From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V1 #205 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Tuesday, August 21 2001 Volume 01 : Number 205 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time [Michael Mitton ] Re: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time ["Andrew Hamlin" Subject: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time The Hornby/Top 10 thread made me wonder how the top ten lists for fiction compare between today and yesteryear, so I dug up a page that lists that top 10 best sellers from Publisher's Weekly for each year from 1900 to 1998. Here are two lists--one from 1961 and one from 1998: 1961 1. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone 2. Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger 3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee 4. Mila 18, Leon Uris 5. The Carpetbaggers, Harold Robbins 6. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller 7. Winnie Ille Pu, Alexander Lenard, trans. 8. Daughter of Silence, Morris West 9. The Edge of Sadness, Edwin O'Connor 10. The Winter of Our Discontent, John Steinbeck 1998 1. The Street Lawyer, John Grisham 2. Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy 3. Bag of Bones, Stephen King 4. A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe 5. Mirror Image, Danielle Steel 6. The Long Road Home, Danielle Steel 7. The Klone and I, Danielle Steel 8. Point of Origin, Patricia Cornwell 9. Paradise, Toni Morrison 10. All Through the Night, Mary Higgins Clark Now, is there anyone on this list who wants to argue that 1998 is just as good as 1961? From the 1998 list, I've read only one book, Paradise (Thanks, Oprah!). I don't know anything about Cornwell. Based on other things I've read by these authors, I'm pretty sure the Grisham, Clancy, King, Steel, and Clark are disposable pulp. Wolfe? Could be good. 1961, on the other hand--there's some good stuff on there. The Steinbeck is one of my favorites. MOCKING BIRD is sentimental fiction, but I don't know of anyone who's done it better. Uris feels like what Clancy might have been if Clancy didn't write books to be filmed. Salinger, Miller, Stone...or Steel, King, Grisham? If it is so clear (and, I think it is) that the bestseller list for fiction has gone from mostly authors who (at least attempt to) write literature to authors who want to be read on an airplane, why is it so much harder to argue something similar for bestsellers in music between today and years past? That sounds rhetorical, but I'm really asking. - --Michael p.s. Source: http://www.caderbooks.com/bestintro.html p.p.s. I originally wanted to do current NYT bestseller with 1961 NYT bestseller, but this page was the only page I could find that listed historical best-sellers. So to stick with one data source, I stayed with 1961 and went to 1998, the latest year they cover. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 03:33:27 -0400 From: Dan Sallitt Subject: Re: [loud-fans] post re list-approved music > I have a question about Big Star's third album. > > In the Ryko reissue, "Dream Lover" is placed, unflatteringly, as a bonus > track...after a few covers that are clearly divergent stylistically from > the album as a whole. And yet, in the notes, someone (Jim Dickinson?) is > quoted as saying that "Dream Lover" was among the songs recorded during > the _Sister Lovers_ sessions and was intended for inclusion on that album > (which, as most of us know, was never released in its intended form...that > form never actually having been decided upon). > > It seems blatantly obvious, both from the song itself and from the liner > notes, that "Dream Lover" belongs as part of the album proper, with most > of the covers ("Till the End of the Day," "Nature Boy," and maybe "Whole > Lotta Shakin'") being more obviously bonus-track like. > > So what gives? Of the two Chilton songs that didn't appear on the PVC and Jem releases, I actually prefer "Downs" to "Dream Lover".... Is there some quote that indicates that "Dream Lover" had a preferred status among the five omitted tracks? I think all these songs were part of the sessions, not just "Dream Lover." I don't know who made the decision about what tracks were left off of the PVC release. I'm not sure that Chilton was shut out of the decision-making process. I asked him in 1985 whether he sequenced the PVC release, and he said, "No, but I like the sequencing." If Chilton were in sole charge of the project of choosing the THIRD tracks and sequencing them, I bet he'd do something weird like start the album with "Nature Boy." He always had a taste for desecrating his own work. And the covers were probably as much a part of the plan for the album as the originals. One of the covers, "Femme Fatale," made it onto the PVC release. All we can do is choose our own songs and sequencing for THIRD - I don't think there's any natural division. (Personally, I'd throw off "Thank You Friends" and