From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V8 #144 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, August 10 2009 Volume 08 : Number 144 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] Posies and $ [JRT456@aol.com] Re: [loud-fans] sad news [Andrew Hamlin ] Re: [loud-fans] sad news [Markwstaples@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 12:27:38 EDT From: JRT456@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Posies and $ I interviewed Ken Stringfellow a few years ago, and he was flying off on tour while a nanny was helping his wife take care of his newborn child on an island off the coast of France. I wouldn't worry about the guy. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 14:45:09 -0700 From: Andrew Hamlin Subject: Re: [loud-fans] sad news > Seeing this just now made me realize his soundtracks also had a big > impact on me. I was really into that style of > edgy-if-you-were-especially-sheltered pop that he featured in his > movies. Heck, I never thought of myself as especially sheltered, music-wise at least (I was probably the only kid in middle school with a copy of TROUT MASK REPLICA, and yes, that probably explains why I don't have any friends today), but I fell for those soundtracks. "If You Leave" can still almost make me cry. "Left Of Center" still sounds like it's about me (assuming I could write a decent song). A movie-loving friend of mine actually put SIXTEEN CANDLES on his All Time Top Ten Films list. The savage Asian stereotyping ruins that one for me, but PRETTY IN PINK spoke plainly, and sometimes painfully, to what I went through. Of course, people too young or too old to be teenagers in the 80's might have missed the whole thing (and not feel like they missed much), Andy I just published a novel about music. Early in the process of writing it, I was warned by a similarly music-obsessive friend that writing about music is like dancing about architecture.[1] Since that first somewhat menacing reminder, Ive heard the line frequently. At first blush, the claim is a smugly dismissive one: verbal descriptions of music are doomed to be pointlessly, perhaps even ridiculously, inferior to actual music. As a reader, I resisted this idea; it just felt false, though I couldnt quite say why. But as a writer, this assertion paralyzed me: I didnt want to waste two or three years trying to produce something that could not be produced.[2] I tried to put aside the lines foundational snobbery (My music is too ineffable for your inky art), and then, reassuringly, it seemed like nothing more than a truism: words are words and music is music. And perfume is perfume; paintings are paintings; facial features are facial features. Yet writers are never counseled against attempting to evoke paintings or smells or faces or feelings or buildings or the nonmelodic sounds of jackhammers, thunder, or snoring. What was so elusive about music that it couldnt be captured by words? - --from "Dancing About Architecture" by Arthur Phillips; read the whole thing (plus the footnotes) at http://www.believermag.com/issues/200907/?read=article_phillips ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 23:10:22 EDT From: Markwstaples@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] sad news In a message dated 8/9/2009 5:51:16 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, andrew.hamlin@gmail.com writes: Heck, I never thought of myself as especially sheltered, music-wise at least (I was probably the only kid in middle school with a copy of TROUT MASK REPLICA, and yes, that probably explains why I don't have any friends today), but I fell for those soundtracks. "If You Leave" can still almost make me cry. "Left Of Center" still sounds like it's about me (assuming I could write a decent song). A movie-loving friend of mine actually put SIXTEEN CANDLES on his All Time Top Ten Films list. The savage Asian stereotyping ruins that one for me, but PRETTY IN PINK spoke plainly, and sometimes painfully, to what I went through. TROUT MASK REPLICA? Did you have some off-his-rocker uncle that tried to mold you, or something? "Andy, roll a joint just like I showed ya for your uncle John while I fish through the tape case for WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH." I love Suzanne Vega. Even spent time with her book THE PASSIONATE EYE. The best concert I've ever seen was seeing her perform in 1990 at Spirit Square in Charlotte. My many yeared disgust with Howard Stern (I couldn't remember his name while writing this, so I Googled "obnoxious shock jocks") began when he pissed me off proper one day about 15 years ago when he talked about Suzanne Vega and wanting to have sex with her--saying "she has a look you just want to mess up" or something like that. I was like, ewww--HE has a look you just want to de-louse. I just thought, this guy's a dick, and I don't mean detective--and SOO disrespectful to her. Too bad being crude is his only claim to fame--others have genuine talent that brings theirs. I can remember once, about 9 years ago I think, mentioning my love for PRETTY IN PINK on here, my frustration with the chosen ending--you remember that? (I think it just fueled anti-Mark fervor, but, what didn't in those days?) Dammit, Duckie should've wiped the floor with Blaine's linen trousered butt--then made him eat BMW keys. No, I'm not harboring any unresolved class resentments--but like Billie Jean once said in her "legendary" movie, "Fair is fair." John Hughes movies are no longer a guilty pleasure to like or taboo to discuss because we've all gotten old and are now a safe distance from our youth to enjoy them again, no longer seeing them as emotioally pornographic. Just my theory. - --Mark np The Gentle Waves SWANSONG FOR YOU (I like Isobel better without trees screaming) ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V8 #144 *******************************