From: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org (mad-mission-digest) To: mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Subject: mad-mission-digest V8 #95 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 V8 #___ 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 * Also, PLEASE do not quote an entire digest when you reply to the * list.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 Thursday, April 22 2004 Volume 08 : Number 095 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: MM: Cold As It Gets [Danalee7@comcast.net] MM: Mad Mission Accomplished again [Danalee7@comcast.net] MM: In Store at Tower April 21 [John Bernhard ] MM: Patty album artwork ["Becca Jarry" ] MM: Patty in Folkwax, and at Tower ["Luca, Joseph" Has a Dylan-esque (folk period) sound, doesn't it? Ya- that is a good way of describing this one. Dana ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 07:41:41 +0000 From: Danalee7@comcast.net Subject: MM: Mad Mission Accomplished again Someone from the list who knows told me about an Indie record store here in Antioch so I got over there today- unfortunately no Patty Griffin there tho and I didn't want to wait a week to order it as I won't be here- he says people in Antioch listen to R&B and hip hop and classic 70's so he doesn't keep many other artists in stock. oh. Gulp. Guess I don't fit right in. He also said the older folks (like me, he didn't say) are stuck on meth and that makes them stuck in a time frame of like Lynard and that is all they listen to and they are still wearing the same clothes as back then too. Frozen in time. yikes- what a terrible evaluation of my generation. I said " Is that speed? " I don't even know for sure as I have been living under a rock I guess and I have never listened to Lynard altho I guess I am still wearing the same clothes as back then- jeans and clogs etc, etc. I will do so till I drop- will not be wearing old lady clothes ever , but then, I cannot be wearing those little nothings my girls wear either. Something about 3 X 8 lb babies does that idea in forever. Bad idea. No I will never look like 16 again, but I do follow some newer artists that were not around when I was 16. If they had been around when I was 16- back in '65- I am sure they would have captured me then as well as now. I was always into music that meant something- folk mostly. Issues that mattered. I did press on tho in my Mad Mission and did find more ID Cds in Berkeley- at Amoeba and Rasputin so I picked up 3 more for 3 of my girls who I have brainwashed. :) Arielle and Jayne have to learn it quick- they will both be going to 1 of the East Coast concerts in 2 weeks. My step-daughter Jaime is in Atlanta but she loves Patty too. I'll have to mail hers. Arielle already snapped hers up like crabcakes. :) Thanks, Mom. Tonite I saw Catie Curtis at Freight & Salvage- I love that girl- she had a new group from Brooklyn open- Girlyman- they were so cute and very good. See, I am not totally stuck in the sixties. Hope you are all managing to find your very own ID and enjoying it finally. Dana- lone Patty Griffin holdout here in Antioch- several of you told me you feel my pain- you all make me smile- I hope you are not in the same sitch! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 09:08:40 -0400 From: John Bernhard Subject: MM: In Store at Tower April 21 Well, this was not like the in store in 2002. That one had maybe 50-60 people and was very intimate and casual. This time we had about 300-350 folks jammed into the upstairs of Tower Records and people were stuffing the aisles and spilling out over into the sides. Doug came out and tuned the guitars and tested the mics and then Patty came out. Someone yelled out " We're going to Pizzaria Uno after the show, wanna come?" which got a laugh out of Ms. Griffin ( a reference to her 5 yr stint waiting tables there ). She also had some family members in the front row and commented how she can't take the cold weather anymore ( and weather was pretty nice here yesterday ! ). Set was short and sweet. LOVE THROW A LINE DON'T COME EASY TOP OF THE WORLD ICICLES FALLING I didn't hang around for the signing but my guess is Patty was there at least an hour. Judging by the turnout I'd say Patty's fanbase in Boston has exploded since 1000 KISSES. Hope some other MM'ers made it to this nice little freebie. John B ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 11:51:32 -0400 From: "Becca Jarry" Subject: MM: Patty album artwork Found this tidbit on the web. Traci Goudie Turns It On Press Release, Aug 8 2002 To paraphrase an old truth: Behind every good artist may just be another good artist. The CD packaging and a music video for the new Patty Griffin CD 1000 Kisses have been created by Traci Goudie, an emerging force in the music video field. Goudie, who has her own Texas-based production company, Ghetto Sushi Bowl, threw everything she had into this project. And she has a lot. She designed the CD cover, in part with her still photography; she will direct the music video; and she will provide the visual effects in that video, using her technical skills on tools that range from a Quantel Henry to Mac Photoshop and AfterEffects. The Griffin CD was released in April. The music video shoot, on Super 16, will begin in mid-June. This is Griffin's third commercial release. The Dixie Chicks' last tour was named after a song of hers that they covered. Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt cover her songs as well. Goudie has worked with Griffin for awhile and it is the music video director's incremental approach that has made this such a winning union. "She's a true artist of great caliber and, as a person, quite shy so as our friendship developed we did a couple of shoots for my book, for fun, and we felt comfortable together," says Goudie. "I sent my book to her manager and landed the job for shooting the photography for the CD packaging and the design and layout. They started to trust me more and I started to do all of her ads and all of the press photography, a documentary, a little live video that she's selling as merchandise and now the music video." This is much the way Goudie's career has gone, from one stepping stone to another. She began as a graphic designer then became a photographer, incorporating digital work from her effects background into her stills. A couple of shows opened the door for doing music photography which she parlayed into doing music videos. "I just specialize in interpreting music into visual imagery, through photography or video or the design of packaging," she says. Goudie shoots film and video for the stills. For the video work, she uses an XL1, recording most of the things she does for a current documentary, and has worked with formats ranging from 35mm to Super 8. In the post field, she trained on a Discreet Flame and is adept with many other effects and compositing packages. Goudie has been shooting and directing music videos for three years. Her big break was an 11-minute piece she did for the BBC Channel 4 of the indie punk band The Trail of Dead (for whom she had previously done still photos) that led to a video on MTV. "Here's an example of my favorite part of the job. I was hired by MCA a couple weeks ago to document both on video and stills, Patty Griffin recording a Patsy Cline tribute for them. So I got to go in the studio and be within a foot of her as she transcends and sings this brilliant Patsy Cline song. It was so touching. To be intimately involved with the caliber of artists that I'm getting to work with, I just feel really lucky," says Goudie. Austin-born, Goudie is atuned to this Texas town's music scene but finds that her clients come from outside as well. The Trail of Dead is Austin-based, but they skyrocketed in Europe, and as a result the need for more imagery arose, and they later signed with Interscope here in the states. Patti Griffin is a Boston transplant. "It's weird. I've found that even though I live here, the success I've gained has been through channels that have been outside of here. It helps that there is a mystique associated with Austin. It also hinders in a way because it's the southwestern region and a lot of people don9t associate successful editorial or post or directors with here. It's kind of a double-edged sword," says Goudie. "Sometimes it's really great but other times I'll probably have to prove myself being female and being from the southwest." But not to everyone. Patty Griffin already knows her story and has wholeheartedly signed on. _________________________________________________________________ Test your Travel Quotient and get the chance to win your dream trip! http://travel.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 10:50:53 -0400 From: "Luca, Joseph" Subject: MM: Patty in Folkwax, and at Tower Howdy---- Managed to catch the last three wonderful songs last night at Tower. The place was completely mobbed. I brought my three-month-old son with me, who did quite well. He met Patty, who couldn't have been sweeter to him and me. She signed IP to him; I told her that he'd seen/heard her at the Songwriter show last October while he was in utero. A Boston Globe photog took a photo of Patty and Luca, and then interviewed me...alas, nothing in today's paper... Today's Folkwax review the CD; the reviewer, Arthur Wood, gives it a 10 out of 10. The average reader rating so far is seven, but you can change that in a hurry. I've included the link to the page where you can vote and read the article (tell them "Darboy" sent you!). I've also pasted in the review below if you don't want to go to the site or vote... http://www.visnat.com/entertainment/music/folkwax/albumreviews.cfm?aaa=zzz#R 619 Griffin Scores Another Classic, (04/22/04) Tantamount to two years ago, in the process of reviewing Patty Griffin's 1000 Kisses, I marked that recording out as a work of art and potentially my selection for album of the year. While a couple of fine releases surfaced later in 2002, none of them topped Griffin's tour de force. In the fall of last year she released the CD/DVD live retrospective A Kiss In Time. While the shadow of Griffin's unreleased Y2K album Silver Bell didn't fall across the latter disc, it had informed 1000 Kisses in the shape of the magnificent biographical reflection "Making Pies," and does the same for this new collection in the form of "Top of The World" and "Mother Of God." In the process of preparing the way for Silver Bell, A&M issued a number of promotional discs and one of them included Patty's bluesy "Standing," produced by Craig Ross, who is at the helm for Impossible Dream. At the time A&M listed the song as "brand spanking new" and as best as I can tell by comparing both recordings they're the same [See Note #1]. First up is the soulful, up-tempo "Love Throws A Line," which opens lyrically with a series of flash card images predicting doom and disaster - "Let's write a story of earth tidal wave, we run out of luck, we run out of days" and "There's a war and a plague, smoke and disaster." All in all, the theme is an urgent reveille call to mankind to wise up, start listening and paying more attention, to one another "just before the flood runs into the valley." When it seems like it's too late for mankind, Griffin adds the necessary (and longed for) cure-all "love throws a line to you and me." "To the end of the earth I'll search for your face, For the one who laid all of our beauty to waste, Threw our hope into hell and our children to the fire, I am the one who crawled through the wire" sets the scene in "Cold As It Gets." Portraying a different facet of the condition explored in the opening cut, it amounts to its political twin. Later on (in the second cut), Griffin reflects on "a million sad stories on the side of the road," then tellingly censures the developed world's 21st Century with "I couldn't care less, I come first" attitude/voyeurism with "strange how we all just got used to the blood, millions of stories that'll