From: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org (idealcopy-digest) To: idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Subject: idealcopy-digest V3 #230 Reply-To: idealcopy@smoe.org Sender: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk idealcopy-digest Wednesday, July 26 2000 Volume 03 : Number 230 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Pillow & Prayers ["Trevor Dutton" ] George Martin article [george.m.hook@ac.com] Re: George Martin article [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] RE: George Martin article ["Ciscon, Ray" ] RE: George Martin article [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] Celebrating DOME on WZBC [kevin eden ] Re: Pillow & Prayers [paul.rabjohn@ssab.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 13:57:41 +0100 From: "Trevor Dutton" Subject: Pillow & Prayers ..has just been re-released on CD according to August's Uncut mag along with a second disk which was a Volume 2 released only in Japan - first I'd heard of that one. P & P is the only place I have heard anything by The Passage (XOYO I think it is) who were discussed here a few weeks ago as well - on the strength of which I really ought to have checked out some more. Trevor ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 10:08:26 -0500 From: george.m.hook@ac.com Subject: George Martin article Interesting article in Salon magazine today about Sir George Martin as the Fifth Beatle. It details how he developed the revolutionary sounds in the Beatles records, and, of course, the recording of Strawberry Fields Forever and Sgt. Pepper is particularly interesting. On reflection, these were astounding records, and, yes, works of genius. http//www.salon.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 15:00:41 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: George Martin article On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 george.m.hook@ac.com wrote: > Interesting article in Salon magazine today about Sir George Martin as the > Fifth Beatle. It details how he developed the revolutionary sounds in the > Beatles records, and, of course, the recording of Strawberry Fields Forever > and Sgt. Pepper is particularly interesting. On reflection, these were > astounding records, and, yes, works of genius. > > http//www.salon.com Indeed, an interesting article - but I think it overstates Martin's role (and correspondingly understates those of the Beatles). Often, the *ideas* were the Beatles' - Martin's job was to figure out how to translate those ideas into actual noises and notes. Quite often, the Beatles "wrote" the orchestral parts (although they didn't read music) by singing or playing the parts; even in cases where most of the additional instrumentation is Martin's doing, key contributions were made by Beatles. A good example might be the arguably two most distinctive moments in the string chart for "Yesterday": the sustained high note in the last verse, and the rise to a minor seventh in the cello earlier in the piece. Both of these were McCartney's ideas; both were initially resisted by Martin - and both were later acknowledged by Martin as better ideas than he would have come up with. Of course, the best argument against the "George Martin was the real genius" theory (not that George is making that argument) is the rest of the work he's done... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 15:36:23 -0500 From: "Ciscon, Ray" Subject: RE: George Martin article Jeff wrote: On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 george.m.hook@ac.com wrote: > Interesting article in Salon magazine today about Sir George Martin as the * Fifth Beatle. Indeed, an interesting article - but I think it overstates Martin's role (and correspondingly understates those of the Beatles). Often, the *ideas* were the Beatles' - Martin's job was to figure out how to translate those ideas into actual noises and notes. Quite often, the Beatles "wrote" the orchestral parts (although they didn't read music) by singing or playing the parts; even in cases where most of the additional instrumentation is Martin's doing, key contributions were made by Beatles. A good example might be the arguably two most distinctive moments in the string chart for "Yesterday": the sustained high note in the last verse, and the rise to a minor seventh in the cello earlier in the piece. Both of these were McCartney's ideas; both were initially resisted by Martin - and both were later acknowledged by Martin as better ideas than he would have come up with. I've read the article, and I've read other articles about the Beatles/George Martin collective, and I think you're being just a bit harsh to Sir George. At no time in the article, or in ANY article about George Martin I've seen, does HE claim to be the 5th Beatle. In fact, he's is generally VERY complementary to the Beatles and usually underplays his position in the 'composition' process. It's a generally known fact that Martin was that link that enabled McCartney and Lennon to take their musical ideas and implement them on tape. I would generally think of George Martin as an 'instrument' that the Beatles used to compose their pieces on. Of course, the best argument against the "George Martin was the real genius" theory (not that George is making that argument) is the rest of the work he's done... This is very simply a cheap shot. This would be like claiming that Ernie Banks was a horrible baseball player because the horrible Chicago Cub teams he played for never went to the World Series. ATTENTION UK WIRE FANS: Sorry for the blatant American sports reference, but Ernie Banks was an excellent baseball player who was on some really horrible baseball teams... now back to our regularly scheduled mailing list. Once again, George Martin has never claimed to be a great composer or artist, he's a producer. I've heard several albums that he's produced and they all 'sound' excellent, and have that trademark, some would say overproduced, George Martin sound. My example of this is demonstrated by looking at two different Ultravox albums. 