From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V6 #22 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, January 27 2006 Volume 06 : Number 022 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] drum solos, RIP [dc ] Re: [loud-fans] drum solos, RIP [2fs ] RE: [loud-fans] drum solos, RIP ["Aaron Milenski" ] [loud-fans] streaming radio ["B.J. Skaught" ] Re: [loud-fans] drum solos, RIP [2fs ] Re: [loud-fans] drum solos, RIP ["don't mine me" ] [loud-fans] streaming radio ["don't mine me" ] [loud-fans] Any Tall Dwarfs fans out there? ["Stefaan Hurts" ] Re: [loud-fans] spoken words, was drum solos, RIP [2fs ] Re: [loud-fans] streaming radio [Michael Bowen ] Re: [loud-fans] streaming radio [Micah ] [loud-fans] pandora [Aaron Mandel ] Re: [loud-fans] pandora ["Stewart Mason" ] Re: [loud-fans] streaming radio [Steve Holtebeck ] Re: [loud-fans] pandora ["Joseph M. Mallon" ] Re: [loud-fans] pandora [2fs ] Re: [loud-fans] pandora [Aaron Mandel ] Re: [loud-fans] pandora [2fs ] Re: [loud-fans] pandora ["Joseph M. Mallon" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 07:42:30 -0800 From: dc Subject: [loud-fans] drum solos, RIP as there's at least one fine drummer on this list, it seemed worth passing along: http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm- neil04jan22,0,3090885.story?coll=la-home-magazine dc ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:11:46 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] drum solos, RIP On 1/26/06, dc wrote: > as there's at least one fine drummer on this list, it seemed worth > passing along: > > > http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm- > neil04jan22,0,3090885.story?coll=la-home-magazine Or, for the long-ass-URL-challenged, Warning: Rush content. Incidentally, I wouldn't dream of questioning Neil Peart's talent - and truthfully I haven't heard enough of his work to question his taste - but...how many pieces does a drum kit need? The article speaks of John Bonham's "cliched" drummer's death (I thought Bonham *wrote* the cliche); someday, we'll read about Neil Peart's tragic death when a substitute drum tech sets up Peart's kit differently than usual, Peart wanders in amongst the myriad toms, cymbals, and god-knows-what-all...and gets lost. No one finds him for days, until the kit is taken down, and there's his body. He's desperately tried to program a Linndrum to play an S-O-S, but the rockbottom simplicity of its rhythm has thwarted him, and an S-O-S rearranged into 11/16 time is found entered in the Linndrum's memory. Sadly, no one understands, and Peart dies as he lived, [incomplete: some Rush fan must provide an apt quote here]. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 11:30:07 -0500 From: "Aaron Milenski" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] drum solos, RIP >as there's at least one fine drummer on this list, it seemed worth passing >along: There is NOTHING that kills an otherwise good album more than a drum solo. My favorite quote about drum solos was the rock critic who said the best drum solo ever was the three snare beats before the final choruses of the Ramones' "Rockaway Beach." ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:51:27 -0800 From: "B.J. Skaught" Subject: [loud-fans] streaming radio I'd like to get some recommendations for good streaming radio--especially indie pop-tpye stuff. There are a couple decent shows here in the Bay Area, but when I was in college there was a DJ there who would play the very latest independent pop singles that no one had ever heard of--stuff from all over and often things that were impossible to find! By the way, i'll take a drum solo over a bass solo any day! B ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:58:51 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] drum solos, RIP On 1/26/06, Aaron Milenski wrote: > >as there's at least one fine drummer on this list, it seemed worth passing > >along: > > There is NOTHING that kills an otherwise good album more than > a drum solo. I'd have to disagree. The thing that kills otherwise good albums even more than drum solos do is lame-ass skits and spoken-word interludes. If you've ever heard _Smith_ by Kleenex Girl Wonder - bloated from its 40 or so minutes of actual music into a double CD by those skits - you'll know what I'm talking about. Damned near unlistenable in its original form. I burned a CD using just the songs - they're pretty good, in fact. Not a huge Bright Eyes fan...but there's that song near the end of _Fevers and Mirrors_ that's utterly ruined by about 8 minutes of a fake interview stuck in the middle of it. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:06:11 -0500 (EST) From: "don't mine me" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] drum solos, RIP 2fs: >> Incidentally, I wouldn't dream of questioning Neil Peart's talent - and truthfully I haven't heard enough of his work to question his taste - but...how many pieces does a drum kit need? << There are some exceptions -- I'm currently playing with a pretty good drummer who likes a complex kit -- but most of the drummers who really knock me out use minimalist kits by rock standards. A really good drummer (imho) can make a 4-piece kit as varied and dynamic and exciting as a 28-piece (or whatever) kit. The worst drummer I ever played with and the drummer with the biggest kit were one and the same. It took him nearly an hour to load in and set up for his audition. We started auditions in that band with one of the songs in 7/4 -- since we *had* multiple songs in 7 it was a