From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V2 #40 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 Monday, January 28 2002 Volume 02 : Number 040 Today's Subjects: ----------------- RE: [loud-fans] Donnie Darko [Aaron Mandel ] [loud-fans] the thing about project estimates... [dmw ] [loud-fans] little feats of music snobbery [Steve Holtebeck ] [loud-fans] irc and more about the dang webpage [dmw ] [loud-fans] Chat? [Andrew Hamlin ] Re: [loud-fans] re: just how much sexiness can that frog tolerate? [JRT45] [loud-fans] Late-breaking news... [Andrew Hamlin ] Re: [loud-fans] Primitives ["Aaron Milenski" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 09:24:57 -0500 (EST) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: RE: [loud-fans] Donnie Darko On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, glenn mcdonald wrote: > Went back again tonight to make sure. Yep, it's that good. If you > missed it in the theater, the DVD comes out March 19th. Despite it tripping over two of my pet peeves, I also thought it was very good. I managed to know almost nothing about it going in, which definitely enhanced the experience. If you manage to watch Donnie Darko without even seeing any promo photos beforehand, so much the better. [Spoiler space for those who haven't seen it...] Peeve 1: Movies with intriguing clues strung all the way through that end with the world blowing up instead of a nice little Encyclopedia Brown moment. One could argue that the world doesn't always work out so nicely, but I hate the feeling that the writer may not have actually had a consistent backstory in mind. Of course, it could just be that I missed stuff. Does R. Sparrow have any agency in all this? Why is Frank essentially trying to arrange his own death? What does Donnie *do* at the end of the movie? Peeve 2: Movies where not only does the hero die, but their death is the keystone that holds the ending together. I got this peeve from playing too many Japanese video games. a ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 13:18:01 -0500 (EST) From: dmw Subject: [loud-fans] the thing about project estimates... they always understimate both actual time-on-task and time-to-complete. always. [ note: i'm trying to make this message un-nerdly enough that it is intelligible to people who haven't labored to acquire an esoteric techie vocabulary. i may not have succeeded. ] for those of you impatiently awaiting the debut of the loudfans web page v0.9 (beta version), it's still sorta vaporware at this point and i got derailed by other concerns for a coupla days, but work is progressing in what i hope will ultimately be considered not unduly untimely fashion. The fact that most everybody used a format that looks kinda like mail header information, eg.: From: owner@loudfans.some.org looks superfically like: Some Item: Some Personal Data ...is complicating stuff a l'il bit. If you think you might have included info that really IS the same as a valid mail header, like, say, "Status" (rather than just "Marital Status") you might want to proofread your page extra closely when it goes up. Actually, everybody should proofread their pages anyway! Also, since spam-bots are known to crawl webpages and harvest e-mails to send ads to all of the addresses they find, I have a slightly interesting design problem -- on the one hand, a lot of us know each other by our e-mail addresses, and so it would seem sort of logical to include a link that you can mail from, on the other hand, some people on the list have expressed concern about spam mail, and there are folks (i'm not aware of any on the list, but i try to think ahead) who have trouble with stalkers, obssessive fans and the like, and don't want their e-mail addresses accessible in any form. so there are going to be three levels that the software handles, for security of e-mail addresses: the highest is no display of e-mail info at all. the second highest, which i'm going to set everyone up with to start with, will show your e-mail address in a little pop up box after you click something to prove that you're not a spambot. the lowest security level will be a plain ol' email link, for people who either don't mind the spam or already have filters in place to deal with it. sound reasonable? & if you haven't sent your introduction yet, it's not too late. - -- d. - ------------------------------------------------- Mayo-Wells Media Workshop dmw@ http://www.mwmw.com mwmw.com Web Development * Multimedia Consulting * Hosting ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 11:44:06 -0800 From: Steve Holtebeck Subject: [loud-fans] little feats of music snobbery ana wrote: > >From: "Joseph M. Mallon" > >Here's a glossary: > >http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/cover/ > > > >The really interesting part is that the band on the >illustration's > T-shirt is not in the glossary. > yeah, but the article sez > it's abridged, so perhaps....? Even though it isn't mentioned anywhere in the article, the unabridged version of this list appeared in the "music issue" of Esquire last year. The same issue had Elvis Costello's list of 500 essential albums (another great example of music snobbery, but I won't go