From: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org (idealcopy-digest) To: idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Subject: idealcopy-digest V1 #160 Reply-To: idealcopy@smoe.org Sender: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk idealcopy-digest Monday, November 9 1998 Volume 01 : Number 160 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Virgin Prunes! [professor ned ] Oh, oh, oh, it's my first time ["Wilson, Paul" ] Re: Oh, oh, oh, it's my first time ["Steve Jackson" ] Re: Oh, oh, oh, it's my first time ["tube disaster" Subject: Re: Virgin Prunes! Am Sam, den 07 Nov 1998 um 23:23:31 -0500, Max Schmid schrieb: >After a bit of searching it seems their stuff is all out of print, except for a live CD >and video just released by Cleo. >A shame. Does anyone know otherwise? Maybe CDNow.com isn't the best place >to be looking. A shame that Cleo released something, you mean...unfortunately, all the Virgin Prunes CDs were released by New Rose/Baby which finally went under several years back. Check Stuart Hardy's excellent webpages at http://www.estragon.demon.co.uk/vprunes/vpdiscog.htm for more information on some excellent albums that are hard as hell to get ahold of. ;-) From the bio: >After the lack of commercial success of these albums Colin decided to take a >break from music and went into production. If I Die, I Die by the Virgin >Prunes was completed before Colin decided to drop music altogether and go >to India for over a year concentrating on photography. For some reason I recall the Virgin Prunes stating that they hated the end result that Colin produced, although a good 90% of their fanbase will agree that "If I Die, I Die..." is far and away their definitive work and a masterpiece in its own right...go Colin! Anyone know what *he* thought of the record? - -ned "I could really chill out in New York." -Mick Harris http://www.gestalt-media.com/stromkern/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1998 11:08:25 -0000 From: "Wilson, Paul" Subject: Oh, oh, oh, it's my first time Hi chaps, I've just joined and thought I'd introduce myself. This is the second list I've subscribed to (the other being Smelly Tongues - The Residents). Not sure I'll stay with you as I'm not sure I can cope with a mailing every day. The Residents list just sends them out when it reaches a certain size, which works out about 2 per week, which I can just about handle, as I have the mail sent to me at work. I have been into Wire since the beginning. I bought Chairs Missing when it first came out (I was at Art College then). It is still my favourite Wire album, together with 154. Other favourites include Colin's A-Z. I have only managed to see Wire live on one occasion, a gig in Manchester just after Manscape was released (without Robert on drums). I nearly died dancing to Torch It! (I am getting too old for all that energetic stuff now). Wire have never been my favourite band but they have always been consistently up there (they just can't quite compete with the TV Personalities. - I can't find ANYONE else who are into this lot!!!??). In reply to trevor.dutton@arup.com , there was a CD released earlier this year which is a best of the Virgin Prunes. Can't remember what it was called or the label. I'll try to find out, must have the details somewhere (I am quite a fan and have a few albums and the video and a few by Gavin Friday). That's all for now, Paul. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1998 12:02:18 -0000 From: "Steve Jackson" Subject: Re: Oh, oh, oh, it's my first time Paul Wilson wrote . I have >only managed to see Wire live on one occasion, a gig in Manchester just >after Manscape was released (without Robert on drums). I was at that one too. When I (mildly) heckled Colin as to Mr Gotobed's wherabouts he replied that he was "walking the dog" Got to meet them afterwards and they were all gentlemen rather than scary art-punk terrorists. Bruce spoke to my then girlfriend for sometime. She was about 18 at the time and was very impressed with her first encounter with a 'pop-star' Chatted about the lyric to "Stampede" I also saw them a few years earlier. They were v. scary... all wearing black under white lights. Graham was a man possessed. Good days. Last great gig like that was Mansun (not Marilyn, nor Hanson) who are a much derided British band. V pretentious but truly excellent live. - -----Original Message----- From: Wilson, Paul To: 'idealcopy@smoe.org' Date: 08 November 1998 11:30 Subject: Oh, oh, oh, it's my first time >Hi chaps, I've just joined and thought I'd introduce myself. This is the >second list I've subscribed to (the other being Smelly Tongues - The >Residents). Not sure I'll stay with you as I'm not sure I can cope with a >mailing every day. The Residents list just sends them out when it reaches a >certain size, which works out about 2 per week, which I can just about >handle, as I have the mail sent to me at work. > >I have been into Wire since the beginning. I bought Chairs Missing when it >first came out (I was at Art College then). It is still my favourite Wire >album, together with 154. Other favourites include Colin's A-ZI nearly died >dancing to Torch It! (I am getting too old for all that energetic stuff >now). Wire have never been my favourite band but they have always been >consistently up there (they just can't quite compete with the TV >Personalities. - I can't find ANYONE else who are into this lot!!!??). > >In reply to trevor.dutton@arup.com , there >was a CD released earlier this year which is a best of the Virgin Prunes. >Can't remember what it was called or the label. I'll try to find out, must >have the details somewhere (I am quite a fan and have a few albums and the >video and a few by Gavin Friday). > >That's all for now, Paul. > > > > > > > ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 03:11:05 -0800 From: "tube disaster" Subject: Re: Oh, oh, oh, it's my first time Brilliant ... quoting that great Boys single (a band who don't get enough credit -- or is it blame? -- for influencing this decade's pop-punk wave, though admittedly the people involved are far more likely to be familiar with the Buzzcocks & Ramones) for an introductory subject line! Anyway, yeah, I've just joined, too. Probably the quickest intro would be to reproduce