replace it with "Downs.") Generally, I like the PVC sequencing (much much better than the Ryko sequencing), and tend to give it a certain historical legitimacy for that reason alone. - Dan ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 10:10:12 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Michael Mitton wrote: > The Hornby/Top 10 thread made me wonder how the top ten lists for fiction > compare between today and yesteryear, so I dug up a page that lists that > top 10 best sellers from Publisher's Weekly for each year from 1900 to > 1998. Here are two lists--one from 1961 and one from 1998: chosen at random, or to make your point? if you didn't choose them to make your point, how did you choose them? > 5. The Carpetbaggers, Harold Robbins the danielle steel protototype, right? > 8. Daughter of Silence, Morris West > 9. The Edge of Sadness, Edwin O'Connor don't know a thing about either, which doesn't mean i'll assume they were good. > 9. Paradise, Toni Morrison i haven't read this one yet, and it may be a lesser work, but morrison is at least as good a writer as some of the 'classics' of the '61 list. > 10. All Through the Night, Mary Higgins Clark > > Now, is there anyone on this list who wants to argue that 1998 is just as > good as 1961? no, what i really want to argue is that there is generally little stastical correlation in any commercial artform between what's "good" by purportedly objective criteria and what sells -- artistic success is no guarantee of commercial success -- but it doesn't preclude it either. Didn't _Love in the Time of Cholera_ top the bestseller lists for a while? and i don't know that you're intending to imply the meta-point that Hornby (hey, guess whose on the bestseller list now? #3 last week i bleeve) was making applies to literature; i.e., there's less good stuff being *written* now than in '61 (vs less good stuff *selling* well). that'd be a tough sell with me. - -- d. - ------------------------------------------------- Mayo-Wells Media Workshop dmw@ http://www.mwmw.com mwmw.com Web Development * Multimedia Consulting * Hosting ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 08:49:06 -0700 From: "Andrew Hamlin" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time >1961 >7. Winnie Ille Pu, Alexander Lenard, trans. Thought I'd note in passing--this is WINNIE-THE-POOH, translated into Latin. It was, if I recall correctly, the first (still the only?) non-English language title to chart on American best seller lists. Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes angulus ridet, Andy Computer raised as if were a child By Reuters August 20, 2001 4:38 AM PT Meet Hal. Like any 18-month-old toddler, he likes bananas, toys and playing in the park. He especially enjoys bedtime stories. But while other children are flesh and blood, Hal is actually a chain of algorithms--a computer program that is being raised as a child and taught to speak through experiential learning in the same way as human children. "He is a curious, very clever child, someone that always wants to know more," said neuro-linguist Dr. Anat Treister-Goren who is Hal's ``mommy'' and readily admits her attachment. "Some kids are more predictable than others. He would be the surprising type," she said. Treister-Goren talks to Hal and reads him stories in much the same way a mother teaches her young child to learn about colors, food and animals. She heads the training department at the Israeli-based Artificial Intelligence (AI), where she inputs information and language ability through conversations with Hal and works with computer experts who fine-tune his algorithms to enhance performance. The privately owned company, which is run by Israeli high-tech entrepreneur Jack Dunietz, aims over the next 10 years to develop Hal into an "adult" computer program that can do what no program has ever done before--pass the Turing test. The British mathematician Alan Turing is one of the founders of computer science and the father of artificial intelligence. More than 50 years ago he predicted the advent of "thinking machines." --Reuters [--from http://www.zdnet.com/zdfeeds/msncobrand/news/0%2C13622%2C2805678%2C-hud00025 nshm3%2C00.html ] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 11:00:41 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, dmw wrote: > On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Michael Mitton wrote: > > Now, is there anyone on this list who wants to argue that 1998 is just as > > good as 1961? > > and i don't know that you're intending to imply the meta-point that Hornby > (hey, guess whose on the bestseller list now? #3 last week i bleeve) was > making applies to literature; i.e., there's less good stuff being > *written* now than in '61 (vs less good stuff *selling* well). that'd be > a tough sell with me. I don't think Hornby was arguing that there's less good stuff being produced. I think he was making an argument about what's