From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V3 #194 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 Friday, July 4 2003 Volume 03 : Number 194 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] Liz... (ns) [Dana Paoli ] Re: [loud-fans] Liz... (ns) [DOUDIE@aol.com] [loud-fans] ...flopped(ns) [Dana Paoli ] Re: [loud-fans] Liz... (ns) [Stewart Mason ] Re: [loud-fans] ...flopped(ns) [Aaron Mandel ] Re: [loud-fans] Liz... (ns) ["jer fairall" ] [loud-fans] Re: Mighty Like A Rose [Stewart Mason ] Re:[loud-fans]...flopped(ns) [Dana Paoli ] RE: [loud-fans]...flopped(ns) ["Larry Tucker" ] Re:[loud-fans]...flopped(ns) [Stewart Mason ] [loud-fans] Margerine (ns) [Dana Paoli ] Re: [loud-fans] Re: Mighty Like A Rose [Dan Schmidt ] Re: [loud-fans] Margerine (ns) ["John Swartzentruber" Subject: [loud-fans] Liz... (ns) ...flopped. - --dana ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 12:56:11 EDT From: DOUDIE@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Liz... (ns) I don't understand. She debuted at 27 on the billboard albums chart. I highlly doubt that any of her other records even got that high.. maybe whipsmart before supernova tanked.... steve matrick ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 17:09:45 GMT From: Dana Paoli Subject: [loud-fans] ...flopped(ns) I don't understand. She debuted at 27 on the billboard albums chart. I highlly doubt that any of her other records even got that high.. maybe whipsmart before supernova tanked.... >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Her last album sold 4,000 more in its first week. - --dana ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 13:30:49 -0400 From: Stewart Mason Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Liz... (ns) At 04:51 PM 7/3/2003 GMT, Dana Paoli wrote: >...flopped. No, Justin Guarini flopped. Liz, arguably, underperformed...unless I'm forgetting and all of her other albums debuted at number one with a bullet. (WCSE might have sold 4000 more copies its first week, but what was its chart ranking? Given the current state of the music industry, it's not unlikely that an album selling 4000 fewer copies than its predecessor would actually chart higher.) This week's New Yorker has an interesting article on the current state of the music industry focusing on Jason Flom of Atlantic. Pretty simplistic overview in many ways, but it does make a point of showing why it's not necessarily a bad thing that the music industry as we know it is self-immolating and why it's their own damn fault (if 25,000 of 30,0000 albums released each year sell fewer than 1000 copies each, wouldn't it make sense to first stop releasing so many albums and then figure out a way to adjust the economies of scale so that you, if not make make a profit on sales of 1000 albums, at least lose less money?), and it does show some remarkable self-delusion on the part of many, especially the producer of an album by a new Celine Dion clone, who complains that "the kids" don't want hugely expensive-sounding, overproduced, hyper-tweaked albums like the one he's doing, that they want something "simple, that sounds like it was recorded in a garage." Um...so...you could...and this is just a suggestion, mind...make a simple record that sounds like it was recorded in a garage, couldn't you? Or is that too obvious? S ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 13:33:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: [loud-fans] ...flopped(ns) On Thu, 3 Jul 2003, Dana Paoli wrote: > Her last album sold 4,000 more in its first week. I don't know what the sales curves for debuts by pop artists -- which is what we're supposed to regard this as, right? -- usually look like. If it's just now getting played on top 40 radio, it'll probably take a little while for the single to sink in. Right? Or are all serious hits big sellers as soon as they're added to radio playlists? a ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 13:40:26 -0400 From: "jer fairall" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Liz... (ns) > No, Justin Guarini flopped. He should be getting used to that by now. I'm sorry, that was mean. He seems like I nice enough guy from the interviews that I've seen. His sidekick, on the other hand...her recent tirade against movie critics is one of the funnier things that I've seen in a while. I don't have a link to it but I'm sure you can look for it in an Andy Hamlin .sig near you soon. Jer np: Elvis Costello, MIGHTY LIKE A ROSE (not one of the more respected Costello records, I'm told, but I'm really liking it...what's everyone have against it anyway?) Help the planet each day! It's free and easy: http://www.Care2.com/dailyaction/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 13:47:25 -0400 From: Stewart Mason Subject: [loud-fans] Re: Mighty Like A Rose At 01:40 PM 7/3/2003 -0400, jer fairall wrote: >np: Elvis Costello, MIGHTY LIKE A ROSE (not one >of the more respected Costello records, I'm >told, but I'm really liking it...what's >everyone have against it anyway?) I've never been sure, actually, other than the fact that it was the point at which EC pretty much made it clear that there would never be a THIS YEAR'S MODEL PART II, which apparently still pisses some people off. It's a little bloated (like many albums of its era, it could be 15 minutes shorter) and arguably a bit overproduced, but frankly, I like it better than either SPIKE or BRUTAL YOUTH, and it's got at least four or five songs that I would put up against most of EC's canon. On the other hand, I've spoken out at length on why THE JULIET LETTERS doesn't suck nearly as bad as everyone says, so perhaps my view is suspect. S ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 17:48:40 GMT From: Dana Paoli Subject: Re:[loud-fans]...flopped(ns) Whitechocolate... debuted at #35 and then fell to 60-something the next week. As a comparison, the Avril Levigne album appears to have sold 