From: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org (jinglejangle-digest) To: jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Subject: jinglejangle-digest V1 #57 Reply-To: jinglejangle@smoe.org Sender: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk jinglejangle-digest Monday, April 6 1998 Volume 01 : Number 057 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [MLL] elliott list? [GoodyErin ] [MLL] Elliott Smith list info [Senorita Raquelita ] [MLL] Kathleen Hanna Incident.. [BlueKin ] [MLL] message from Darren [Senorita Raquelita ] [MLL] Message from Jon Thomas Teichman [Senorita Raquelita ] [MLL] GNS TWAS review part 1 [Senorita Raquelita ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 17:54:57 EDT From: GoodyErin Subject: [MLL] elliott list? ack! tell me more, please! I also recently bought the new Bangs CD and it rocks. As for music I'm currently listening to... the new Jana McCall, Scrawl, and Kristin Hersh, as well as anything by Lois, Sleater-Kinney and Elliott Smith is also lovely. - --Erin ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 18:46:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Senorita Raquelita Subject: [MLL] Elliott Smith list info You can write to Nathan (nfrankli@trinity.edu), who is on this list too, to get on the Elliott Smith list, but if you do join, please REMEMBER his address if you want off the list save the poor folks on the mailing list from that message. It's a very cool list. Nathan also has an Elliott website - I may have linked to it but definitely www.mllord.com under "Links" has a link to it, with lotsa info and pics and stuff. Also, Elliott is playing NYU on April 30 for only $2 for NYU students! Wow! I don't know if non-students can get tickets or what, but I'll be finding out tomorrow so if you're interested email me and I'll let you know what I find out. :) Rachel "I don't want to be your petty heartbreaker but I know that I'll never be that girl on your turntable that girl on your t.v." -- the bangs, "S.O.S." - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- my Mary Lou Lord page is at http://pages.nyu.edu/~rkb200/ To join the Mary Lou Lord mailing list, email Majordomo@smoe.org with ONLY "subscribe jinglejangle" OR "subscribe jinglejangle-digest" in the BODY. For info on my zine I'M NOT WAITING go to http://pages.nyu.edu/~rkb200/zine.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 19:51:32 EDT From: BlueKin Subject: [MLL] Kathleen Hanna Incident.. Is'nt Adam of the Beastie Boys married to Ione Skye..strange he would have a child w/ another if he is married..or is he still married? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 20:31:07 -0400 (EDT) From: Senorita Raquelita Subject: [MLL] message from Darren I know no one knows me. I'm one of those "became a fan through GNS" guys. I've heard all the talk about the 2 promo discs that are out there. If ANYONE knows that their local shop has a copy, or you have spares, or know how I could procure one... I'd be ever so grateful! I've scoured all but two shops here in Portland, and while I didn't come up empty, the promos still have eluded me. I'll hit the remaining two tomorrow. You can contact me directly so as to not clutter the list. Peace, Darren "It's hard to say you love someone, and it's hard to say you don't." - Justin Currie * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * http://www.spiritone.com/~darren/backpage.htm mailto:darren@spiritone.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 20:35:55 -0400 (EDT) From: Senorita Raquelita Subject: [MLL] Message from Jon Thomas Teichman Note: if you use the word HELP in any form in your subject line your post will bounce to me. -- rachel Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 19:58:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Jon Thomas Teichman Hello To All On the List, On Friday May 8th, 1998, Fugazi and Shellac play at The Congress Theatre Chicago. Capacity at the Congress Theatre is 3000. Tickets go on sale April 5th at the following locations, $6 Cash Only. I am thrilled beyond words to see this pairing of two stellar bands. Only problem is that I'm living in Bowling Green, Ohio. What I'm wondering is if some kind soul living in one of these metropolitian areas could pick up 4 tickets for me. I'm set to graduate the next day and what a way to start the weekend off right. Plus, my brother & two graduating seniors and myself want to attend what looks to be the "event" of the season. Anyone who could help me out would be rewarded with ample thanks, immediate $$ and a few live tapes to boot. PLEASE, all kind folks email me as soon as you read this. And I'll happily accomodate you and your wishes. The idea of Shellac and Fugazi on the same stage is the best graduation party ever! Tickets are available at these stores: Atomic Records Milwaukee Ground Zero Louisville Both Reckless Stores in Chicago Reckless in Evanston Record Swap in Napierville and Homewood Doors Open at 6pm / Curfew 11.30 Thanks So Much In Advance, Jon T. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 20:43:05 -0400 (EDT) From: Senorita Raquelita Subject: [MLL] GNS TWAS review part 2 And third, Lord and Salomon both have determinedly eclectic tastes, themselves, and for once I feel like maybe the litany of things their songs remind me of isn't solely my imposition. The gentle, steady pop gem "His Lamest Flame" mixes bits of the Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel and the Lemonheads, and features backing vocals by Gia Ciambotti (who was in the short-lived band The Graces with ex-Go-Go's guitarist Charlotte Caffey and a pre-"Bitch" Meredith Brooks). "Western Union Desperate" sounds in parts like an unplugged Too Much Joy temporarily run out of sarcasm, and in parts like Darden Smith's "Little Victories", and the Verlaine reference turns out to be to the poet, not the guitarist. "Lights Are Changing", re-recorded since her first EP, this time with Roger McGuinn on guitar, sounds more like a Tommy Keene song than ever. "Seven Sisters" could be pre-Big-Band Lyle Lovett. "Throng of Blowtown" sounds like a Guided by Voices title, but the song, with Brion's eerie chamberlain and whirring E-bow guitars, sounds more like an old Michael Penn b-side. "The Lucky One" could be a subdued Mary Chapin Carpenter song, and "She Had You" could easily be a Neil Young cover. The reconstruction anthem "Some Jingle Jangle Morning" is like the greatest Blake Babies/Lemonheads song ever. "Shake Sugaree" finds Elliott Smith accompanying Mary Lou on acoustic guitar, and she thanks him by having her voice processed just like his. "Two Boats", with its ticking rim-shot snare and elegant guitar figures, could be her Adult Contemporary crossover. "Supergun" sounds like Edie Brickell trying to turn a Helium song into the Gin Blossoms. And if everybody needs at least one British folk song, Mary Loud's is Salomon's Thompson-esque "Down Along the Sea", with Ruth Barrett's dulcimer and Cait Reed's twittering tin whistle. The song that completes my rehabilitation, however, is the last one, "Subway". A tranquil lullaby in the vein of the Replacements' "Skyway", with Shawn Colvin herself finally showing up to sing a little harmony, it could be just a bit of insistent autobiography, but in what seems to me like a clever move, Mary Lou underplays the narrator's specific occupation, and concentrates on the flow of people around her. The simple plea she emerges with, "So hold my eye / While the rest of the city files by", could belong to a busker, a beggar, or just a lonely stranger, and the tips and tokens could literally be coins, or could be the routine sparks thrown off as pieces of the city scrape against each other, as if even the most impersonal, incidental social friction of people coexisting in a city produces enough energy to power the entire place. So perhaps there is as much humanity in a crowded subway tunnel as there is in a quiet forest glade, after all, and we sustain each other, statues and storytellers alike, despite our most diligent attempts at introversion. We do yearn for isolation, because without a sense of self nothing else can be calibrated, but solitude and emptiness are only starting points, and no amount of ocean spray and dizzy camera fly-bys can make you king of any world that matters. Copyright (c) 1998, glenn mcdonald The War Against Silence is published weekly at www.furia.com/twas, and posted to the newsgroup rec.music.reviews. It may not be distributed elsewhere without my explicit permission. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 20:42:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Senorita Raquelita Subject: [MLL] GNS TWAS review part 1 Newsgroups: rec.music.reviews Subject: TWAS 166: Emma Townshend, Cheri Knight, Mary Lou Lord Date: 2 Apr 1998 17:07:53 -0800 Organization: Computer Science, University of B.C., Vancouver, B.C., Canada The War Against Silence www.furia.com/twas The War Against Silence #166, 2 April 98 (I cut the Emma Townshend and Cheri Knight reviews, you can go to the website and read em if you want. -- rachel) Mary Lou Lord: Got No Shadow The bridge between The Northeast Kingdom and Winterland for me, this week, and thus the album that prevents my desire to move to Manitoba and take up sprout farming and my desire to keep living two blocks away from MIT in a thicket of extension cords and speaker cables from declaring all out-war with each other just yet, is Boston subway busker Mary Lou Lord's major-label debut, Got No Shadow. It's taken a few weeks, much longer than I anticipated, to find this album a place in my life. I had decided, on the basis of Mary Lou's previous EPs, that her great genius was as a disassembler, stripping obscure but worthy pop songs down to their vulnerable guitar-and-voice essences. Got No Shadow, however, which features a full band almost throughout, really has only two covers, Freedy Johnston's "The Lucky One" and a creaky old-style folk song called "Shake Sugaree", written by Elizabeth Cotten, neither of whose originals I've heard. As a result, my first few attempts to assimilate this record floundered pretty quickly. "Why", I asked, with rhetorical dismay, "did Mary Lou Lord, of all people, decide to make a mundane folk-pop-rock record, instead of something that took advantage of her unique gift?" I wanted an album halfway between Tori Amos and Billy Bragg, and instead got one halfway between Elliott Smith and Shawn Colvin. As I returned, periodically, to this disappointment, though, I began noticing some things wrong with it. First of all, although Mary Lou's cover of Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" on the promotional EP early buyers got with this album is truly phenomenal, in my opinion, when I went back and got out her two other discs to listen to all those great old covers again, I suddenly remembered that the great covers I was thinking of weren't on them, either, they were things I remember hearing her play in person, back when I used to run into her busking. The songs I liked best on her EPs, the bouncy "Lights Are Changing" and the reeling "Martian Saints", were upbeat pop-rock songs with full bands. Resenting the absence of covers, instead of cherishing the new songs, was therefore my own decision, and in theory I ought to be able to reverse it; once I formulated this hypothesis, demonstrating its correctness was easy. Got No Shadow is, in fact, a folk-pop-rock record, but I like folk-pop-rock records, and this one has three unmistakable Mary Lou Lord trademarks to distinguish it. First, I love the timbre of her voice. It is a large part of why I adored her covers, and it's no less charming on her own songs. It is almost totally uncluttered by technique, and although this could have resulted in her having to work so hard to get the notes right that the songs lose all meaning, she doesn't seem to regard her technical inadequacies as important, and so sings her songs with nothing distracting her from the words. As a result, her songs always sound to me like they aspire to make sense. The covers, in fact, don't always reward this focus as well as her own compositions. Second, her new celebrity friendship with Shawn Colvin notwithstanding, Mary Lou's heritage is as much indie rock as folk-singing. Not all her songs try to merge the two, but the ones that do produce an impishly mild noisiness that I find thoroughly charming. The slashing guitars of "She Had You", contributed by Nels Cline, Jon Brion and Nick Salomon, seem to have had fuzz applied like you'd sprinkle glitter onto a party invitation, and what might have come off, in some other hands, as a swarm of piranhas, here seems more like a cheerful stuffed dinosaur with big felt teeth. The gritty distortion on the lilting "Some Jingle Jangle Morning" sounds like it's coming from an ancient beat-up guitar held together by alternating layers of duct tape and aching fondness. Even Salomon's charging riffs on "Supergun", which might easily have overwhelmed the song, are mixed down so low that the wispy flutters of Mary Lou's delicate voice are enough to beat them into pop submission. ------------------------------ End of jinglejangle-digest V1 #57 *********************************