the A-list selections I just sent to Craig's page -- 1)Ex Lion Tamer 2)Blessed State 3)Heartbeat 4)Mannequin 5)Used To 6)Ahead 7)Fragile 8)On Returning 9)Another the Letter 10)So & Slow It Grows (Jesus, I didn't quite realize the breadth & depth of my fondness for this band till I had to start winnowing the list ... what about I Am the Fly? Men 2nd? Another the Letter? That Rosetta Stone of American hardcore punk, 12XU? Strange? It's So Obvious? Champs? Mr Suit? I Should Have Known Better? The 15th? Map Ref? I Feel Mysterious Today? Kidney Bingos? Eardrum Buzz? Take It [U2 must've taken the title literally when they wrote Numb]? And I had to make a conscious decision not to even take the solo albums into consideration, because about 2/3rds of A-Z ranks right up there ... (I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have anywhere near this difficulty selecting faves by any of the other bands I've been heavily into for years & years, like the Mekons, Joy Division, Cure, Fall, Siouxsie, Clash & Prince. OK, maybe the Fall & Mekons ... (And my god, I just realized I completely forgot about the non-LP sides, else Dot Dash & Our Swimmer would've probably made my list ...) Albums -- 1)Pink Flag 2)Chairs Missing 3)A-Z 4)154 5)Peel Sessions 6)Behind the Curtain 7)A Bell is a Cup 8)Not To 9)First Letter 10)IBTABA (I don't normally consider non-studio albums for rankings like this, but if Document & Eyewitness can make the list on the page, Peel Sessions & Behind the Curtain belong too.) >Hi chaps, I've just joined and thought I'd introduce myself. This is the >second list I've subscribed to (the other being Smelly Tongues - The >Residents). Not sure I'll stay with you as I'm not sure I can cope with a >mailing every day. The Residents list just sends them out when it reaches a >certain size, which works out about 2 per week, which I can just about >handle, as I have the mail sent to me at work. Sounds like you should go with a digest subscription, then. Actually, I've found this list quite low-volume so far (though compared to the Joy Division list it's like receiving War & Peace in installments ... then again, the reason that group exists *has* been dead for 18 1/2 years now). > >I have been into Wire since the beginning. I guess I have, too ... or at least as close to "the beginning" as one could get while growing up in Southwest Arkansas, 20-odd miles from Bill Clinton's "place called Hope" (where my first ex is now city manager, but that's quite another story ... though since I remember her liking the first 3 albums OK, perhaps it's vaguely on-topic). Pink Flag was one of the 8 albums I plunked down money for when I bought my first bona-fide stereo ("first"? What am I saying? It's *still* my stereo) back in 5/78, on the strength of (oddly enough) a laudatory review in Rolling Stone, probably by Greil Marcus or someone of that ilk. (I dug up that issue from the storeroom out back a few months ago but can't find it just now ... I think the cover featured a rendition of the Bee Gees & Peter Frampton from the wonderful new Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie extravaganza). Interesting how tastes mature. I remember doing my own "A List" of best albums of '77/'78 for a comics/sf fanzine back then, & I believe Pink Flag made No. 8 (behind the likes of More Songs About Buildings & Food, This Year's Model, Power in the Darkness &, for godssake, the Stranglers' Black & White & maybe Approved by the Motors). Within 4 or 5 years, it was my No. 1 all-time album -- a rank it continues to hold today. Chairs Missing isn't too far behind. It was the first album I ever mail-ordered & the 2nd import I ever bought, back in early '79 (albeit tied on both counts with SLF's Inflammable Material ... both of 'em popped up in an ad in the back of -- where else? -- Rolling Stone, along with Throbbing Gristle's 3rd & Final Report, which I didn't take a chance on for well over a decade more). And 154 ... the fact that I rank it just behind Newman's A-Z is no slam at the Wire LP, but merely an indication of the high esteem in which I hold the Colin (which I've read over the years was basically the groundwork for what was to be Wire's 4th, anyway). God, within those 3 albums I think one could say we have the templates for most of the important musical trends over the next several years ... almost even including Goth (looking back, repeated listens to I Should Have Known Better had me pretty well prepared for the Sisters of Mercy)! Never saw the band, sad to say. They didn't come anywhere *near* the South, I'm sure, the first time around, & by the time I lived in anything approaching a genuine metropolis (Phoenix, '81-'84), they didn't exist ... though I guess being able to find the Dot Dash, Outdoor Miner & Our Swimmer 7"s used or on clearance & the Crazy About Love 12" new for $5 or so helped assuage the pain a tad. > Wire have never been my favourite band but they have always been >consistently up there (they just can't quite compete with the TV >Personalities. - I can't find ANYONE else who are into this lot!!!??). Well, for me the TVPs aren't nearly up there with Wire (or the other bands I listed above, or a few dozen others), mainly because I've been really remiss about getting into their post-Don't the Kids stuff, of which I've bought probably about half. Don't the Kids, though, is an utter, absolute gem, one of the all-time great pop albums, & the early singles are equally brilliant. (I can tell right now that there's an awfully good chance I'll find myself singing Part Time Punks at work tomorrow ... Friday, of course, the song du jour was Mannequin -- anybody else know Chumbawamba's B-side cover?) > there >was a CD released earlier this year which is a best of the Virgin Prunes. >Can't remember what it was called or the label. I'll try to find out, must >have the details somewhere (I am quite a fan and have a few albums and the >video and a few by Gavin Friday). There's some decent things on the Heresies set (esp. Down the Memory Lane), which I taped off a friend eons ago back, but judging from the Over the Rainbow retrospective, I feel fairly confident that the Best Of would be pretty much synonymous with If I Die. Dan ------------------------------ End of idealcopy-digest V1 #160 *******************************