From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V7 #216 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 Tuesday, September 18 2007 Volume 07 : Number 216 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV ["Sgt. Cockring" ] [loud-fans] best-of candidates at the 3/4ish mark. ["outbound-only email ] Re: [loud-fans] best-of candidates at the 3/4ish mark. [Roger Winston ] Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV [Scout82667@aol.com] Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV [Gil Ray ] Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV ["Steve Holtebeck" ] Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV ["Matthew Weber" ] Re: [loud-fans] best-of candidates at the 3/4ish mark. ["outbound-only em] re: [loud-fans] Abra Moore, Dead Man Singing, and thoughts on the year [] re: [loud-fans] Abra Moore, Dead Man Singing, and thoughts on the year [] re: [loud-fans] Abra Moore, Dead Man Singing, and thoughts on the year [] [none] [zoom@muppetlabs.com] Re: [loud-fans] Abra Moore, Dead Man Singing, and thoughts onthe year ["] Re: [loud-fans] Abra Moore, Dead Man Singing, and thoughts onthe year ["] [loud-fans] boston area loudfan heads up, pinback, rogue wave ["outbound-] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:23:11 -0400 From: "Sgt. Cockring" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV Is this "dialogue"? Me think so. Me still unsure if it violates protocol. - -Sarge On 9/18/07, Roger Winston wrote: > > At Monday 9/17/2007 10:30 PM, Sgt. Cockring wrote: > > >What is your favorite color? I was just discussing the phenomenology of > >favorite colors with the guy I work with. Really interesting > stuff...though > >of course, nobody HERE would care. > > My favorite color used to be green, but now it seems to be closer to > something in the teal family (#08d5c4). Then again, that sort of > goldish-yellowish-green (olive?) color (#d9af09) sometimes gets me > hot. That's the color I'd paint my dream car (a '65 Thunderbird?) if I > had > one. Yeah! Metallic, with flakes! > > Please don't use this information to label me. I *hate* being labelled. > > Is this "dialogue"? > > Latre. --Rog > > -- FlasshePoint, yet another blog among millions: http://www.flasshe.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:40:43 -0400 From: "outbound-only email address" Subject: [loud-fans] best-of candidates at the 3/4ish mark. I'm using software to help me out, which means I'm missing anything I haven't imported into iTunes (under-reporting the earlier part of the year, certainly). I'm defining a minimum of 3 songs I rated as "especially good" as a baseline for best-of candidacy, which gives me. Asterisks mark the shoe-ins for the shortlist; - is just squeaking by with the minimal classification. au revoir simone, -bad religion, *steve barton, andrew bird, black francis, blonde redhead, -chelsea, deerhoof, deerhunter (the ep, not the full-length), -dents, dino jr. (astoundingly unsucky; surprise of the year so far), *dollyrots, epoxies, get him eat him, glos, *hallelujah the hills, hot cross, immaculate machine, -information, *ted leo, love of diagrams, mekons, melt banana, mendoza line, *menomena, montag, national, new prawnographers, palomar, *parts & labor, emma pollock, shepherdess, elliott smith, -taxpayer (their half of the split with dear leader), *laura veirs, *volt (the one on in-the-red records, not the one on the german label), *tommy womack special honorable mention for bands with standout songs on otherwise weak records or where I haven't heard the rest of the record yet: arcade fire ("intervention"), dreamfast ("ashley please" - guilty pleasure of the year, if not the decade), vegomatic ("quelque chose"), young galaxy ("swing the heartache") and there are plenty I haven't heard or need to listen to more. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:24:30 -0600 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] best-of candidates at the 3/4ish mark. At Tuesday 9/18/2007 06:40 AM, outbound-only email address wrote: >dino jr. (astoundingly unsucky; surprise of the year so far), This is one of those albums that I would've appreciated a lot more if all the songs were like half as long. They just go on beyond their natural endpoint (even though most of them aren't really *that* long). Maybe that's why the album is called BEYOND. >*parts & labor I really tried to get into this one, but aside from a few bits here and there, it didn't do anything for me. I think it's the singing. Latre. --Rog - -- FlasshePoint, yet another blog among millions: http://www.flasshe.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:47:41 -0700 From: "Douglas Stanley" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV > I know two people who have told me that they are afraid to post on the list because they are fearful of being ridiculed. I'm afraid to leave my house anymore for the fear of the ridicule (well, that and the police). Don't know how long it's been since I posted anything, but I do think I've uncovered the true identity of the Sarge: http://www.myspace.com/nickjhines Sorry to "out" you. Don't take it personally. You know we love you. Questions: 1. Is Li'l Cap'n Travis anywhere near as good as "Sugerbuzz" makes them out to be? 2. Why do some love the new New Pornographers disc while others find it boring and (gasp!) mid-tempo. How would I feel about it? I did not like Twin Cinema. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:49:56 EDT From: Scout82667@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV In a message dated 9/18/2007 8:01:42 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, sgtcockring@gmail.com writes: Me think so. Me still unsure if it violates protocol. - -Sarge It is, and it's a nice change, and it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH ME!!! Still no answer to my Gil and Robert video question. To find my answer, I suppose I'll have to confer with the dough of cakes, my magic 8 ball, divining rods, or the grease from Martha Quinn's hair--maybe the Geek Squad at Best Buy--(they have cool Beetles as squad cars). Favorite color: cobalt blue Fave artist of the moment: Rufus Wainwright - --Mark ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:19:20 -0700 (PDT) From: Gil Ray Subject: Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV Mark, try going to my MySpace site. It's on there, too...maybe it will play better for you, there???? Gil - --- Scout82667@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 9/18/2007 8:01:42 A.M. Eastern > Daylight Time, > sgtcockring@gmail.com writes: > > Me think so. Me still unsure if it violates > protocol. > > -Sarge > > > > > > It is, and it's a nice change, and it has ABSOLUTELY > NOTHING TO DO WITH > ME!!! Still no answer to my Gil and Robert video > question. To find my answer, I > suppose I'll have to confer with the dough of cakes, > my magic 8 ball, > divining rods, or the grease from Martha Quinn's > hair--maybe the Geek Squad at Best > Buy--(they have cool Beetles as squad cars). > > Favorite color: cobalt blue > > Fave artist of the moment: Rufus Wainwright > > --Mark > > > > > > ************************************** See what's > new at http://www.aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:12:35 -0700 From: "Steve Holtebeck" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV On 9/18/07, Douglas Stanley wrote: > I'm afraid to leave my house anymore for the fear of the ridicule > (well,that and the police). I fear the Police too.. "Every Breath You Take" is one creepy song. I thought I was safe their U.S. Tour ended this summer, but they're playing Dublin when I'm there in two weeks -- I think Sting is still watching me! > 2. Why do some love the new New Pornographers disc while others find it > boring and (gasp!) mid-tempo. How would I feel about it? I did not like > Twin Cinema. I'm still deciding what to think about CHALLENGERS. The tempo thing is definitely a challenge, but there are lots of good songs. But anyone who gets a chance to see them on this tour should do so. They're touring with a full slate of members (both Neko Case and Dan Bejar!), so it's like Yes's UNION tour with fewer keyboard solos. - -Steve ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:10:04 -0700 From: "Matthew Weber" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] I want my GTV On 9/18/07, Steve Holtebeck wrote: > > On 9/18/07, Douglas Stanley wrote: > > I'm afraid to leave my house anymore for the fear of the ridicule > > (well,that and the police). > > I fear the Police too.. "Every Breath You Take" is one creepy song. > > I thought I was safe their U.S. Tour ended this summer, but they're > playing > Dublin when I'm there in two weeks -- I think Sting is still watching me! "Oi Sting! Stop looking at my bum!" - -- Matt + Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage. The Seven Sages, c. 650-c. 550 B.C. : PERIANDER. From PLUTARCH, The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, sec. 14 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:12:00 -0400 From: "outbound-only email address" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] best-of candidates at the 3/4ish mark. Rog: > >dino jr. (astoundingly unsucky; surprise of the year so far), > > This is one of those albums that I would've appreciated a lot more if all > the songs were like half as long. They just go on beyond their natural > endpoint (even though most of them aren't really *that* long). Maybe > that's why the album is called BEYOND. Well, yeah, but I think most songs and most records go on about twice as long as they need to. I guess in this case my expectations were so low that almost anything hemi-demi-semi-decent would have exceeded them. I might downgrade it after a few more spins, and it doesn't have a star. >*parts & labor > > I really tried to get into this one, but aside from a few bits here and > there, it didn't do anything for me. I think it's the singing. I concede that it's not going to be for everyone. A big part of what I