From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #347 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Saturday, September 22 2007 Volume 16 : Number 347 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: My name is "God", and I'm a salty little pisser with Eb's cock in my kisser [Michael Sweeney ] Re: Breaking news [Steve Talkowski ] the coprophagy thread ["natalie jacobs" ] Deacon Blue [hssmrg@bath.ac.uk] Re: clean snakes [grutness@slingshot.co.nz] Random item [kevin ] not too tl but still dr [Rex ] Re: tl;dr episode iv: fat bob strikes back [Rex ] Re: clean snakes [Rex ] FW: My name is "God", and I'm a salty little pisser with Eb's cock in my kisser [Michael Sweeney ] Re: Days of Buster [lep ] nick drake [HwyCDRrev@aol.com] Re: Days of Buster ["David Stovall" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:36:27 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Re: My name is "God", and I'm a salty little pisser with Eb's cock in my kisser Jeff wrote: >On 9/19/07, Michael Sweeney wrote:>>>> ...or the one that claims that Phil McCarthy has been dead for years>> (honestly)...and was replaced in the Hermits (or was it the Five?) by a>> blokette with one leg (having lost the other one in Billy Zimmer's>> hovercraft>> accident)... > >...Or the one where Kevin Richardson had his entire skull replaced. ...or that he he injected his dad (in a tiny, tiny submarine) into his bloodstream... Michael "I must be slipping - I actually had to think for a moment about who 'Kevin Richardson' might be" Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ Gear up for Halo. 3 with free downloads and an exclusive offer. Its our way of saying thanks for using Windows Live. http://gethalo3gear.com?ocid=SeptemberWLHalo3_WLHMTxt_2 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 10:35:43 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: kevin Subject: Re: Days of Buster >Thank goodness Rex was there to witness the strange things that went on >with Buster... I know it sounds unbelievable, and I probably wouldn't >believe it myself if I hadn't seen it over and over again... That's some of the funniest, um, stuff I've ever read. Had any of these pooches been exposed to GG Allin that you know of? np Steve Reich, Music For 18 Musicians (dink dink dink dink dink dink dink dink dink dink dink dink...) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:09:35 -0400 From: Steve Talkowski Subject: Re: Breaking news http://tinyurl.com/yumorm On Sep 21, 2007, at 12:21 PM, kevin wrote: > http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/09/21/clinton-i-am-not-a- > lesbian/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:18:17 -0500 From: "natalie jacobs" Subject: the coprophagy thread > Thank goodness Rex was there to witness the strange things that went on > with Buster... I know it sounds unbelievable, and I probably wouldn't > believe it myself if I hadn't seen it over and over again... Believe > it or not, I left out the craziest parts for fear that the story would > just sound too fantastical... But today, I present it to you. > Everything that I am going to tell you is true. You know, I've been thinking lately about getting a dog after I move back to Portland. Thank you, Blatzy, for reminding me why I shouldn't. My cats have done some vile things on occasion (mostly involving using my bed as a litterbox), but nothing comparable to eating shit. n. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:55:16 +0100 From: hssmrg@bath.ac.uk Subject: Deacon Blue Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 05:57:13 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: Breakfast at Tiffany's hssmrg@bath.ac.uk wrote: > * Deacon Blue, a remarkably successful but undistinguished Britpop band. Britpop? No, they predate the '97 britpop scare by about a decade. It was my great misfortune to be working in the largest record store in Glasgow when their big breakthrough album came out - ack! Stewart * Eighties, nineties, who's counting? Formed in 1985, peaked in 1989 and split in 1994, but they apparently re-formed in 1999 and are still (just about) going, it says here: . - - MRG ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 10:12:22 +1200 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: clean snakes >Ourobouros. Thank god I don't have to pronounce it. oo-ROB-er-us, IIRC. >The Clean, "Modern Rock". [..] Maybe that makes a wee teeny bit >ironic that the other Clean >reunion album (which I hadn't heard until today, although a good deal of it >is on "Anthology") turns out to be far less homogeneous in sound, and yet >it's the one entitled "Modern Rock". The other? So you haven't heard "Unknown country", then? 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: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:46:53 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: kevin Subject: Random item From the always entertaining overheardinnewyork.com: Guy: You're how old? 27? Wow, I'm *old*. Chick: Why, how old are you? Guy: 35. If this was 1000 years ago, I'd be dead by now. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:35:33 -0700 From: Rex Subject: not too tl but still dr The Au Pairs, "Sense & Sensuality". Second album, and in come the synths, saxes, drum machines, and smoothed-out beats. It's not fatal, but it's amazing how many of these bands followed this pattern, like they all came to the same dead end as a function of their era, when it didn't have to be that way. The Au Pairs fare at least as well as Gang of Four did with this approach did on "Songs of the Free" maybe a little better, as Lesley Woods does nothing to tone down the intensity of her delivery, and the guitars stay pretty spikey. The lyrical approach is streamlined, but not softened at all if anything the repetition make the politicizing even more pointed. The debut is just too much to live up to, though. It's as if a feral animal has been converted into a deadly machine it may be just as efficient and it's still a marvel to behold in action, but some of the mystery of what makes its muscles work has been demystified. But it hasn't been produced to death by any means if I hadn't heard "Playing with a Different Sex" first, my jaw would be on the ground listening to this record, and as it unfolds, some of the changes work not the ones that are a sign of their times as much as the strange personal choices, the near-torch song and the Eastern drone experiment and the (you knew it was coming) spacey dub excursion are all interesting. I'd still call this an essential record. The bonus tracks suggest a number of interesting possible future directions for the band (the guys singing lead on a Clash-like number, and Woods taking on some bluesy, almost commercial material for which her voice is surprisingly wonderfully suited, but they also whisper of fragmentation and the end of it all, which is a shame. Joe Strummer, "Rarities: Dizzy's Immortal Donkey". A bootleg, I guess this would once have been called. As much as Strummer is a larger-than-life heroic figure to many, and as much as has been written about him, he's still kind of a hard guy to figure out. Chief among his supernatural powers, as far as I can tell, is that upon immersing himself in any new musical idiom, Strummer seems to have immediately and instinctively grasped (though not felt bound by) everything about it not just the conventions and charactieristic subject matter, but somehow, immediately, all the key artists, release dates, lost sessions and who played on all of them.. all of it, be it rockabilly, some obscure branch of world music, or an emergent strain of unnamed techno. These are odds and sods of highly divergent recording quality, but they make me believe it: the guy plays everything, and plays it all correctly, and yet never sounds like anyone other than Joe Strummer. One beef with this: one of the two tracks which made this a must-download for me, "Afro-Cuban Be-Bop", a 7"-only release which has haunted me since hearing it a couple of times on French radio in 1991, has a big needle pop in the middle of it. I can probably fix it myself, and I've wanted a good copy of this for so long that I probably eventually will, but still, damn. Meanwhile, there are lots of other unearthed and unheard tracks on this thing to keep me happy. It's good to hear a little bit of what was going on in the years before those (damned fine) Mescaleros albums finally started appearing. Slovenly, "Highway to Hanno's". An old SST band that appeared on my radar a couple of years ago, in the form of vinyl rips of two of their albums. Here's a third one that I've just discovered. Less punky than many of their labelmates, Slovenly works out an intricate web of interlocking guitars and melodic basslines, not unlike what The National does these days, come to think of it. None of those icey chorused-up postpunk sawing-at-eighth-notes guitar tones, nor any trace of jangle, though; the reference is clearly backwards towards more fluid forebearers like Television, the Voidoids, Beefheart (when they break out the sax) or even The Soft Boys (and unlike a lot of critics, I don't throw those references around loosely), so of course I'm enjoying that. The vocalist (and the lyrics) might prove to be a barrier to some listeners he deploys a baritone in the Ian Curtis mold, confident that it'll all work out in spite of not being in complete control of his pitch. That kind of thinig doesn't bother me, although it doesn't mesh with the often-soaring and filigreed guitar melodies as it would with Barney Summers-type hammering. Small price to pay, though. There are perhaps a few too many semi-ambient interludes, and the lyrics do lean toward the pretentious (think D. Boon's earnest side, without the self-deprecating humor). That works just fine on the wilder, more experimental jams (which cannot help but evoke, yep, The Pop Group), but less so on the reflective or consonant numbers. In fact, the two types of songs sit less comfortably beside each other here than they would on a Minutemen album, and that may be because there's a ceiling of sheer beauty above which Boon's wonderfully scratchy guitar wouldn't (and didn't need to) soar, but