there) zkk46@ttacs.ttu.edu wrote: (re: "Dixie Chicken") > It's named after a restaurant in College Station, TX, so I think by > title alone it can be considered southern rock. Never heard the song > before though, so no comments on whether it sounds like Sknyrd. I'd be more likely to believe that the restaurant is named after the song instead of the song being named after the restaurant, but maybe Lowell George and the restaurateur found the same title independently? Dana wrote: > Before anyone rushes out to buy this, I'll note that Aquarius' > reviews aren't always trustworthy. I've noticed that Aquarius seems to rave about nearly every release, like they're trying to sell them or something. Their web site/email missives are always fun to read, but mostly serve to steer me away from buying things, rather than making me rush out to buy them. Here's their review of the "Eban & Charley" soundtrack, which gave this potential consumer at least three yellow "proceed with caution" flags. == The first 2002 peep from the prolific pen of Stephen Merritt (following the epic "69 Love Songs" 3-cd box set) comes not as a new Magnetic Fields, Future Bible Heroes nor Sixths album, but as an indie film soundtrack. Sounding just as you'd expect film music composed by Mr. Magnetic Fields would... lovely, lonely, spartan and droll. Lingering piano and harpsichord notes, brief solemnly sung moments that I wouldn't quite classify as songs (which include despairing renderings of O Tannenbaum and Greensleeves), clinky-clunky, off-kilter antique toy instrument sounds and experimental soundscapes. Word has it he's been deep in recordingland working on new Magnetic Fields and Future Bible Heroes albums, but until those surface... == Steve ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 21:39:22 From: "Brian Block" Subject: [loud-fans] re: just how much sexiness can that frog tolerate? Some specific replies to Jeffrey's kind mixtape review (and someone else's Crack the Sky question): >>>>Thin Lizard Dawn "Happy Loonies": Begins with sort of a rubberband-sounding guitar over a samba rhythm, and then into a louder, more rock section, another section that sounds like a verse, very melodic...okay, I give up on the structure - but it's pretty cool in an almost Sparks-y way. Tell me more... >>>> I don't know much about them, but they were a New York City quartet whose self-titled 1996 debut was bubbly and tuneful along a range you could mostly extrapolate from "Happy Loonies". They released a 1999 follow-up called GO that tried to move their sound towards Modern Rock, which i didn't like at all. Once i accepted a 15-minute car ride home from a co-worker during which he was playing a mixtape he'd designed for himself, and the equally-catchy equally-quirky first track on THIN LIZARD DAWN came up, and i was so stunned that it took me the entire running time of the song before i could place it, even though i'd been playing the album not a week earlier. >>>>Gruppo Sportivo "I Said No": Piano-based off-beat chord suspensions into >>>>a hammering group attack, accompanied by a grunting choir of bass >>>>saxophones...apparently a tale of musical seduction gone awry. I like it >>>>well enough! >>>> MISTAKES, this Dutch band's 1979 American debut, was one of my Dad's all-time favorite albums. Others included albums by Bartok, Rimsky-Korsikov, Sibelius, Schnittke, and Jeffrey Fredericks & the Clamtones. >>>>Fidget "Rock'n' Roll Is Back Again": But where had it gone? This is one >>>>of my favorite tracks here, with its wobbly organ line, hop skip and a >>>>jump drumming, and guitar parts as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle w/o getting >>>>all avant-garde about it. >>>> Exactly what i love about this song, and several others on Fidget's GLAD TO BE YOUR ENEMY. My guess is that the jigsaw method is a solution to (1) wanting to make complex music while (2) not being able to play terribly well. If so, i think it's a brilliant one. >>>>Miranda Sex Garden "Are You the One?": The singer's got a great voice >>>>.... I like the string-like parts: I think the band has (or had) a >>>>violinist and cellist on board, >>>> Correct, they do. >>>>Rush "Subdivisions": The synth patches are a bit dated, and the 7/8 >>>>rhythm at the beginning seems less integral than showy and gestural - >>>>but the song's solid, and the Peart/Weinrib/Zivojinovich trio possesses >>>>the chops to make the nifty little instrumental flourishes effective. >>>> >>>> Glad you like the song, and i'm willing enough to agree that the 7/8 rhythm isn't integral... but i guess i'd argue that since the melody clearly doesn't _require_ an 8th beat, giving it an 8th beat would have been just as artificial a gesture _against_ being showy. >>>>Crack the Sky "All the Things We Do" >>> This is from 1989's FROM THE GREENHOUSE, which rates for me with 1975's CRACK THE SKY as their best work. Although if you can't tolerate dead-on imitations of David Gilmour by guitarists with Polish surnames, you won't agree with me on that. >>>>Primitives "All the Way Down": Which "Primitives" is this? >>>> As Stewart correctly says, this is an English band usually with girlie singer. Unlike Stewart, i'd actually pick this Primitives album, PURE, as one of the great pure-pop masterpieces and LOVELY as kind of a nice warm-up, but it's a tiny disagreement. Can anyone here, Stewart or otherwise, tell me anything about the music on their third, U.K.