love about the band is actually how awful they sound. They're so crazily hissy and weird, the rules that I usually apply to mixes just don't apply. It took me a little while to forgive the new record for not sounding more like the last one; believe it or not this one is more sonically normal (and perversely, maybe a little less hooky, although I think "New Crimes" and "Vision of Repair" bring the hooks). Anyway, the no,-I-can't-sing,-why-do-you-ask vocals are just part of the charm for me. I choose to believe that the first track on the new Les Savvy Fav (still in the first listen, but already a candidate, along with the harris/spudgun split I just heard today) is a tribute to Parts & Labor: "there was a band called the pots and pans/they made this noise that people couldn't stand/and when they toured all across the land/the people said 'no, no, no,'/the people said 'no no no', but the drummer said 'yes, yes, yes,'/'this tour is a test'" ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:34:44 -0700 (PDT) From: zoom@muppetlabs.com Subject: re: [loud-fans] Abra Moore, Dead Man Singing, and thoughts on the year >Roger Winston to loud-fans >Matchbox Twenty?? Kid Rock?? Matchbox Twenty because I liked their debut, and for my theoretical fetish for comeback albums. Kid Rock because he's got the audacity to call it ROCK AND ROLL JESUS, thus feeding my Jesus fetish. And who knows, I might get paid for reviewing them. A man can dream. Of course, Bo Diddley is Jesus. The Jesus and Mary Chain tells us so. And forgive our trespasses as we forgive those compelled to own every note-blurt BOC set to tape (twice). Come to think of it Rog, I've got a vinyl copy of IMAGINOS I've never spun--should I? Andy September 17, 2007 Music Scholar Barred From U.S., but No One Will Tell Her Why By NINA BERNSTEIN Nalini Ghuman, an up-and-coming musicologist and expert on the British composer Edward Elgar, was stopped at the San Francisco airport in August last year and, without explanation, told that she was no longer allowed to enter the United States. Her case has become a cause cilhbre among musicologists and the subject of a protest campaign by the American Musicological Society and by academic leaders like Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where Ms. Ghuman was to have participated last month in the Bard Music Festival, showcasing Elgars music. But the door has remained closed to Ms. Ghuman, an assistant professor at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who is British and who had lived, studied and worked in this country for 10 years before her abrupt exclusion. The mystery of her case shows how difficult, if not impossible, it is to defend against such a decision once the secretive government process has been set in motion. After a year of letters and inquiries, Ms. Ghuman and her Mills College lawyer have been unable to find out why her residency visa was suddenly revoked, or whether she was on some security watch list. Nor does she know whether her application for a new visa, pending since last October, is being stymied by the shadow of the same unspecified problem or mistake. In a tearful telephone interview from her parents home in western Wales, Ms. Ghuman, 34, an Oxford graduate who earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, said she felt like a character in Kafka. I dont know why its happened, what Im accused of, she said. Theres no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless. Kelly Klundt, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security, said officers at San Francisco International Airport had no choice but to bar Ms. Ghuman because the State Department, at its discretion, had revoked her visa. The State Department would not discuss the case, citing the confidentiality of individual visa records. Mr. Botstein, who wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the hope of having the visa problem resolved before the music festival, said Ms. Ghumans case is symptomatic. This is an example of the xenophobia, incompetence, stupidity and then bureaucratic intransigence that we are up against, he said, also citing the case of a teacher of Arabic at Bard who missed the first weeks of the spring semester this year because of visa problems. What is at stake is Americas pre-eminence as a place of scholarship. Ms. Ghuman is certainly not alone in her frustration. Academic and civil liberties groups point to other foreign scholars who have been denied entry without explanation at an airport, or refused a visa when they applied. A pending lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union contends that the Bush administration is using heightened security measures to keep foreign scholars out on ideological grounds in violation of the First Amendment rights of American scholars to hear them. But Ms. Ghumans case does not seem to fit such a pattern. Few believe that her book in progress, India in the English Musical Imagination, 1890-1940, or her work on Elgar, best known by Americans