with the Slovenly guitarists, the sky seems to be the limit as far as prettiness is concerned, and you can't help but wish they'd stick to it. I seem to reacall that they do so more consistently on their other two records, but in any case, all three are worthy of attention. After that, comfort food. My annoying habit of reading yesterday's newpaper has revealed to me that I missed The New Pornos the other night and am missing The Arcade Fire tonight, and I had really intended to see both, so that's two missed chances to expose myself to something which would probably have made me weep openly especially The Arcade Fire, who are playing the Hollywood Bowl, because that's where I took my older daughter to her first concert, at which she fell in love with The Arcade Fire (and slept through most of David Byrne). Musta been nearly three years ago now, and you'd better believe she still remembers it. I gotta pay more attention. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:15:11 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: tl;dr episode iv: fat bob strikes back On 9/21/07, Michael Sweeney wrote: en saturated), but... > > 1b. I am cardigan-and-shotgun hard-pressed to see how anyone could > confuse that with Nirvana... People do a lot of things that don't make sense, though. This is one of them, sadly. So now, just to get it over with, I'll go ahead and mention Better Than Ezra for the hat trick. There. Now a bit of pickled ginger to clear the pallete, and let the weekend commence. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:27:02 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: the coprophagy thread On 9/21/07, natalie jacobs wrote: > My cats have done some vile things on occasion (mostly involving using my > bed as a litterbox), but nothing comparable to eating shit. This reminds me to consult the Fegmind about another pet issue. Our cat keeps pissing on the slipcover to our couch. Is this just an unbreakable cycle? Because I keep washing the slipcover and pillow covers, even tried double-washing them once, and Exene still pisses on them, usually in the same spot Not because her litterbox hasn't been cleaned either... several times I've found the piss-spot right after hearing her using the litterbox with nary a complaint. Wifey and I both work, so there's no way to monitor the cat around the clock. So... erm... is the variant "Christopher Gross, please advise!" acceptable? - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:30:48 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: clean snakes On 9/21/07, grutness@slingshot.co.nz wrote: o-ROB-er-us, IIRC. > > >The Clean, "Modern Rock". [..] Maybe that makes a wee teeny bit > >ironic that the other Clean > >reunion album (which I hadn't heard until today, although a good deal of it > >is on "Anthology") turns out to be far less homogeneous in sound, and yet > >it's the one entitled "Modern Rock". > > The other? So you haven't heard "Unknown country", then? Nope. On the list it goes. I have followed the Triffids map you proposed, but haven't gotten to the listening part yet. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 05:28:28 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: FW: My name is "God", and I'm a salty little pisser with Eb's cock in my kisser This was in my outbox, but not in the latest digest...thought I'd re-try it (my apologies if individual e-mail receptors already rec'd it...but I do so luv this branch of this thread...) MLS From: m_l_sweeney@hotmail.comTo: fegmaniax@smoe.orgSubject: Re: My name is "God", and I'm a salty little pisser with Eb's cock in my kisserDate: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:36:27 +0000 Jeff wrote: >On 9/19/07, Michael Sweeney wrote:>>>> ...or the one that claims that Phil McCarthy has been dead for years>> (honestly)...and was replaced in the Hermits (or was it the Five?) by a>> blokette with one leg (having lost the other one in Billy Zimmer's>> hovercraft>> accident)...>>...Or the one where Kevin Richardson had his entire skull replaced. ...or that he injected his dad (in a tiny, tiny submarine) into his bloodstream... Michael "I must be slipping - I actually had to think for a moment about who 'Kevin Richardson' might be" Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ Can you find the hidden words? Take a break and play Seekadoo! http://club.live.com/seekadoo.aspx?icid=seek_wlmailtextlink ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 05:47:30 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Re: tl;dr: we came here to rock the microphone Rex wrote: >No Doubt, "The Very Best of No Doubt or Some Shit Like That". ...Suddenly seeing this title in the midst of the on-going Rexy Reviews was like getting slapped in the face with a mackerel. It -- somehow -- reminded me of (I think it was) a late '70s / early '80s NatLamp piece that included a bunch of reviews of very hardcore punk elpees (maybe it was in a mock punk newsletter or h.s. newspaper)...and the final entry was, jarringly, "'Rumours,' Fleetwood Mac." The "review" itself said only something like "Buy this for your mother -- then cut the fuck out of it with a knife." Michael "Although -- hey! -- I like 'Rumours'...but not nearly as much as I luvs me some 'Tusk'" Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ More photos; more messages; more whatever  Get MORE with Windows Live Hotmail.. NOW with 5GB storage. http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration _HM_mini_5G_0907 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 06:22:24 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Re: Days of Buster Blatzy said: > [some fucked-up doggie coprophagic, er...shit...] My GF had a dog -- a shar pei -- that used to eat it right out of a cat named Elvis (but, of all the other dogs and cats in that household, ONLY from Elvis as he used the litter box)...so...like all the fucked up shit you said, PLUS the whole cross-species aspect... Shudder...hey, it's what his story brought to MY mind -- thought I'd share it all with you... Michael "Thank Cthulhu this was all before I knew her...so, I've _heard_ about it, but never had to _see_ it..." Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ Kick back and relax with hot games and cool activities at the Messenger Cafi. http://www.cafemessenger.com?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_SeptWLtagline ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:25:51 -0400 From: lep Subject: Re: Days of Buster Sweeney says: > Blatzy said: > > > [some fucked-up doggie coprophagic, er...shit...] > > My GF had a dog -- a shar pei -- that used to eat it right out of a cat named > Elvis (but, of all the other dogs and cats in that household, ONLY from Elvis > as he used the litter box)...so...like all the fucked up shit you said, PLUS > the whole cross-species aspect... sigh. what about all the times a dog fails to eat poo? no one ever starts a thread for that. my parents' dog was recently a guest at my place for a week or so. i assure you that nearly everything he ate was Generally Regarded as Edible and none of it was poo. as ever, lauren - -- - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "People with opinions just go around bothering one another." - The Buddha ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 11:19:32 EDT From: HwyCDRrev@aol.com Subject: nick drake _http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/20/PKG0S4MAK.DTL&hw= nick+drake&sn=002&sc=904_ (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/20/PKG0S4MAK.DTL&hw=nick+drake&sn=002&sc=904) DRAKE'S TIMELESS MAGIC _David Wiegand_ (mailto:dwiegand@sfchronicle.com) Thursday, September 20, 2007 (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/09/20 /PKG0S4MAK.DTL&o=0) (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2007/09/20/PKG0S4MAK.DTL&o=1) On a night in late November 1974, Nick Drake listened to the Brandenburg Concertos, ate a midnight bowl of cornflakes and overdosed on the medication that was supposed to rescue him from the darkness into which he'd been retreating in his final years. His mother found him in the morning, dead at 26. The rest of the world had to wait a few years to find him, but once it did, Drake achieved the kind of success that eluded him in life. The three albums he made barely sold before his death. The few live appearances he made didn't help, although, at one point, he was on a bill with Country Joe & the Fish. At another, he went on tour to promote one of his records, but it didn't work out and he came home early. A few years after his death, Drake's music began to catch on. People were writing about him. Others were buying his albums. They said he'd become a cult figure, a status fed by his sad biography and by a too-facile sense of music. I remember reading about Drake when he finally hit. I bought all three albums at once, listened to them and then slipped them into the piles of vinyl LPs I'd eventually give away. I don't remember my reaction to the music back then. I think it just didn't seem to be exciting. Some of it reminded me of Leo Kottke. Later, when I'd rediscovered Drake, I was amazed at what I'd missed before. Millions of people "find" Drake at some point in their lives, and perhaps many find him too early. They identify with the oversaturated beauty of "Made to Love Magic," whose opening lines are: "I was born to love no one, no one to love me/ Only the wind in the long green grass/ the frost in a broken tree/ I was made to love magic." If you listen to Drake because you feel you identify with his loneliness, or perhaps allow his biography to inform the music, you'll miss what makes him deserving of his posthumous success. It is probably true, as Patrick Humphries says in "Nick Drake: The Biography," that the "fundamental flaw" in Drake as a composer was "the adolescent obsession with loneliness and the inability to communicate, which betrays his extreme youth when he wrote the songs." The phase Drake was in when he wrote his early songs is one that most people go through, but the problem, as Humphries sees it, was that the phase "became home, and he stayed there far too long." And yet, despite the sometime