'Vienna', produced by the late, lamented, krautrock legend Conny Plank showed a great German influence throughout the album. Dark, mysterious, brooding, a definite European album. 'Quartet' produced by George Martin was a much brighter and cleaner production. You can still trace some of the roots back to 'Vienna', but it's almost as if the sun had risen and the recording was shining in the light of day. Myself, I prefer 'Vienna' and the darker version of Ultravox, but under no circumstances would I say that the production of 'Quartet' was bad. In fact, if I had my choice, I'd have had George Martin produce Wir's 'The First Letter', which certainly could have benefited from a 'cleaner' production job. Cheers, Ray Ciscon ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 17:05:41 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: RE: George Martin article On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Ciscon, Ray wrote: > Jeff wrote: > > Indeed, an interesting article - but I think it overstates Martin's role > (and correspondingly understates those of the Beatles). Often, the *ideas* [Ray]: > I've read the article, and I've read other articles about the Beatles/George > Martin collective, and I think you're being just a bit harsh to Sir George. As I said, it's the *article* that overstates Martin's role - and to say that the article overstates it isn't to imply that his role wasn't very important (it was) or that Martin's egotistically claiming credit he doesn't deserve (you're correct that Martin is quite reticent in taking credit). > Of course, the best argument against the "George Martin was the real > genius" theory (not that George is making that argument) is the rest of > the work he's done... > > This is very simply a cheap shot. This would be like claiming that Ernie > Banks was a horrible baseball player because the horrible Chicago Cub teams > he played for never went to the World Series. Not really. I'm simply saying that *if* George Martin were the power behind the throne, one would expect (a) his own compositions, like the _Yellow Submarine_ soundtrack; and (b) the majority of his other production work to show the same sort of genius. They don't: the composition and arranging on the YS soundtrack is pretty marginal (as always, imho), and while he's always a fine *producer*, he can't get out of the musicians he works with genius that isn't there. So *of course* his productions for America et al are not going to be as good: they're nowhere near the league of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr as creative, experimental musicians. A better baseball analogy would be imagining that, say, a manager was solely responsible for a team's success - when his managing for other teams *with less talent* was as good as it could be, but not the factor that made the team win the World Series. (That is, George Martin working for Jeff Beck didn't turn his dicey fusion into genius, nor did it break Elton John's incredibly lengthy streak of crap recordings.) Or closer to home: if Colin Newman worked on, uh, the next Limp Bizkit album, it would doubtless still be crap. Might be more interesting crap than before, but...) I'm not dissing Martin at all - I just think the article of the essay gives casual readers the impression that much fo the Beatles' genius is actually Martin's. This is not correct.> > My example of this is > demonstrated by looking at two different Ultravox albums. 'Vienna', produced > by the late, lamented, krautrock legend Conny Plank showed a great German > influence throughout the album. Dark, mysterious, brooding, a definite > European album. 'Quartet' produced by George Martin was a much brighter and > cleaner production. You can still trace some of the roots back to 'Vienna', > but it's almost as if > the sun had risen and the recording was shining in the light of day. I'd say this is an apt description of the two albums, and Martin may indeed have made the contributions you note - then again, the *following* Ultravox album (whose title I forget) continued in a brighter vein - and _Rage in Eden_ (which, I think, immediately followed _Vienna_) is brighter than _Vienna_. That is, it's also true that the band was moving toward brighter, more pop-oriented songs anyway. (Uh-oh - the "early '80s new wave" thread is in danger of popping its hairsprayed, dyed head up fromt he depths again...) Since there's no 'control group' of songs to test, it's hard to say whose contributions were whose... - --Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/reviews.html ::Time provides the rope, but love will tie the slipknot, ::and I will be the chair you kick away. __Stephin