From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V3 #261 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, September 6 2003 Volume 03 : Number 261 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] geek help? screenshots of DVD? ["me" Subject: [loud-fans] geek help? screenshots of DVD? i'm playing back a DVD on my 'puter and trying to take screenshots - all i get is black. why? how can i get these screenshots? thanks - a very very frustrated brianna - -- http://geeks4dean.com NOW AVAILABLE --> Altoids Dean shirts! - -- Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 22:35:41 -0700 From: "me" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] geek help? screenshots of DVD? okay, so i've figured out why, but still not how to get around it. maybe i should just drag out the camera.... - ----- Original Message ----- From: "me" To: "LoudFans" Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 10:13 PM Subject: [loud-fans] geek help? screenshots of DVD? > i'm playing back a DVD on my 'puter and trying to take screenshots - all i get > is black. why? how can i get these screenshots? > > thanks - > a very very frustrated brianna > > -- > http://geeks4dean.com > NOW AVAILABLE --> Altoids Dean shirts! > -- > Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: > "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail > in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? > And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive > them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 23:52:01 -0700 From: Michael Zwirn Subject: [loud-fans] Bumbershoot write-up, Labor Day (long) Ah, Bumbershoot. An event that promises more good music than you possibly listen to at once, in too many venues to easily traverse, with so many people in the crowd that you can scarcely push through them in order to eat greasily prepared food that costs too damn much. Yet, in spite of it all, Bumbershoot may be my standard-bearer for all-day (or all-weekend) rock festivals. It's run as a non-profit, it's staggeringly cheap ($15/day if you buy in advance), you can bring your own food and water, and the quality of the musicians is always superb. For the second year in a row, I made it to one day of the festival, in this case, the closing Labor Day Monday. R.E.M. was booked as the headliner, and the gorgeous weather and the high-profile acts drew enormous crowds. By the time Susan and I got to Seattle and found a decent parking spot, it was around 11:30. Getting into the Bumbershoot complex of areas, and finding our way around, took a good half hour. After peering in puzzlement at the cross-referenced matrix of bands and venues, we decided to check out Carissa's Wierd (sic) at what was called either the Ex(hibition) Hall or the Next Step, depending on whom you asked. We caught only the last song and a half of their morose alt-folk in the utterly generic basement where they were playing, before we were shuffled out the door. There seemed to be a lull in the schedule of decent acts for awhile, and we milled around the street performers and stands and the excellent gallery of rock concert posters. Popping into the Starbucks Literary Stage, with its pleasant couches, we heard a few choice readings of fiction, including a dreary children's story by a Seattle City Councilman who really ought best stick to politics. At Memorial Stadium, a decrepit old football stadium now used by the Seattle Sounders minor-league soccer team, Leftover Salmon and Nickel Creek were on stage. Nickel Creek's cherubic innocence seemed to draw a lot of supporters to their revved-up bluegrass, but it was their covers that impressed the audience most. They blazed through a Pavement song, the Beatles' bitter "Taxman," and Coldplay's "Yellow," to the loudest shouts of a crowd that was mostly lying on blankets under the sun. Things got really busy by mid-afternoon. Susan and I found a great seat between le Petit Cirque and the amusingly regimented "Buskers Stage," which was the farthest thing from busking that one can imagine. At the circus stage there were hula hoop specialists and contortionists, while the blare of amateurish left-wing folksingers echoed from the Buskers Stage. At 4:00 promptly, Mary Lou Lord went on the Buskers Stage, protesting repeatedly that she wasn't used to sitting so far above her audience and asking, in her seemingly-naive but practiced manner, if the audience had any requests. This is partly bogus, of course. Mary Lou has had a major label contract and toured all over the world; she's no innocent off the streets. But it's part of her schtick. Once a busker, always a busker, she argues. She did some of her best older songs, many of them her own: "Camden Town Rain," "Some Jingle-Jangle Morning," "Western Union Desperate," and some new ones as well. "Stars Burn Out," written with Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond, seems