for Pomp and Circumstance, could have raised red flags in Washington. And if it were a question of security profiling, nothing in her background fits. She was born in Wales. Her mother is a British homemaker, and her father, an emeritus professor of educational psychology at the University of Wales, was born in India to a Sikh family and moved to Britain in the 1960s. Last semester, Ms. Ghuman tried to teach her students by video link. This academic year, she is on an unpaid leave of absence. The arbitrary and inexplicable exclusion of Dr. Ghuman has been a personal tragedy for her and a cause of distress to Mills and to American higher education, said Janet L. Holmgren, the president of Mills College, who called her one of our most distinguished faculty members. She seems to be in this limbo, said Ms. Ghumans fianci, Paul Flight, 47, who has visited her three times in Britain and is considering a move there. Mr. Flight, a countertenor, co-directed Darius Milhauds opera about Orpheus and Eurydice with Ms. Ghuman at Mills three years ago. Ms. Ghumans descent into the bureaucratic netherworld began on Aug. 8, 2006, when she and Mr. Flight returned to San Francisco from a research trip to Britain. Armed immigration officers met them at the airplane door and escorted Ms. Ghuman away. In a written account of the next eight hours that she prepared for her lawyer, Ms. Ghuman said that officers tore up her H-1B visa, which was valid through May 2008, defaced her British passport, and seemed suspicious of everything from her music cassettes to the fact that she had listed Welsh as a language she speaks. A redacted government report about the episode obtained by her lawyer under the Freedom of Information Act erroneously described her as Hispanic. Held incommunicado in a room in the airport, she was groped during a body search, she said, and was warned that if she moved, she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher. After questioning her for hours, the officers told her that she had been ruled inadmissible, she said, and threatened to transfer her to a detention center in Santa Clara, Calif., unless she left on a flight to London that night. Outside, Mr. Flight made frantic calls for help. He said the British Consulate tried to get through to the immigration officials in charge, to no avail. And Ms. Ghuman said her demands to speak to the British consul were rebuffed. They told me I was nobody, I was nowhere and I had no rights, she said. For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means. As Ms. Ghuman tells it, the officers said they did not know why she was being excluded. They suggested that perhaps a jilted lover or envious colleague might have written a poison pen letter about her to immigration authorities, she said, or that Mills College might have terminated her employment without telling her. The notions are unfounded, she said. One officer eventually told her that her exclusion was probably a mistake, and advised her to reapply for a visa in London after a 10-day wait. But it took more than eight weeks for her file to be transferred to the United States Embassy in London, in part because of routine anthrax screening at the State Department. As for the possibility that she has been deemed a security threat, Ms. Ghuman said: Its not only insulting and heartbreaking, but how? In what way? Musicians, dangerous people? Is it my piano playing? I have no indication at all, she added, and it has been 13 = months. Inquiries by Ms. Ghumans representative in Parliament and several members of Congress, including Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, have been to no avail, said Byron Adams, a professor of music at the University of California, Riverside, who said he had known Ms. Ghuman for years and respected her work. All of these people have gotten the runaround from the State Department, Mr. Adams said. In late spring, when hope faded that Ms. Ghumans visa nightmare would be resolved quietly, Charles Atkinson, the president of the American Musicological Society, asked its 3,600 members to send letters to the State Department expressing our profound consternation and anxiety over the treatment of one of our members. The society has invited her to lecture at its conference in November, which, in a fortunate circumstance, Mr. Atkinson said, is to be held in Quebec. The $500 travel grant they have awarded her will not cover the cost. But at least, he said, she can expect Canada to let her in. [--from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/nyregion/17musicologist.