From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V18 #121 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, June 24 2010 Volume 18 : Number 121 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: The Smiths [Jeremy Osner ] Re: The Smiths [m swedene ] Re: The Smiths [lep ] Re: The Smiths [2fs ] Re: Tech query [ross ] Re: The Smiths [Miles Goosens ] The Smiths, Benny and me ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: The Smiths, Benny and me [Miles Goosens ] Re: The Smiths, Benny and me [Jeremy Osner ] Re: The Smiths, Benny and me [kevin studyvin ] a decade of misquoting clint ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: a decade of misquoting clint [Jeremy Osner ] Re: a decade of misquoting clint [FSThomas ] Re: a decade of misquoting clint [Jeremy Osner ] another year [Jill Brand ] Re: a decade of misquoting clint ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: another year ["Stewart C. Russell" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:07:28 -0400 From: Jeremy Osner Subject: Re: The Smiths Is the shrieking falsetto also Morrissey? One of the tracks I was listening to last night (forgot which, maybe "Miserable Lie"?) I was feeling kind of incredulous that that falsetto and the deep baritone belonged to the same singer. J On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 11:38 PM, Miles Goosens wrote: > On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Jeremy Osner wrote: >>I don't >> think I really had much sense of the Smiths at all until I was in >> college, and then it was a sense of them as a band I didn't need to >> listen to because all their songs sounded the same. > > To a degree they do if for no other reason, because of Morrissey's > voice... but by the time you hit album #3, the superb THE QUEEN IS > DEAD, Marr ups the musical ante and there's a winning variety of > approaches that carries through to the end of the Smiths... heck, even > beyond, since Morrissey's initial collaborator on his solo songs, > producer Stephen Street, also realized that the secret of keeping > Morrissey interesting was to switch up the non-Morrissey elements (and > to write really, really good songs). So you're not wrong, and you're > wrong, all at once. :) > > later, > > Miles > > -- > over a year of feeling guilty about not blogging enough! > http://readingpronunciation.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:29:55 -0400 From: m swedene Subject: Re: The Smiths I too forgot about the wailing on the "Miserable Lie" song. On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 8:07 AM, Jeremy Osner wrote: > Is the shrieking falsetto also Morrissey? One of the tracks I was > listening to last night (forgot which, maybe "Miserable Lie"?) I was > feeling kind of incredulous that that falsetto and the deep baritone > belonged to the same singer. > > J > > On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 11:38 PM, Miles Goosens > wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Jeremy Osner > wrote: > >>I don't > >> think I really had much sense of the Smiths at all until I was in > >> college, and then it was a sense of them as a band I didn't need to > >> listen to because all their songs sounded the same. > > > > To a degree they do if for no other reason, because of Morrissey's > > voice... but by the time you hit album #3, the superb THE QUEEN IS > > DEAD, Marr ups the musical ante and there's a winning variety of > > approaches that carries through to the end of the Smiths... heck, even > > beyond, since Morrissey's initial collaborator on his solo songs, > > producer Stephen Street, also realized that the secret of keeping > > Morrissey interesting was to switch up the non-Morrissey elements (and > > to write really, really good songs). So you're not wrong, and you're > > wrong, all at once. :) > > > > later, > > > > Miles > > > > -- > > over a year of feeling guilty about not blogging enough! > > http://readingpronunciation.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:33:33 -0400 From: lep Subject: Re: The Smiths Jeremy says: > Is the shrieking falsetto also Morrissey? Yes. It's always sounded to me like he's been surprised by a whack on the ass. xo P.S. Honestly, it's always been a bit comical to me. There's a great DVD of an early Smiths show (the one where he has a bunch of flowers in his back pocket most of the show) and every time Morrisey does the shriek, I lose the thread. Fortunately, by the time they did "The Queen is Dead", I believe he'd been treated for it. - -- "people with opinions just go around bothering one another." -- the buddha ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:42:48 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: The Smiths On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 9:33 AM, lep wrote: > Jeremy says: > > Is the shrieking falsetto also Morrissey? > > Yes. It's always sounded to me like he's been surprised by a whack on the > ass. > I wouldn't have said "whack" - but yes. Anyway: I think there's intentionally a slightly comic aspect to the falsetto vocals on this first album (as many note, he rarely used it thereafter). I intend to re-listen to the album (which my brain nearly has memorized anyway) for this thread, but that's my thoughts on the falsetto issue... - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.wordpress.