never be told, Silent and froze in the mud." Having painted these bleak images Griffin goes deeper "I know a darkness that's darker than cold, A wind that blows as cold as it gets, Blew out the light of my soul," yet by the close she dreams of "Some sunny street not so far away," and closes with the authoritative "I only live to see you live to regret everything that you've done." Do we really have to wonder who "you" is? The slightest flicker of light at the end of this - so far - unremittingly dark tunnel, arrives in the form of track three, "Kite." Beautiful melancholy is one description for what Griffin consistently achieves in word and melody, and from "Kite" onwards wave upon wave of that particular emotion permeates the fabric of Impossible Dream. Supporting herself on piano, played hesitatingly as suits the atmosphere, in "Kite" Patty relates early on "All the trouble went away, And it wasn't just a dream." So what are these "Kites" that "In the middle of night we try and try with all our might, To light a little light down here" and "In the middle of night we dream of a million kites flying high above the sadness and the fear"? Are they earnest prayers, hopeful wishes or life goals yet to be fulfilled? The image-filled lines "Little sister just remember as you wander through the blue, The little kite that you sent flying on a Sunday afternoon, Made of something, light as nothing, Made of joy, that matters too, How the little dreams we dream, are all we can really do" - particularly the fragility and hope encapsulated in the third and fourth, must surely be the most touching that Griffin has committed to paper, and in closing she shifts the overview from earthbound to universal, "The world turns with all its might, the little diamond coloured blue" and then adds "I keep sending little kites until a little light gets through." While the radio friendly "Love Throws A Line" is the first single to be drawn from this recording, "Kites" is one of a handful of Da Vincis on Impossible Dream. As I noted earlier, "Standing" is a soulful number and though short on words, it's the sort of song that you might hear emitting from the open door of a Muscle Shoals, Alabama studio. On the cut, a heavenly choir of voices - is that you Emmylou? - supports Griffin. A medium-paced shuffle "Useless Desires," is a goodbye song wherein the narrator reflects, "I can't make you stay, I can't spend another ten years wishing you would anyway" and adds later, "Every day I take a bitter pill, It gets me on my way, For the little aches and pains, The ones I have from day to day, To help me think a little less about the things I miss, To help me not to wonder how I ended up like this." In "Top Of The World" Griffin's lyric employs the voice of a man, now passed - "One night they called me for supper, But I never got up" - who goes on to express some, now eternal, regret that "I wish I had known you, Wish I had shown you, All of the things I was on the inside." By way of emphasising his frustration having reflected upon the "might have been," as "Top Of The World" fades Patty's parents perform a verse of the Mitch Leigh/Joe Darion song "Impossible Dream," from the musical The Man Of La Mancha. The narrator in Griffin's lyrically repetitive "Rowing Song" has left home and as time and distance take that person further and further away, the narrator recounts how "letters from home never arrive, And I'm alone all of the way, All of the way alone and alive." Irrespective of the latter, you have the feeling that it's a place where the narrator wants to be. The semi-spoken opening lines "The lights are flashing on the highway, I wonder if we're going to ever get home tonight" imbue "Don't Come Easy" with a Springsteen-ish feel. Of course, on 1000 Kisses Patty covered his "Stolen Car." At the heart of Patty's effort lies the sentiment "If you break down, I'll drive out and find you, If you forget my love, I'll try to remind you, I'll stay by you when it don't come easy, When it don't come easy." "Don't Come Easy" once more finds Griffin at the piano, and this track and "Rowing Song" feature some fine understated brass work from Michael Ramos [See Note #2]. I wonder to what extent "Florida" is biographical in terms of Griffin's life, since the Mainer lived there for a period, two decades back? At the outset the story line features two innocent young girls who went "sailing down A1A into the arms of Florida," and is retold in retrospective by one of them - now a wiser, and worldly wearier traveller, who is still resident in the sunshine state - "Isn't it hard sometimes, Isn't it lonely, How I still hang around here, There's nothing to hold me." At the piano, once more, Patty's seven-minute plus melancholic symphony "Mother Of God" immediately follows, and shares a connection to the foregoing cut in the verse, "When I was eighteen I moved to Florida, Like everyone sick of the cold does, And I waited on old people waiting to die, I waited on them until I was." As for references to (The Virgin) Mary, they appear initially in "When I was little I'd stare at her picture, And talk to the mother of God, I swear sometimes I'd see her lips move, Like she was trying to say something to me" and later in "I live too many miles from the ocean, And I'm getting older and odd, I get up every morning with my cup of coffee, And I talk to the mother of God." Winding down gently the acoustic guitar led "Icicles" is the closing cut on Mission Impossible. Mission impossible be damned, this eleven-song masterpiece finds Griffin gazing at us from the top of the mountain, so trumpet it loud and clear "mission accomplished and then some." Notes: Note #1: Both tracks are four-minutes four seconds long. Craig Ross and Jay Joyce were the co-producers of Silver Bell. Note #2: Ramos was instrumental in the inclusion of "Mil Besos" on 1000 Kisses. Arthur Wood is a founding editor of FolkWax ------------------------------ End of mad-mission-digest V8 #95 ********************************