From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V3 #276 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, September 22 2003 Volume 03 : Number 276 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] CD Rot? [John Sharples ] [loud-fans] Chat relocated ["jer fairall" ] [loud-fans] dueling chats [Jenny Grover ] Re: [loud-fans] dueling chats ["jer fairall" ] [loud-fans] Belated R.E.M. writeup [michael@zwirn.com] RE: [loud-fans] The Boss, and his Lackeys ["Ian Runeckles & Angela Bennet] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 17:11:12 -0700 (PDT) From: John Sharples Subject: Re: [loud-fans] CD Rot? G. Andrew Liddy: >Oh, Sharples was MIA long before the blackout. My >record reviews are coming up on seven months overdue. I've been off the list since last winter. I still haven't replaced my dead home computer (and I can't use work email for personal), but I'm slowly getting around to it. But, progress: I took my old "brooklaw" email account around back, shot it, burned it, and buried it. Mail finds me here at jsharples61@yahoo.com until I get the whole deal straightened out. I'll probably only lurk here until then. The last several months have been *excessively* weird, even for me. The blackout was a comparatively restful day. Too much to recap briefly here, suffice to say the two months I spent in exile in Palmerton, PA on an environmental mass tort litigation was where the wheels came off (actually, the right front wheel of my Honda literally came off in a blizzard on the Mass Pike last winter, but that's another story). Imagine two dozen young contract attorneys from NYC working ungodly hours in the middle of mining country with no outlet for their excess energy at day's end for miles around except for the hotel bar. Right before the assignment ended, my services were "no longer required" following a regrettable incident towards the end of one long night of, shall we say, particularly energetic excess energy outletting that attracted the attention of the local constabulary. But all's we that ends well, the magistrate was very understanding and charges in the end were reduced to a mere disorderly conduct summons. So I got that going for me, which is nice. No one thought we'd top the time that one of my colleagues, through front desk error, ended up with the honeymoon suite and promptly installed a quarter keg of Yuengling in the jacuzzi, or when, insanely, both Cardinal 007 and the entire Cheap Trick touring entourage stayed over at our hotel on the same night (Card: Zander's niece says 'hi'), but there you have it. >But if I ever hear from him again I'll ask what he >thinks Mississippi Fred >McDowell and Johnny Woods. I don't know Woods but I got into Mississippi Fred when I went through a big Robert Johnson kick a few years back. Fred's Worried Life Blues, indeed. Back to lurkdom, JS PS The year's best album, by FAR, and the most magnificent power-pop record of the last five years, hand's down...is LIZ PHAIR. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 21:08:32 -0400 From: "jer fairall" Subject: [loud-fans] Chat relocated I'm having trouble getting into the Eskimo room so, figuring some of you might be experiencing the same thing, I've relocated the chat to DALnet (channel, as usual, #loudfans). Hope to see you there. Jer np: Weakerthans, RECONSTRUCTION SITE Help the planet each day! It's free and easy: http://www.Care2.com/dailyaction/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 22:09:30 -0400 From: Jenny Grover Subject: [loud-fans] dueling chats Well, I can't get onto DALnet, but I can get onto Eskimo, so if anyone else has similar problems and wants to join me, I'll be sitting in #Loudfans on irc.eskimo.com Jen ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 22:05:54 -0400 From: "jer fairall" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] dueling chats > Well, I can't get onto DALnet, but I can get > onto Eskimo, so if anyone else has similar > problems and wants to join me, I'll be > sitting in #Loudfans on irc.eskimo.com And that is the one that you do want to check into. Clearly the problem is on my end, I've already redirected Phil to that chat and even I'm supposed to be working on other stuff anyway. I'll keep trying, though. Jer Help the planet each day! It's free and easy: http://www.Care2.com/dailyaction/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 20:23:30 -0700 (PDT) From: michael@zwirn.com Subject: [loud-fans] Belated R.E.M. writeup After some much-needed prodding, I realize I've failed to follow up on my promised commentary on the R.E.M. show on September 3rd, in the hinterlands of southwestern Washington State. Susan and I had returned from Bumbershoot around one in the morning September 2nd, and the next morning she sent me a giggling IM from her office, which shares space with the Sierra Club, that R.E.M. Athens had called their office to offer comp tickets for the show. So for the second time in three nights, we were off to catch R.E.M. For a change of pace, working in the conservation world has actual benefits to my social life. The Amphitheatre at Clark County is a big, sterile concrete shed built on the same model at Deer Creek outside Indianapolis, or Great Woods south of Boston. To its credit, this is a brand new venue with excellent sound, and cavernous and well-designed restrooms, but there's only so much you can do to generate audience excitement in a concrete-and-plastic box. The attendance was abysmal, which didn't help. Promotion was minimal, the band didn't have any new material out yet, and the band had appeared just 150 miles north two nights beforehand -- for less than half the price, alongside a day's worth of other worthy entertainments. So the vast shed of 18,000 capacity appeared mostly empty. Despite the cruddy ambience, Wilco did a pretty good show. The songs were vastly easier to differentiate than they'd been at Bumbershoot, the band played tightly, and it turns out that Jeff Tweedy sounds like Neil Finn only when the band is playing a vast, poorly laid-out soccer stadium with a bad sound system. So, that was educational. R.E.M. kicked off with some truly unlikely choices. "These Days," from Lifes Rich Pageant, was an inspired selection, and it set the stage for the band's overall coherent message: get rid of Bush, take a stand for your beliefs, etc. Not a bad message, overall, although I doubt they were preaching to anyone other than the converted. Other rarities followed in startling succession: "Feeling Gravity's Pull," "Begin the Begin" (which had appeared in Seattle), a hard-rocking "Finest Worksong." Some relatively minor songs in the band's catalogue were showcased to fine effect, including Reveal's "I've Been High" and "She Just Wants to Be." "High" was a particular pleasure, because it's a wan, uninviting, gurgling mess on record, but a delight to hear performed in concert - airy, twitchy, but not too insubstantial. Up's defiant-cum-inspirational "Walk Unafraid" was also one of the unexpected features. Michael Stipe and Mike Mills also did a few beautiful piano-vocals pieces together, including "Nightswimming," and the two new songs from the greatest hits record, "Bad Day" and "Animal" were duly showcased. Other than that, the band played the hits: "Losing My Religion," "The One I Love," "Everybody Hurts." Fine, nothing extraordinary. The mandolin solo on "Losing" could have been a bit tighter. The band ended with the now-obligatory "End of the World As We Know It," but the energy level in the crowd wasn't what it should have been, and the place emptied out pretty darn quickly. It's reassuring that the band it still as good as it is, but saddening that the audience just doesn't seem to be there anymore. Michael J. Zwirn http://www.zwirn.com Home: 503/232-8919 Cell: 503/887-9800 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 07:31:13 +0100 From: "Ian Runeckles & Angela Bennett" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] The Boss, and his Lackeys > Listening to the song as a whole, though, it sounds to me > like the sadness has nothing to do with their sexuality, but > that they're stuck doing their act in front of an unreceptive > audience -- so basically, it's exactly the same song as > "Sultans Of Swing," just in a different setting! Come to > think of it, I've heard people say that they think the band > in that song are being mocked too, but I don't hear that either. I'm pretty sure that Mark wrote the song about a real band but whether he changed the name to protect them I don't know. But he definitely isn't mocking the band - the "audience" of guys in their "best brown baggies and platform soles" are the ones he's mocking... I haven't listened to Making Movies for years - must spin it again soon - - reminds me a trip I took with a couple of mates to Norway just after Movies had come out and we played it non stop... Ian ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V3 #276 *******************************