From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V2 #51 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 Saturday, February 2 2002 Volume 02 : Number 051 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] Miller time [Steve Holtebeck ] Re: [loud-fans] Catching up [Tim_Walters@digidesign.com] Re: [loud-fans] Country Roads [ns, was James Taylor] [Robert Toren ] [loud-fans] RE: Garbage Van ["Brett Milano" ] Re: [loud-fans] Catching up [Stewart Mason ] Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... ["Dennis McGreevy" ] Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... [Carolyn Dorsey ] RE: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... ["Aaron Milenski" ] Re: [loud-fans] Miller time [steve ] RE: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... ["Aaron Milenski" ] Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... [Roger Winston ] Re: [loud-fans] Why do people hate James Taylor so much? ["John Sharples"] Re: [loud-fans] [ns] the other Scott again (of course) [Roger Winston ] [loud-fans] big metal something [steve ] Re: [loud-fans] Re: gleanings [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... [Stewart Mason ] [loud-fans] XTC update [steve ] Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... [Miles Goosens ] Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... [Miles Goosens ] RE: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... ["glenn mcdonald" ] Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... [Stewart Mason ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 15:28:05 -0800 From: Steve Holtebeck Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Miller time Miles Goosens wrote: > At 03:25 PM 2/1/2002 -0500, Aaron Milenski wrote: > >I think that the discussion of Steve Miller should go beyone his 70s hits. > >His first two albums, espeically SAILOR, are still two of the best to come > >from the San Fran hippie scene, and bear very litttle resemblance to the > >much simpler, more blatantly commerial work he did in the 70s. > > I never picked those up, even when I was 10 or 11 and thought that Steve > Miller was really, really cool. I only got as far back as THE JOKER. I'd > want to sample them before buying. The best introduction to the early Steve Miller Band is on the Best Of 1968-1973 album, which is chock full (20 songs) of material from his first four or five albums before the Joker, is normally mid-line priced, and is really quite good. Kind of a cross between blues and psychedelia, a bit hippieish, and quite Beatlesque in spots. I think "Quicksilver Girl" is one of the greatest songs ever, even if it was featured in THE BIG CHILL! Steve Miller's early albums with Boz Scaggs are as different from his later albums as Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac are from the later Fleetwood Mac albums, or the early Bee Gees are from the disco-era Bee Gees for that matter. John Denver was an important musical influence on my early life because my mom was a big fan, and his first album RHYMES AND REASONS was my initial introduction to the Beatles, so I can defend him if I want to. Steve ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 15:30:31 -0800 From: Tim_Walters@digidesign.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Catching up >but the parodies above seem to mock it by exaggerating its >bluntness I took the five-second version (which I can't remember where I heard, and may well be a mutated descendant of the Jeni version) to be mocking its length and repetitiveness, not its bluntness. But even if I'm wrong about that, I don't see anything with a parody that takes as its starting point a good but distinctive feature of the original and pushes it to the point of absurdity. >What is it artistically about the song that >sucks? I don't think it sucks--I think it's actually a interesting attempt to write a pop song in folk ballad format. Bob Dylan did it better, but that's no shame. But I don't have to think it sucks to enjoy a parody. Most LORD OF THE RINGS fanatics love BORED OF THE RINGS as well--I certainly do. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 15:32:42 -0800 (PST) From: Robert Toren Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Country Roads [ns, was James Taylor] - --- Andrew Hamlin wrote: > And to West Virginia's state legislature, > which made it one of the > >official state songs, despite the geographical > liberties taken by > >Denver/Danoff/Nivert. The Blue Ridge Mountains: northern Georgia, western North Carolina, western Virginia and eastern West Virginia. The Blue Ridge Mountains form the easternmost and highest range of the main section of the Appalachians. Shenandoah National Park lies near the northern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains. http://freespace.virgin.net/john.cletheroe/usa_can/usa/appalach.htm Robert ===== blah blah blah Mr. Sensitive Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions! http://auctions.