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print ] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:34:43 -0700 (PDT) From: zoom@muppetlabs.com Subject: re: [loud-fans] Abra Moore, Dead Man Singing, and thoughts on the year >Roger Winston to loud-fans >Matchbox Twenty?? Kid Rock?? Matchbox Twenty because I liked their debut, and for my theoretical fetish for comeback albums. Kid Rock because he's got the audacity to call it ROCK AND ROLL JESUS, thus feeding my Jesus fetish. And who knows, I might get paid for reviewing them. A man can dream. Of course, Bo Diddley is Jesus. The Jesus and Mary Chain tells us so. And forgive our trespasses as we forgive those compelled to own every note-blurt BOC set to tape (twice). Come to think of it Rog, I've got a vinyl copy of IMAGINOS I've never spun--should I? Andy September 17, 2007 Music Scholar Barred From U.S., but No One Will Tell Her Why By NINA BERNSTEIN Nalini Ghuman, an up-and-coming musicologist and expert on the British composer Edward Elgar, was stopped at the San Francisco airport in August last year and, without explanation, told that she was no longer allowed to enter the United States. Her case has become a cause cilhbre among musicologists and the subject of a protest campaign by the American Musicological Society and by academic leaders like Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where Ms. Ghuman was to have participated last month in the Bard Music Festival, showcasing Elgars music. But the door has remained closed to Ms. Ghuman, an assistant professor at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who is British and who had lived, studied and worked in this country for 10 years before her abrupt exclusion. The mystery of her case shows how difficult, if not impossible, it is to defend against such a decision once the secretive government process has been set in motion. After a year of letters and inquiries, Ms. Ghuman and her Mills College lawyer have been unable to find out why her residency visa was suddenly revoked, or whether she was on some security watch list. Nor does she know whether her application for a new visa, pending since last October, is being stymied by the shadow of the same unspecified problem or mistake. In a tearful telephone interview from her parents home in western Wales, Ms. Ghuman, 34, an Oxford graduate who earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, said she felt like a character in Kafka. I dont know why its happened, what Im accused of, she said. Theres no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless. Kelly Klundt, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security, said officers at San Francisco International Airport had no choice but to bar Ms. Ghuman because the State Department, at its discretion, had revoked her visa. The State Department would not discuss the case, citing the confidentiality of individual visa records. Mr. Botstein, who wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the hope of having the visa problem resolved before the music festival, said Ms. Ghumans case is symptomatic. This is an example of the xenophobia, incompetence, stupidity and then bureaucratic intransigence that we are up against, he said, also citing the case of a teacher of Arabic at Bard who missed the first weeks of the spring semester this year because of visa problems. What is at stake is Americas pre-eminence as a place of scholarship. Ms. Ghuman is certainly not alone in her frustration. Academic and civil liberties groups point to other foreign scholars who have been denied entry without explanation at an airport, or refused a visa when they applied. A pending lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union contends that the Bush administration is using heightened security measures to keep foreign scholars out on ideological grounds in violation of the First Amendment rights of American scholars to hear them. But Ms. Ghumans case does not seem to fit such a pattern. Few believe that her book in progress, India in the English Musical Imagination, 1890-1940, or her work on Elgar, best known by Americans for Pomp and Circumstance, could have raised red flags in Washington. And if it were a question of security profiling, nothing in her background fits. She was born in Wales. Her mother is a British homemaker, and her father, an emeritus professor of educational psychology at the University of Wales, was born in India to a Sikh family and moved to Britain in the 1960s. Last semester, Ms. Ghuman tried to teach her students by video link. This academic year, she is on an unpaid leave of absence. The arbitrary and inexplicable exclusion of Dr. Ghuman has been a personal tragedy for her and a cause of distress to Mills and to American higher education, said Janet L. Holmgren, the president of Mills College, who called her one of our most distinguished faculty members. She seems to be in this limbo, said Ms. Ghumans fianci, Paul Flight, 47, who has visited her three times in Britain and is considering a move there. Mr. Flight, a countertenor, co-directed Darius Milhauds opera about Orpheus and Eurydice with Ms. Ghuman at Mills three years ago. Ms. Ghumans descent into the bureaucratic netherworld began on Aug. 8, 2006, when she and Mr. Flight returned to San Francisco from a research trip to Britain. Armed immigration officers met them at the airplane door and escorted Ms. Ghuman away. In a written account of the next eight