From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V14 #248 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Sunday, October 23 2005 Volume 14 : Number 248 Today's Subjects: ----------------- feg fame and fortune [Jeff Norman ] Go4 [Eb ] Re: Go4 [Jeff Dwarf ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 18:43:37 -0500 From: Jeff Norman Subject: feg fame and fortune Sometimes, the whole world looks like Fegmaniax: I'm reading my mailing from the Word of the Day list, and the first item in the weekly discussion mailing is from a familiar name - a Mr. James Dignan in New Zealand. The item featured an excerpt from an attempted novel - I'd forward it here, but I'll wait for James' permission... - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 16:04:48 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Go4 Saw a great show on Friday night: the reunited Gang of Four. I was excited about finally seeing this band -- I expected to see them years ago, circa the oft-maligned "Mall" album, but the tour was cancelled. I recall some eclectic triple bill planned with Public Enemy and...mmm...someone else. I guess it was *too* eclectic. The show was at Anaheim's House of Blues, contained within the Downtown Disney shopping block. After weathering an unexpected detour through the Disneyland parking maze, I arrived at the show about halfway through the first band's set. They were called Men, Women & Children, though their lineup was bereft of the latter two subgroups. They weren't as bad as their name, but how could they be? MW&C are from New York. If they're signed to a label, I couldn't find evidence of this on the Web. They were a good match for Gang of Four, with a compatible emphasis on gritty guitar scrapes mixed with a steady, thumping dancebeat. They didn't seem matured as performers yet, and had some ill-advised, dorky stage moves. Trying a little too hard to "put on a show." Yet the music was listenable, which is more than I can say for the second band. The next act was Morningwood (yes, a veritable bonanza of stupid band names), who's apparently signed to Capitol. Succinctly put, this was a set about tits. Tits, tits and tits. For further background, check the greeting page of the band's website (http:// www.morningwoodrocks.com). The site also informs me that the group even has a EP called "It's Tits," a fact which I didn't know before composing the second and third sentences of this paragraph. The group has the tried-and-true "sexy chick backed with dudes" lineup, led by a thick-haired screamer with tits. Tits, tits and tits. She wore low-slung black jeans with high-slung black panties, and a tight, horizontally-striped Mickey Mouse shirt which emphasized her Tits. She was aggressively convulsing her torso to bounce these Tits, within seconds of getting onstage. The guitarists seemed like classic-rockers posing as alt-rock thrashers, and included such old- school accoutrements as a Yardbirds T-shirt, a classic "bleached shag" haircut and a Flying V guitar. The singer's voice was nowhere near as impressive as her Tits, and the music was just a big, ugly noise. The set's high point (or low point, depending on your point of view) was the group's apparent theme song, "Take Off Your Clothes." This was presented as an audience-participation number and, sure enough, three comely vixens scrambled down to the right area in front of the stage, climbed on the shoulders of friends and soon were pulled up onstage to flaunt their wares. They *seemed* to be honest fans and not plants (the singer later crowed that they were the best dancers they had found during the whole tour), but it's hard to say for sure. The action turned faintly daring. Two of the girls were hampered because they wore no bras underneath their flimsy tops, but the other quickly unbuttoned a hot-pink shirt to reveal a black bra underneath (and, yes, an attractively sleek physique). That shirt was discarded altogether, a minute or two later. Meanwhile, the singer was doing her best to maul her willing subjects. She rubbed her face in their chests (which -- possibly to her relief -- posed no size competition for her own endowments), fondled their buns and even ended up straddling/groping one of the girls on the stage floor. There was even a moment of legitimate nudity, when she yanked up one girl's top, but the girl was facing toward the back of the stage at the time, so the nudity was mostly restricted to a bare back. Just another day at Disneyland. Well, clearly, this show hadn't given me my money's worth yet. But that would change, happily. "Hip" shows at this OC-buried venue are often weakly attended but, this time, the room was already about 80% full for Morningwood. It seemed close to a sell-out, by the time Gang of Four arrived. It was everything you'd hope for in a Gang of Four show, new or old. The group hasn't lost any of its focus or intensity, and there was no sense of just casually revisiting the old "hits" for fun (and profit). All the members have aged well (see http://www.freewebs.com/ cawthorneband/Gang%20of%20Four.jpg) and -- with the exception of drummer Hugh Burnham, who was always a bit round-bodied -- look like they even, dare we say, "work out." Singer Jon King wore a thin, black silk shirt which didn't seem to fit him very well. Either that, or it had few enough buttons that his midriff was easily glimpsed between the holes. Andy Gill was in a smart dark suit with tossled