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 15:32:10 -0800 From: "Brandon J. Carder" Subject: [loud-fans] old snafu loads fun and fouls anus fold Don't know if everyone's seen this. Could be handy, though: http://216.12.219.209/anagram/ gyrate me oh my lid afoul, Darn John Cornbread 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: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 16:44:40 -0700 From: "Roger Winston" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... "Edmund Fitzgerald" was the first song I learned to play on the guitar, so I have a soft spot in my heart for it. Granted, it has as many chords as the typical Ramones song, but still... It's easy to play/sing it at the same time and actually sound good doing it. Especially if you're in high school and are just learning to strum an acoustic guitar. I never thought it was monotonous at all. It's fun. Later. --Rog ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 18:49:38 -0500 From: "Brett Milano" Subject: [loud-fans] RE: Garbage Van As far as I know, the disc called THE BANG MASTERS on CBS Legacy is pretty >much definitive. If you stick with this, you're missing the bonus disc that came with the various UK reissues, namely the 32 acoustic, minute-long crap songs that he wrote to get out of his Bang deal. Obviously made up on the spot, these range from parodies of Twist & Shout to specific putdowns at people at Bang, to pure raving nonsense, and includes the least promising opening line in the history of popular music ("I can tell by looking at your face/ That you've got ringworm"). Midway through the disc is a song called "Freaky If You Got This Far." I know plenty of people who swear this is the best album he ever made. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 16:56:17 -0700 From: Stewart Mason Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Catching up At 03:16 PM 2/1/02 -0800, John Cooper wrote: >I'm not defending the song henceforth to be known as TWoTEF (I'm very >mildly positive on it; I wouldn't buy it, but I wouldn't turn off the >radio if it came on and I hadn't heard it in the last couple of >months), but the parodies above seem to mock it by exaggerating its >bluntness, which is one of the things I like about it. People >sometimes die senselessly, and one of ways we respond to it is to >talk and sing about it. What is it artistically about the song that >sucks? I agree with Tim that the exaggeration of its bluntness is perfectly reasonable parody. And actually, musically I quite like the song. I'm a big fan of Dorian mode in general, and I love a good drone no matter what form it takes. My main complaint, and it's echoed in Jeni's exaggerated enunciation during his parody, is that I'm not much of a fan of Gordon Lightfoot's voice in general, and on this song in particular, the way he draws out words to fit the melody emphasizes the aspects of his voice that I don't care for. S ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 18:06:28 -0600 From: "Dennis McGreevy" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... There's a radio station in Chicago, calls itself "The Drive", who are experimenting with a novel format: retro AOR. They play stock "oldies", but mix in the full length versions of "Do You Feel Like We Do?" by Peter Frampton and "Time Has Come Today" by the Chambers Brothers, plus loads of Steely Dan. An their marketing generally swirls somewhere about the central point of "Remember how cool FM radion was when you were young and spent all your time listening to things on headphones? Well, now your old, and hopefully have money, and we'd like to appeal to you as our target demographic." Even the ads for optical laser surgery have some spin on this general idea. Last May, after moving into a new shop, we listened to this station frequently. Then one week, the decided to play "TWotEF" and "She's A Rainbow" by the Stones about six times a day each. After having Gordon Lightfoot as me if anyone knew where the love of god went when the tides of November came early one time too many, it was all I could do not to punt the radio across the street at the chinese Walgreens. Relatedly, when I was in grade school, we had this thing in music class called "The Pop Hit of the Month". "TWotEF" was one of these. The music teacher decided to teach us a lesson in poetic license by having us look up actual news stories regarding the sinking of that ill-fated (whether "ill-fated" due to its tragic demise, or to its tragic immortalization in song is debateable). It seems that there was in fact no advance indication that the ship would go under, no captain resigning himself valliantly to his awful fate, and no cook sayin' "Fellas it's been goo ta know ya, " when the main hatchway gave in. No distress call was ever placed. The ore boat was fully loaded, and hit fore and aft by such a combination of large waves that it unexpectedly snapped in half, and sank in probably less than 90 seconds, as far as