popular - not at all the same thing. And as we went through, at great length, half a year or so ago, the argument re "there's not as much good stuff now," I'll just note I was arguing that there's no possible way to determine that point, given how much music (or writing) is produced. Movies, you might be able to do it - at least if you limited it to "big studio American movies," say: it's conceivable that one person could see all of them released in any given year. And you can't do a statistically viable sample, since there's no way to know how representative such a sample would be: there is no larger data pool to abstract into the smaller one. (I.e., nobody knows every record released last year.) But Michael's point about what's *popular* is probably true, and for many of the same reasons. The publishing industry also has been pared down to a handful of agglomerated megacorporations, whose main interest is not books but profits. This is even more true in publishing than in records (or at least, the former idealism was more pronounced in publishing than in music). - --Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::Let's quit talking about it and start watching it on TV:: __Susan Lowry__ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 09:09:21 -0700 From: "Brandon J. Carder" Subject: [loud-fans] Fw: In which Elvis claims some small victory. - ----- Original Message ----- From: Brandon J. Carder To: loudfans@smoe.org Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 9:06 AM Subject: In which Elvis claims some small victory. > On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Michael Mitton wrote: > > Now, is there anyone on this list who wants to argue that 1998 is just as > > good as 1961 If you want a real clear picture of this thing, go to your local thrift store and dig through the records. Tell me how many Robert Goulet LPs you hit before you find one Blue Cheer record. When have sales figures ever accurately reflected production quality? Cypress House/QED/Lost Coast Press Publishers of Exotic Paper Airplanes by Thay Yang and Tales From the Mountain by Pulitzer Prize nominee, Miguel Torga We don't rent pigs. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 09:51:35 -0700 From: bbradley@namesecure.com Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time <> well, there's always this one - i gave it to my language-loving boss for christmas - but i don't know if it made any top xx lists: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0865164207/qid%3D998412557/104-643182 4-7725535 - -- brianna bradley web designer, web ops http://namesecure.com IT ALL STARTS WITH A WEB ADDRESS tel: 925.609.1101 x206 fax: 925.609.1112 "The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing." Cole's Axiom http://startrekonice.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 09:56:10 -0700 From: bbradley@namesecure.com Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time HAHAHAHA!!!! look at the reading level on that one! Reading level: Ages 4-8 it's in LATIN for crying out loud.... - -- brianna - -----Original Message----- From: bbradley@namesecure.com [mailto:bbradley@namesecure.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 9:52 AM To: loud-fans@smoe.org Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time <> well, there's always this one - i gave it to my language-loving boss for christmas - but i don't know if it made any top xx lists: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0865164207/qid%3D998412557/104-643182 4-7725535 - -- brianna bradley web designer, web ops http://namesecure.com IT ALL STARTS WITH A WEB ADDRESS tel: 925.609.1101 x206 fax: 925.609.1112 "The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing." Cole's Axiom http://startrekonice.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 12:14:21 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Fw: In which Elvis claims some small victory. On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Brandon J. Carder wrote: > When have sales figures ever accurately reflected production quality? Never. But just to clarify, the initial argument was simply that, by and large, the charts today are even worse than they usually are - not that once upon a golden time, the charts were pure shining brilliance. - --Jeff Jeffrey Norman, Posemodernist University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Dept. of Mumblish & Competitive Obliterature http://www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 10:27:30 -0700 From: "Andrew Hamlin" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time >HAHAHAHA!!!! look at the reading level on that one! > >Reading level: Ages 4-8 > >it's in LATIN for crying out loud.... Not impossible. I refer the reader to Helen DeWitt's novel THE LAST SAMURAI, in which our protagonist tackles classical Greek, Japanese, Old Norse, and Inuit by roughly age five. Or for those who prefer their truth stranger than fiction, the case of William James Sidis: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi969.htm http://www.sidis.net/ THE PRODIGY, Amy Wallace's biography of Sidis, is sadly out of print, but I highly recommend it anyway. The Animate And The Inanimate, Andy "Oh yeah. Turn on the TV and rip the knob off. Don't even try to pretend you won't be watching." - --Paul H. Henry on http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/eo/20010817/en/pity_the_fools_an_80s_tv_comebac k_1.