hours that she prepared for her lawyer, Ms. Ghuman said that officers tore up her H-1B visa, which was valid through May 2008, defaced her British passport, and seemed suspicious of everything from her music cassettes to the fact that she had listed Welsh as a language she speaks. A redacted government report about the episode obtained by her lawyer under the Freedom of Information Act erroneously described her as Hispanic. Held incommunicado in a room in the airport, she was groped during a body search, she said, and was warned that if she moved, she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher. After questioning her for hours, the officers told her that she had been ruled inadmissible, she said, and threatened to transfer her to a detention center in Santa Clara, Calif., unless she left on a flight to London that night. Outside, Mr. Flight made frantic calls for help. He said the British Consulate tried to get through to the immigration officials in charge, to no avail. And Ms. Ghuman said her demands to speak to the British consul were rebuffed. They told me I was nobody, I was nowhere and I had no rights, she said. For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means. As Ms. Ghuman tells it, the officers said they did not know why she was being excluded. They suggested that perhaps a jilted lover or envious colleague might have written a poison pen letter about her to immigration authorities, she said, or that Mills College might have terminated her employment without telling her. The notions are unfounded, she said. One officer eventually told her that her exclusion was probably a mistake, and advised her to reapply for a visa in London after a 10-day wait. But it took more than eight weeks for her file to be transferred to the United States Embassy in London, in part because of routine anthrax screening at the State Department. As for the possibility that she has been deemed a security threat, Ms. Ghuman said: Its not only insulting and heartbreaking, but how? In what way? Musicians, dangerous people? Is it my piano playing? I have no indication at all, she added, and it has been 13 = months. Inquiries by Ms. Ghumans representative in Parliament and several members of Congress, including Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, have been to no avail, said Byron Adams, a professor of music at the University of California, Riverside, who said he had known Ms. Ghuman for years and respected her work. All of these people have gotten the runaround from the State Department, Mr. Adams said. In late spring, when hope faded that Ms. Ghumans visa nightmare would be resolved quietly, Charles Atkinson, the president of the American Musicological Society, asked its 3,600 members to send letters to the State Department expressing our profound consternation and anxiety over the treatment of one of our members. The society has invited her to lecture at its conference in November, which, in a fortunate circumstance, Mr. Atkinson said, is to be held in Quebec. The $500 travel grant they have awarded her will not cover the cost. But at least, he said, she can expect Canada to let her in. [--from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/nyregion/17musicologist.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print ] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:34:42 -0700 (PDT) From: zoom@muppetlabs.com Subject: re: [loud-fans] Abra Moore, Dead Man Singing, and thoughts on the year >Roger Winston to loud-fans >Matchbox Twenty?? Kid Rock?? Matchbox Twenty because I liked their debut, and for my theoretical fetish for comeback albums. Kid Rock because he's got the audacity to call it ROCK AND ROLL JESUS, thus feeding my Jesus fetish. And who knows, I might get paid for reviewing them. A man can dream. Of course, Bo Diddley is Jesus. The Jesus and Mary Chain tells us so. And forgive our trespasses as we forgive those compelled to own every note-blurt BOC set to tape (twice). Come to think of it Rog, I've got a vinyl copy of IMAGINOS I've never spun--should I? Andy September 17, 2007 Music Scholar Barred From U.S., but No One Will Tell Her Why By NINA BERNSTEIN Nalini Ghuman, an up-and-coming musicologist and expert on the British composer Edward Elgar, was stopped at the San Francisco airport in August last year and, without explanation, told that she was no longer allowed to enter the United States. Her case has become a cause cilhbre among musicologists and the subject of a protest campaign by the American Musicological Society and by academic leaders like Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where Ms. Ghuman was to have participated last month in the Bard Music Festival, showcasing Elgars music. But the door has remained closed to Ms. Ghuman, an assistant professor at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who is British and who had lived, studied and worked in this country for 10 years before her abrupt exclusion. The mystery of her case shows how difficult, if not impossible, it