From: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org (precious-things-digest) To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V10 #18 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 Saturday, January 29 2005 Volume 10 : Number 018 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. [Nadyne Mielke ] Re: Fw: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. [trent with that boom boom ] Preference for Albums based on when you discovered Tori [Maria Aguirre ] Re: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. ["T Taitt" ] Re: billboard beekeeper review ["Pete Lambert" ] a new way to hear Tori ["Jon Haverman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 20:38:22 -0800 From: Nadyne Mielke Subject: Re: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. At 11:56 AM 1/26/2005, Richard Handal wrote: >Tanisha said: > > ps - Am I the only person who didn't really like Boys > > For Pele? >Dear God, I certainly hope so. I certainly hope not. We're all allowed to draw our own opinions about each individual album, after all. :) >I'm curious if you can speak to this situation. Are there certain things >you can point to that causes it to be that way for you? You're a musician, >too, which does nothing but add to my confusion as to how this can be >possible. I dislike the production on BfP. It's very uneven: too sparse in some places, too overdone in others. And someone needed to exercise a bit of editorial control. I mean, really, what is the meaning of 'tuna rubber a little blubber in my igloo'? I've come up with several possibilities, but they all boil down to 'too much red wine'. :) As an album, I almost never listen to it. I vastly prefer live versions of all of the individual songs. If I'm listening to all of my music on shuffle and a BfP song comes on, I don't generally skip it, but I can't remember the last time that I played the album all the way through -- probably the last time that someone told me that they couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't like BfP and they hoped that I was the only Tori fan who doesn't. /nm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 00:44:31 -0500 From: "Lisa Zwick" Subject: Re: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. I don't think there's more than 1 or 2 songs on there that I actually like. I never even listen to the cd. I have it burned onto an mp3 disc with the rest of her cds, and when I'm listening to her stuff I just skip right over the whole BfP. - -Lisa - ---- > ps - Am I the only person who didn't really like Boys > For Pele? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 23:43:50 -0800 From: Dana Clark Subject: Re: precious-things-digest V10 #17 so... i get digest, and i never ever respond (well except that once), but now i'm going to respond lots and lots. sorry for the weird format! =P here we go... tanisha wrote: > > ps - Am I the only person who didn't really like Boys > For Pele? god, i LOVE pele. choirgirl is by far my favorite, but pele... god, it speaks to me on such a deep level. soooo beautiful. and the harpsichord? *drools* i never thought harpsichord could be so phenomenal. i wish she'd revisit it! jeffrey wrote: > > Those are really the only ones that I really listen to much, CaLS > being one of my favorite songs of all time, though. I found the > album to be kinda dark. true... but i think that's one of the reasons it's as rich as it is. the darkness... can't stay away from the darkness!!! tanisha wrote: > i found the album as a whole quite self-indulgent, > like she basically threw everything she'd written > during a certain period time on it whether it was a > strong song or not. there are tunes on that record > that to be honest, i can't even get through from start > to finish. i also find it interesting that it was her > first self-produced record, because i strongly suspect > that another producer would have suggested trimming > the fat and showcasing the 12 or so most > well-developed compositions. i, then, am certainly glad she produced it. i think the entire album as a work of art is strong as is... i think without even the short songs it would certainly be lacking. there is something about listening to the album from start to finish that is phenomenal. of course, as you said, it is just an opinion. =P i remember being shocked that so many people dislike venus, because i loooooove venus as well. i think the album i'm not really attached to is under the pink. i love all the songs as individual units, but as a whole i just don't care about it either way. could live without it really. very strange, that. tony wrote: > > Joking aside, Pele was by far my favorite album, and tragically, the > last one I felt a real, emotional connection with. I hope Beekeeper > proves more satisfying than the last few releases. And this time > I'm staying very far away from reading any of the lyrics or > listening to any of the music until I get a copy of the real thing > in my greedy little hands!! i hope you are as in love with it as i am, tony... it is truly beautiful. not a fave, but definitely beautiful. dana ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 04:02:34 -0800 (PST) From: trent with that boom boom Subject: Re: Fw: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. No -- for me BFP is my least favorite album. There are some good songs on that album but, overall, I don't like it either. LE and UTP are my absolute faves! trent Tony Fernandes wrote: Tanisha wrote: "ps - Am I the only person who didn't really like Boys For Pele?" - ---------------------------------- meet me @ http://TR3NT.