minimal requirement, and it eliminated a lot of players right away. But we also always tried a straight 4/4 number -- we didn't expect instant brilliance on the 7 tune, since it was a bit non-standard, and we figured a familiar and basic 4/4 number (we usually used Pere Ubu's "Final Solution") would give any drummer a chance to show off his/her chops. He couldn't play in 4/4 either. Please don't write me back at this address; this is an outgoing-mail-only address, because addresses I use to post to archived mailing lists aren't safe from spammers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 11:08:36 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] streaming radio On 1/26/06, B.J. Skaught wrote: > By the way, i'll take a drum solo over a bass solo any day! I'll take a bass solo over a tuba solo any day. Actually, I often find harmonica annoying - especially when it's connoting bluesiness on records that aren't blues recods. Saxes when played outside either actual-jazz style or honking '50s R&B-derived noisemaking are annoying. I don't like soul-style female backing vocal groups outside their context either. (A lot of '70s/early '80s mainstream rock was ruined by some or all of these.) Okay, I'm not a blues fan - if by "blues" we mean the sort of mainstreaming thereof that got big play from the late sixties onward. I think Lou Reed was on the right track when he (supposedly) started fining anyone in the VU for playing any blues lick. Probably the problem is there's nothing easier to play than the blues badly. I think we should go back and replace all cheesy quasi-blues noises (like the annoying female backing vocals on Bob Dylan records) with Allen Ravenstine EML analog-synth blattings, woopings, and squawks. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:10:49 -0500 (EST) From: "don't mine me" Subject: [loud-fans] streaming radio Bradley: >> I'd like to get some recommendations for good streaming radio--especially indie pop-tpye stuff. There are a couple decent shows here in the Bay Area, but when I was in college there was a DJ there who would play the very latest independent pop singles that no one had ever heard of--stuff from all over and often things that were impossible to find! << MIT's WMBR (www.wmbr.org) is very much a mixed bag, but has some excellent shows. Many of them have archived playlists so you can dig around for promising DJs. I'm personally partial to the "Breakfast of Champions" on Tuesday mornings, although it's a bit early for West coast-ers (8-10 am ET). Please don't write me back at this address; this is an outgoing-mail-only address, because addresses I use to post to archived mailing lists aren't safe from spammers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:07:43 -0500 From: "Stefaan Hurts" Subject: [loud-fans] Any Tall Dwarfs fans out there? I'm looking for the title of a Tall Dwarfs track I taped off the radio many, many moons ago (about 18 years' worth of moons, to be precise). It's supposed to be on HELLO CRUEL WORLD, but I checked the samples of all the songs for that album on MP3.COM and none of the songs sound like this track. It starts with "Two o'clock in the afternoon...". ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 9:47:58 -0800 From: Subject: Re: [loud-fans] spoken words, was drum solos, RIP > The thing that kills otherwise good albums even more than drum solos > do is lame-ass skits and spoken-word interludes. If you've ever heard > _Smith_ by Kleenex Girl Wonder - bloated from its 40 or so minutes of > actual music into a double CD by those skits - you'll know what I'm > talking about. Damned near unlistenable in its original form. I burned > a CD using just the songs - they're pretty good, in fact. > > Not a huge Bright Eyes fan...but there's that song near the end of > _Fevers and Mirrors_ that's utterly ruined by about 8 minutes of a > fake interview stuck in the middle of it. > > Of course that rule doesn't apply to records with brief spoken passages (e.g., LN and The Dukes "Psonic Psunspot"). However, I do find the bits on "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" rather annoying. Likewise, the pretensions of the bits on "Days of Future Passed". ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:55:17 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] spoken words, was drum solos, RIP On 1/26/06, jacklip@charter.net wrote: > > The thing that kills otherwise good albums even more than drum solos > > do is lame-ass skits and spoken-word interludes. If you've ever heard > > _Smith_ by Kleenex Girl Wonder - bloated from its 40 or so minutes of > > actual music into a double CD by those skits - you'll know what I'm > > talking about. Damned near unlistenable in its original form. I burned > > a CD using just the songs - they're pretty good, in fact. > > > > Of course that rule doesn't apply to records with brief spoken passages (e.g., LN and The Dukes "Psonic Psunspot"). > However, I do find the bits on "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" rather annoying. Which is funny, since the Dukes' thing is clearly inspired by it. Less than 10 seconds = okay; more than = dubious. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 14:24:36 -0500 From: Jenny Grover Subject: Re: [loud-fans] streaming radio B.J. Skaught wrote: >I'd like to get some recommendations for good streaming radio--especially >indie pop-tpye stuff. There are a couple decent shows here in the Bay Area, >but when I was in college there was a DJ there who would play the very latest >independent pop singles that no one had ever heard of--stuff from all over and >often things that were impossible to find! >By the way, i'll take a drum solo over a bass solo any day! > >B > > > 3wk.com is the best I've found. It keeps me entertained and broke. Jen ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:03:10 -0800 From: Subject: Re: [loud-fans] spoken words, was drum solos, RIP > > Of course that rule doesn't apply to records with brief spoken passages (e.g., LN and The Dukes "Psonic Psunspot"). > > However, I do find the bits on "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" rather annoying. > > Which is funny, since the Dukes' thing is clearly inspired by it. > > Less than 10 seconds = okay; more than = dubious. > > I actually heard the Ogden's thing after the Dukes and remember thinking "so that's where they got it from". Still, I find the Dukes' version more elegantly silly, if that makes sense. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:06:34 -0500 From: Michael Bowen Subject: Re: [loud-fans] streaming radio At pandora.com, you select an artist and they build a playlist around it. As they play, you can add more artists to broaden the categories they search from. After an hour or so, they will ask you to sign up for something like $3/month. Last.fm does something similar, except they generate your custom playlist using statistics gathered from the music you play on your computer. After downloading a widget from them, it sends the tracks you play to your profile in their database, compares them to what other listeners of the same music like, and generates a playlist from that. Again, it costs $3/month for the custom playlist, but if you listen to a lot of streaming music, it might be worth it. Jeffrey Norman and I (and possibly other loud-fans, as well) are currently distorting the last.fm database; my profile is at http://www.last.fm/user/milkbone/ . ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 14:39:09 -0800 (PST) From: Micah Subject: Re: [loud-fans] streaming radio This has been one of the delights of the new year. I am listening to Pandora now. The "Joe Pass" station is running. I believe I have about 10 stations set up. The usual suspects. "Sun Kil Moon", "The Sea and The Cake", "Keith Jarrett." "Stars" are just some of them. Micah Michael Bowen wrote: At pandora.com, you select an artist and they build a playlist around it. As they play, you can add more artists to broaden the categories they search from. After an hour or so, they will ask you to sign up for something like $3/month. Last.fm does something similar, except they generate your custom playlist using statistics gathered from the music you play on your computer. After downloading a widget from them, it sends the tracks you play to your profile in their database, compares them to what other listeners of the same music like, and generates a playlist from that. Again, it costs $3/month for the custom playlist, but if you listen to a lot of streaming music, it might be worth it. Jeffrey Norman and I (and possibly other loud-fans, as well) are currently distorting the last.fm database; my profile is at http://www.last.fm/user/milkbone/ . With a free 1 GB, there's more in store with Yahoo! Mail. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:15:53 -0500 (EST) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: [loud-fans] pandora My housemate told me I should try Pandora and see what I thought. First I gave it Why? and it played me The Most Serene Republic, who I'd been avoiding because of the awful name and the incestuous Canadian roster, but that was pretty cool. I stuck with that 'channel' through a handful of increasingly bland songs and then decided to try again with something else. So I asked it for things that sound like Xiu Xiu, and it played me Chappaquiddick Skyline. End of experiment. a ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:25:59 -0500 From: "Stewart Mason" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pandora - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Aaron Mandel" > My housemate told me I should try Pandora and see what I thought. > First I gave it Why? and it played me The Most Serene Republic, who > I'd been avoiding because of the awful name and the incestuous > Canadian roster, but that was pretty cool. I stuck with that > 'channel' through a handful of increasingly bland songs and then > decided to try again with something else. > > So I asked it for things that sound like Xiu Xiu, and it played me > Chappaquiddick Skyline. End of experiment. My first time with Pandora, it took something like 12 tries before it even recognized an artist I typed in. I tried again a few months later, and it kept insisting that if I liked Nellie McKay, I would really love Tori Amos. So apparently, all women who play piano are alike. I'm not impressed either, but at least it's better than the old Ringo setup at MIT was back in the day, when the best it could guess was that if you liked Game Theory, you might want to check out this new band called the Loud Family. S ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:20:55 -0800 (GMT-08:00) From: Steve Holtebeck Subject: Re: [loud-fans] streaming radio From: Michael Bowen >At pandora.com, you select an artist and they build a playlist around >it. As they play, you can add more artists to broaden the categories >they search from. After an hour or so, they will ask you to sign up >for something like $3/month. But you aren't obligated to do that at all.. I listen to pandora quite a lot, and still haven't paid them