is to defend against such a decision once the secretive government process has been set in motion. After a year of letters and inquiries, Ms. Ghuman and her Mills College lawyer have been unable to find out why her residency visa was suddenly revoked, or whether she was on some security watch list. Nor does she know whether her application for a new visa, pending since last October, is being stymied by the shadow of the same unspecified problem or mistake. In a tearful telephone interview from her parents home in western Wales, Ms. Ghuman, 34, an Oxford graduate who earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, said she felt like a character in Kafka. I dont know why its happened, what Im accused of, she said. Theres no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless. Kelly Klundt, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security, said officers at San Francisco International Airport had no choice but to bar Ms. Ghuman because the State Department, at its discretion, had revoked her visa. The State Department would not discuss the case, citing the confidentiality of individual visa records. Mr. Botstein, who wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the hope of having the visa problem resolved before the music festival, said Ms. Ghumans case is symptomatic. This is an example of the xenophobia, incompetence, stupidity and then bureaucratic intransigence that we are up against, he said, also citing the case of a teacher of Arabic at Bard who missed the first weeks of the spring semester this year because of visa problems. What is at stake is Americas pre-eminence as a place of scholarship. Ms. Ghuman is certainly not alone in her frustration. Academic and civil liberties groups point to other foreign scholars who have been denied entry without explanation at an airport, or refused a visa when they applied. A pending lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union contends that the Bush administration is using heightened security measures to keep foreign scholars out on ideological grounds in violation of the First Amendment rights of American scholars to hear them. But Ms. Ghumans case does not seem to fit such a pattern. Few believe that her book in progress, India in the English Musical Imagination, 1890-1940, or her work on Elgar, best known by Americans for Pomp and Circumstance, could have raised red flags in Washington. And if it were a question of security profiling, nothing in her background fits. She was born in Wales. Her mother is a British homemaker, and her father, an emeritus professor of educational psychology at the University of Wales, was born in India to a Sikh family and moved to Britain in the 1960s. Last semester, Ms. Ghuman tried to teach her students by video link. This academic year, she is on an unpaid leave of absence. The arbitrary and inexplicable exclusion of Dr. Ghuman has been a personal tragedy for her and a cause of distress to Mills and to American higher education, said Janet L. Holmgren, the president of Mills College, who called her one of our most distinguished faculty members. She seems to be in this limbo, said Ms. Ghumans fianci, Paul Flight, 47, who has visited her three times in Britain and is considering a move there. Mr. Flight, a countertenor, co-directed Darius Milhauds opera about Orpheus and Eurydice with Ms. Ghuman at Mills three years ago. Ms. Ghumans descent into the bureaucratic netherworld began on Aug. 8, 2006, when she and Mr. Flight returned to San Francisco from a research trip to Britain. Armed immigration officers met them at the airplane door and escorted Ms. Ghuman away. In a written account of the next eight hours that she prepared for her lawyer, Ms. Ghuman said that officers tore up her H-1B visa, which was valid through May 2008, defaced her British passport, and seemed suspicious of everything from her music cassettes to the fact that she had listed Welsh as a language she speaks. A redacted government report about the episode obtained by her lawyer under the Freedom of Information Act erroneously described her as Hispanic. Held incommunicado in a room in the airport, she was groped during a body search, she said, and was warned that if she moved, she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher. After questioning her for hours, the officers told her that she had been ruled inadmissible, she said, and threatened to transfer her to a detention center in Santa Clara, Calif., unless she left on a flight to London that night. Outside, Mr. Flight made frantic calls for help. He said the British Consulate tried to get through to the immigration officials in charge, to no avail. And Ms. Ghuman said her demands to speak to the British consul were rebuffed. They told me I was nobody, I was nowhere and I had no rights, she said. For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means. As Ms. Ghuman tells it, the officers said they did not know why she was being excluded. They suggested that perhaps a jilted lover