote: > > > A windy friend claims all songs with handclaps are good. No exceptions. > > > > Counterexamples? She already nixed my "Mickey" suggestion. ;) > > > > Eb > > "Safety Dance"--though there's got to be sometheing a lot worse. That windiness problem might be aided by a change in diet. Anyway: are the handclaps in "Safety Dance" (WTF is a "safety dance" btw?) real handclaps - I mean are they the Mexican handclaps or are they Sears handclaps? Uh, sorry - got lost: the point is do electronic handclaps count? (And clearly, massed handclaps - i.e., applause - do not - otherwise Peter Frampton would be in, and that just cannot be.) - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 20:05:13 -0700 From: "Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus" Subject: Re: meta-reap <> well, you're certainly wrong about arafat being the "father of modern terrorism". i should think that that honour goes to winston churchill: "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected." -- 1919 arafat's not even the father of modern *holy land* terrorism: menachem begin and co. were committing acts of terrorism in mandatory palestine when arafat was still in swaddling clothes. a completely corrupt thug i'll give you; but "cunning" and "ruthless" greatly overstate his skillz, in my opinion. why couldn't they win? they maintained a list of artists that did not want their material traded via the site (even though, legally speaking, i don't think the artists would have had a leg to stand on had easytree chosen to ingore their requests). what else could the "couple of lawyers" possibly want? and, lawyers on behalf of whom? the RIAA? if so, why not call them out in the sign-off letter? and, is there not a single ISP in this world that would stand up and fight for its users' rights? is something not adding up here, or is it just me? i got the first one -- and deleted it almost as quickly as i could listen to it. shit! her voice makes me nostalgic for fingernails-on-chalkboards. (and, yes, before you ask: i *do* think that corin tucker's voice is positively sublime...) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 00:03:29 -0400 From: FSThomas Subject: Re: Test this theory Jeff wrote: > Anyway: are the handclaps in "Safety Dance" My guess would by synthetic ones at best. > (WTF is a "safety dance" btw?) I thought it was some euphemism for protected sex. > real handclaps - I mean are they the Mexican handclaps or are they Sears > handclaps? Uh, sorry - got lost: the point is do electronic handclaps count? > (And clearly, massed handclaps - i.e., applause - do not - otherwise Peter > Frampton would be in, and that just cannot be.) I would nominate Center Field by Fogerty, but that song did a bit for his career. What about Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers? Certainly no good could come from that song. - -f. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 08:55:00 +0200 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: Test this theory - --On 6. April 2005 20:28:43 Uhr -0500 Dolph Chaney wrote: > At 08:28 PM 4/6/2005, Dolph Chaney wrote: >> At 08:21 PM 4/6/2005, Eb wrote: >>> A windy friend claims all songs with handclaps are good. No exceptions. >>> >>> Counterexamples? She already nixed my "Mickey" suggestion. ;) >> >> The Magnetic Fields - "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure" > > Oh, wait, she said ARE good. Geez. OK, I don't know the song, but its title would've made me believe that it's got to be good. So I was surprised that you gave it as a counterexample and I am now strangely relieved that you got it wrong :-) - -- Sebastian Hagedorn http://www.spinfo.uni-koeln.de/~hgd/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 12:30:17 +0000 From: 2and2makes5@comcast.net Subject: Re: Test this theory > > (WTF is a "safety dance" btw?) > > I thought it was some euphemism for protected sex. > According to the lead singer, it had to do with a slam-dancing ban in some of the places they were playing. What the video was about, I'll never know. Jon ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 08:25:34 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: Test this theory 2and2makes5@comcast.net wrote: > > "Safety Dance"--though there's got to be sometheing a lot worse. I'm lobbying hard to have Safety Dance replace O Canada as our national anthem. It's much more apposite than our present dirge. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 10:44:52 -0500 From: Jeff Subject: and...? Pirate #1: What do you get when you cross two teachers, an anarchist, and a mule? Janitor #2: I don't know, Bubbly - what do you get? Pirate #1: Varnish! (really, the above should be in German) - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 10:51:04 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: Test this theory On Apr 6, 2005, at 6:21 PM, Eb wrote: > A windy friend claims all songs with handclaps are good. No exceptions. > James Kirk's "Get On Board" is a great song, but when the handclaps start about 2/3 of the way through it just makes me wince. I guess that doesn't disprove her theory though, unfortunately. > Counterexamples? She already nixed my "Mickey" suggestion. ;) > C'mon, Eb. You of all people should know that it's fruitless to argue with a crazy person! - -tc, "Less handclaps, more cowbell!" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2005 11:24:50 -0400 From: The Great Quail Subject: Rapture > Thanks for reminding me how unspeakably lame Debbie Harry's "rapping" was... > Gotta be somewhere near the bottom on "worst rap lyrics"... Well, to be fair, she was kind of doing it as a jokey homage.... And Grandmaster Flash thought it was pretty cool, and was happily surprised that she actually put it on an album.... - --Ken "Punky Reggae Party" Kenster ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 15:40:33 -0500 From: Jeff Subject: meta-rap On Apr 6, 2005 10:22 AM, Bachman, Michael wrote: > > On Apr 6, 2005 7:09 AM, Jeff Dwarf wrote: > > > > >Thanks for reminding me how unspeakably lame Debbie Harry's "rapping" > was... > >Gotta be somewhere near the bottom on "worst rap lyrics"... > > Not that there was a lot to compare it with though when it came out in > 1981, > aside from Grandmaster Flash, and maybe a couple others. Blondie should > get > some credit for having one of the first rap hits. Blondie should get some credit for getting in early on the "white folks imitate black folks' subcultural form badly" thing... All I know is, that was likely the first rap a lot of white people heard (myself included), and it soured me on exploring the form for several years at least. (Future single-letter subject line changes: discuss carnivores in rap; discuss first encounters with rap music; discuss the time you got caught in a bear-trap; discuss the time you sheltered some friends from the rain with your body; discuss the confused time you ate a child's carriage in England.) - -- ..Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 16:43:48 -0400 From: "Lauren Elizabeth (gmail)" Subject: Re: meta-rap Jeff says: > All I know is, that was likely the first rap a lot of white people heard > (myself included), and it soured me on exploring the form for several years > at least. > Hmmm...I think Blondie/Debbie is taking more than their/her share of the responsibility on this one. Personally speaking, my being young, white, and suburban when rap was becoming popular made me just a bit fearful of black culture. Or likely I was already a bit fearful, and rap exposed that tendency in myself. The television didn't help much on that front either. I would not have called myself a racist but neither would I have called myself perfect. I imagine it was just the shock of the new as they call it. I am older and perhaps wiser. Black culture still makes me a bit fearful but now it's because I've realized what an uptight dork I am - scary thought indeed! Sort of related this...I had a friend who once related that when he about 12 or so, he heard the Sex Pistol were coming to America. He had seen pictures. He had seen news clips. He was *very* scared. I wasn't afraid of the Sex Pistols as I had not heard of them ;) xo Lauren N.P. Leonard Cohen - 'Everybody Knows' , nearly on repeat - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I hate all music. Except 'Roadrunner' by The Modern Lovers." - John Lydon ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:56:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: meta-rap Jeff wrote: > Bachman, Michael wrote: >>> Thanks for reminding me how unspeakably lame Debbie >>> Harry's "rapping" was... >>> Gotta be somewhere near the bottom on "worst rap >>> lyrics"... >> >> Not that there was a lot to compare it with though when >> it came out in 1981, aside from Grandmaster Flash, and >> maybe a couple others. Blondie should get >> some credit for having one of the first rap hits. > > Blondie should get some credit for getting in early on > the "white folks imitate black folks' subcultural form > badly" thing... Well, considering it was 25 years or so after Pat Boone, let alone his Jazz equivolents, that would be pretty damn hard. White folks started imitating black folks' subcutlral forms badly long before the waning days of the Carter administration. Further, I don't think that Deborah Harry was "imitating" any sort of blackness at all (same goes for David Byrne on "Crosseyed and Painless" or Tina Weymouth on "Wordy Rappinghood"). I think she sounds very deliberately white - --almost overly so as if to make it clear she's not trying to appropriate rap for herself, only to acknowledge it and say she thinks it's cool and interesting. The lyrics are pretty dopey, though amusingly and goofily so. It's not like she thought she was re-writing (or maybe more appropriately given the chronology, pre-writing) "The Message." 