to gnaw yet again at Cobain's bones, and "Ron" and "I'm Farming it Out to You" both balance her famously wry wit with some unresolved bitterness. At least at this set, she didn't perform too many covers, although with one set per day, she had lots of opportunities at Bumbershoot to do so. But I'm always happy to see Mary Lou perform, under any circumstance, and the audience was very appreciative. I left Mary Lou's set a bit early to try to get into the New Pornographers' gig at the Ex Hall. Bad idea. Encouraged by a rave review in the Seattle Weekly, the audience for the NP show was easily three or four times the capacity of the venue. There were hundreds of people lined up past the signs reading "sold out," in hopes that they could sneak in later. Instead, I sought out the cultivated amenities of McCaw Hall, the new opera venue, to see the last few songs of the Daniel Lanois set. I had seen Lanois a few months ago in Portland, and frankly wasn't enthralled by the experience. But the set in Seattle was something else entirely. The superb acoustics, and the added muscle of a four-part band, gave "Power of One" and the Hendrix cover "May This Be Love" a huge sonic thrust. He did four songs before his band left and he returned with a solo encore. Now, you simply can't do encores at Bumbershoot, because there's always a band racing to take the stage after you. But for some reason, Lanois was the only artist booked at the McCaw, so he had some leeway. His solo set included some of my favorite acoustic songs from For the Beauty of Wynona, "The Collection of Marie Claire" and "Rocky World." The former is a spooky ballad about the abduction of an exotic dancer from Montreal to the woods of Labrador, and the former -- my introduction to Lanois' music, many years ago -- a mournful yet ultimately redemptive piece about love and loss. Then, as the faithful amongst the audience lingered in hopes of more, Lanois' band came back for a stirring, rhythmic, and LOUD "Brother LA." Yet another of my favorites from Wynona, and a magnificent finale. I just wish I had seen the whole show. Inspired by Lanois, I sought out my girlfriend (who was similarly impressed) somewhere in the upper balcony seating, and we had some Filipino dinner before venturing out to Memorial Stadium again for Wilco and R.E.M. We laid out blankets on the Astroturf and settled in while a massive audience slowly gathered, filling the floor of the stadium and almost all of the bleachers. Wilco kicked off their set with "Box Full of Letters" before moving onto their more recent material. With the exception of a long instrumental digression through "I am Trying to Break Your Heart," it was all straightforward, classic American country-rock material. The Woody Guthrie lyrics for "California Stars" fit in just perfectly. I never saw much that was distinctive about Wilco's music, even the supposedly groundbreaking Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and was mostly just impressed by how much Jeff Tweedy's voice resembles late-period Neil Finn. But Wilco is nothing if not agreeable summertime music, and it's hard to imagine a more pleasant setting than the late-summer afternoon lying in the stadium with the music washing past you. Without a new album to tour behind, R.E.M. didn't have much to prove. They could have performed the greatest-hits package promised for October and the audience would have been happy. Instead, the band pulled out some unlikely older songs, opening their set with a passionate "Begin the Begin," from Lifes Rich Pageant. The set quickly took the form of a political rally, with rousing versions of "Finest Worksong" and "Orange Crush" setting a good context for the new anti-Bush song "The Last Straw." They did "Maps and Legends," to my genuine astonishment, in the middle of new songs like the catchy "Bad Day" and less convincing "Animal." The sound on the field was genuinely crummy, though. As we left the stadium around 9:30 for the long drive back to Portland, we were serenaded out the door by the lovely "Electrolite." It may not have been a great show -- it was hard to tell on the basis of the sound at ground level -- but the band seemed to be taking some risks and having fun. I regretted leaving after 45 minutes, but was happy to have seen the band at all (they were booked for the Portland area 2 days hence, but with ticket prices I didn't plan on attending -- but more on that later). The 280 mile drive back was marked by Mirah on the CD player or the Beach Boys on the radio, and stops for free coffee from the Washington State rest stops, as the Labor Day weekend, and the unofficial summer, wound slowly to an end. - --------------------- Michael Zwirn, michael@zwirn.com (t) 503-232-8919 (c) 503-887-9800 http://zwirn.com ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V3 #261 *******************************