From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V4 #187 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 9 2004 Volume 04 : Number 187 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] Nothing more than feelings... ["Rex.Broome" ] Re: [loud-fans] Chicago [Aaron Mandel ] Re: [loud-fans] Roundup of review swap review reviews ["Fortissimo" Subject: [loud-fans] Nothing more than feelings... Jeffrey: > I'd rather hear a mediocre song about how to weave a basket than a > mediocre song about someone's broken heart. Of course, dollars to doughnuts your average song which appears to be about basket weaving, or headless zombies or trilobites or buildings or food (I'm thinking ham specifically) is actually about someone's broken heart on some level. Generally speaking. Project: cite a reverse example of a song which appears to be about "feelings" but is in fact about some other mundane or esoterically non-emotional subject. I feel like maybe early Talking Heads would be a good place to start looking... - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 14:48:51 -0700 From: "Vallor" Subject: [loud-fans] Chicago A while back I asked if anyone of the list was familiar with record stores in Paris, I never heard from anyone so perhaps no one from the list lives over there or is familiar with that aspect of Paris, but I thought I'd ask again. Paris, Pamplona, Spain and Bilboa, Spain, any help ? I'm wondering if anyone on the list has any thoughts or familiarity with Papa M. Shan and I saw them/him at the ATP back in 2001 (on a bill with Wilco, Big Star, Destroy All Monsters, JOMF, etc.) and they (a 4 peice at the time) sounded similar to OP8 and Howe Gelb circa Listener but with a string trio backing Papa M himself, Dave Pajo, on guitar and vocals. I've bought a couple of Papa M releases since (Live From a Shark's Cage & Hole of Burning Alms) only to find that these are mostly instrumental experimental music (though they are quite good). If anyone is familiar, are there albums that exhibit the ornate instrumental and vocal music I heard live ? They were amongst the best things we saw at the festival and I'd love to find the right releases. Headlining that show was Wilco, and once Big Star had ended their set, we left our plum seats to make room for Wilco fans. Having been frozen out of the prior night's Television performance by the crowds and having little knowledge of Wilco at the time, we figured we didn't need to stay and hog the seats. Since then, I've been getting in to Wilco and kind of regret leaving. My nephew loaned me a documentary on the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, after which I bought Summer Teeth then YHF then last night I picked up the new one. I have to wrestle sometimes with Tweedy's vocals which hearken for me a mash of Ray Davies (good) with Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir (ungood for me), but I think I'm getting used to it. I do enjoy the stylistic mash of Big Star, Beach Boys, Gastr Del Sol and whatnot. I also quite enjoyed much of the Loose Fur CD (Tweedy, Jim O'Rourke and Wilco's Glenn Kotche), the Neu!-like opener was particularly fine. I haven't heard Being There, which I understand was the first album in which they began experimenting with sound, nor have I heard AM which I hear is more No Depression-y. Any thoughts on Wilco from the list ? As for Magnetic Fields, I think with someone with as varied a career as S. Merritt, it's difficult for me to believe that you can write off his work as uniformly detatched. I think there's plenty of emotion invested in songs like Maria Maria Maria from Eban and Charley as well as I Don't Want to Get Over You, Come Back from San Francisco & The Book of Love from 69 Love Songs just to name a few. I think the problem is that (and don't get all wiggy and defensive about this) Merritt is writing from a cultural perspective that was relatively unfamiliar to most underground pop listeners prior to his appearance. He is infatuated with musical theater and very much writes from an urban gay perspective, one that is inheritly cynical and ironic, though in my experience this is not a culture that is cold and emotionally detatched. Paradoxically, They Might Be Giants write from the ironic urban perspective of what I imagine are two straight men, yet like Magnetic Field, there are moments where heartbreaking emotional words skate on top of rather unlikely or theatrical melodies. Speaking of They Might Be Giants and Magnetic Fields, if there are any TMBG fans who can't stand S Merritt and still have the Hello Club EP from The Gothic Archies circa 1996, let me know (I'm also on the lookout for the Dave Schramm Hello Club EP), I will find nice things to trade you. - - Dan Vallor ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 18:54:34 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Chicago On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, Vallor wrote: > A while back I asked if anyone of the list was familiar with record > stores in Paris, I never heard from anyone so perhaps no one from the > list lives over there or is familiar with that aspect of Paris, but I > thought I'd ask again. Paris, Pamplona, Spain and Bilboa, Spain, any > help ? Paris: I remember finding several decent used-record stores in a clump just off the Rue de Rivoli, though sadly I don't remember exactly where -- downtown, east of the Forum des Halles, and about a block north of Rivoli. Over toward the Bastille is a specialty shop called Bimbo Tower that carries avant-garde and electronic music. I enjoyed being in it but didn't buy anything. If you like enormous mechanized vending machines, plan to visit a Yatoo Partoo (store locator at yatoopartoo.com) at some point in Paris. There's one in the Gare du Nord, but it's way more fun looking up at the glow of Yatoo Partoo on an otherwise-dark street at night, which we did as much as possible once we discovered the one near us (down in the 13eme district). a ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 19:27:31 -0500 From: "Fortissimo" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Roundup of review swap review reviews On Wed, 7 Jul 2004 13:41:19 -0400, "glenn mcdonald" said: > > I'd rather hear a mediocre song about how to weave a basket than a > > mediocre song about someone's broken heart. > > I'm not completely sure, but I think I might disagree with this. On the > one hand, there are a lot more songs about broken hearts than about > basket-weaving, so it makes sense to contend that a mediocre > contribution to an underserved field is generally more valuable than a > mediocre contribution to an overserved one. On the other hand, though, > I certainly believe that "feelings", as you say, are more interesting > and valuable to examine than traditional handcrafts, so is a mediocre > contribution to a popular but important field more or less valuable > than a mediocre contribution to an unpopular but unimportant one? > > There are meta-conversations on top of these, too, which always > complicates things. Writing a mediocre song about basket-weaving makes > the meta-point that you can write about anything, which is useful to > state. But writing a mediocre song about your feelings may make the > meta-point that self-knowledge is precious even when it's mundane, > which could also be important to say. > > So I end up kind of on both sides. The writers I consider the best > lyricists tend to be the ones capable of crafting stand-alone > narratives with clear poem/story virtues quite apart from their musical > existence. See, for example, Richard Shindell's brilliant > INS-interrogation song. But at the other spectrum, I love Alanis > Morissette's songs fiercely, "feeling" lyrics included, and she's a > terrible writer in any technical sense. Often the best "feelings" songs are meta-songs: songs not about feelings, but about feelings about feelings. That is, they're not simply unreflective transmissions from a set-alight heart (sorry: couldn't resist the flaming lippy pun...) but reflections on what happens in the wake of them their feelings. And, uh, yeah: I was being intentionally provocative and not entirely serious. At one level, of course, if a listener feels nothing when hearing a song, often it's because the listener feels the writer/singer/performer isn't feeling anything; same situation in reverse, when the listener does feel. And of course, the listener feeling something is prerequisite to actually liking (vs. merely appreciating) the song. Anyway, I'm bored and want to start an annoying but simple thread. So: Frank Black Frank Black Francis* - --the idea is to keep chaining names (at either end) so any two consecutive names are a musician or band. Let's see how long a chain we can make... * which is the name Mr. Thompson is using on his remakes of Pixies tracks with Two Pale Boys (who've worked with David Thomas). - ------------------------------- ...Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ :: Solipsism is its own reward :: :: --Crow T. Robot ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V4 #187 *******************************