-only album GALORE? cheers, -Brian _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 16:39:25 -0700 From: Stewart Mason Subject: Re: [loud-fans] re: just how much sexiness can that frog tolerate? At 09:39 PM 1/27/02, Brian Block wrote: >>>>>Primitives "All the Way Down": Which "Primitives" is this? >>>> > >As Stewart correctly says, this is an English band usually with girlie >singer. Unlike Stewart, i'd actually pick this Primitives album, PURE, as >one of the great pure-pop masterpieces and LOVELY as kind of a nice warm-up, >but it's a tiny disagreement. Can anyone here, Stewart or otherwise, tell >me anything about the music on their third, U.K.-only album GALORE? If you see it cheap used, go ahead, but I wouldn't pay regular price for it. Like many guitar-pop bands of their era (Darling Buds and the Soup Dragons being others), the Primitives jumped on the post-Madchester indie-dance bandwagon around 1990, so GALORE is just your basic synth-dance-groove stuff. Not actually bad, but totally forgettable. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 15:50:02 -0800 From: Campbell Fitch Subject: [loud-fans] A belated introduction Name: Campbell Fitch. Known to one and all as Cam. Residence: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Occupation: Lawyer Marital Status: Happy. I think my wife Renee is also happy. Children: None. We do, however, have two very spoiled cats.. Pets: see Children Birthdate: May 26, 1958 Religion: Unconvinced Vision Correction: Yes, and the need grows yearly. Met Janet?: No. Favorite Scott Record: Lolita Nation Joined loud-fans: 1996 or so. Have lurked about since then, with the odd spasm of posting interrupting the inertia. Met loudfans? Unfortunately, no. Last Concert: Keith Jarrett trio. Wow. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 18:54:47 -0500 (EST) From: dmw Subject: [loud-fans] irc and more about the dang webpage irc - dalnet whatever, me and sharples now, and you soon, i hope? woops, and jer, now, too. more about the dang web page: jenny grover had an idea so good i'm really embarrassed i didn't have it first: instead of goofy pop ups to protect e-mail address, the whole site will be protected by a very basic login. - ------------------------------------------------- Mayo-Wells Media Workshop dmw@ http://www.mwmw.com mwmw.com Web Development * Multimedia Consulting * Hosting ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 16:10:58 -0800 (PST) From: Andrew Hamlin Subject: [loud-fans] Chat? I'll be at irc.eskimo.com for some time, waiting to see if there's something to say. The wait-ing...oh you know that one don't you? Andy "No kings, no bishops, no priests. The Kingdom of Heaven has been known by that name since the Authority first set himself above the rest of the angels. And we want no part of it. This world is different. We intend to be free citizens of the Republic of Heaven." - --Philip Pullman, from somewhere in the HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 19:40:10 EST From: JRT456@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] re: just how much sexiness can that frog tolerate? In a message dated 1/27/02 1:40:53 PM, bokonin@hotmail.com writes, in reponse to another query: << >>>>Primitives "All the Way Down": Which "Primitives" is this? >>>> As Stewart correctly says, this is an English band usually with girlie singer. Unlike Stewart, i'd actually pick this Primitives album, PURE, as one of the great pure-pop masterpieces....>> Since we've all got modern-era Primitives fever, I'll gladly trade a 21-track import best-of CD (a Camden imprint comp, w/ two different mixes of the dull "All the Way Down") with whoever contacts me off-list with something to offer from their own Stack Of Overrated Bands That Other People Seem To Find Entertaining... ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 16:53:15 -0800 (PST) From: Andrew Hamlin Subject: [loud-fans] Late-breaking news... Owing to eskimo's continuing bugginess, we're over at irc.DAL.net now. And if you don't hurry, you just might miss the first irc session in FOREVER of Everybody's Favorite Loudfan... Andy "If you don't get out of my way, I will kill you." - --host of the party I attended last night ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 21:48:20 -0500 From: "Aaron Milenski" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Primitives I agree with Brian--I like PURE better than LOVELY. I also like the Darling Buds' very similar POP SAID at least as much as both Primitives albums if not more. Regardless, I'd wholeheartedly recommend them all. > >but it's a tiny disagreement. Can anyone here, Stewart or otherwise, >tell > >me anything about the music on their third, U.K.-only album GALORE? I thought it was lousy--a pale imitation of their better work. I also found the (I forget the name) compilation of their early demos and singles to be hopelessly unformed and dull. Aaron _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V2 #40 ******************************