or envious colleague might have written a poison pen letter about her to immigration authorities, she said, or that Mills College might have terminated her employment without telling her. The notions are unfounded, she said. One officer eventually told her that her exclusion was probably a mistake, and advised her to reapply for a visa in London after a 10-day wait. But it took more than eight weeks for her file to be transferred to the United States Embassy in London, in part because of routine anthrax screening at the State Department. As for the possibility that she has been deemed a security threat, Ms. Ghuman said: Its not only insulting and heartbreaking, but how? In what way? Musicians, dangerous people? Is it my piano playing? I have no indication at all, she added, and it has been 13 = months. Inquiries by Ms. Ghumans representative in Parliament and several members of Congress, including Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, have been to no avail, said Byron Adams, a professor of music at the University of California, Riverside, who said he had known Ms. Ghuman for years and respected her work. All of these people have gotten the runaround from the State Department, Mr. Adams said. In late spring, when hope faded that Ms. Ghumans visa nightmare would be resolved quietly, Charles Atkinson, the president of the American Musicological Society, asked its 3,600 members to send letters to the State Department expressing our profound consternation and anxiety over the treatment of one of our members. The society has invited her to lecture at its conference in November, which, in a fortunate circumstance, Mr. Atkinson said, is to be held in Quebec. The $500 travel grant they have awarded her will not cover the cost. But at least, he said, she can expect Canada to let her in. [--from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/nyregion/17musicologist.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print ] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:50:12 -0700 (PDT) From: zoom@muppetlabs.com Subject: [none] Rog: > >dino jr. (astoundingly unsucky; surprise of the year so far), > > This is one of those albums that I would've appreciated a lot more if all > the songs were like half as long. They just go on beyond their natural > endpoint (even though most of them aren't really *that* long). Maybe > that's why the album is called BEYOND. >Well, yeah, but I think most songs and most records go on about twice as >long as they need to. I guess in this case my expectations were so low that >almost anything hemi-demi-semi-decent would have exceeded them. I might >downgrade it after a few more spins, and it doesn't have a star. Still haven't heard that one, but less-is-more mavens may note, the new Manic Street Preachers clocks in, minus enhancement extras, at all of 38 minutes. Managed to Breen that last post (sorry) (guess I'm more J. Mascis than J.D. Bradfield), Andy "Short is my date, but deathless my renown." - --from Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:58:28 -0600 From: "Roger Winston" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Abra Moore, Dead Man Singing, and thoughts onthe year zoom@muppetlabs.com on 9/18/2007 4:34:43 PM wrote: >And forgive our trespasses as we forgive those compelled >to own every note-blurt BOC set to tape (twice). What is "tape"? >Come to think of it Rog, I've got a vinyl copy of >IMAGINOS I've never spun--should I? It depends upon the alignment of the stars. Look into a mirror while holding a rose, and you will have your answer. Astronomy. A star. Latre. --Rog - -- FlasshePoint, yet another blog among millions: http://www.flasshe.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:57:44 -0600 From: "Roger Winston" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Abra Moore, Dead Man Singing, and thoughts onthe year zoom@muppetlabs.com on 9/18/2007 4:34:43 PM wrote: >And forgive our trespasses as we forgive those compelled >to own every note-blurt BOC set to tape (twice). What is "tape"? >Come to think of it Rog, I've got a vinyl copy of >IMAGINOS I've never spun--should I? It depends upon the alignment of the stars. Look into a mirror while holding a rose, and you will have your answer. Astronomy. A star. Latre. --Rog - -- FlasshePoint, yet another blog among millions: http://www.flasshe.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:36:10 -0500 From: "outbound-only email address" Subject: [loud-fans] boston area loudfan heads up, pinback, rogue wave in case anyone is interested ... I got a tip that Newbury Comics had copies of the new Pinback disc with the limited/pre-release/whatever bonus EP, so I stopped by on my way home to pick one up. While I was there a copy of the new Rogue Wave found its way into my hands, and it turned out that it came with a while-supplies-last bonus 45 with a non-album b-side -- ask at the counter. sorry for the post flood t'day. ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V7 #216 *******************************