From: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org (mad-mission-digest) To: mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Subject: mad-mission-digest V7 #262 Reply-To: mad-mission@smoe.org Sender: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk * If you ever wish to unsubscribe, send an email to * mad-mission-digest-request@smoe.org * with ONLY the word unsubscribe in the body of the email * . * For the latest information on Patty's tour dates, go to: * http://www.pattygriffin.net/PattyInConcertDB.php * OR * go to http://www.atorecords.com * . * PLEASE :) when you reply to this digest to send a post TO the list, * change the subject to reflect what your post is about. A subject * of Re: mad-mission-digest V7 #___ gives readers no clue * as to what your message is about. * Also, PLEASE do not quote an entire digest when you reply to the * list. Edit out anything you are not referring to. mad-mission-digest Saturday, October 18 2003 Volume 07 : Number 262 Today's Subjects: ----------------- MM: tonight's show ["Sarah =^..^=" ] MM: Re: Daniel Menaker's piece [Amy Silver ] MM: Call Me Crazy ["Janet C. Jordan M.D." ] Re: MM: Call Me Crazy [garveygirl70@comcast.net] Re: MM: Call Me Crazy [Oldrancocas@aol.com] MM: DVD [lindee37@webtv.net (Lindee)] MM: Re: Where do Patty Griffin's songs come from? article ["Don Henn" Subject: MM: tonight's show Hi y'all -- Just wondering if any of you could give me an estimate of how long the show lasts? I'm heading to the Cleveland, OH show tonight (heading out from Detroit) and I'm planning on trying to record it with my mini-disc recorder. I need to know how many md's I'll need. I have two, but I'm not sure if I'll need more or not! I'm sure someone has mentioned how long the show lasted at some point on here, but I can't recall! Thanks!! I'll report out on the show tomorrow! If any MMer's are there, look for me! I'll be with my friend Angi, I have medium long brown hair and I'll probably be wearing a black sweater...hahaha. Peace, Sarah ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You're gonna dance to jah music, dance, We're gonna dance to jah music, dance, Forget your troubles and dance, Forget your sorrows and dance, Forget your sickness and dance, Forget your weakness and dance. . ." -- Bob Marley - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Use custom emotions -- try MSN Messenger 6.0! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 12:21:43 -0400 From: Amy Silver Subject: MM: Re: Daniel Menaker's piece That was interesting reading, although I thought it amusing that Daniel Menaker, whoever the hell he is, thinks himself wiser than Patty Griffin and Plato. If Patty says the songs are coming from elsewhere, then they are, buddy. Amy Silver longtime lurker songwriter who knows when a song is sent from beyond (good), and when it's not (bad) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 11:31:41 -0500 (Central Daylight Time) From: "Janet C. Jordan M.D." Subject: MM: Call Me Crazy OK, I just have to say that in the last 5 years I have become inflicted with this poetry/lyric psychosis. I don't read poetry or even like it, generally It does however run in my family, like many genetic afflictions. I have had poems emerge from me that have words in them that I have to look up in the dictionary; phrases that I don't understand, that are always identifiable in some remote piece of literature that I've never read. It's quite intriguing to me. I am not religious or superstitious...I look for the science in things. My explanation is that memory lives in our DNA and is indeed passed on. We only think of memory as something in our limbic system (brain) but honestly. ......girls, is it not true that our CELLS remember the size of our mother s hips and replicate them in us?? There is not doubt in my mind that Patty's lyrics emerge from her, sometimes from unknown places. Janet ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 20:46:50 +0000 From: garveygirl70@comcast.net Subject: Re: MM: Call Me Crazy You're crazy > OK, I just have to say that in the last 5 years I have become inflicted with > this poetry/lyric psychosis. I don't read poetry or even like it, generally > It does however run in my family, like many genetic afflictions. I have > had poems emerge from me that have words in them that I have to look up in > the dictionary; phrases that I don't understand, that are always > identifiable in some remote piece of literature that I've never read. It's > quite intriguing to me. > > I am not religious or superstitious...I look for the science in things. My > explanation is that memory lives in our DNA and is indeed passed on. We > only think of memory as something in our limbic system (brain) but honestly. > ......girls, is it not true that our CELLS remember the size of our mother > s hips and replicate them in us?? > There is not doubt in my mind that Patty's lyrics emerge from her, sometimes > from unknown places. > Janet ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:08:18 EDT From: Oldrancocas@aol.com Subject: Re: MM: Call Me Crazy OK, you're crazy. Then again maybe not? I have stuff come to me all the time too. But mostly from the voices in my head. I try not to listen to them but they always win. yarglive ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:20:35 -0400 (EDT) From: lindee37@webtv.net (Lindee) Subject: MM: DVD Hi guys..well, I just watched the DVD twice and it is scrumptious. Up until this point, I've had no means to see Patty on video and had only seen the ACL show once so I really enjoyed hearing her talk and laugh, etc. I LOVED what she had to say about the fans at the end there and also her obvious affection for her dog was so charming. The CD is breathtaking and I'm taking it to bed in my diskman shortly-lol BUT..you can imagine my disappointment when I realized it was NOT the Ryman concert on DVD-BAH! That really would have been phenomenal to watch-oh well. I don't know why I was confused-it just seemed like when Patty explained the DVD when I saw her in July, that's how it sounded to me. I just love watching her perform and have no performance video at all of her. Well, she is just unbelievably great and I'm happy to have A Kiss