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 14:26:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Michael Mitton Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time dmw: > > 1998. Here are two lists--one from 1961 and one from 1998: > > chosen at random, or to make your point? if you didn't choose them to > make your point, how did you choose them? Essentially at random. As I said in my p.p.s., I originally wanted to compare the current bestseller list with 1961, where 1961 was chosen as a nice, 40 year difference. But this was the only source I could find for 1961 bestsellers, so to keep the same data source, I went with 1998, the latest year they gave. (The only other lists I looked at were 60, 62, and 40) > > 8. Daughter of Silence, Morris West > > 9. The Edge of Sadness, Edwin O'Connor > > don't know a thing about either, which doesn't mean i'll assume they were > good. Nor do I. I checked Amazon, though, and found that the West book is OOP, and there was no information at all about the book on the amazon page. So my guess would be that it's pulp. THe O'Connor book was reissued a few years back, and amazon has half a dozen rave reviews for it--so judgement still pending. > > 9. Paradise, Toni Morrison > > i haven't read this one yet, and it may be a lesser work, but morrison is > at least as good a writer as some of the 'classics' of the '61 list. Absolutely. The side Oprah comment I made about this wasn't made to suggest she's a mediocre writer, but to note that it probably wouldn't have made the bestseller list if it weren't for Oprah's support. Even if not her best, it deserves to be read, so I'm happy Oprah gave it her support. > and i don't know that you're intending to imply the meta-point that Hornby > (hey, guess whose on the bestseller list now? #3 last week i bleeve) was > making applies to literature; i.e., there's less good stuff being > *written* now than in '61 (vs less good stuff *selling* well). that'd be > a tough sell with me. With me too, but I was only suggesting that less good stuff is selling well. (See Jeff's response) Incidentally, the reason I thought of doing this was The New Yorker (them again!) did a story like this a couple of years ago. As I remeber it, they didn't have any useful insights into why the bestsellers have changed as they have.... - --Michael ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 14:50:51 -0400 From: "glenn mcdonald" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time Michael's two book-lists (which are particularly evocative for me since the 1961 one happens to include one of my favorite books in the world) made me realize that Hornby didn't really state the point he was trying to make, and we haven't clarified it in this discussion, either. We've been saying "popularity", but I think we might really be talking about taste. That is: do "people" today have worse taste than the corresponding people thirty years ago? I mean, presumably if somebody could prove that the sort of people driving the top-ten list today weren't buying records at all in 1961, so that comparing a radio-station chart from 1971 with a Billboard chart from 2001 reveals not a shift in taste but the emergence of a new market, we wouldn't be so alarmed. I have a feeling there are a lot of confounding factors in the 1961/1998 book-list comparison. I assume both lists are of best-selling *hardbacks*, for example. How does this bias the results, versus whatever they would have been with paperback sales included? And what about library check-outs? It's possible that the biggest change since 1961 is the rise of the hardback as a viable consumer format for crap that would previously have been sold to libraries in hardback and consumers in pulp paperback. And even if we stipulate that Danielle Steel is crap, and John Steinbeck is literature, how well did crap sell in 1961, and how well does literature sell now? Were there different amounts of each available in the two periods, in absolute or relative terms? And then there's another whole context-setting discussion to be had about the relative social position of books and records in different periods. We haven't said so, but I suspect most of us believe that music had more or less the same cultural importance in 1971 that it does now, but Oprah notwithstanding, surely books are more marginal now than they were in 1961. How that affects the best-seller lists, though, is hard to quickly judge. If TV stole the less sophisticated readers, we might expect "good" literature to sell better (relative to "bad" books), but if the proliferation of competing forms of entertainment has reduced *everybody*'s reading, it might have had the effect of increasing the fraction of the book-buying populace who only buy a few books, to the advantage of the kind of books occasional readers would feel more comfortable with. Conceivably this latter effect could be operating in music, too. glenn ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 12:01:54 -0700 From: Tim_Walters@digidesign.