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:36:27 -0400 From: ross Subject: Re: Tech query On 10-06-10 01:58 PM, kevin studyvin wrote: > I use the same line to run from the HP to the stereo and it outputs stereo. > > Good suggestion - I think I have Audacity on a disk around here someplace. > I'll have to give that a shot. > > I still suspect a Vista compatibility issue tho. > > On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Rex wrote: > > >> Is it the exact same 3.5 line? Definitely a stereo cable? >> >> To troubleshoot you might try recording to a different application... >> either one you already have, or download Audacity or similer... >> >> -Rex >> > You may need to change the settings on the program you're using to record. If this is true, you might get some mileage out of switching apps, as Rex suggested. You'll want to check your input configuration, both in the recording sofware (usually options->audio->input or some such), and in either the control panel (if using windows sound as input) or in your asio or (what's that other one? can't remember) audio drivers. The latter two, one of which I can't remember (old guy!) skip past the windows handling of audio, which is not well suited to some types of recording. It's because of latency, but we'll skip that to avoid glazed eyes. Switching to a new OS can cause driver problems, but I don't think it's that, because you do have a signal. If you're really unlucky, it still may be a driver problem My soundcard works OK in Win7, except that choosing different input levels has no effect any more. So you can get a driver that's basically OK, but with some as-yet-unfixed glitches. Are you using 64 bit Vista? That version was not too well supported where drivers are concerned. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:09:35 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: The Smiths Can it be mere coincydink that the Morrissey store sent me an e-mail about a sale this very morning? I think NOT. Fegs control the vertical and the horizontal. Saving my further thoughts on THE SMITHS, and the Smiths, Marr, and the Mozzer in general, for after at least a listen all the way through. I'll bet I haven't played the album all the way through since some time in the mid-'90s, though I have always thought of it positively. Have owned it since '84, though, oddly, I have never owned HATFUL OF HOLLOW in any format. later, Miles - -- over a year of feeling guilty about not blogging enough! http://readingpronunciation.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:23:48 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: The Smiths, Benny and me So then, The Smiths. Or rather, mostly Benny, who is so closely linked to the sound of The Smiths for me that I can't hear Morrissey without picturing Benny. I knew Benny from the first day of primary school. Within the year, we knew he was a creative kid. He made weekly comics for all his friends, comics scrawled on offcuts from his dad's stationery shop. Each comic was different, with different characters and careful story arcs (in my case, mostly fart gags) for each friend. We'd forgive Benny's at best phonetic spelling, 'cos we were each of us six at the time. A few years passed, and Benny and I went to different schools. At age 12, tho', we ended up in the same secondary school. A bit taller, fractionally better at spelling, he was one of the weird kids of the year. He was one of the first indie kids on my radar, and his frantic indie cool kept him from being picked on. It was easy to be indie in the UK in the 1980s; you still listened to BBC radio, but you tuned to John Peel at night, just like everyone else. If you wanted to be identified as indie, you talked about what John Peel played. There was only one alternative. We'd only just got a fourth TV channel, and we needed alternatives so badly in the Age of Thatch that we'd even wait eagerly for Richard Whiteley to come on ... So there was Benny on the school bus; the clapped-out, clearly illegal motor coach with the brutish owner-driver Spamheid crashing gears and smoking furiously. Benny would be waving his arms about "Woa-hay ... Morrissey ... This Charming Man ... he's great, woa-hay", then fall into the smokers at the back as Spamheid took the roundabout at Pollokshaws too fast. So dedicated to the Smiths was Benny that he'd bring his albums into school. Not that there was any place to play them, it was just the awe of the medium, and his reverence for the sounds that they represented. 