anything. I think their main revenue stream is thru referrals to amazon and iTunes. The pandora service works a lot better if you start with individual songs than with artists, and provide lots of initial feedback about what you like and don't like. I have one station based on "Shake Some Action" (more uptempo songs with electric rock instrumentation, mild rhythmic syncopation, and major key tonality) which is a great way to stay awake toward the end of the workday, but it took lots of tweaking to get it just right. I used to listen to KFJC quite a bit, but most of my favorite shows aren't on anymore. I still like Zero Gravity on Saturday nights (the show that hosted a LF live set once upon a time), and Apartment Life on Monday afternoons, but I'm pretty sure Bradley is already familiar with that show! - -Steve ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:33:36 -0800 (PST) From: "Joseph M. Mallon" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pandora On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Aaron Mandel wrote: > So I asked it for things that sound like Xiu Xiu, and it played me > Chappaquiddick Skyline. End of experiment. This is one of the indie-est things I've ever read. I have no idea what either group sounds like, or why this relationship is bad... Ah, the oldness of me! Joe Mallon jmmallon@joescafe.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:40:13 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pandora On 1/26/06, Joseph M. Mallon wrote: > On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Aaron Mandel wrote: > > So I asked it for things that sound like Xiu Xiu, and it played me > > Chappaquiddick Skyline. End of experiment. > > This is one of the indie-est things I've ever read. I have no idea what > either group sounds like, or why this relationship is bad... Well, for "things that sound like Xiu Xiu," one answer would be "a guy who forgot to take his meds insists on playing the Cure on his boombox during a performance of a Chinese opera while a barge with a string quartet playing Schoenberg crashes into the concert hall." Actually, when Jamie Stewart's vocals don't drive me completely up a tree I like them pretty well. Chappaquiddick Skyline is Ted Kennedy's solo acoustic project - rather country-western-ish. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 21:21:30 -0500 (EST) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pandora On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Joseph M. Mallon wrote: > On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Aaron Mandel wrote: >> So I asked it for things that sound like Xiu Xiu, and it played me >> Chappaquiddick Skyline. End of experiment. > > This is one of the indie-est things I've ever read. I'm going to assume that's not supposed to be an insult. But if it is, um... your mom is indie! Yeah. I saw her working the merch table at a Bright Eyes show. She says hi. > I have no idea what either group sounds like, or why this relationship > is bad... Xiu Xiu sound like this: http://5rc.com/audio/I%20Broke%20Up%20(SJ).mp3 I wish I could describe them, but I can't do a very good job. There's murmury vocals punctuated with screaming, drum machines, eerie samples, gamelan instruments heavily distorted, unrhymed lyrics and... well, I don't know, click the links if your computer has speakers. Chappaquiddick Skyline are some kind of Pernice Brothers side project, which means a dozen people here would have more to say than I do. Guy with a guitar. They bear the same relationship to Xiu Xiu as Michael Penn does to Captain Beefheart. Someone help me out here. a ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 21:15:39 -0600 From: 2fs Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pandora On 1/26/06, Aaron Mandel wrote: > Chappaquiddick Skyline are some kind of Pernice Brothers side project, > which means a dozen people here would have more to say than I do. Guy with > a guitar. They bear the same relationship to Xiu Xiu as Michael Penn does > to Captain Beefheart. > > Someone help me out here. Hmm. Michael Penn (Boogie Nights) -> Burt Reynolds (Boogie Nights/The Player) -> Teri Garr -> Frank Zappa (Head) -> Captain Beefheart. (Thank you Oracle of Bacon...) I'll let somebody else handle the Xiu Xiu/Chappaquiddick Skyline thing. Which really does seem bizarre. Steve's right, though: Pandora works a lot better with songs than artists, since it has to generalize an artist's whole corpus in terms of musical traits...often, almost impossible (unless you're the Ramones). - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 22:07:34 -0800 (PST) From: "Joseph M. Mallon" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] pandora On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Aaron Mandel wrote: > On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Joseph M. Mallon wrote: > > > On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Aaron Mandel wrote: > >> So I asked it for things that sound like Xiu Xiu, and it played me > >> Chappaquiddick Skyline. End of experiment. > > > > This is one of the indie-est things I've ever read. > I'm going to assume that's not supposed to be an insult. But if it is, > um... your mom is indie! Yeah. I saw her working the merch table at a > Bright Eyes show. She says hi. Not an insult, just an assessment of a comparison between two very obscure bands that is predicated on having heard both. Again, not an insult. Joe Mallon jmmallon@joescafe.com ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V6 #22 ******************************