From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #474 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, January 31 2008 Volume 16 : Number 474 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! [2fs ] Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! [Rex ] Re: yet another iTunes WTF [Rex ] Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! [Rex ] Re: yet another iTunes WTF [grutness@slingshot.co.nz] Re: puppet Spike [lep ] Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle ["Benjamin Lukoff" ] Re: puppet Spike [lep ] Re: Quick (like, really quick) feg survey [kevin ] Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle ["Jason Brown" ] Re: cilantro: more than just a taste issue [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! [Michael Sweeney ] In the future [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: yet another iTunes WTF [Rex ] Re: Another quick Feg survey [Rex ] RE: Quick (like, really quick) feg survey [Michael Sweeney ] Re: Reap [Tom Clark ] Mmmm Cilantro ["SH McCleary" ] Re: tying the loos threads [2fs ] Re: puppet Spike [2fs ] Re: on not inhaling [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! [2fs ] song request ["Melissa Higuchi" ] Re: yet another iTunes WTF [2fs ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:36:27 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! On 1/31/08, 2fs wrote: > > > This is by no means a simple question, in fact. (My blatherings are here, > but they're more useful for the link they provide to Bruno's review.) > Oops - forgot to link: < http://spanghew.blogspot.com/2008/01/possible-misapprehensions.html> - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:46:59 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! On Jan 31, 2008 1:47 PM, Capuchin wrote: > > I think it brings music back to what it was before the recording industry. > Kristin is putting out a song and we get to absorb it and reinterpret it > for the world. Now, in the old days, I believe a much higher percentage > of people played musical instruments and/or sang, so a song would get > reinterpreted by them in their homes every few nights. And then maybe > somebody would come through town and play the song another way. And that > was it. There was the song and it was independent of even the writer's > version. Or nobody even knew who the "writer" was, etc. I definitely appreciate the parallels between this model and the traditional role of folk music, which is more or less in my blood. Dylan's "A song is anything that walks around on its own" is a sort of sacred idea to me. But with the old folk model, you wouldn't have every single incarnation of the song at your fingertips all the time. You'd have a few records at home with different versions, but other than that, what you had was the version being performed in front of you at the club or on the street corner or in your parlo(u)r, and when that was over, it was history (except inasmuch as it went to live in each listener's mind alongside everything else they know about the song, becoming part of their aggregate understanding of the song, which they might later express in their own performance, altering the perception of others about the song). Point being, the fok model is viral, or ever-growing-- the roots of the song can (should?) get lost, which doesn't happen when you remix someone's master tapes. Perhaps my problem is that the advent of the self-same internet that allows this *also* seems to allow so much more access to so much more music and so many more artist that it's mindboggling even the keep up with each new artist one song at a time, and the idea of many, uncountable iterations of a single song is more than I can imagine being able to absorb... unless I want to concentrate so intently on the output of one artist (RH and KH would be contenders for me) that I ignore the vast majority of the others of the others completely. As a songwriter-type-person, there is an appeal to deifying a single song and examining it from as many angles as possible-- the rewards could be very great. On the other hand, it'd be almost impossible for me to have a conversation about those rewards with anyone who'd been either listening to a more varied diet of music, or obsessively focusing on mulitple versions of some other relatively obscure artist's song instead. > > These people were remixing from stems. To them, I think the definitive > version of a song is a matter of time and place... a temporary consensus > until someone else comes along. > > And we have several modern examples of the cover of a song being the > definitive: Ednaswap's "Torn", NIN's "Hurt", etc. Not *good* examples. Those are both bad songs. "Torn" is equally boring in either version, and the fact that Cash did "Hurt", to say noting of having somewhat of a hit with it, is pretty high on my list of Non-Fatal Things I Wish Had Never Happened. But that aside, I think there's a difference: "remixing from stems" is pretty specific to something being done *using parts of* a particular recording. Eliminate all the original recorded material, replacing it with your own, and you're doing a cover version, not a remix. They are related, sometimes overlapping, but hardly synonymous kinds of re-interpretations. > I don't think this is a step in the right direction. It respects the > spirit of music much more closely than the reverence to individual > recordings does. At the same time, there is certainly music that's never intended to exist outside of the context of the original recording. You can go ahead and cover / remix / reinterpret it anyway, but that would be the opposite of reverence for the original work, by definition. Even