From: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org (precious-things-digest) To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V1 #256 Reply-To: precious-things@smoe.org Sender: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "precious-things-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. precious-things-digest Wednesday, December 11 1996 Volume 01 : Number 256 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Tori concert--LA Re: Y KANT Tori Amos Intro Tape ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 10 Dec 96 11:32:00 PST From: "Layton, Laszlo" Subject: Tori concert--LA Tickets for the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas Concert, Night #1 at the Universal Amphitheatre with TORI AMOS go on sale as follows: Wednesday, December 11th at 7:00pm. Tickets are $30. Limit 2 tickets per person. Ticketmaster outlets, Tower Records and Blockbuster locations. Wristbands will be handed out at 5:00pm. Charge by phone at 213/480-3232. Good luck! Laszlo ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 18:41:34 -0500 (EST) From: Nadyne Mielke Subject: Re: Y KANT On Mon, 9 Dec 1996, Delirium wrote: > Does anyone know where I can find an ORIGINAL Y KANT TORi Read on CD for a > some what decent price??? I am looking to spend around $120... Check out record shows. The last time I went to one, there were a few people there selling YKTR on CD and vinyl. /nad *************************************************************************** * Nadyne Mielke, CS majour, Southern Tech, Marietta, GA * * * * "I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of * * oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate * * commerce. " -- J. Edgar Hoover * *************************************************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 22:42:09 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: Tori Amos Intro Tape TORI AMOS: AN INTRODUCTION SIDE A "Crucify" 4:58 [from the album =Little Earthquakes=, 1992] The leadoff track from her first solo album; also a single and a video. Continues to be one of her most popular songs: she still performs it live. Important and empowering for its theme of a woman liberating herself from self-victimization. "Girl" 4:06 [from =LE=) A nearly-forgotten, more upbeat rock track on a similar theme; the riff may owe a little to Stevie Nicks' "Rhiannon." Exceptional contrapuntal bridge. "Winter" 5:40 [from =LE=] This was the song of hers that first caught my ear, and I still rate it among her very best. Also a single, it is widely admired. Very poignant lyrics, potent music-box atmosphere, tremendous orchestrated build in the faux bridge/recapitulation. "Precious Things" 5:04 [from the limited-edition live EP =Crucify=] Much of her reputation stems from her extraordinary live performances, and this =LE= song has always been a standout; she deliberately wrote it as a virtuoso workout just like her favorite guitar songs. (Note the relatively sedate applause; lunacy prevails more recently.) "Leather" 3:12 [from =LE=] She never sounds more like (early) Kate Bush than in this music-hall mode; but her angle on sexual politics is very much her own. Not nearly as light as it sounds. "Me and a Gun" 3:44 [from =LE=] Written to help her deal with her own rape, it struck a chord with many listeners, and is the most socially-important piece she's written. This close-focus no-frills =a cappella= folklike tune stark as an Appalachian ballad permits no dodging from what it has to say. She still performs it at every show. "Take to the Sky" 4:20 [from the single =Winter=] Some of her better songs are B-sides not on any of her albums. This sprightly rhythmic treat appears to concern her previous musical career as a rock-band singer. Another tremendous bridge. "Here. in my Head" 3:53 [from the import single =Crucify=] Another B-side which stands with "Winter" among her very best, remarkable for the way it builds to the coda. "Pretty Good Year" 3:25 [from the album =Under the Pink=, 1994] The leadoff track from her second solo album, here mostly because it's so typical; notable for the way its smooth progress twice veers off course and rights itself again. "The Waitress" 3:09 [from =UtP=] And after that normative track, here's the most eccentric and daunting, alternately ominous and furious. (But it's not merely angry, it's =about= anger.) Favorite track of a number of listeners. "Baker Baker" 3:20 [from =UtP=] From an artist not noted for subtlety of feelings, the restraint of this underrated track makes its strong emotion strike all the deeper. And as it does to this side, it often closed her live sets. SIDE B "Cornflake Girl" 5:04 [from =UtP=] Another single, this is possibly her most complex and accomplished composition, a successful medium-large form with jazzy syncopations and crossrhythms. "Bells for Her" 5:20 [from =UtP=] Her first track not dominated by ordinary grand piano; the instrument here is a species of prepared piano. And remarkably, it's a spontaneous composition: it did not exist before this first and only take. "Honey" 3:47 [from the single =Pretty Good Year=] Though there were fewer B-sides for the second album, they included this gem featuring characteristic piano arpeggios doubled by Steve Caton's gorgeous acoustic guitar. "Beauty Queen/Horses" [from the album =Boys for Pele=, 1996] The lead-in to her third album is double-barrelled: an exquisite folk improvisation over a single note/drone, and a fairytale ballad that recalls "Winter." Note the more freely-flowing bridge and the way it feints the return to the verse. "Blood Roses" 3:56 [from =BfP=] First appearance of harpsichord in her output; as with many songs on the album, the bridge (full-voiced then =sotto voce=) is this dark and bloody number's strongest moment. "Little Amsterdam" 4:29 [from =BfP=] Ghosts of verses and choruses can't disguise that this is a =passacaglia=, a series of variations over the brooding, obstinate piano vamp. One of several Southern Gothic-flavored songs on the album. "Caught a Lite Sneeze" 4:24 [from =BfP=] The album's first single, this roof-raiser was (sans rhythm track) a show-stopper--despite the logistical difficulty of switching between piano and harpsichord--on her most recent tour. "Famous Blue Raincoat" 5:37 [from =Tower of Song=, 1995] She has recorded (on singles and compilations) at least a half-dozen covers, and performed a further dozen-plus live; this may be the strongest, both the great Leonard Cohen piece itself and her interpretation. On the face of it his ascetic Romanticism should not mix with her febrile Mannerism; but this (for her) restrained performance opens the song's well of emotion without sentimentalizing it. "Hey Jupiter" 5:10 [from =BfP=] Though it occurs near the middle of the album, it seems appropriate to close with this third of her finest songs, the best third-album song, and perhaps the pinnacle of her work so far. Overpowering emotion stemmed only by bare accompaniment and simple, stately form. ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V1 #256 *************************************