12" was a lot of real estate in a teen bag, especially on transit. Ad those sounds ... the album starts with an impossible 80's drum track, but Reel Around the Fountain is so lush and lengthy you can forgive that. You've got to have a tolerance for warble and jangle to even get a handle on this album, but the next two tracks kind of lead you away. "Pretty Girls Make Graves" is a surprisingly sweet fourth, "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle" does almost nothing, and then there's the album's stormer, "This Charming Man", so short it's almost over by the time you've sat up to take notice. You had to live in the now back then. Blink and you'd miss it. TCM is the first of a run of four epic tracks, with "Still Ill" being the handbook of eighties indie disaffection, "Hand in Glove" adding the bit of depth to the proceedings (I remember seeing Benny's notes on the song, and what he thought it all meant. I suspect it's still classified). And then, "What Difference Does it Make?", the whirling anthem of the album - where the re-enactment of Morrissey's stage antics got the only marginally-coordinated Benny pitched into the fag pit again as Spamheid gunned the beat-up Plaxton up the Ayr Road. Last two tracks? Who cares? If you're not spent and reclining by the end of WDDIM?, you weren't listening to the same album. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:39:35 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: The Smiths, Benny and me On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 8:23 PM, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > So then, The Smiths. Or rather, mostly Benny, who is so closely linked > to the sound of The Smiths for me that I can't hear Morrissey without > picturing Benny. Holy fuck, what can any of us say to follow this piece? Yes, it's not a competition, but Stewart wins it anyway. Thank you, sir, for writing one of the best things I've ever seen on Feg - and I've seen some pretty great things here. later, Miles - -- over a year of feeling guilty about not blogging enough! http://readingpronunciation.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:43:30 -0400 From: Jeremy Osner Subject: Re: The Smiths, Benny and me This ought to be published in a magazine or something. On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 9:23 PM, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > So then, The Smiths. Or rather, mostly Benny, who is so closely linked > to the sound of The Smiths for me that I can't hear Morrissey without > picturing Benny. > > I knew Benny from the first day of primary school. Within the year, we > knew he was a creative kid. He made weekly comics for all his friends, > comics scrawled on offcuts from his dad's stationery shop. Each comic > was different, with different characters and careful story arcs (in my > case, mostly fart gags) for each friend. We'd forgive Benny's at best > phonetic spelling, 'cos we were each of us six at the time. > > A few years passed, and Benny and I went to different schools. At age > 12, tho', we ended up in the same secondary school. A bit taller, > fractionally better at spelling, he was one of the weird kids of the > year. He was one of the first indie kids on my radar, and his frantic > indie cool kept him from being picked on. > > It was easy to be indie in the UK in the 1980s; you still listened to > BBC radio, but you tuned to John Peel at night, just like everyone else. > If you wanted to be identified as indie, you talked about what John Peel > played. There was only one alternative. We'd only just got a fourth TV > channel, and we needed alternatives so badly in the Age of Thatch that > we'd even wait eagerly for Richard Whiteley to come on ... > > So there was Benny on the school bus; the clapped-out, clearly illegal > motor coach with the brutish owner-driver Spamheid crashing gears and > smoking furiously. Benny would be waving his arms about "Woa-hay ... > Morrissey ... This Charming Man ... he's great, woa-hay", then fall into > the smokers at the back as Spamheid took the roundabout at Pollokshaws > too fast. > > So dedicated to the Smiths was Benny that he'd bring his albums into > school. Not that there was any place to play them, it was just the awe > of the medium, and his reverence for the sounds that they represented. > 12" was a lot of real estate in a teen bag, especially on transit. > > Ad those sounds ... the album starts with an impossible 80's drum track, > but Reel Around the Fountain is so lush and lengthy you can forgive > that. You've got to have a tolerance for warble