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10, Books this time >I have a feeling there are a lot of confounding >factors in the 1961/1998 book-list comparison. I assume both lists are of >best-selling *hardbacks*, for example. I think it's worse than that. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the NYT Bestsellers list is compiled based on less-than-rigorous input from a few stores in Manhattan, and the techniques used by publishers to get on the list, and to promote it to the book-buying populace, have improved considerably since 1961. So its ability to serve as a gauge of popularity, and the validity of list comparison between that era and this, are questionable. Likewise, pre-SoundScan music charts reflected the tastes of those in the music business (especially radio station program directors) as much or more than actual sales. The biggest and most well-known effect of the switch to SoundScan was an increase in the number of charting rap albums. - --Tim, who likes "Get Ur Freak On" ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 14:07:04 -0500 From: Chris Prew Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10 Distractions from Real Life > we haven't clarified it in this discussion, either. We've been saying > "popularity", but I think we might really be talking about taste. That is: > do "people" today have worse taste than the corresponding people thirty > years ago? I was thinking about this too, after noting that "American Pie 2" has been getting fairly good reviews (2 thumbs up! Funnier than the original!). 'Art' has been marginalized in our society--and replaced 'entertainment'. As such, our 'Top Ten's' are now loaded with things that are 'entertaining' but by no means artistic. Although this has been the case to varying degrees throughout our history, I think its particularly pervasive right now. Actually, you might be able to replace the word 'entertainment' above, with 'hype'. Is it unhip to to be intellectually challenged any more? Chris P.S. I love popcorn movies as much as the next guy. Haven't seen AP1 or 2 though, and have no desire to. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 14:27:28 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10 Distractions from Real Life On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Chris Prew wrote: > Is it unhip to to be intellectually challenged any more? Massively. Even more unhip is to let others know you enjoy being intellectually challenged. Certainly this is true amongst high-schoolers and college students (although my experience in the latter is based at a community-serving commuter school, not a major university: can anyone who recently attended or is attending a major U address this one? Aaron? Are Harvard undergrads likelier to read Don DeLillo or Danielle Steele?). In particular, for boys to act as if they have a mind and want to use it is more or less equivalent to pinning a KICK ME sign on one's back. (Actually, I was just talking with Aaron Milenski about this one...) This probably means that a certain percentage of folks who might be interested in checking out "good" books or music don't do so, because they fear the social repercussions. (And this isn't true only among the young: just try walking into most working class bars looking like a typical college student...) - --Jeff Jeffrey Norman, Posemodernist University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Dept. of Mumblish & Competitive Obliterature http://www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 19:45:35 +0000 From: "robert toren" Subject: [loud-fans] Cool Picture of Scott I Didn't Take Found this on a Mitch Easter site_ great shot I haven't seen before_ http://mapslegends.net/Images/pop_20guys_201989.jpg Description below... Enjoy, Robert "Here's a picture taken in LA around "89 from my archives. This was at a dinner organized by Karen Glauber at Chandara in Hollywood. Sitting: Left: Glenn Morrow from Bar None, Peter Holsapple leaning forward around Glenn,,,, Sitting from left to right My ex Betsy, Me, Chris Stamey, Joe Henry, Standing Mitch, of course, and Scott Miller from Loud Family/Game Theory... At the time of the photo, I was working for Glenn at Bar None at the time...Doing west coast retail promo for Freedy Johnston, Glass Eye, and They Might Be Giants. Glenn knew that I was a huge fan of Chris, Peter, Mitch, Scott, and