From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V2 #94 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 Sunday, March 10 2002 Volume 02 : Number 094 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] scary stuff (pt. 2) [JRT456@aol.com] Re: [loud-fans] Ashcroft & Thomas make with the oil [JRT456@aol.com] Re: [loud-fans] Ashcroft & Thomas make with the oil [steve ] Re: [loud-fans] completely irrelevant pet peeve (you've beenwarned) [Dan ] Re: [loud-fans] How much does Xanax cost? [Dan Sallitt > It's pretty much common knowledge that Pat Buchanan is a Socialist, as he only confirmed by his running mate in the past Presidential election. Musical content: This list's resident big Marillion fan might want to contact me off-list. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 08:50:11 EST From: JRT456@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Ashcroft & Thomas make with the oil In a message dated 3/8/02 11:17:13 PM, steveschiavo@mac.com writes: << So what's that got to do with Ashcroft? >> My response had more to do with Andrew Tobias--specifically, that if you're going to reprint gossip that no single news organization has been able to follow up on (although I'm pretty sure Maureen Dowd rushed to present it as fact), then it's worth adding that the source is the Treasurer for the Democratic National Committee. And since the target of that gossip is the alleged beliefs of a fundamentalist Christian, it's also worth noting that Tobias is a gay activist. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 10:38:25 -0600 From: steve Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Ashcroft & Thomas make with the oil On Saturday, March 9, 2002, at 07:50 AM, JRT456@aol.com wrote: > My response had more to do with Andrew Tobias--specifically, that if > you're > going to reprint gossip that no single news organization has been able > to > follow up on (although I'm pretty sure Maureen Dowd rushed to present > it as > fact), then it's worth adding that the source is the Treasurer for the > Democratic National Committee. And since the target of that gossip is > the > alleged beliefs of a fundamentalist Christian, it's also worth noting > that > Tobias is a gay activist. Considering Ashcroft's other baggage, the cat thing seems to fit right in. Perhaps the other Republicans in the Senate should have considered *his* biases when he was lying about Ronnie White. - - Steve __________ Break the cursing seal of love, new devil. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 12:26:34 EST From: JRT456@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Ashcroft & Thomas make with the oil In a message dated 3/9/02 8:39:11 AM, steveschiavo@mac.com writes: << Considering Ashcroft's other baggage, the cat thing seems to fit right in. Perhaps the other Republicans in the Senate should have considered *his* biases when he was lying about Ronnie White. >> It's hard to gossip or lie about decisions made by the Missouri Supreme Court. Those things tend to be part of the public record. I'm sure, however, that the 54 other Senators who voted against White considered Ashcroft's bias against the only Missouri Supreme Court Justice who didn't want to impose the death penalty on a man who murdered three police officers (in addition to tracking down a policeman's wife and also killing her). ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 10:05:00 -0800 (PST) From: mweber@library.berkeley.edu (Matthew Weber) Subject: Re: [loud-fans] scary stuff (pt. 2) >In a message dated 3/8/02 9:53:41 PM, jenor@csd.uwm.edu writes: > ><< Just how far left would one have to go to go as far right as this? I think >we need to resurrect Chairman Mao to have some balance in the talkpits. >> > >It's pretty much common knowledge that Pat Buchanan is a Socialist, as he >only confirmed by his running mate in the past Presidential election. Yeah, a National Socialist. Matt Americanism. Who can be against that? Or harmony. Who can be against that? Or, to bring it up to date, "Support our troops." Who can be against that? Or yellow ribbons. Who can be against that? Anything that's totally vacuous. In fact, what does it mean if somebody asks you, Do you support the people in Iowa? Can you say, Yes, I support them, or No, I don't support them? It's not even a question. It doesn't mean anything. That's the point. The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa. Of course, there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support their policy? But you don't want people to think about the issue. That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything, but its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that *does* mean something: do you support their policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about. Noam Chomsky, _Media Control : The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda_ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 20:31:36 -0500 From: "glenn mcdonald" Subject: [loud-fans] the death of the single For those of you who share my morbid fascination for any article about music that features somebody complaining that "most" albums "have only one good song out of a dozen": http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/03/07/wkd.death.of.the.single.ap/i ndex.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2002 22:52:36 -0500 From: Dan Sallitt Subject: Re: [loud-fans] completely irrelevant pet peeve (you've beenwarned) > This reminds me of something that happened at a party at Seth Tiven's > house in Boston about a zillion years ago. These two girls in the middle > of the room were talking about faking orgasms. Sean, then Dumptruck's > drummer, was walking past them, overheard part of this conversation, and > without missing a beat stopped and confronted them: > > "You fake *having* orgasms!?? I gotta fake NOT having them!!" This is a variant on the line from SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID: "Heterosexuality is where the woman tries to come but can't, and the man tries not to come but can't." - Dan ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2002 22:56:48 -0500 From: Dan Sallitt Subject: Re: [loud-fans] How much does Xanax cost? > >Now it's stuck in my head too. Would somebody please pass the Xanax. > > Over the years, I've