and jangle to even get a > handle on this album, but the next two tracks kind of lead you away. > "Pretty Girls Make Graves" is a surprisingly sweet fourth, "The Hand > That Rocks The Cradle" does almost nothing, and then there's the album's > stormer, "This Charming Man", so short it's almost over by the time > you've sat up to take notice. You had to live in the now back then. > Blink and you'd miss it. > > TCM is the first of a run of four epic tracks, with "Still Ill" being > the handbook of eighties indie disaffection, "Hand in Glove" adding the > bit of depth to the proceedings (I remember seeing Benny's notes on the > song, and what he thought it all meant. I suspect it's still > classified). And then, "What Difference Does it Make?", the whirling > anthem of the album - where the re-enactment of Morrissey's stage antics > got the only marginally-coordinated Benny pitched into the fag pit again > as Spamheid gunned the beat-up Plaxton up the Ayr Road. > > Last two tracks? Who cares? If you're not spent and reclining by the end > of WDDIM?, you weren't listening to the same album. > > Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:08:06 -0700 From: kevin studyvin Subject: Re: The Smiths, Benny and me On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 6:39 PM, Miles Goosens wrote: > On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 8:23 PM, Stewart C. Russell > wrote: > > So then, The Smiths. Or rather, mostly Benny, who is so closely linked > > to the sound of The Smiths for me that I can't hear Morrissey without > > picturing Benny. > > > > Holy fuck, what can any of us say to follow this piece? Yes, it's not > a competition, but Stewart wins it anyway. Thank you, sir, for > writing one of the best things I've ever seen on Feg - and I've seen > some pretty great things here. > > later, > > Miles > Yeah, what he said. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:27:20 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: a decade of misquoting clint Clint Eastwood doesn't actually say "A man's got to know his limitations, Briggs" at the end of Magnum Force: ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:34:00 -0400 From: Jeremy Osner Subject: Re: a decade of misquoting clint I always thought of this as an inside joke, kind of an "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well" thing. I have a vague memory of seeing a RH interview in which he made reference to this. J On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 10:27 PM, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > Clint Eastwood doesn't actually say "A man's got to know his > limitations, Briggs" at the end of Magnum Force: > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:45:12 -0400 From: FSThomas Subject: Re: a decade of misquoting clint On 6/23/2010 10:34 PM, Jeremy Osner wrote: > I always thought of this as an inside joke, kind of an "Alas, poor > Yorick! I knew him well" thing. I have a vague memory of seeing a RH > interview in which he made reference to this. > With Yorick? That cat /never/ gives interviews! /Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it./ My gorge, indeed! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:54:45 -0400 From: Jeremy Osner Subject: Re: a decade of misquoting clint Say, it looks like I read that interview at RobynWare: http://www.jh3.com/robyn/base/song.asp?squid=929 On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 10:45 PM, FSThomas wrote: > On 6/23/2010 10:34 PM, Jeremy Osner wrote: > > I always thought of this as an inside joke, kind of an "Alas, poor > Yorick! I knew him well" thing. I have a vague memory of seeing a RH > interview in which he made reference to this. > > > With Yorick? > > That cat never gives interviews! > > /Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most > excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how > abhorr'd in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it./ > > My gorge, indeed! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:21:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Jill Brand Subject: another year Happy Birthday, Stewart! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:27:56 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: a decade of misquoting clint On 10-06-23 22:45 , FSThomas wrote: > > My gorge, indeed! This is the season for gorge rising, especially when cleaning out the green bin. There's something about mouldy grapefruit rinds that makes the breakfast rise again. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:06:47 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: another year On 10-06-24 07:21 , Jill Brand wrote: > Happy Birthday, Stewart! and happy birthday, Jill! ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V18 #121 ********************************