hair, and bassist Dave Allen was seriously bad-ass in a snug T-shirt which didn't hide his tattoos and beefy biceps. My my, so much sex in the air tonight. King had some unusual, jittery moves -- the strangest was a hunched- over lateral scuttle, back and forth across the stage, which made him look like a target from the classic "Space Invaders" video game. He also offered plenty of outstretched arms and marching legs, and enjoyed pointed his finger down into the sides of the crowd. He was a dandy frontman, using his tallness well to command the stage. Meanwhile, Burnham was just a *machine*. And I mean that as a compliment. Despite his extra weight, he seemed to barely break a sweat, and he scarcely changed his facial expression throughout the night. Solid as a rock. There was also an intermittent lighting effect which (accidentally?) did interesting things to his face -- two opposing lights flashing with the beat made his face harshly switch between soft underlighting and a half-lit "With the Beatles" look. Pleasantly eerie. If there was any mild disappointment to the visuals, it was Andy Gill - -- but, admittedly, only from my own quirky perspective. His scratchy, brittle style is *so* distinctive that I seriously had a hard time predicting what he would look like playing. I mean, how does he *do* that? As it turned out, he offered little of the aggressive forearm hacking which I imagined. Instead, he was simply a reserved string-picker who (also) almost never changed his facial expression. His suppressed tenacity was compelling in its own way, but my pre-existing fantasies were slightly let down. His one big Hendrix moment came during "Anthrax," where he opened with a strange, anti-musical solo involving lots of unconventional guitar grips and closeup looks into the instrument's face. Then, once the solo was over, he calmly laid the guitar (still feedbacking) on top of an amplifier and came upfront to chant the lyrics with King. Formally posed with thrust-out chests, they looked like the Van Trapp kids singing "So Long, Farewell." The one song where the group's tenacity slipped a bit was "Hed Send in the Army." For this tune, a old microwave oven was set up on a table at the left of the stage, and King gleefully pounded it with a black electric guitar (later, a bat), going along with the song's stark beat. I gather that he does something like this at every show, though I suspect "wasting" a guitar was special because it was the tour's last night. In any case, the stunt was a bit too theatrical and didn't work especially well. It was intriguing to watch the oven gradually collapse and fall apart, but it didn't seem so "rock 'n' roll" when King knocked the oven to the floor a couple of times and had to carefully reposition it on the table before resuming his bashing. Oops. This was also the *only* song where I saw Burnham "break character" and smile. Afterwards, King tossed the battered guitar into the audience. Now there was a tasty souvenir for someone! The setlist was almost exclusively devoted to the Entertainment! and Solid Gold albums. I find it intriguing (and gratifying) that bands like Gang of Four, Wire, the Undertones and Roxy Music reunite, and end up focusing so strongly on their early, groundbreaking material rather than their more "commercial" work. It seems that the marketplace's demands have reverted back to the pure stuff, with passing years. (Myself, I couldn't even find a reason to hold onto my copy of Hard.) The band members and crowd united into a legitimate tribal celebration, by the end. The main set's final song was "To Hell with Poverty," which went over huge, and the floor continued pumping its fists throughout the encore tunes "I Love a Man in Uniform" and "Damaged Goods." The fans sang all the "Ah ahh ah ahhhh" counterpoint in the latter's chorus and, of course, the final "goodbye goodbye goodbye" refrain worked perfectly as a closer. The band summoned Men, Women & Children and Morningwood back onstage for the encore, so there were about a dozen people onstage singing along with the central hooks. In olden days, groups would come together to sing a stirring anthem like "I Shall Be Released" -- now they're singing "I Love a Man in Uniform." Ha. Times change. By this point, the saucy Morningwood singer had changed into a stereotypical '50s-waitress outfit, which craftily switched the emphasis from her chest to the underwear flashing beneath her short, bouncing skirt. Such versatility. I noted that when King re-introduced the other bands for thank-you applause, Morningwood earned barely a nipple...er, ripple. Aha. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 16:52:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: Go4 Eb wrote: > Saw a great show on Friday night: the reunited Gang of > Four. I was excited about finally seeing this band -- I > expected to see them years ago, circa the oft- > maligned "Mall" album, but the tour was cancelled. I > recall some eclectic triple bill planned with Public > Enemy and...mmm...someone else. I guess it was *too* > eclectic. The Sisters of Mercy. I remember Andrew Eldritch on 120 Minutes blaming the whole thing on the record company. The lack of cross-over appeal between himself and the PE audience never quite occured to him. "I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it." -- Mitch Hedberg . __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V14 #248 ********************************