investigators were able to reconstruct. So to be true to the actual unfolding of events, the song should have been hardcore punk. and why did he threaten Sundown like that?, - --Dennis ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 18:46:01 -0600 From: "Keegstra, Russell" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... Mr. McGreevy: >It seems that there was in fact no advance indication that the >ship would go under, no captain resigning himself valliantly to >his awful fate, and no cook sayin' "Fellas it's been goo ta know >ya, " when the main hatchway gave in. No distress call was ever >placed. In fact, the last radio contact from the Fitzgerald was "We are holding our own." Maybe I didn't hear the song enough, but I never had any problems with it. The Rheostatic's version is much more interesting though. Russ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 19:58:00 -0800 From: Carolyn Dorsey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... I probably am in a huge minority here but I am a fan of Gordon Lightfoot-- not of his middle of the road ballads from the seventies but of the first couple albums he made in the sixties. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Sundown are probably the songs I dislike most of his, but they were big hits for him. I spent many summers in Ontario in the sixties and he was very popular with the people I knew there. I probably wouldn't like GL the way I do I didn't have an association with his music at that time--but I think his first records are great. He was a wonderful songwriter. His voice was very clear and he had a wonderful guitarist he played with regularly. He did a great version of Hamilton Camp's of Pride of Man on his first record I think. He's battled drug addiction and alcoholism for a long time and has started touring a little again. I listed to one of his new songs at a listening station somewhere and wasn't really interested in getting his new release. Carolyn ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 20:54:09 -0500 From: "Aaron Milenski" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... For those of you who don't know the story, NRBQ once ended a concert with a particularly long, boring version of TWotEF, and got practically booed off the stage. They returned for an encore...and played it again! Is it any wonder they're so beloved? Aaron _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 19:55:41 -0600 From: steve Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Miller time On Friday, February 1, 2002, at 05:28 PM, Steve Holtebeck wrote: > Kind of a cross between blues and psychedelia, a bit hippieish, and > quite Beatlesque in spots. I think "Quicksilver Girl" is one of the > greatest songs ever, even if it was featured in THE BIG CHILL! Steve > Miller's early albums with Boz Scaggs are as different from his later > albums as Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac are from the later Fleetwood Mac > albums, or the early Bee Gees are from the disco-era Bee Gees for that > matter. That would be later albums post RECALL THE BEGINNING. Boz left after the second album and a similar role was filled by jazz guy Ben Sidran on BRAVE NEW WORLD, YOUR SAVING GRACE, and NUMBER 5. Sidran has also played keyboards on many of the subsequent Miller albums. FWIW, here's a short bio - http://www.gangster-of-love.com/bio.html - - Steve __________ I know that it's cynical, but I feel that civil liberties-for a lot of these people in Congress-are either an inconvenience or a campaign slogan. They care only about money and power. - Wil Wheaton ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 21:00:33 -0500 From: "Aaron Milenski" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... Oh, and I have a particularly weird reaction to Gordon Lightfoot. I love "Sundown," which I think is one of the greatest folk-rock songs ever, but I hate everything else I've heard by him. Weird. Mostly I don't like his voice, but when doubletracked on "Sundown" it's sublime. I also love Fotheringay's cover of his "The Way I Feel," but not his own version. I'm not sure if we should start a thread about "Artists you can't stand except for one song that you love." _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 19:34:35 -0700 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... At Friday 2/1/2002 07:58 PM -0800, Carolyn Dorsey wrote: >I probably am in a huge minority here but I am a fan of Gordon Lightfoot-- >not of his middle of the road ballads from the seventies but of the first >couple albums he made in the sixties. Call me late for dinner, but I think that "If You Could Read My Mind" is one of the greatest songs ever. My older (by nine years) sister was the big Gordon Lightfoot fan in our family, and she converted me. I had GORD'S GOLD on 8-track and listened to it all the time. I do like his voice, and he has a way with a melody. Hey, some people have the Carpenters, I have GL. Now where's that