a then very young Joe Henry. I had met Peter and Chris several times during the 80's, but that was my first time meeting everyone else. Needless to say, I had a great time that evening.. Paul " blah blah blah Mr. Sensitive :-P _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 13:00:23 -0700 From: bbradley@namesecure.com Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Top 10 Distractions from Real Life On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Chris Prew wrote: > Is it unhip to to be intellectually challenged any more? i'm sorry - but i'm guessing this is the polar opposite of the common usage of 'challenged' - height challenged (like me), etc. (IOW, not having enough height) just to clarify..... - -- brianna bradley ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 10:18:17 -1000 From: "R. Kevin Doyle" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Top 10 Distractions from Real Life Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Offers: >On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Chris Prew wrote: >> Is it unhip to to be intellectually challenged any more? >Massively. Even more unhip is to let others know you enjoy being >intellectually challenged. This seems to tie in with the concept that "art" is something that only the elite have any interest in. To whit: www.improvland.com/articles/joeymichaels/artisdeath.html This is, I believe, a tongue in cheek article about theatrical improvisation and how it needs to do everything in its power to avoid the label of art. I find with my high school students that they simultaneously decry trash movies and music and, at the same time, go to see "Mummy Returns" on its opening weekend. Some of them place a very high value on "intellectual things," but find themselves swept up in the irresistible stream of mass consumption. It isn't any fun wanting to talk about movies when all you've seen is "Memento" and all your friends saw "Planet of the Apes." R. Kevin ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 15:25:05 -0500 From: Chris Prew Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10 Distractions from Real Life > On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Chris Prew wrote: > >> Is it unhip to to be intellectually challenged any more? > > i'm sorry - but i'm guessing this is the polar opposite of the common usage > of 'challenged' - height challenged (like me), etc. (IOW, not having enough > height) > > just to clarify..... > > -- > brianna bradley I didn't think about it that way, but that was pretty unintentionally amusing...considering that most people who are 'intellectually challenged' are probably more hip than those who 'like to be challenged intellectually'. Maybe I feel I am intellectually challenged by the intellectually.... nah. Chris Who watched Sesame Street for the first time in decades this morning with his 4 month old daughter, and was quite pleased to find that they are teaching sign language now. The baby, showing her approval, hit herself repeatedly in the head with a rattle. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 13:35:36 -0700 From: Cindy Alvarez Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10 Distractions from Real Life At 2:27 PM -0500 8/21/01, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: >recently attended or is attending a major U address this one? Aaron? Are >Harvard undergrads likelier to read Don DeLillo or Danielle Steele?). I can't speak for universities outside Harvard, but there the pop-culture thing gets turned on its ear -- no one would be caught dead with Danielle Steele, even if they claimed to be reading it only ironically. Camp and kitsch okay in smallish doses, but dumbed-down stuff is anathema. I remember people rolling eyes at me when I professed to like Stephen King -- never mind the hundred other more literary books in my recently-read bookshelf. In >particular, for boys to act as if they have a mind and want to use it is >more or less equivalent to pinning a KICK ME sign on one's back. Oversimplification, I think -- it's all about compensation. Guys in my high school could get away with Actin' Smart, so long as they were an athlete, a well-liked student gov't person, overtly charming or really attractive. >This probably means that a certain percentage of folks who might be >interested in checking out "good" books or music don't do so, because they >fear the social repercussions. I think that's likeliest in the junior-high and early high school era, honestly -- after that point most people have put themselves either into the "I'll try things that sound interesting even if my friends don't" or the "If my peers don't like it, it must not be worth trying" camp. And I suspect the latter is more the issue here than a fear of social repercussion. c ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 16:45:26 -0400 From: "Chris Murtland" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Top 10 Distractions