today, there are intelligent artists who object to the taping of their live shows (Neko Case comes to mind), and while that's sort of surprising, hey, it's their art. Until, or unless, it isn't (which I think is kind of what the Dylan quote suggests, but even that is only one artist's take on what happens to his art once it leaves him). Wow, a good topic, eh? - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:52:10 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: yet another iTunes WTF On Jan 31, 2008 3:19 PM, 2fs wrote: > I want iTunes to be able to sort by the total cumulative length of all > characters forming the artist's name. So, an artist named "iii" would be > much shorter than one named "mmm." > > Of course we'd need to specify a particular font for this to work. iTunes only has the one font anyway, no? Let's DO it! - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:59:00 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! On Jan 31, 2008 12:38 PM, 2fs wrote: > > > I get the rest of what you said - but that's really surprising to hear > your > thoughts on _Learn to Sing Like a Star_ - since I thought it was her best > work in years! (Not that the intervening years have been bad or anything - > just that I really like LTSLAS). > I wanted to like it, listened to it a lot and found a lot to admire, but at some point it just went "clunk" for me and never recovered. The closing track is a marvel, though, and I think that in some respects I tended to spend the entire record waiting to hear that one song, which didn't help. It's not bad at all, it just didn't do The Thing that Hersh's best material does for me. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 13:05:23 +1300 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: yet another iTunes WTF >On 1/31/08, >grutness@slingshot.co.nz ><grutness@slingshot.co.nz> wrote: > > >It seems to be making the classic error of treating numbers as if they're >>just different characters, rather than recognizing (as several other >>ordering schema in various apps I have can do) that numbers have their own >>order, so that "20" should not follow "2" but "19,"... > >20 should follow 19 but be before 2. Twe- comes before Two :) > >8, 18, 11, 15, 5, 4, 14, 9, 19, 1, 7, 17, 6, 16, 10, 13, 3, 12, 20, 2 > > > >Now yr talkin crazy talk... well, there was a smiley, but think about it. Whereabouts is "Eight days a week" in your song collection? Is it under "8", at the end of the alphabetical list, or under E? What about "52 stations"? Shouldn't that be alphabetically under F? 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, 31 Jan 2008 19:08:43 -0500 From: lep Subject: Re: puppet Spike Capuchin says: > And that's why I don't like Battlestar Galactica. i.e. because it's been tainted with realism? xo - -- - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "People with opinions just go around bothering one another." - The Buddha ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:18:46 -0800 From: "Benjamin Lukoff" Subject: Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle No mention of the Tractor eh? On Jan 31, 2008 11:09 AM, kevin wrote: > > http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/musicnightlife/2004154856_deadclubs31.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:24:24 -0500 From: lep Subject: Re: puppet Spike Capuchin says: > On Tue, 29 Jan 2008, lep wrote: > > i love those episodes with illyria. she is soooooo cool. but i do wish > > joss would have given our dear wesley a break once or twice in his life. > > Um, what on Earth do you get out of the shows if you think this would have > been a "good thing" on any level? BTW, if you'd give me any indication that this is an honest question, i'll be glad to answer it, otherwise, keep thinking my opinions are whatever you've already decided them to be. xo - -- - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "People with opinions just go around bothering one another." - The Buddha ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:15:09 -0800 (GMT-08:00) From: kevin Subject: Re: Quick (like, really quick) feg survey >(WTF? Do they play against the Century 21 Yellow Jackets and the Masters >Winners Green Jackets? A whole colored-blazer-based league, I suppose)... I saw a C21 commercial a while back wherein the shill referenced Century 21's "144,000 agents." For those of you with a Babtist background you'll be familiar with the 144,000 persons the Bokk of Revelations says will be saved and left to dance around the Celestial Throne whoopin' & hollerin' & singing hallelujah and whatnot. I couldn't help but wonder if there's supposed to be some connection between these two bunches of 144,000, but oddly enough I've never seen that spot on TV again since that. And I suspect nobody believes me about it either... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 00:26:00 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Re: Another quick Feg survey Brian Hoare wrote: >btw. probably too late to mention cilla black death. ...No, that's brilliant (but I'm still semi-cheesed off that nobody even sneered at my suggestion of Iron Death and the Maiden)... Michael "'Attention Junkie?' No, why do you ask?" Sweeney ps - Phil Spector of Death? _________________________________________________________________ Need to know the score, the latest news, or you need your Hotmail.