From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V3 #305 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, October 20 2003 Volume 03 : Number 305 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] time to bore Steve [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] [loud-fans] Back to an old list ... ["Paul King" ] Re: [loud-fans] Back to an old list ... [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] [loud-fans] Chat counterproposal ["G. Andrew Hamlin" Subject: [loud-fans] time to bore Steve We haven't talked about movies here for a while, have we... I'm usually lame at actually getting to theaters, but we did go out last night and see Mystic River. (No spoilers yet) I have mixed feelings: pro: acting, character, setting; con: Bacon's character's wife, obtrusive music*, weak ending (after Penn and Bacon talk on the street, the movie becomes directionless, including an odd scene w/Penn's character and his wife that didn't work for me at all). * Written by director Eastwood...here I was throughout thinking, damn, this composer has no ideas, and the ones he has don't work - I wonder what Eastwood was thinking in hiring him...: guess the answers to that are obvious. Worst moment: a gunshot that, visually, cuts to pure white...and that moment ruined by a hugely stupid orchestral crescendo. Also: does anyone else think Sean Penn is looking more like Al Pacino the older he gets? Jeff Ceci n'est pas une .sig np: Tricky _Pre-Millennium Tension_ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 19:37:47 -0400 From: "Paul King" Subject: [loud-fans] Back to an old list ... Since there is an occasional interest in lists, I was shuffling through some old links, when I revisited "The Top 365 Songs of the 20th Century" on http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/news/530757/detail.html -- I think something like this list came up a month ago. What kind of criteria do people use to judge these things? Chicago's "Saturday in the Park" is #362, while "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer is #201. There are a lot of other bizarre stuff here as well, that makes me wonder if this is legitimate. Yes, I know that the NEA and the RIAA did this up. Anyone know what the criteria was? Paul ========================================================= Paul King http://www3.sympatico.ca/pking123/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 19:24:00 -0500 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Back to an old list ... Quoting Paul King : > Since there is an occasional interest in lists, I was shuffling > through some > old links, when I revisited "The Top 365 Songs of the 20th > Century" on > http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/news/530757/detail.html -- I > think something > like this list came up a month ago. > > What kind of criteria do people use to judge these things? I don't know what criteria individual people used - but the list itself apparently results from a poll. Here's some details: Who the hell is Louise Homer? ..Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: "am I being self-referential?" np: Tristeza - Mixed Signals ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 18:22:08 -0700 From: Steve Holtebeck Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Back to an old list ... Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > I don't know what criteria individual people used - but the list > itself apparently results from a poll. Here's some details: > > > Who the hell is Louise Homer? Louise Homer recorded the definitive version of "America The Beautiful" in 1921. Here's another breakdown of how the songs were selected, from a transcript to the radio program THIS IS AMERICA, on the Voice of America. http://www.manythings.org/voa/01/010521tia_t.htm I don't know why they spell out all their numerals, or why their "century" goes back to 1890, but it makes for interesting reading, especially if you read it aloud in your best VOA "Special English" voice! - -Steve ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 19:52:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Phil Fleming Subject: [loud-fans] doin' tha chat thang! Jer and I are there...come join us! irc.dalnet.com #loudfans Phil F. NP: about to be THE WILDHEARTS - P.H.U.Q. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 20:26:12 -0700 (PDT) From: "G. Andrew Hamlin" Subject: [loud-fans] Chat counterproposal I can't reach DAL.net, but I'll be waiting at irc.muppetlabs.com #loudfans, for about another hour, if you'd care to make the switch. About as long as it takes to play this Dawn Clement CD, in other words, Andy R.E.M. Alt rock's lifelong nostalgia act. By Chris Suellentrop Posted Thursday, October 16, 2003, at 3:36 PM PT R.E.M.'s fans have been saying "R.E.M. sucks" since 1984. Reckoning, the band's second album (not counting the Chronic Town EP), sucked because it wasn't Murmur. The next album, Fables of the Reconstruction (or was it Reconstruction of the Fables?), sucked because it was too soft. Life's Rich Pageant was louder but sucked because it was intelligible. The Top 10 Document sucked because it was too popular. Green, the first album R.E.M. put out that wasn't on the IRS label, sucked because it was too Warner Bros. Out of Time sucked because it was too pop. Automatic for the Peoplewell, nobody thought Automatic sucked. But all the albums since Automatic: They suck. So, let's be clear. R.E.M. does not suck. They're the best rock band of the last two decades of the 20th century. (If you're a U2 fan, add "American" to the sentiment.) But despite the critical acclaim, the millions of records sold, and the influence exerted on bands from Nirvana to Radiohead, R.E.M. finds itself on a slow slide into middle-aged nostalgia act. The three remaining band members are heading toward 50, and the past two R.E.M. albums have barely charted. Reveal, the band's most recent album, didn't even go gold, selling less than 500,000 copies in the United States. Now R.E.M. has just finished a sad greatest-hits-style tour, playing in unfilled arenas that bands like Radiohead have no trouble selling out. The tour will be followed by the release of In Time, a "best of" album, at the end of the month. (Kansas City's Pitch Weekly nicely summed up the cynic's take on the tour and the new record as "a two-for-one special on sellout moves.") But one thing breeds hope in the R.E.M. fan's heart that the band can avert its transmogrification into an alt-rock Eagles or Rolling Stones: Maybe it's easier to bear the cross of middle-aged rock stardom when a good chunk of your fan base has been accusing you of being washed up since before you were 30. From almost the beginning, there's been something backward-looking about R.E.M. fandom, a secret wish that R.E.M. never become more than a heralded but middling-selling college band from Athens, Ga.even though such obscurity would mean that the vast majority of R.E.M. fans engaged in this Edenic pining would never have discovered them. Band friend Natalie Merchant has succumbed, saying in 1995, "I don't know if I'm being nostalgic, but when they do a song like 'So. Central Rain' or 'Fall on Me,' I get a feeling that I don't get with a lot of the newer material." For a considerable subset of fans, the band's concerts are largely exercises in subtle, cooler-than-thou boasting. When I went to a show during the 1995 Monster tour, I tried to distinguish myself from the throngs of teenage girls by wearing my ratty T-shirt from the 1989 Green tour. Mere moments after entering the gate, I was outclassed and shamed by a man in a pristine shirtit must have been kept vacuum-sealed on a closet shelffrom the band's 1987 Work Tour. During R.E.M.'s commercial peak, its members openly fretted about aging gracelessly, and the '90s were their decadelong struggle with approaching middle age. "Hopefully, we're not going to put out Chicago XIV," Michael Stipe told Rolling Stone in 1992. "That would be my worst fear, that we would turn into one of those dumb bands who go into their second decade and don't know how bad they are and don't know when to give it up." Out of Time and Automatic for the People were R.E.M.'s renunciations of rock-band status, and Monster was their midlife-crisis attempt to reclaim it. New Adventures in Hi-Fi tried to mix the two approaches, and Up, the first album done without drummer Bill Berry, was a failed experiment in art rock. Reveal continued the band's late-'90s decline. In retrospect, the band's host of promisesbroken, one by oneto their fan base appear designed specifically to ward off the dilemma they now find themselves in. They vowed never to play a venue larger than 5,000, then it was 12,000, then they said they would never do an arena tour. They would never lip-sync in their videos. They would never sell a song for commercial purposes. (True, they turned down Bill Gates' proffered green for Windows 95 commercialsa paycheck the Rolling Stones happily cashedbut they did provide "Stand" for use as the theme song to Chris Elliott's sitcom, Get a Life.) They would break up on New Year's Eve 1999. They would break up if only one band member quit. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. But now, with R.E.M. in its third decade of recording, the three remaining members appear to have acquired a newfound acceptance of their lifelong nostalgia-act status. "I don't know that people want us to do new songs anymore," Peter Buck said while promoting the recent tour. "Even starting in the '90s, I felt audiences were looking for songs they'd heard before." Chicago Sun-Times critic Jim DeRogatis told Buck, "You're enough of a student of rock history to know that the best-of album is traditionally a 'biding your time' move," and Buck conceded, "It is to a certain degree. It's either that or the final curtain. You were kind of polite not to say that." U2, R.E.M.'s fellow alt-rock elder statesmen, dealt with its declining popularity by issuing (the ironically titled?) All That You Can't Leave Behind, a return to the "old U2" sound of the 1980s. It was U2's Steel Wheels moment, their Indian summer after a decade on the skids. But it was also a concession that U2's days of experimenting with new sounds were over. R.E.M. faces a similar turning point. For years, the band members have said they could churn out songs that sound like their oldies but goodies, but they prefer to push themselves in new directions, audience be damned. R.E.M.'s next album is scheduled for release in 2004, and many fans would prefer a failed experiment to an ear-pleasing mimicry of their best work, one that's unsatisfying all the same because it's still an imitation. Only the band can decide: Do they want to be R.E.M. or an R.E.M. cover band? - --from http://slate.msn.com/id/2089925/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 23:47:44 -0400 From: "jer fairall" Subject: [loud-fans] chat, for real this time We finally found a room that accomodates us all! irc.stealth.net (#loudfans). Andy, Jen, Phil and myself are there now, so c'mon over! Jer Help the planet each day! It's free and easy: http://www.Care2.com/dailyaction/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 22:59:09 -0500 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: [loud-fans] R.E.M.: not "southern rock" but tied to the whipping post anyway Quoting "G. Andrew Hamlin" : > R.E.M. > Alt rock's lifelong nostalgia act. > By Chris Suellentrop > Posted Thursday, October 16, 2003, at 3:36 PM PT > > R.E.M.'s fans have been saying "R.E.M. sucks" since 1984. > Reckoning, the > band's second album (not counting the Chronic Town EP), sucked > because it > wasn't Murmur. The next album, Fables of the Reconstruction (or > was it > Reconstruction of the Fables?), sucked because it was too soft. > Life's > Rich Pageant was louder but sucked because it was intelligible. > The Top 10 > Document sucked because it was too popular. Green, the first > album R.E.M. > put out that wasn't on the IRS label, sucked because it was too > Warner > Bros. Out of Time sucked because it was too pop. This is pretty funny - esp. the "sucked since 1984" bit. But of course, that's what happens to every garage/indie/small-scale act that becomes more popular. Automatic for > the > Peoplewell, nobody thought Automatic sucked. What? "Everybody Hurts" wasn't maudlin, to which quality the video added pretentious? (Hey, I'm just repeating what I heard.) > the past two R.E.M. albums have barely charted. Reveal, the > band's most > recent album, didn't even go gold, selling less than 500,000 > copies in the > United States. So apparently, success *is* chart-success? Now R.E.M. has just finished a sad > greatest-hits-style > tour, playing in unfilled arenas that bands like Radiohead have > no trouble > selling out. But Radiohead have sucked since OK Computer, remember? And if you've seen setlists for this tour, it's hardly "greatest hits" (despite being billed as such): they're pulling out a lot of deep-catalog stuff that hasn't been heard live for years. The tour will be followed by the release of In Time, > a "best > of" album, at the end of the month. (Kansas City's Pitch Weekly > nicely > summed up the cynic's take on the tour and the new record as "a > two-for-one special on sellout moves.") I thought this thing was really a classic "contract fulfillment" move. If the band's lucky, it'll sell like...whatever the opposite of hotcakes is, and Warners will drop them, and they can go back to some indie and be as musically perverse as they like. Out of > Time and Automatic for the People were R.E.M.'s renunciations of > rock-band > status, Huh? and Monster was their midlife-crisis attempt to reclaim > it. There's absolutely no recovery once someone describes anything as being related to a "midlife crisis" you know. Okay: halfway through Monster, I kept wishing someone had stolen Peter Buck's tremolo pedal - but when I go back to that album, there are a lot of songs I like a lot on it. Some weak tracks too...but the fact is, nearly every record of theirs has had a couple of weak tracks that should have been b-sides (and some of their b-sides were much better, and should have been on the albums). Oops - guess I'm just confirming that they've sucked since Murmur. New > Adventures in Hi-Fi tried to mix the two approaches, A midlife-crisis renunciation of renouncing rock-bands! and Up, the > first > album done without drummer Bill Berry, was a failed experiment in > art rock. Unless you're writing about Roxy Music or Wire (or *maybe* early Talking Heads), "art rock" is another guaranteed, unrecoverable critical dealer of fatal wounds. Another way to look at it: how many other platinum bands risked a complete sonic changeover that late, and at that comfortable a stage, in their careers? (Actually, that's something I give U2 credit for as well.) > Reveal continued the band's late-'90s decline. So, I'm guessing the "best rock band" thing was ironic? Uh, anyway, I agree here about Reveal being a decline. > > In retrospect, the band's host of promisesbroken, one by oneto > their fan > base appear designed specifically to ward off the dilemma they > now find > themselves in. Oh I hate this kind of thing. Let's just take one: the breaking up NYE '99. Wasn't that actually a joke, something said in exasperation by Buck when some interviewer kept pestering him and being dissatisfied with his answers about how long the band was going to keep going? Okay, one more: sure, it's easy when you're in your twenties to say, if any one of us leaves, that's it, end of story, yadda yadda. But when that actually happens, you realize it means that just because you said something stupid when you were younger, you can't keep playing with the people you want to play with? How dumb would that be? "Yeah - but then they should have changed the band name, to honor Bill Berry." Uh-huh...as if every last review, promotional sticker, and every fan too, wouldn't be saying "the other three R.E.M. guys" to the extent that, hey, *that*'s what they should have changed their name to!" > U2, R.E.M.'s fellow alt-rock elder statesmen, dealt with its > declining > popularity by issuing (the ironically titled?) All That You Can't > Leave > Behind, a return to the "old U2" sound of the 1980s. This is *so* stupid, one of the worst examples of critical dogshit-sniffing around. ATYCLB sounds *nothing* like U2 of the '80s (Joshua Tree), nor does it sound anything like early U2 (first two) or the transitional works of War or Unforgettable Fire. It sounds like, well, a band resolving that it'd just write simple songs and play them simply. A complete failure, in other words, after the brilliant Achtung Baby, the in-some-ways-even-more-abrasive Zooropa, and Pop (which was a bit of a letdown for me after Zooropa but still had some excellent moments). It was U2's > Steel > Wheels moment Uh, and everyone listens to Steel Wheels these days, right? > also a concession that U2's days of experimenting with new sounds > were over. We'll see. But remember: "failed art rock." "Experiment with new sounds," but be prepared to be drubbed for it anyway. > fans would prefer a failed experiment See? to an ear-pleasing mimicry > of their > best work, one that's unsatisfying all the same because it's > still an > imitation. Only the band can decide: Do they want to be R.E.M. or > an > R.E.M. cover band? And apparently, for this critic, neither can win. It doesn't exactly sound like any benefit of the doubt regarding experimentation is being offered. > > --from http://slate.msn.com/id/2089925/ But hey - at least they're not doing twenty-minute drone fests to the work of Edgar Allan Poe. Oh, speaking of failed experiments and popular old sounds: if Elvis Costello ever decides he wants to do the small rock combo thing again, but he can't bear to drag the Attractions together again, what he *really* should do is hire Spoon as his backing band. ..Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: I suspect that the first dictator of this country :: will be called "Coach" :: --William Gass ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V3 #305 *******************************