65,000 copies in its first week. Did Avril have a fan base to start with? Who can say how Liz Phair will do as time goes by. Not me, and we'll see. But, it's worth keeping in mind that the single is getting top 40 airplay and she's been reviewed prominently (though not necessarily nicely) pretty much everywhere, and yet it looks like she just sold her album to everyone who bought the last some (the other 4,000 probably downloaded it out of spite). Nice photo in the Bio section of the Capitol website, though. I think it would have made a much better cover than the one they chose :) - --dana ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 13:52:34 -0400 From: "Larry Tucker" Subject: RE: [loud-fans]...flopped(ns) |-----Original Message----- |From: Dana Paoli [mailto:dana-boy@juno.com] |Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2003 1:49 PM |To: loud-fans@smoe.org |Subject: Re:[loud-fans]...flopped(ns) | | |Whitechocolate... debuted at #35 and then fell to 60-something |the next week. As a comparison, the Avril Levigne album |appears to have sold 65,000 copies in its first week. Did |Avril have a fan base to start with? | |Who can say how Liz Phair will do as time goes by. Not me, |and we'll see. But, it's worth keeping in mind that the |single is getting top 40 airplay and she's been reviewed |prominently (though not necessarily nicely) pretty much |everywhere, and yet it looks like she just sold her album to |everyone who bought the last some (the other 4,000 probably |downloaded it out of spite). There's no such thing as "bad" publicity, right? Larry ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 11:03:41 -0700 (PDT) From: "G. Andrew Hamlin" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Liz... (ns) > I'm sorry, that was mean. He seems like a nice > enough guy from the interviews that I've seen. > His sidekick, on the other hand...her recent > tirade against movie critics is one of the > funnier things that I've seen in a while. I > don't have a link to it but I'm sure you can > look for it in an Andy Hamlin .sig near you > soon. 'Fraid I'll need a little help here. I don't even know who Justin Guarini is, let alone why he flopped, or what his sidekick has against movie critics. I mean, okay, Roger Ebert finds Kiarostami not merely overrated but an active menace to the continued acceptance of Iranian cinema in the West...but nobody's perfect. My day for not knowing things. My week for not knowing things, actually, if you count showing up for work to discover that work was not there. More recently, though, somebody was trying to convince me that margarine was less healthy than butter, saying something about HDLs. HDLs? Off to call the Happy Flowers (and Jandek), Andy SANTIAGO, Chile, July 2  A huge, gelatinous sea creature found washed up on Chiles coast has stumped scientists, who have sent samples to a specialist in France for help in identifying the mystery specimen. The blob was mistaken for a beached whale when first reported last week, but experts who went to see it said the 40-foot-long mass of decomposing lumpy gray flesh apparently was an invertebrate. WED NEVER before seen such a strange specimen, we dont know if it might be a giant octopus that is missing some of its parts or maybe its a new species, said Elsa Cabrera, director of the Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago. The round substance looks like a mammoth jelly fish and is about as long as a school bus. Giant octopuses can dwell hundreds of feet below the ocean and only rise to the surface when they die. Specimens have been known to be as long as 30 feet. There was speculation that the mass might be a whale skin, but Cabrera said it was too big and did not have the right texture or smell. Steve Webster, senior marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, wasnt ready to rule that out, at least based on the photo and limited information he has read. If the texture is leathery, he said, I would opt more for whale skin ... the rotted, separated skin of a blue, sei or fin whale could easily be this size. In addition, he said, at least 50 percent to 80 percent of the length of a giant squid or octopus is arms and tentacles, not the body. From what I can see in the picture, this is one big mass of tissue, and is not divided into what might be arms or tentacles. The Chilean Navy first spotted the mystery specimen along with another large mass near Puerto Montt, in southern Chile, but the latter turned out to be a dead humpback whale. Cabreras group sent samples to French specialist Michel Raynal. The center contacted him and his initial impression was that it is a giant octopus, Cabrera told MSNBC.com. A review of literature found only one other specimen of a similar shape and size, Cabrera said, and that was found on a Florida beach in 1896. University of South Florida scientists a few years ago said tissue analysis showed that the specimen was whale skin, not a giant octopus. Cabrera noted the Chilean specimen is bigger than what was found in 1896, measuring about 40 feet long, 18 feet wide, and three feet tall at its highest point. Webster raised the possibility that if the blob is really gelatinous, and not particularly tough and leathery, then it could be whats known as a pyrosome  a colony of millions of plankton that can grow to up to 60 feet long. He said that genetic analysis of the tissue should reveal some clues to identify the specimen. If this were just the head and body of a squid or octopus, he added, then it appears to be far larger than any such critter known to date. - --from http://www.msnbc.com/news/933992.asp?cp1=1 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 14:07:53 -0400 From: Stewart Mason Subject: Re:[loud-fans]...flopped(ns) At 05:48 PM 7/3/2003 GMT, Dana Paoli wrote: >Whitechocolate... debuted at #35 and then fell to 60-something the >next week. As a comparison, the Avril Levigne album appears to have >sold 65,000 copies in its first week. Did Avril have a fan base >to start with? No, but she was the beneficiary of one of the biggest street-level hypes I have ever been witness to. A good month before her album came out, the poster spots up and down Comm Ave and Brighton Ave in my neighborhood -- you know, those places where there's plywood up to cover construction or broken windows in a disused building and immediately get covered with posters for the latest album, film or videogame -- all had Avril posters everywhere. Then every public surface in the neighborhood was covered with Avril Lavigne stickers (most of which are still here). Then, in one of the most bizarre marketing gambits I have yet seen, every streetcar stop between St. Paul Street and Harvard Ave on the B line got spraypainted with a stencil that said "Avril Lavigne -- Sk8ter Boi." If her label was paying for all of that, her marketing budget must have been enormous. S ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 18:18:48 GMT From: Dana Paoli Subject: [loud-fans] Margerine (ns) My day for not knowing things. My week for not knowing things, actually, if you count showing up for work to discover that work was not there. More recently, though, somebody was trying to convince me that margarine was less healthy than butter, saying something about HDLs. HDLs? >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Sorry to hear about the job, unless that's a good thing. If I'm remembering right, they say that margerine is high in trans-fatty acids which raise your HDL, which is the bad kind of cholesterol that can lead to blockages. Margerine is also yucky. Use a little butter to flavor your olive oil when you're cooking. I have a feeling that Stewart will have an opionion on this :) BTW, I just had water bison milk yogurt for the first time last week, and it's absolutely fantastic: light and fluffy and delicious. Who would'a thunk. - --dana ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 14:23:38 -0400 From: Dan Schmidt Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Re: Mighty Like A Rose Stewart Mason writes: | On the other hand, I've spoken out at length on why THE JULIET | LETTERS doesn't suck nearly as bad as everyone says, so perhaps my | view is suspect. I liked THE JULIET LETTERS too, despite being naturally suspicious of those sorts of things, and my tastes usually differ from Stewart's, so... actually, I don't know what that shows. Dan - -- http://www.dfan.org ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 17:45:20 -0400 From: Stewart Mason Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Margerine (ns) At 06:18 PM 7/3/2003 GMT, Dana Paoli wrote: >More recently, though, somebody was trying to convince me that margarine >was less healthy than butter, saying something about HDLs. HDLs? >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > >Sorry to hear about the job, unless that's a good thing. If I'm remembering >right, they say that margerine is high in trans-fatty acids which raise your >HDL, which is the bad kind of cholesterol that can lead to blockages. >Margerine is also yucky. Use a little butter to flavor your olive oil when >you're cooking. I have a feeling that Stewart will have an opionion on this :) Margarine is an interesting combination of being worse for you than butter and being distinctly inferior to butter in all applications, especially baking. Unless you have specific cholesterol or other coronary problems, use the butter. If you do have conditions that make butter a no-no, there are yogurt-based spreads that are both better for you and much less icky-tasting than margarine. (This is especially useful if you're one of these bizarre people who thinks that every flour-based food in existence has to have a butter-like spread slathered onto it. I have seen my father-in-law butter Pop Tarts, fer chrissake.) Personally, I usually just use my olive oil straight, although a little butter is nice if I'm sauteing something that needs a higher smoke point than straight olive oil can provide, like mushrooms, or my summertime favorite, sauteed corn: strip the kernels off a few fresh ears with a sharp knife, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil and one tablespoon of butter in a wide pan with a curved bottom (I usually just use one of the woks) over medium-high heat, dump the corn in and saute until everything's heated through and a few kernels are a very light golden brown on the edge. Toss in a little kosher salt and serve immediately. You'll never boil corn again. S ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 17:53:16 -0400 From: "John Swartzentruber" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Margerine (ns) On Thu, 03 Jul 2003 17:45:20 -0400, Stewart Mason wrote: >Margarine is an interesting combination of being worse for you than butter >and being distinctly inferior to butter in all applications, especially >baking. This isn't really true. Real margarine (i.e., not those watery spreads) has different melting properties than butter. So, for example, cookies are chewier with margarine and crisper with butter. Depending on what you are going for, margarine can be superior in some applications. Not that I keep any around, so I usually stick with olive oil or butter (but not mixed). I got my data from the book, "Cookwise", but here is a secondary source: http://www.ochef.com/28.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 18:50:58 -0400 From: dana-boy@juno.com Subject: [loud-fans] New Yorker (ns) That New Yorker article on the music biz is kind of interesting, but what stuck with me was a feeling that the explanation of the origin of the expression "Money note" was not, in fact, the real story. - --dana, about to finally watch the first episode of that Monk show that I've read so much about on the WFMU site ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V3 #194 *******************************