-get your "fix". http://www.msnmobilefix.com/Default.aspx ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:28:27 -0800 From: "Jason Brown" Subject: Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle Well, last i checked the Tractor is still in operation! But apparently no clubs have ever closed outside of the downtown core! - -- "Never go with a hippie to a second location." - Jack Donaghy ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:23:15 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: cilantro: more than just a taste issue Rex wrote: > I dunno, I gotta hope to keep Romney in there a little bit longer, > if only to underline how manically scary McCain is, and > destabilize the GOP a little bit longer. Meanwhile, will somebody > broker Clinton and Obama onto the same > ticket? Soon? Please? We all know it's right. If it's going to be McCain though, the Dem VP candidate kinda has to be somelike like Senator Webb, someone who anytime the GOP tries to paint the dems as weak has the immediate unquestionable authority to call "Bullshit!!!" on it. "I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them." -- Tom Lehrer "The eyes are the groin of the head." -- Dwight Schrute . ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:39:31 -0800 (PST) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: Another obit: R.I.P. Seattle On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, Jason Brown wrote: > Well, last i checked the Tractor is still in operation! But > apparently no clubs have ever closed outside of the downtown core! There is no hipster life beyond the core, apparently ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 00:57:17 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! Jeff wrote: >(It's okay - for my money, Clapton's version of "Little Wing" has it all overHendrix's - or at least, it transforms it so utterly that it's nearly adifferent song. I still like Hendrix's original...but I think of them nearlyas two different songs that happen to share words and chords.)< ...I'm with you there, totally, brother...(I even like the also-different version by Sting...) Michael "Not meaning to only be responding to Jeff's posts; it's just turning out that way..." Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ Need to know the score, the latest news, or you need your Hotmail.-get your "fix". http://www.msnmobilefix.com/Default.aspx ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:02:58 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: In the future everyone will play with The Minus 5 for 15 minutes http://depts.washington.edu/kexp/blog/?p=4498 "I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them." -- Tom Lehrer "The eyes are the groin of the head." -- Dwight Schrute . ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:06:13 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: yet another iTunes WTF On Jan 31, 2008 4:05 PM, wrote: > well, there was a smiley, but think about it. Whereabouts is "Eight > days a week" in your song collection? Is it under "8", at the end of > the alphabetical list, or under E? What about "52 stations"? > Shouldn't that be alphabetically under F? > > Ah. Depends on how the artist (or typesetter/graphic designer) chose to write the title. On the former song, after downloading the digital-only "Decay", I noticed that it seemed to appear in differently in different incarnations in my collection, both as "52 Stations" and "Fifty-Two Stations". I am generally with Jeff N. in loathing the confusion between titles and typography, esp. re. band names, but in the destinction between numeral and word, I think we have to go with what's written down on the track list, assuming it's the artist's intention until proven otherwise (that is, U should leave Prince song titles B). Yes, sometimes the post-artist powers, label execs, and designers might get it wrong, but I assume that usually a choice has been made. Everyone I know who writes songs can tell you right away the exact spelling of their song titles, including this very issue of numerals (it's "Pushing Forty", or "Dr. I'm Healthy" as opposed to any alternatives). Maybe some don't care, but I'd guess most do. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:07:19 -0800 From: Rex Subject: Re: Another quick Feg survey On Jan 31, 2008 4:26 PM, Michael Sweeney wrote: > Brian Hoare wrote: > >btw. probably too late to mention cilla black death. > > ps - Phil Spector of Death? > Kudos to you both. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 01:05:44 +0000 From: Michael Sweeney Subject: RE: Quick (like, really quick) feg survey > Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:15:09 -0800> From: kevinstudyvin@earthlink.net> To: m_l_sweeney@hotmail.com; fegmaniax@smoe.org> Subject: Re: Quick (like, really quick) feg survey> CC: jeffreyw2fs.j@gmail.com> > > >(WTF? Do they play against the Century 21 Yellow Jackets and the Masters> >Winners Green Jackets? A whole colored-blazer-based league, I suppose)...> > I saw a C21 commercial a while back wherein the shill referenced Century 21's "144,000 agents." For those of you with a Babtist background you'll be familiar with the 144,000 persons the Bokk of Revelations says will be saved and left to dance around the Celestial Throne whoopin' & hollerin' & singing hallelujah and whatnot. I couldn't help but wonder if there's supposed to be some connection between these two bunches of 144,000, but oddly enough I've never seen that spot on TV again since that. And I suspect nobody believes me about it either... < ...Nah, EVERYBODY knows that when the Rapture comes, itll be the Re/Max agents who'll be saved while the C21 Y-Jackets catch like kindling in the big ol' lake o' fire...serves them bastards right, too... Michael "Blasphemies R' Us" Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ Need to know the score, the latest news, or you need your Hotmail.