From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V5 #124 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, May 16 2005 Volume 05 : Number 124 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] King Tut/Marc Almond [A52boy@aol.com] [loud-fans] Re: Gang of Four ["Vallor" ] [loud-fans] Whammo ["Richard Blatherwick" ] Re: [loud-fans] Re: Gang of Four [Jeff ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 14:40:05 EDT From: A52boy@aol.com Subject: [loud-fans] King Tut/Marc Almond Just so you'll believe me when I say: _AOL News - Forensic Reconstruction Shows What King Tut Looked Like_ (http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050510153509990008) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 11:39:19 -0700 From: "Vallor" Subject: [loud-fans] Re: Gang of Four The Entertainment album is great angular abrasive post punk while the subsequent albums showed a descent into commerciality that increasingly lost me. That said, it is tremendously appealing angular abrasive post punk with great songs and rhythms (I won't say beats). I think that Entertainment, the Yellow EP that followed it and the 2nd album, "Sold Gold" are really where the band retain vitality and all subsequent albums were too focused in softening and commercializing the band's sound. I'd go to a Borders or one of those places with scanner listening stations and give Entertainment a try. The reformed band are brilliant, Stewart and any of the rest of you who go see them will be thrilled. They focus on the early work and most leave the later stuff in the past. I believe only 2 later songs popped up in the set and they were reworked in the style of the early records, these being "We Live As We Dream, Alone" and "I Love a Man in Uniform" (which I understand is showing up at occassional shows only as a last encore). I saw the open for The Buzzcocks in 1979 and they were known to me in name only and I was bowled over, they could have easily rendered a weaker headliner an embarrassment, but fortunately the Buzzcocks were just as brilliant, making this one of the most memorable shows from that era for me. Oh, yeah...I'm staying on topic here in that I just looked at the "Scott's Favorite Albums" page on the www.loudfamily.com site and Entertainment was #7 for 1979. - - Dan V - - ----- Original Message ----- From: "jer fairall" > Let's say I only know Gang of Four from the singles "I Love a Man In > Uniform" and "To Hell With Poverty." Let's also say that I have > always found the former mildly annoying and have never had any > strong feelings one way or the other toward the latter. Do I still > need to hear/own ENTERTAINMENT! (namely, the Rhino reissue of it > that is released on Tuesday), seeing as how it's an classic and > important album and all, or do these songs (not from this album, I > realize) pretty much dictate what I'll end up thinking of the band > overall? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 23:25:27 +0300 From: "Richard Blatherwick" Subject: [loud-fans] Whammo Just visited the site of my favourite Aussie music retailer, and one highly regarded by others on this list, to discover a 'Gone Fishing' message - apparently they are off on a break for a while. Has anyone else had any recent dealings with them, or have they been gone for a while? Also, is their absence as benign as the message suggests? I started using them after the demise of Greg's Music World; Greg sent a message recommending them to everyone on his mailing list. Seems I may have to look for another independent Aussie company, at least in the short term, for all those purely antipodean releases. Richard ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 20:14:06 -0500 From: Jeff Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Re: Gang of Four On 5/15/05, Vallor wrote: > The Entertainment album is great angular abrasive post punk while the > subsequent albums showed a descent into commerciality that increasingly lost > me. I'm going to go out on a wacky crazy limb here and defend _Songs of the Free_ (but probably not _Hard_, at least not as much). I don't think it's so much a "descent into commerciality" as "an attempt to incorporate dance beats" - which, at the time, didn't necessarily mean "commerciality" but was a common, viable, post-punk strategy of expanding one's musical turf from the original British punk template. (Most obviously, see New Order - but also nearly every descendant British band of the early '80s was more dancy than its antecedent acts. That was the way things went then.) In addition to (often) more danceable beats, the singing became more aggressive and less, uh, tuneless ranting, and there some interesting things that happened when their guitar approach - which sometimes seemed like, smash the neck against the mic stand and then try to play that chord a second time - met the slightly more traditional rhythm approach. Anyway, I still like Songs of the Free. But anyway: yes, you should make every effort to at least hear _Entertainment!_ - it's a classic, and 'twas highly influential, and all that. You can hate it - but at least you can say, well, I listened to it, and [fill in blank of why you didn't like it] rather than not knowing. - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V5 #124 *******************************