25 years later, it's clumsiness is part of its charm. And she's still a better rapper than Vanilla Ice. Or McHammer. Of 50 Cent. And besides, James did the "Gee, it's not a favorite, but I don't think it's the worst Banshees album" joke about the rapture last time it came up a few weeks ago. "I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it." -- Mitch Hedberg ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 13:19:16 +1200 From: James Dignan Subject: T shirts, Small countries, Blondie, the Pope, and handclaps. >>>I don't know...but I'm trying to think of an appropriate architect's >>>work on which to use a really bad pun that's been floating around in my >>>head for a while... someone who designs buildings that sort of look >>>like Prairie School on acid; bright colors, or distorted forms...all >>>just so someone can describe the building as looking "like it was >>>designed by Pink Floyd Wright." >> >>Sorry. No worse than a T-shirt I used >>to own. Featured a magenta portrait of that Psychoanalyst guy Sigmund >>Whatsisname. I guess you can figure out the two word caption... >> >>James (then there was the other one with old scared looking guy and the >>wraith-like dreadlocked rasta - "Scrooge visited by the ghost of Marley") > >That sounds like a Simon Drew design to me. My flavourite is the >dripping motrbike captioned "Dali Havidson". There are a few of his >here: http://www.t-shirts.co.uk/dept.asp?dept%5Fid=11&pageNumber=2 well, I answered offlist, but I miht as well write it here as well - no, I designed them, and they were screenprinted by my then SO. I like the Simon Drew designs though - they remind me of the work of one of my favourite local artists (Barry Cleavin) who did a series of works featuring skeletal alligators, all titled for political cliches using the word "Allegations". So you got "A number of allegations flying around the room" with a picture of flying alligator skeletons; "A series of partially substantiated allegations", etc. I wrote: >And now Prince Rainier's gone too... I bet the leader of the world's >third smallest country is getting worried at the trend (what would >that be, Nauru?) I'd forgotten... the head of British forces in Gibraltar died a couple of months back. > San Marino gets kudos for being the smallest country with >a F1 race. Um no - that's Monaco. > Not that there was a lot to compare it with though when it came out in 1981, >aside from Grandmaster Flash, and maybe a couple others. Blondie should get >some credit for having one of the first rap hits. for having THE FIRST rap hit. It was the breakthrough that really launched rap on the mainstream. Rap had existed before - right back to the Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron, but it was an underground thing until Rapture. >Tom Clark wrote: >> The point is that a differentiation is being made >> [between the pope and Arafat] in the first place. >> The president dictates when a flag is half-masted for >> foreign officials, and I think he's a fucktard for >> arbitrarily mandating that the pope be so honored. Arbitrarily? Nah. The Pope was a good God-fearing Christian. Maybe not quite as pious and religious a Christian as Dubya, but on the right track. >A windy friend claims all songs with handclaps are good. No exceptions. > >Counterexamples? She already nixed my "Mickey" suggestion. ;) "Centerfold", by J.Geils Band, has handclaps, IIRC. 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, 07 Apr 2005 22:52:51 -0700 From: Vendren Subject: Re: Test this theory > I'm lobbying hard to have Safety Dance replace O Canada as our national > anthem. It's much more apposite than our present dirge. > > Stewart I'd vote for that. As probably the only Feg to have seen Men Without Hats perform live (twice) I can assure that I heard handclaps during Safety Dance while no clapping of hands could be seen. Those were techno-claps, as was the style of the time. Palle ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V14 #91 *******************************