-get your "fix". http://www.msnmobilefix.com/Default.aspx ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:10:33 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: on not inhaling On 1/31/08, Elizabeth Brion wrote: > > > > (This is a bit of a test, as I just had a post of mine appear on a > smoe-hosted list in a timely fashion for the first time in ages; if the > whole server has decided it likes me again, I might actually participate > now and again. If, however, this shows up on Sunday and 12 people have > linked to I Hate Cilantro - not my fault, I swear!) That's weird - I thought we were talking about the whole cilantro thing like nine or ten months ago. So - what do you folks expect from the newly elected President Obama? - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:10:45 -0800 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: Reap On Jan 31, 2008, at 3:03 PM, Jeff Dwarf wrote: > The Montel Williams Show > > http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117979859.html?categoryId=2467&cs=1 > > He gave Sylvia Browne somewhere to be on TV a lot, so fuck the > fucking fuck with a fucking fucking fuck fuck fuck. On the other > hand, there's always this: > > http://www.schlock.net/sounds/montel.wav FTFA: "Stations continue to embrace Montel and the message of social responsibility that has been the cornerstone of his show" Apparently social responsibility = parading out the dregs of society like a circus sideshow. - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:13:26 -0500 From: "SH McCleary" Subject: Mmmm Cilantro jeffreyw2fs murmured: A friend of mine is revolted by cilantro. For whatever reason, it just sets him off. (He memorably wrote a blog entry about it, for which he made a very clever photo: it looked at first as if he'd put a large piece of cilantro on a plate with a white circular border...which at closer look turned out to be a toilet, which he'd shot straight-on from above) Cilantro has a psychotropic effect on me. You could ask Susan (if she was still around) about a certain dinner in Chicago when I got a snootful. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:14:34 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: tying the loos threads On 1/31/08, grutness@slingshot.co.nz wrote: > > > >Wait... what's the word for things that are not good, but happened in a > >strangely coincidental way? I had a made-up word for it the other day, > >but can't think of it now. > > Synchronicity I think a lot of Police fans (or "The Police fans") would disagree that that's necessarily not good... > > > Hasn't really started happening in NZ yet, though the country's > best-known club soccer team is the Wellington Phoenix. Not even sure > I know how that should be pluralised. "Phoenices"? Oh wait - that's that band with the Boston guy with the beard - the Phoenices Brothers. - ---------------- Now playing: Pink Floyd - Vegetable Man - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:23:47 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: puppet Spike On 1/31/08, Capuchin wrote: > > On Tue, 29 Jan 2008, lep wrote: > > i love those episodes with illyria. she is soooooo cool. but i do wish > > joss would have given our dear wesley a break once or twice in his life. > > Um, what on Earth do you get out of the shows if you think this would have > been a "good thing" on any level? Um, I think this would have been a "good thing" on the level that if Wesley were a human being, he suffers far out of proportion to what he deserves...even though he's done several things that are pretty fucked up, ultimately he's a decent human who still tries to do the right thing. I agree with almost everything you wrote below...but once again, the Jeme Tone Bender renders whatever it was you wanted to say, above, into a pointlessly hostile setting. You really should learn to see that, I'd say. Wesley's suffering and decay and attempts at redemption are probably the > very best thing about Angel. If he had had "a break once or twice in his > life", none of it would make sense and the pathos would be utterly fucked. This is certainly true on the plot level - but I think Lauren's smart enough to figure that out, but was responding (as I said above) in terms of Wesley as hypothetical person, or something. I mean, to me it makes perfect emotional sense to say what she said (however poorly I might be explaining it), even while acknowledging that, dramatically, it would have weakened the series. Like: Wash had to die (oops! spoiler...) for a host of reasons, but that doesn't mean that, since he was such a likable character, it kinda sucked that he did. "Did" both die, and have to do so. I > way more out of that than watching people who have no principles deal with > the random events of a purposeless universe. > > And that's why I don't like Battlestar Galactica. I've just started watching BSG - I just finished Season 1, so no damned spoilers please - but insofar as you went from your last sentence in the preceding paragraph to the sentence about BSG, I disagree that the characters in BSG uniformly "have no principles". Maybe I'll think differently once I've seen a few more seasons...but could you explain what you mean as much as you can w/o utterly spoilerizing S2 and beyond? (Or maybe you only watched one season and gave up - I don't know. Or maybe you were just making a random joke - I can be obtuse as well ;-) - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com - ---------------- Now playing: James White & the Blacks - Contort Yourself ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:29:24 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: on not inhaling 2fs wrote: > So - what do you folks expect from the newly elected President > Obama? I think after Hillary's assassination at the hands of Dick Cheney, he should have pretty free reign.... (Not that I don't prefer Obama over Hillary, but I think his momentum has dissipated substantially). "I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them." -- Tom Lehrer "The eyes are the groin of the head." -- Dwight Schrute . ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:32:06 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Now THIS is fucking cool! On 1/31/08, Rex wrote: > > > > > > And we have several modern examples of the cover of a song being the > > definitive: Ednaswap's "Torn", NIN's "Hurt", etc. > > > Not *good* examples. Those are both bad songs. "Torn" is equally boring > in > either version, and the fact that Cash did "Hurt", to say noting of having > somewhat of a hit with it, is pretty high on my list of Non-Fatal Things I > Wish Had Never Happened. Well, Cash had such gravitas he could probably sing "Louie, Louie" and turn it into a grand tragedy...that said, my favorite version of "Hurt" is the one my friend Steve sent me, where it was worked into a medley of Christmas songs retrofitted with NIN lyrics. "Hurt" was done to the tune of "Little Drummer Boy," sung by a guy who sounded kinda like TMBG's "aren't you the guy that hit me in the eye?" part of "Fingertips"..."I hurt myself today, pah-rumpa-pum-pum..." It's what Trent deserves - being turned into a comedy Christmas number. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 01:09:03 -0000 (GMT) From: "Melissa Higuchi" Subject: song request fegs, I'm collecting suggestions for any songs that might work with this year's Burning Man theme - American Dream. any suggestions would be appreciated - esp as the list has a mich wider and deeper appreciation of music than many of the folks in the camp. basically we'd do anything to avoid having to hear ring of fire over and over again. already suggested American Woman American Music - Violent Femmes America - Rammstein and of course Robyn's america thanks melissa ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:44:01 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: yet another iTunes WTF On 1/31/08, Rex wrote: > > > > On Jan 31, 2008 4:05 PM, wrote: > > > well, there was a smiley, but think about it. Whereabouts is "Eight > > days a week" in your song collection? Is it under "8", at the end of > > the alphabetical list, or under E? What about "52 stations"? > > Shouldn't that be alphabetically under F? > > > > > Ah. Depends on how the artist (or typesetter/graphic designer) chose to > write the title. On the former song, after downloading the digital-only > "Decay", I noticed that it seemed to appear in differently in > different incarnations in my collection, both as "52 Stations" and > "Fifty-Two Stations". I am generally with Jeff N. in loathing the confusion > between titles and typography, esp. re. band names, but in the destinction > between numeral and word, I think we have to go with what's written down on > the track list, assuming it's the artist's intention until proven otherwise > (that is, U should leave Prince song titles B). Yes, sometimes the > post-artist powers, label execs, and designers might get it wrong, but I > assume that usually a choice has been made. Everyone I know who writes > songs can tell you right away the exact spelling of their song titles, > including this very issue of numerals (it's "Pushing Forty", or "Dr. I'm > Healthy" as opposed to any alternatives). Maybe some don't care, but I'd > guess most do. > Plus (as some of the titles in the list I posted demonstrate) some song titles are clearly intended as numerical references, not incidentally numbers (compare "24/7" vs. "24 Pigeons Crapping in the Square"). And certainly, this is true of years : a song called "1968" has no business being alphabetized under "N." Plus which, there are areas of confusion, where it's unclear whether a number is intended as, say, a year ("1984" -> "nineteen eighty-four") or as a number (a song called "1600" which turns out to be about some group of 1600 people...and which the singer sings "one thousand six hundred" - alpha'd under "O" therefore - not "sixteen hundred" - - alpha'd under "S" - as the year would be pronounced). Alphabetizing under the numeral when the title's so written gets rid of that problem. Oh wait - actual example: Grant Hart's "2541." Until you hear the song, you have no idea whether the numeral in question is a year (as if it's a science-fiction song), a number ('two thousand five hundred forty-one"), or - - as it turns out to be - an address. He pronounces it "twenty-five forty-one" - but how one pronounces four-digit addresses probably varies. For instance: Milwaukee's addresses are on a grid, with numbered streets running north-south - and so addresses on easterly/westerly streets refer to that grid - i.e., 2541 W. Something Street can be presumed to be west of 25th Street and east of 26th Street. So what happens when you get further west in this setup? Well, locals would pronounce an address like 12407 W. Bland St. as "one twenty-four oh-seven" - but I've heard people from out of town say things like "twelve four-oh-seven." Trying to alphabetize numerals based on the verbal spelling, in other words, requires you to figure out how they're pronounced...and since in many cases, that info isn't to be gleaned from the title alone, it's an unwieldy notion. Attempting to wrest vast quantities of verbiage from trivia... - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com - ---------------- Now playing: Charlotte Hatherley - Commodore ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #474 ********************************