tribute album? Thinking I should finally get GORD'S GOLD on CD, Later. --Rog ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 21:31:41 -0500 From: "John Sharples" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Why do people hate James Taylor so much? >I have to say that the funniest moment ever on Beavis and Butthead was when >they played the video for Journey's "Separate Ways." Perry was emoting to >the extreme, looking foolish as can be, and Butthead turned to Beavis and >rather than saying "this sucks" said "this is horrible!" That's the gravest >insult he ever gave! He then went on to say "if this video was a turd, >it'd be the same thing," but his point had already been made. I remember that as the second-best diss B&B ever gave a video. The best was for a Milli Vanilli video: B&B just looked at each other in silence, then switched the channel. Miles, my dad lives on top of one of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Round Hill, VA. At the back of his property is the Appalachian Trail, and then beyond that (down the other side of the mountain) is West Virginia. So I think WVa has at least a bit of Blue Ridge Mountain in it. In fact, this reminds me of the time my idiot brother-in-law and his friend Dan decided to go on a "hike" behind my dad's place. They got lost and ended up calling me from a truck stop in West Virginia. Only later did they admit to me they had eaten psychedelic mushrooms, and that as it began to get dark they had their own little version of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. They're lucky a bear didn't eat them. JS, big JT and Cat Stevens fan ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 19:43:50 -0700 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] [ns] the other Scott again (of course) At Friday 2/1/2002 11:07 AM -0600, Miles Goosens wrote: >Rog (how far is Colorado Springs from you?) Geographically or ideologically? If the first, ~60 miles. If the second: http://www.cjnetworks.com/~cubsfan/places/colorado_springs.html http://www.family.org http://www.loudcitizen.com Later. --Rog ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 18:45:53 -0800 From: Tim_Walters@digidesign.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... >Call me late for dinner, but I think that "If You Could Read My Mind" is >one of the greatest songs ever. Me too. And the Happiness Emporium do a barbershop quartet version that must be heard to be believed. >Hey, some people have the Carpenters, I have GL. Now where's that tribute >album? http://www.lightfoot.ca/trib1.htm >Thinking I should finally get GORD'S GOLD on CD, GORD'S GOLD, as I mentioned earlier, is all re-recordings, not the pure quill. Tragic. But it seems that it's your personal ur-text, so go for it. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 20:54:39 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Stef swap pt. 2 On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, Joseph M. Mallon wrote: > (06) Green: She's Heaven > Generock w/ fey vocals. Are these the folks that did the REM EP in '89? Yes. But "generock"?!? "Fey vocals"? Oof, yr breakin' my heart: I love this song - to me, it's just insanely gleeful despite (or because?) of its note of desperation. Oh well...cherchez la femme, pigs are the sons of gout, whatever the French phrase is. - --Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb:: __Batman__ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 20:22:56 -0700 From: Roger Winston Subject: [loud-fans] Shalini Webcast There's a live webcast going on right now of Shalini's concert at the Cat's Cradle. If you look carefully, maybe you can spot Larry Tucker in the crowd. Tune in to http://www.dcn.com. Later. --Rog ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 21:25:12 -0600 From: steve Subject: [loud-fans] big metal something Since Loud-Fans are such a film-going bunch, has anyone else been to see Brotherhood Of The Wolf? I heard on Weekend Edition that it was the second biggest film of the year in France, after Amelie. As a bonus, you might get to see the trailer for Zu Warriors (that's what Miramax is calling it's release of The Legend Of Zu). - - Steve __________ Our previous president studied at Oxford. This one was given a sightseeing tour of London and said it was ''diverse and clean.'' The Times also said Bush gave a ''pep talk'' to children about the advantages of reading over television. The children did not ask him to name the last book he had read. Just good manners, I guess. - Roger Ebert ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 22:31:52 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Re: gleanings On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, Jon Gabriel wrote: > Since we're both Angel fans, we were both depressed > when the protagonist named his "freaky vampire baby" > Conor, almost ruling that name out for good. But my > wife (curiously named Angela) searched the spoiler > boards and determined