from Real Life Not necessarily convinced it's tongue-in-cheek. I have considered labeling music a sport before, so this article rang a bell. At the risk of triggering another discussion about "what is art," I won't say much more. Chris > Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Offers: > > >On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Chris Prew wrote: > > >> Is it unhip to to be intellectually challenged any more? > > >Massively. Even more unhip is to let others know you enjoy being > >intellectually challenged. > > This seems to tie in with the concept that "art" is something that only the > elite have any interest in. To whit: > > www.improvland.com/articles/joeymichaels/artisdeath.html > > This is, I believe, a tongue in cheek article about theatrical improvisation > and how it needs to do everything in its power to avoid the label of art. > > I find with my high school students that they simultaneously decry trash > movies and music and, at the same time, go to see "Mummy Returns" on its > opening weekend. Some of them place a very high value on "intellectual > things," but find themselves swept up in the irresistible stream of mass > consumption. It isn't any fun wanting to talk about movies when all you've > seen is "Memento" and all your friends saw "Planet of the Apes." > > R. Kevin ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 16:11:47 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Top 10 Distractions from Real Life On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Cindy Alvarez wrote: > At 2:27 PM -0500 8/21/01, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > > >recently attended or is attending a major U address this one? Aaron? Are > >Harvard undergrads likelier to read Don DeLillo or Danielle Steele?). > I can't speak for universities outside Harvard, but there the > pop-culture thing gets turned on its ear -- no one would be caught dead > with Danielle Steele, even if they claimed to be reading it only > ironically. Camp and kitsch okay in smallish doses, but dumbed-down > stuff is anathema. I remember people rolling eyes at me when I > professed to like Stephen King -- never mind the hundred other more > literary books in my recently-read bookshelf. Just to clarify - we're talking among undergrads? > In > >particular, for boys to act as if they have a mind and want to use it is > >more or less equivalent to pinning a KICK ME sign on one's back. > Oversimplification, I think -- it's all about compensation. Guys in my > high school could get away with Actin' Smart, so long as they were an > athlete, a well-liked student gov't person, overtly charming or really > attractive. Probably correct - obviously, I was generalizing to make a point. But... > I think that's likeliest in the junior-high and early high school era, > honestly -- after that point most people have put themselves either into > the "I'll try things that sound interesting even if my friends don't" or > the "If my peers don't like it, it must not be worth trying" camp. And I > suspect the latter is more the issue here than a fear of social Which is likely the case with the Harvard crowd you mention above, as well. As far as college students, I'm thinking of the hordes of baseball-capped slouchers-in-back-rows that populate my classes. Some of them write very nice papers, and socialize before and after class in ways that suggest their classroom silence isn't just shyness - but once class begins, there they slouch. Several of these guys, in fact, are perfectly fine talking with me alone - but in the class, they are, it seems, too cool to care. But I would support my general point by surveying any number of pop-cultural productions in which the smart kids are invariably nerdy, glasses-wearing nebbishes with dubious social skills - while the more socially skilled kids might be witty or clever but seldom seem as if they'd crack a book. At this point I feel compelled to mention that I'm not suggesting these characters should be holing up with Shakespeare and Joyce, discussing postmodernism while sipping lattes, pinkies extended. But the ongoing notion that if one *is* interested in Shakespeare and Joyce, one cannot also be socially skilled, have a sense of humor, and enjoy popular culture (whether in its more polished or overtly trashy forms) still seems prevalent. (Which is why I felt compelled to mention it.) And it gets worse, as has been copiously documented by others, outside the white middle class - where "books" are too often associated with whites, and academic diligence gets called "acting white." (I shouldn't have to say that any number of prominent blacks and Latinos have decried this symptom among their own youth, so it's certainly not a universal.) Uh...is the Isley Brothers CD currently occupying the no. 3 chart position actually any good? Or is it one those comebacks in name only, unworthy of their earlier work? - --Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::This