Merritt__ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 00:49:57 -0700 (PDT) From: kevin eden Subject: Celebrating DOME on WZBC - --0-1957747793-964597797=:6233 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Tonight, Wednesday, July 26, WZBC's Radio Isotope will be hosting a special featuring the music of members of the band Wire. Under the alias of DOME, Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis have recently released their first new album since "Will You Speak This Word." We on radio Isotope believe this is cause for a celebration. We will be featuring music from all the post-Wire projects, including selections from the recordings below. Please tune in tomorrow night at 10 on 90.3 FM or go to http://www.wzbc.org and click on our streaming audio link. WZBC will be setting up an IRC channel called DOME_ZBC during the show. Please join us there as well for spontaneous conversation about the music. Thank you and Enjoy! - -Paul Collegio, Radio Isotope Recordings to be featured: Selected Wire tracks, including the Hafler Trio remixes Gilbert/Lewis 3R4 Gilbert/Lewis?mills waterloo gallery "Mzui" Duet Emmo LP Duet Emmo 12" Dome 1, 2, 3, "Will You Speak This Word" & "Yclept" Bruce Gilbert "Ends With The Sea" Bruce Gilbert "The Shivering Man" "Music For Fruit" "Insiding" "This Way" "In Esse" "Ab Ovo" "Bi Yo Yo" EG Lewis "Pre>He" Bruce Gilbert/Ron West "Frequency Variation" Halo He Said "Hail", "Take Care" He Said Omala "Catch Supposes", "Matching Crosses" Ear Trumpet "Bring On The Dirt" AC Marias "Time Was" Desmond Simmons "alone on Penguin Island" P'O "Whilst Climbing Thieves Vie For Affection" Colin Newman "Provisionally Entitled the Singing Fish" plus much of the Colin and Malka's projects from the Swim~ catalog as well. Don't miss this! ===== kevin eden wmo, po box 112, stockport, cheshire, sk3 9fd, uk wmouk@yahoo.com http://wiremailorder.com/ "dreams that money can buy" __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get Yahoo! Mail – Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ - --0-1957747793-964597797=:6233 Content-Type: message/rfc822 X-Apparently-To: wmouk@yahoo.com via web202.mail.yahoo.com Received: from imo-r17.mx.aol.com (152.163.225.71) by mta210.mail.yahoo.com with SMTP; 25 Jul 2000 22:36:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from TamperCD@aol.com by imo-r17.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v27.12.) id r.11.6f41766 (3311); Wed, 26 Jul 2000 01:35:40 -0400 (EDT) From: TamperCD@aol.com Message-ID: <11.6f41766.26afd2ac@aol.com> Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 01:35:40 EDT Subject: Celebrating DOME on WZBC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: undisclosed-recipients:; X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 120 Content-Length: 1650 Tonight, Wednesday, July 26, on WZBC's Radio Isotope I will be hosting a special featuring the music of members of the band Wire. Under the alias of DOME, Bruce Gilbert and Graham lewis have recently released their first new album since "Will You Speak This Word." We on radio Isotope believe this is cause for a celebration. We will be featuring music from all the post-Wire projects, including selections from the recordings below. Please tune in tomorrow night at 10 on 90.3 FM or go to http://www.wzbc.org and click on our streaming audio link. I will be setting up an IRC channel called DOME_ZBC during the show. Please join us there as well for spontaneous conversation about the music. Thank you and Enjoy! - -Paul Collegio, Radio Isotope Recordings to be featured: Selected Wire tracks, including the Hafler Trio remixes Gilbert/Lewis 3R4 Gilbert/Lewis?mills waterloo gallery "Mzui" Duet Emmo LP Duet Emmo 12" Dome 1, 2, 3, "Will You Speak This Word" & "Yclept" Bruce Gilbert "Ends With The Sea" Bruce Gilbert "The Shivering Man" "Music For Fruit" "Insiding" "This Way" "In Esse" "Ab Ovo" "Bi Yo Yo" EG Lewis "Pre>He" Bruce Gilbert/Ron West "Frequency Variation" Halo He Said "Hail", "Take Care" He Said Omala "Catch Supposes", "Matching Crosses" Ear Trumpet "Bring On The Dirt" AC Marias "Time Was" Desmond Simmons "alone on Penguin Island" P'O "Whilst Climbing Thieves Vie For Affection" Colin Newman "Provisionally Entitled the Singing Fish" plus much of the Colin and Malka's projects from the Swim~ catalog as well. Don't miss this! - --0-1957747793-964597797=:6233-- ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 9:56:26 +0100 From: paul.rabjohn@ssab.com Subject: Re: Pillow & Prayers pillows and prayers was a brilliant idea that collected up a load of great tracks by fairly obscure acts and got them listened to by people who wouldn't normally have gone near an indie single of that type. wonder what's on the volume 2? more of the same i guess....... p ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Pillow & Prayers Author: PC:trevor.dutton@arup.com at INTERNET Date: 7/25/00 4:59 PM ..has just been re-released on CD according to August's Uncut mag along with a second disk which was a Volume 2 released only in Japan - first I'd heard of that one. P & P is the only place I have heard anything by The Passage (XOYO I think it is) who were discussed here a few weeks ago as well - on the strength of which I really ought to have checked out some more. Trevor ------------------------------ End of idealcopy-digest V3 #230 *******************************