that chances are that the undead > infant *might* not be long for the series. They've actually done better with the Baby Factor than most shows. To wit: Baby is introduced, and featured in an episode or two, taking up roughly the proportional amount of episode-business as actual baby might (i.e., more than 100% - yes, I know that's impossible, but the baby doesn't). Then: gestures are made toward the presence of Baby, while plots drift back to previously established Normal (otherwise the show becomes All About Baby). Baby eventually (a) grows up, or (b) somehow is ignored, bringing the series fully back to Normal. _Angel_ has actually somehow returned to Baby a couple of times - as realistic as you might expect for a show about a vampire with a soul... But last week's _Buffy_? In the words of Comic Book Guy, "Worst...episode...ever!" Do let's not talk about the "monster" itself...but let's observe that the Fast Food Is Creepy theme was well established inside of four minutes...which is why the next fifteen or twenty hours - uh, minutes - were spent continuing to establish that theme, along with assorted red herrings. And big surprise: with the broad hinting (what? no mugging or tap-dancing?) about the soylency of the meat, it turns out not to be! Who would have guessed? And I'm a bit irked at the whole Amy the Witch rhyming with her description thing: suddenly she's jsut plain mean? Grrr...aaarrghh. > If the WB agrees to a spin-off titled, "Conor, the > Vampire 'Vampire-Slayer' Slayer," we may just go with > Ragnar. I keep telling her that no one will mess with > a boy who's name is Icelandic for "Bringer of War." My favorite local band when I was at Ann Arbor in the early '80s was Ragnar Kvaran - named after its singer, who was indeed born in Iceland. I was good friends for a while w/his younger bro, Geir (rhymes, more or less, with "air"). Plus, he could be nicknamed 'Gnarly! - --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 ::As long as I don't sleep, he decided, I won't shave. ::That must mean...as soon as I fall asleep, I'll start shaving! __Thomas Pynchon, VINELAND__ np: Visitor Jim s/t ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 22:46:57 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Why do people hate James Taylor so much? At 09:31 PM 2/1/2002 -0500, John Sharples wrote: >Miles, my dad lives on top of one of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Round Hill, >VA. At the back of his property is the Appalachian Trail, and then beyond >that (down the other side of the mountain) is West Virginia. So I think WVa >has at least a bit of Blue Ridge Mountain in it. It seems like it's a matter of interpretation. The link Photo Robert sent was just some guy's amateur page (heck, he has a disclaimer on the bottom of the page saying that he isn't an expert on Appalachia), and neither Melissa nor I thought that it touched West Virginia. Some of the webpages I've turned up this evening view the eastern tip of the Eastern Panhandle (Martinsville, Harper's Ferry) as part of the Blue Ridge, which would just barely qualify. The geology-head sites like put the Blue Ridge massif just short of the WV border and Harper's Ferry, but some of them also are careful to distinguish the massif from the Blue Ridge Mountains. The US Geological Survey puts WV entirely within the Appalachian Plateau and Valley and Ridge Provinces. I think this scores one for the Goosens corner. Other things I've seen line up even more with what I thought, which was an interpretation that hews a lot closer to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Heck, the official Shenandoah Valley tourism sites hawk the Valley as being separate and distinct from, and west of, the Blue Ridge, which would diminish the boundaries even more than I would! I still hew to the view that the Blue Ridge *Mountains* are not in West Virginia at all, and believe that people who aren't at all in them like to think they are (or promote their businesses as though they are) because "Blue Ridge Mountains" *sounds* scenic 'n' beautiful 'n' all, and it's certainly recognizable in a way that "Alleghenies" or "New River Valley" aren't. Sort of the same way some songwriters in DC might put it in a song about West Virginia -- the Blue Ridge must be in the Mountain State, right? :-) >of the time my idiot brother-in-law and his friend Dan decided to go on a >"hike" behind my dad's place. They got lost and ended up calling me from a >truck stop in West Virginia. Only later did they admit to me they had eaten >psychedelic mushrooms, and that as it began to get dark they had their own >little version of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. They're lucky a bear didn't eat >them. I would have scoffed at the bear joke a couple of decades ago, but with the state's depopulation since 1980, a lot of things have come out of the woods that everyone thought were gone for good. A few Christmases ago, I saw wild turkeys on the spur of the ridge across from my mom's. None of us had ever seen wild turkeys on our hill before, and my mom's lived there since 1950. Just a few years ago, my mother-in-law thought there was a bear living further up her hill, wandering down into her yard to eat scraps she'd put out for turtles. later, Miles np: Don Dixon webcast with Shalini and Mich guesting on "Preying Mantis" (thanks, Rog!) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 23:01:39 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Country Roads [ns, was James Taylor] On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, Matthew Weber wrote: > And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, > and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the > Lord's passover. > For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all > the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the > gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. > _The Holy Bible: The Old Testament_, The Second Book of Moses, > Called Exodus, chapter 12, verses 11-12 Judge orders God to break up into smaller deities. _The Onion_: Vol. 38, issue 03, called Pretty Damned Funny ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 23:06:44 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Country Roads [ns, was James Taylor] On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, ana luisa morales wrote: > >--- Original Message --- > >From: "Andrew Hamlin" > > >Pop quiz: Danoff and Nivert were half of what band, which >had > a hit with what universally-reviled (except by me of > >course) soft-rock sensation? > > starland vocal band, > "afternoon delight".... > > (now what'd i win?) I should think that would be obvious... - --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 ::"In two thousand years, they'll still be looking for Elvis - :: this is nothing new," said the priest. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 23:20:35 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, Dennis McGreevy wrote: > Last May, after moving into a new shop, we listened to this station frequently. > Then one week, the decided to play "TWotEF" and "She's A Rainbow" by the Stones > about six times a day each. That's a weird combination - although I love "She's a Rainbow." But then I'm one of those weirdos who actually likes _Their Satanic Majesties' Request_ and wish the Stones had pursued the goofy psychedelia thing further. > Relatedly, when I was in grade school, we had this thing in music class called > "The Pop Hit of the Month". "TWotEF" was one of these. The music teacher > decided to teach us a lesson in poetic license by having us look up actual news > stories regarding the sinking of that ill-fated (whether "ill-fated" due to its > tragic demise, or to its tragic immortalization in song is debateable). It > seems that there was in fact no advance indication that the ship would go under, > no captain resigning himself valliantly to his awful fate, and no cook sayin' > "Fellas it's been goo ta know ya, " when the main hatchway gave in. No distress > call was ever placed. The ore boat was fully loaded, and hit fore and aft by > such a combination of large waves that it unexpectedly snapped in half, and sank > in probably less than 90 seconds, as far as investigators were able to > reconstruct. Uh well uh yeah...but truthfulness isn't really the point, innit. Yr gonna write a ballad, ya gotta have details. Many of them. Going on, w/o break nor bridge, for, oh, six or seven minutes. For some reason, though, I liked that song - still do, i guess, despite its ritual invocation as The Thing You Must Hate periodically. I'm reminded, to an extent, of a rather silly criticism of Springsteen some sage at (I think) _Rolling Stone_ once offered up: Springsteen was unrealistic and overdramatic, sez he, because every time a Springsteen character gets in a car, some grand and glorious thing happens. "He never," our hero wrote, "just goes to the 7-Eleven to buy a pack of cigarettes." Well yes...but that doesn't exactly offer much potential for a song, now does it? (Although a parody of "Thunder Road" - with the climactic moment being the narrator's pocketing 37 cents in change - might be worth working up.) Really, though, it's the wrong criticism of a real aspect of Springsteen's music (then - I think circa _Darkness_): it seemed to offer mythmaking in place of more everyday reality (Miles will jump in now and correct me, probably). Actually, there are a number of writers I would like to see write a song exactly about driving to the 7-Eleven to pick up a pack of cigarettes... - --Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::I suspect that the first dictator of this country will be called "Coach":: __William Gass__ np: Esther Lee _Fifty Eight Now Nine_ - the singer sang the word "cigarettes" just as I begin typing it in my last line. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 23:21:39 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, Roger Winston wrote: > Call me late for dinner, but I think that "If You Could Read My Mind" is > one of the greatest songs ever. This was definitely a favorite song of mine - I still think it's pretty damned fine. - --Jeffrey with TWotEFs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::Any noise that is unrelenting eventually becomes music:: __Paula Carino__ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 22:46:04 -0700 From: Stewart Mason Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... At 11:20 PM 2/1/02 -0600, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: >Really, though, it's the wrong criticism of a real aspect of Springsteen's >music (then - I think circa _Darkness_): it seemed to offer mythmaking in >place of more everyday reality (Miles will jump in now and correct me, >probably). Actually, there are a number of writers I would like to see >write a song exactly about driving to the 7-Eleven to pick up a pack of >cigarettes... Well, Jojo doesn't smoke, obviously, but isn't that basically what "Roadrunner" is about? This may be why I tend to prefer Richman to Springsteen, in much the same way that I prefer, say, Frederick Barthelme to Ernest Hemingway: when Jonathan Richman writes a song about how cool it is to drive down the highway at night listening to the radio, he's not writing about any kind of Archetypal Journey of the Everyman, he's writing about how cool it is to drive down the highway at night listening to the radio. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 00:07:15 -0600 From: steve Subject: [loud-fans] XTC update Caroline will be releasing the XTC box and remastered albums, and other news - http://www.billboard.com/billboard/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id= 1282650 - - Steve __________ While still at the Department of Justice, Rehnquist provided the best definition of a strict constructionist I have ever encountered. It was in a memo Rehnquist wrote while he was vetting Judge Clement Haynsworth, one of Nixon's selections who was rejected by the Senate. Rehnquist wrote, in brief, that a strict constructionist was anyone who likes prosecutors and dislikes criminal defendants and who favors civil rights defendants over civil rights plaintiffs. That is as candid and blunt as you can get. And that is the real definition of a strict constructionist. - John Dean ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2002 00:21:12 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... At 11:20 PM 2/1/2002 -0600, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: >Really, though, it's the wrong criticism of a real aspect of Springsteen's >music (then - I think circa _Darkness_): it seemed to offer mythmaking in >place of more everyday reality (Miles will jump in now and correct me, >probably). Since I was invited -- I associate that quality much, much more strongly with BORN TO RUN. "Jungleland" pushes the "street opera" and mythic figures (The Magic Rat, the Barefoot Girl) somewhere beyond overt, and several of that album's other songs ("Thunder Road," "Night," and of course the title track) follow suit. I still love all of these songs, but I always understood if the dramatics turned people off. DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN, on the other hand, seems considerably less mythic and more intensely personal. The grand, romantic escapes (even if there's the strong implication that they'd never materialize) of BORN TO RUN end up as dreams "crushed and dying in the dirt" on DARKNESS. Destructive compulsions, Oedipal drama, soul-splintering rage, and soul-crushing hopelessness take center stage. "Racing in the Street" is DARKNESS' flip side of "Jungleland." The glorious "sleek machines" of "Jungleland"'s Protean arena are now the scrap-pile rigs of two-bit street racers seeking a nighttime escape from the crushing reality of their everyday jobs. The homecoming roll in the hay with the barefoot girl gives way to a living death with a woman who sits in the house with the lights off, her eyes as empty as her life and his. Our protagonist doesn't get to go out like the Magic Rat, tragically betrayed to his enemies, guns ablaze; instead, his song-ending prayer ("tonight my baby and me, we're gonna ride to the sea / and wash these sins off our hands") is betrayed by the strains of Roy Bittan and Danny Federici's impossibly beautiful, impossibly sad fugue as the cry of a man who really knows that no one is listening and that nothing will ever change in his life. DARKNESS is still my favorite Springsteen album, and the accompanying tour - -- oh my God. Let's just say that anybody with two decent-sounding '78 bootlegs could put together a live album that would crush the official LIVE 1975-1985 like a rotten kiwi fruit. I blame Jon Landau and Dave Marsh. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2002 00:43:19 -0600 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... At 10:46 PM 2/1/2002 -0700, Stewart Mason wrote: >Well, Jojo doesn't smoke, obviously, but isn't that basically what >"Roadrunner" is about? This may be why I tend to prefer Richman to >Springsteen, in much the same way that I prefer, say, Frederick Barthelme >to Ernest Hemingway: when Jonathan Richman writes a song about how cool it >is to drive down the highway at night listening to the radio, he's not >writing about any kind of Archetypal Journey of the Everyman, he's writing >about how cool it is to drive down the highway at night listening to the >radio. I think this message completes the Archetypal Divergence of My Taste From Stewart's. I take his point about Jonathan Richman, but the rest is just perpetuating stereotypes about Bruce that never were entirely true. I just cut a long section about BTR's "Meeting Across the River" out of the prior message, where I basically said that even in the midst of the most Archetypal With A Capital A album of Springsteen's career, he switches gears to an understated story about two ordinary guys. "Meeting" presages the ordinary folks who inhabit DARKNESS, THE RIVER, and especially NEBRASKA. There were always human and personal things that I could latch onto even in the more epic cuts, but from DARKNESS onward, it's more about the limits of everyday existence and Springsteen's own personal demons. If the existential despair of "Stolen Car" is meant to be An Archtypal Journey of the Everyman, I'll eat my hat while standing on a Blue Ridge Mountain peak in West Virginia. And scale and archetypes don't always matter, it's if you can hit the targets. Faulkner and Joyce have Dreams As Big As You Please, but they had more ability and far more soul than Hemingway, and that's why their stuff kicks Ernest T.'s butt from Galway to Key West and back again. Like Stewart, I'd take Barthelme over Hemingway, but that's because he's great at what he does, not because he aims lower. Does anyone else think that Jonathan Richman hit an early, spectacular peak with THE MODERN LOVERS and then never came within a rolling hill of it again? I own several of those Beserkley albums, and Loud-Listers (John Sharples prominent among them) have sent me other cuts on swap tapes, but I remain steadfastly unimpressed with anything he's done since. later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 02:09:24 -0500 From: "glenn mcdonald" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... > I probably am in a huge minority here but I am a fan of Gordon Lightfoot-- > not of his middle of the road ballads from the seventies but of the first > couple albums he made in the sixties. Hell, I'll admit to being a Lightfoot fan, and I won't even dissemble about the period. I think "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is a classic, and _Sundown_ and _Summertime Dream_ are both marvelous albums. I don't have strong feelings for or against James Taylor, but I love Cat Stevens, I think John Denver had his moments, and I own the Bee Gees box set. In fact, I have the Emmylou Harris, Pere Ubu *and* Yes boxes. And the first album I ever purchased for myself was _Hotel California_ but the fourth or fifth was the Steve Miller Band's _Greatest Hits_. So you can all, you know, talk to the hand or something. glenn ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2002 00:48:31 -0700 From: Stewart Mason Subject: Re: [loud-fans] TWotEF.... At 12:43 AM 2/2/02 -0600, Miles Goosens wrote: >And scale and archetypes don't always matter, it's if you can hit the >targets. Faulkner and Joyce have Dreams As Big As You Please, but they had >more ability and far more soul than Hemingway, and that's why their stuff >kicks Ernest T.'s butt from Galway to Key West and back again. Like >Stewart, I'd take Barthelme over Hemingway, but that's because he's great >at what he does, not because he aims lower. I admit that I was thinking specifically of the BORN TO RUN-era stuff and I concede the point about "Stolen Car" and would toss in songs like "Brilliant Disguise" and "Walk Like A Man," but I don't think he ever completely moved away from the whole Big Statements concept. Though "Born in the USA" was wildly misinterpreted, it was still Bruce's statement on disenfranchised Vietnam vets. But I don't think writing in the style of Richman or Barthelme (or Laurie Colwin or...I'm trying to think of some other songwriter who deals in quotidian life so thoroughly...RSM, maybe?) is necessarily aiming lower than writing in the style of Faulkner or Joyce or Springsteen. If anything, I think you could make the argument that it's harder to write something interesting and insightful about small slices of everyday life than to write about the Big Themes. To return to JeFF's analogy, it's probably easier to write something interesting and profound about the Vision Quest than the trip down to Target to pick up some toilet paper and a new mop. S ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V2 #51 ******************************