album is dedicated to anyone who started out as an animal and ::winds up as a processing unit. __Soft Boys, note, CAN OF BEES__ np: more Beatles - this time, Ant1-d1 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 16:41:49 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] post re list-approved music On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Dan Sallitt wrote: > > I have a question about Big Star's third album. > > > > In the Ryko reissue, "Dream Lover" is placed, unflatteringly, as a bonus > > track...after a few covers that are clearly divergent stylistically from > > the album as a whole. And yet, in the notes, someone (Jim Dickinson?) is > > quoted as saying that "Dream Lover" was among the songs recorded during > > the _Sister Lovers_ sessions and was intended for inclusion on that album > > (which, as most of us know, was never released in its intended form...that > > form never actually having been decided upon). > > Of the two Chilton songs that didn't appear on the PVC and Jem releases, > I actually prefer "Downs" to "Dream Lover".... Is there some quote that > indicates that "Dream Lover" had a preferred status among the five > omitted tracks? I think all these songs were part of the sessions, not > just "Dream Lover." I'm at home now, and here are the relevant quotes from the notes: Chilton and Dickinson were only able to agree on a running order for four songs (the first three and the last one). "The whole thing made sense, at one point, on paper," stated Dickinson. "It was very cyclic. 'Thank You Friends' is supposed to be first, and 'Take Care' is supposed to be last." Dickinson goes on to say that "Holocaust" definitely was not intended as the closer. Later, he says: "The thing has never truly been released.... The other subsequent releases of the record basically are bootlegs, because it has never been released in the right sequence.... We all knew that Stax was going out of business, so we just kept recording, hoping things wouldn't go away, but we never truly finished.... 'Dream Lover' is, in reality, the last thing we recorded.'" So, Dickinson says: (a) there was never an official running order, except for the first three tracks and the last one, and (b) "Dream Lover" was definitely recorded at sessions intended for release as part of this album. So that's why I find it mysterious that Ryko labeled "Dream Lover" a bonus track: how can there be bonus tracks to an album whose official tracks were never established, and by what criteria would "Dream Lover" be considered one of those bogus bonus tracks - since the album's own liner notes show the producer of the sessions designating it as one of the tracks recorded for the album? It seems as if Ryko just arbitrarily decided that a handful of tracks were "bonuses" - even though several of them had appeared on several previous releases of _Sister Lovers_. This is especially vexing, since "Dream Lover," in its general mood and arrangement, clearly slots nicely alongside "Big Black Car," 'Take Care," "Nighttime," etc. > I don't know who made the decision about what tracks were left off of > the PVC release. I'm not sure that Chilton was shut out of the > decision-making process. I asked him in 1985 whether he sequenced the > PVC release, and he said, "No, but I like the sequencing." > > If Chilton were in sole charge of the project of choosing the THIRD > tracks and sequencing them, I bet he'd do something weird like start the > album with "Nature Boy." He always had a taste for desecrating his own > work. And the covers were probably as much a part of the plan for the > album as the originals. One of the covers, "Femme Fatale," made it onto > the PVC release. Yep - but he did agree on the opening tracks and the ending. Curiously, despite Dickinson's comments above, the intended second and third tracks aren't mentioned, and the sequence does not begin with "Thank You Friends." > All we can do is choose our own songs and sequencing for THIRD - I don't > think there's any natural division. (Personally, I'd throw off "Thank > You Friends" and replace it with "Downs.") Generally, I like the PVC > sequencing (much much better than the Ryko sequencing), and tend to give > it a certain historical legitimacy for that reason alone. - Dan You mean because Chilton said he liked it? I don't have the PVC release - I used to have the Line CD, though, which omitted (as I recall) the Kinks cover and "Nature Boy" and included everything else. Oh well - I'm just glad the songs are out there - most of them are brilliant by any measure, and even the ones that are intentionally fucked up need to be there, since intentionally fucking up seems one of the record's key notions. - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::the sea is the night asleep in the daytime:: __Robert Desnos__ ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V1 #205 *******************************