found that either TMBG's "Particle Man" or the Mr. Ed > theme will get *any* song out of your head. > > <><><><><><><><><><> > > I recommend "Mexican Radio" for this. I keep an .mp3 of William Shatner's "Mr. Tambourine Man" around for this purpose. The important side effect is that, after the old song is dislodged, the "Mr. Tambourine Man" that takes its place is usually the familiar Byrds or Dylan version instead of Shatner's. - Dan ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 01:21:38 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] the death of the single On Sat, 9 Mar 2002, glenn mcdonald wrote: > For those of you who share my morbid fascination for any article about > music that features somebody complaining that "most" albums "have only > one good song out of a dozen": > > http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/03/07/wkd.death.of.the.single.ap/ I'm unsure whether most albums have only one good song - for the same reason I'm unsure whether there are more or less great albums released these days as compared to the piney days of yore (note: do not have this argument again: simply reread the archives. Thank you), but this is an intriguing article anyway. I'm 40, and so I grew up in the sixties, a music-obsessed kid with a transistor radio and earphones hidden beneath my pillow at night. My parents weren't terribly into popular music, but were enough to have picked up a couple of the more obvious choices, like a couple of Beatles albums (and also Herb Alpert's _Whipped Cream & Other Delights_, the cover of which did god knows what to my prepubescent psyche...). As soon as I could afford it - from my allowance, to money earned from a paper route - I started buying singles. I remember hanging out at the Kohl's Department Store a few blocks from my house, which at the time had a small record department, fascinated by all the different 45s. I still have a few of those rather beat-up singles - too bad I didn't take better care of them, as some would probably be worth some money today - but the point of this little nostalgia trip is this: Although I bought LPs as soon as I could afford to do so, that was several years later...and was the sort of chance I'd take only on known quantities. LPs were more often gifts on birthdays and Christmases - as a kid, I couldn't afford them. Even into my teens, when my music-buying was clearly a habit and the main thing I'd spend my money on, I'd test-drive an artist by buying a single. If I liked it well enough, I might buy the corresponding LP. But kids nowadays don't seem to have that choice. It's either drop the (unnecessarily inflated big-store) full price of a full-length CD, or do without. Or it was, until mp3s came along. No wonder a generation of young music fans apparently can't live without them. That record companies would be so greedy as to argue that singles cut into the sales of CDs, or that there wasn't enough profit on them, only shows how narrow-minded and stupid their accounting is. The point of singles is essentially their function as loss-leaders (if indeed they're sold at a loss): you develop young music fans, you put them out essentially as advertisements for the full-length CD (why hasn't some bright young accountant simply thought of transferring the costs of singles into the promotional budget? Hell, give the damned things away...) - and by doing so, you're more likely to have those fans buying your product later. I've long thought that if the record companies really wanted to end their dependence upon blockbusters (the economic equivalent to a lack of biodiversity), they should pressure radio to open up its playlists. A simple fact: very few people will buy music they haven't heard - unless the price is low enough to make it less of a problem. Pretty damned simple, really. Ironically, whatever problems companies are experiencing as a result of the popularity of MP3s is to some extent a direct result of their killing off singles, and of the increasingly narrow-cast notion of popular music, in marketing, radio, and auxiliary markets. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but...weren't the most popular Napster downloads pretty much the same as the most popular songs on the charts? People were just getting themselves a new place or means to listen to the same tracks they would otherwise listen to. Ironic, too - since popular songs surround us all for "free" all the time - radio, airplay in public places, etc. What I'm not sure about is what those big companies should do about all this. I mean, it's easy to bash them...but right now I'm thinking: if I were the head of Sony's music division, what would I want to do about this situation? I'm pretty much thinking I'd conclude that the acts that really bring in the dollars are multimedia...in the sense that their music is only a part of their appeal (and only a part of the way they bring in money). I'd probably further conclude that it's not at all worth my time supporting any act that doesn't have such multimedia potential: i.e., any act so mundane as to only be about producing music. I think it's less and less likely that mass-popular music will be able to communicate anything interesting to music fans like us - that isn't its purpose. In some ways, there may be a return to a new version of the regionalism that characterized popular music until the agglomeration of big labels in the late sixties and onward: only instead of a geographical basis, it'll have a taste-public basis, with small niches searching out other musics they like online, and those MP3s serving as ideal advertisements (the thing itself, nearly) for CDs. In other words, maybe there'll be a music business again. The big labels won't be part of it; they'll be in the multimedia entertainment business, with music as only one part of a whole entertainment package - kinda like the old showbiz model (pre-Beatles), where a popular musician was just assumed to want to go on to film, to Las Vegas, etc. Okay, I'm too tired for this to make any sense...someone else tell me tomorrow morning just how fucked-up all these ideas are. - --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 ::sex, drugs, revolt, Eskimos, atheism:: ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V2 #94 ******************************