In Time. I did just by a DVD player last night. I ended up getting a Panasonic and the guy at Circuit City had to give me quite a lesson on how to hook everything up. I have a VCR, WebTV and now the DVD...so I had to buy this little box to hook everything into. Everything is working great except the VCR...there is one cord that has nowhere to go now so it is not playing, but I'll figure it out I guess. I'm very happy with the DVD player....I bought a Tori Amos DVD yesterday and got my Patty one today-my two favorite gals! Linda "Sometimes I hear my voice And it's been here Silent all these years..." ~Tori Amos~ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 22:54:29 -0400 From: "Don Henn" Subject: MM: Re: Where do Patty Griffin's songs come from? article Thank you Holly for deciding to post this. I had not seen it before , & think it stands head & shoulders above any other critique of Patty's & composing in general , that I've read. The writer seems to one of few intellectuals who abandon the ivory tower to find where the rubber meets the road. I was prepared to dispute some of his apparent conclusions , but as I read on , I found that , like a true intellectual , he could hold opposing ideas in his mind w/o drawing a concrete conclusion. The only thing I can take him to task for , is when he writes " not anything mystical , but just the unconscious". JUST the unconscious! To my mind the human subconscious is the center of mysticism. We are not singly responsible for it. It contains the sum of human experience. Our own & those who have impacted us throughout our lives. While a writer is solely responsible for what comes from it , the foundation is created in some known , but many more unknown ways by our shared human experience. I did like the way he said that Patty sees it as sort of a mission ; a Mad-Mission no doubt : ) With all apologies to Daniel Menaker , I condensed his article for brevity's sake , & for those MMers who don't like to wade through long intellectual discourse. I hope I've kept the gist intact You never thought you'd be alone This far down the line And I know what's been on your mind You're afraid it's all been wasted time Don Henley/Glenn Frey "Wasted Time" Performed by The Eagles Don Songwriter Savant Where do Patty Griffin's songs come from? By Daniel Menaker I talked to the accomplished and idiosyncratic country/pop/folk/whateversinger/songwriter Patty Griffin and she was insistent on the point:that there is something bigger than just herself involved in writing her songs. For a long time, these kinds of artistic disavowals struck me as coy But recently, with 40 years' worth of listening and editing and writing experience perhaps reaching a critical mass, I've come to realize that most people who make this sort of artist-savant claim actually believe and mean exactly what they say. Griffin is a good case in point. Like many songwriters she sometimes starts with the music with a phrase or a bit of melody, with a guitar riff and the words come later. But when they do, "they seem to come from nowhere," she says ; "they just sort of pop out." At other times, she simply sits and makes silly rhymes. "For 20 minutes or a half an hour I'll just make nonsense rhymes or just rhymes about my dog," she says. "And then serious ones begin to happen." Songwriting can be a physical discipline for her, as well. "Often I have to move my body in a certain way, like exercising, to begin to get into the right rhythm for writing a song." When she said this, she moved her shoulders around in a swimming kind of way, to show what she meant. It's not surprising that Griffin and many others like her honestly feel in the grip of something "beyond" themselves, feel "inspired" when they are writing music. These creative experiences have a long, grand tradition and literature. (Plato, an early proponent of this idea, says that "all good poets, epic as well as lyric, composed their beautiful poems not by art but because they are inspired and possessed.") What did come as something of a surprise to me in our conversation was the vehemence of Griffin's resistance to the possibility that she and she alone is responsible for her music. When I said I thought that "inspiration" might actually not be anything mystical but just the unconscious, creative right brain delivering artifacts to the conscious left hemisphere, she not only disagreed but seemed upset about the notion. "There has be something more than that," she said. "The mystery is beyond that. The fact that you're writing about experiences you've never had shows that. I mean, sometimes the whole room alters when I'm writing a song." It makes sense that she would believe so passionately that she is somehow channeling these elegiac, quasi-protest songs. She needs to believe that she is being spoken through, and may fear that taking the credit , being a musical amateur will undermine what she sees as a sort of mission. In a limited way, she's wrong, as every other artist and Plato are when they assert that the human artist is the instrument of some greater force.Unless the person involved is one of the many plagiarists at large these days, he and he alone made the work. But in a broader way she's quite right. The brain is, from one way of looking at it, the receptacle, the vessel, for all kinds of information, data, stimuli from the outside world, and, often without any intellectual plan, the mind of the artist will synthesize and structure and give emotional depth to some portion of these stimuli, will chew them up, and spit out art. In that way the artist is an instrument after all, an instrument played by the inchoate world around him. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2003 00:01:14 EDT From: SM082987@aol.com Subject: MM: Cleveland show Excellent show all the way around, everyone did a good job with their songs. Jackson Browne even made an appearance on stage and sang two songs. Also, Dar called her father on a cell phone and together with the audience wished him a happy birthday from the stage. This was a very classy performance but I'm too tired to type the setlist. brian ------------------------------ End of mad-mission-digest V7 #262 *********************************