callowness of theme, there is also extraordinary sophistication in Drake's music, first in its compositional structure, in how the vocal line often flirts with the guitar foundation, runs ahead a bit, then turns back; and in the surprising lyricism, in how the words can hold fast one moment to the simplest of rhyme schemes, and soar the next toward Byronic heights. One must also acknowledge the quality of his two instruments, his guitar and his voice. Virtually everyone who ever performed with him was astounded at the sureness of his finger work, his ability to wrench emotions, wry commentary, the perfect echo of a sad line from the strings of his guitar. In addition to his inability to communicate with an audience, many of Drake's live performances fizzled because he devised odd tuning schemes for each of his songs. When he finished one number, the audience would have to wait patiently while he retuned for the next, and few audiences were willing to wait patiently. There's also Drake's voice, an airy, detached tenor that seems so often like sung sighing. Humphries also points out that Drake arrived on the British music scene at a time when most pop singers were applying Americanized pronunciation to their lyrics. Not so Drake, who's almost defiantly British in his diction on most of the surviving recordings. The notable exceptions are to be found largely on the bootleg "Tanworth-in-Arden 1967-68," which features Drake singing Dylan, Gershwin and his own songs, often in an Americanized accent. Finally, Drake's songs continue to captivate because they are so varied. Some of the songs seem rooted in old English folk music, such as "Northern Sky" and "River Man," while others seem to have leaped from a Noel Coward review, such as the cheeky send-up of the rich and the removed, "Mayfair." And, despite Drake's popular image as a moody loner, some of the songs are actually happy. Dedicated Drake fans will debate forever which are the best songs and which are the best albums to own. Of course, the basic three are needed as the foundation, but you can't get a sense of Drake if you buy only one of the three. There is both a musical and, unmistakably, a biographical arc in the three albums. The first, "Five Leaves Left," is in many ways the most accessible and demonstrates Drake at the height of his powers as a guitarist, composer and singer. It includes some of the greatest Drake songs: "Time Has Told Me," "River Man," "Fruit Tree," "The Thoughts of Mary Jane" and " 'Cello Song." The second, "Bryter Layter," with its dopey '70s-kitsch cover - an oval photo of Drake sitting on a chair with guitar, his shoes in front of his feet - is more heavily produced, with backup singers, brass, violins, flute tracks, instrumental cuts ("Sunday") that almost sound like elevator music. And yet, it is, of course, the masterpiece of the Drake oeuvre by many accounts, thanks to cuts such as "Northern Sky," one of Drake's most hauntingly beautiful numbers, and the waterfall of notes that opens "Hazey Jane II," a song whose inventiveness rises above the brass-heavy arrangement. By the time Drake made "Pink Moon," he wasn't capable of laying down the number of tracks demanded in the earlier albums. Drake was in full psychological retreat by then, a process augmented by drugs. Most of the last record is Drake and his guitar. His diction is sometimes slurred and his vocals, which often danced around pitch anyway, at times wander even further. The album contains one of the strangest of all Drake tunes, the instrumental "Horn," as well as the gentle finale, "From the Morning," whose lyrics include the line: "Now we rise and we are everywhere." Those words are carved on the back of the headstone Drake now shares with his parents in the church graveyard in the English village of Tanworth-in-Arden. Drake's father, Rodney, died in 1988; his mother, Molly, in 1993. Again and for the last time, their son came home early. E-mail David Wiegand at _dwiegand@sfchronicle.com_ (mailto:dwiegand@sfchronicle.com) . REMEMBERING NICK DRAKE: Producer Joe Boyd, Gabrielle Drake and singer-songwriter Jolie Holland will discuss the influence of Nick Drake's life and work at 8 p.m. Oct. 2 at Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. $19. (415) 392-4400. _www.cityboxoffice.com_ (http://www.cityboxoffice.com/) . A SKIN TOO FEW: THE DAYS OF NICK DRAKE: 7 p.m. Oct. 3 and 5 p.m. Oct. 9 at DocFest at the Roxie Film Center, 3117 16th St., San Francisco. (415) 820-3907. _www.sfindie.com_ (http://www.sfindie.com/) . This article appeared on page N - 50 of the San Francisco Chronicle ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:35:12 -0400 From: "David Stovall" Subject: Re: Days of Buster This whole recounting is so disgusting I can't stop laughing. > The only real way to deal with it was to joke about it. I used to > imagine what Buster and Ally would be like if they were in a Rock > Band... And thus, I imagined "Ally and the Flavorchews"... G.G. Ally and the Turd(er) Junkies, maybe? d9 ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #347 ********************************