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:09:28 +0000 From: "Tom xxxxx" Subject: Re: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. tanisha said: > >ps - Am I the only person who didn't really like Boys >For Pele? Wow. I'm pretty amazed at that question. Not that I think everyone has to love BfP, but I thought the general consensus among the fans was that it was one of her best. I think of Pele as having some of Tori's highest highs of songwriting but some of her lowest lows (not counting bsides). The songs that are good are among her very best: Doughnut Song, Horses, Marianne, Blood Roses, Sneeze, Lucifer. The lyrics are dense and dark; it's a journey deep within her psyche and not everything is pretty and nice. Parts are thorny and difficult. It took me a long time to love Widow, Red Baron, and Twinkle, and I'm still not a fan of Amsterdam and Agent Orange. Overall though, Pele just gets richer for me over time. And, the music is strong throughout the CD, even when the lyrics are not; just listen to the music in Muhammad and Lucifer and I think you'll see what I mean. That is not to imply the lyrics are weak on those two songs, just that the music is so damn amazing. About six months after I got Pele, some really bad shit went down in my life. I played Pele over and over again. I don't know what I would've done without this CD and Lou Reed's "New York." All that said, it's not my favorite of her CDs. That would have to be Little Earthquakes. If I had to rank her CDs....er....I guess it would be: 1. Little Earthquakes 2. From the Choirgirl Hotel 3. Boys for Pele 4. Scarlet's Walk 5. Under the Pink 6. To Venus and Back 7. Strange Little Girls Anyway, it sucks that I'm at work now, because I want to drink a cup of strong coffee, stare out at the snow, and listen to Boys for Pele. May none of your hinges falter, Tom M. "Can you Mr. Bush light the sage" - --- Tori Amos, "Indian Summer" ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 08:47:03 -0600 From: Maria Aguirre Subject: Preference for Albums based on when you discovered Tori Hey EWFs, I've thorougly enjoyed reading everyone's opinions on TBK and other of T's albums. I love when this list generates this kind of discussion. Anyway, I have a hypothesis: I believe that there is a a direct relationship between one's favorite album and the era during which one discovered an artist. For example, my favorite Tori album (though I am obssessed with all of them dearly, except SLG, that is the album which we do not speak of) is Boys for Pele. I just adore it and fully emotionally connected with it, as I have with most of Tori's work... but something about that album just feels more quintessential Tori to me. However, I didn't discover Tori until 1995, and that album's release coincided with the begining of my love affair (obssession) with Tori's music. Does this make sense? In other words, I think that most people's favorite Tori album is usually (not always of course) correlated with the time period of their first Tori experiences. I have a feeling this hypothesis applies to other musical artists. Any thoughts on this? Any of your experiences support or refute this? in loving kindness, ~~Maria ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 10:44:06 -0500 From: "Sarah =^..^=" Subject: Re: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. I know others who don't like BfP that much, but for the life of me I can't understand why. I think it's one of her most creative and emotional ones yet. I mean, we got gems like Father Lucifer, Marianne, Hey Jupiter, Prof. Widow, Caught a Lite Sneeze ... what's not to like!? The only thing I can think of is it seems a bit darker or moodier than the others. And maybe has a bit more quirkiness to it? But, to me, the quirkiness is the "tori-ness" in it. :) The shorter little songs like Mr. Zebra or Agent Orange add a little spice to it for me. And the almost dissonant Twinkle is brilliant. Just my thoughts.... :) Sarah - ----Original Message Follows---- From: Richard Handal handal@min.net To: precious-things@smoe.org (Precious Things) Subject: Re: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 14:56:12 -0500 (EST) Tanisha said: > ps - Am I the only person who didn't really like Boys > For Pele? Dear God, I certainly hope so. I'm curious if you can speak to this situation. Are there certain things you can point to that causes it to be that way for you? You're a musician, too, which does nothing but add to my confusion as to how this can be possible. Thanks, Richard Handal, H.G. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 07:44:34 -0800 (PST) From: e m Subject: Re: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. - --- Jeffrey Clark wrote: > > songchicky wrote: > > >ps - Am I the only person who didn't really like > Boys > >For Pele? > > > > > > > I found the album to be kinda dark. this made me laugh a bit b/c it seems like such an understatement. i think that is exactly why a lot of people love pele is for her darkness and williness to go places not gone before musically. > Just another thing I found kinda interesting about > beekeeper, which may > be kinda similar to what others said about how it > seems to go through > all her previous albums... Several songs on > beekeeper do sound rather > inspired by her earlier songs, almost as if they're > "sequels". I'll > just put my list of what I think sounds like what. > > Of course, I could be completely and totally nuts :D > I don't think so at all. I have picked up on that a lot. I think it makes a lot of sense since the last thing tori just worked on was her Best Of collection for Atlantic. She was walking down memory lane and cleaned up some songs, and maybe that has influenced the sound on this album b/c I hear bits a pieces of every musical style she has done including her Ellen Amos days & YKTR days (a little, maybe some vocals). but they seem to be there. there also seems to be some self references to earlier song lyrics. So maybe this is some continuation of the sonic journey she took when she worked on TOAL. i cannot wait for the release to get a real copy of the cd (or two) and also to hear more people's thoughts on what she did musically here. If you are a big fan of Pele's darkness or musical complexity, do not expect to connect to this one necessarily. There is a lot emotion on this one, it is just expressed completely differently. There are some touches of pele in some songs, but it is barely there to me. And that is fine. I wouldn't want her to recreate the same album twice, and this one, while it borrows from the past, it is such an amalgamation, it creates its own unique sound. Although it is not really a musically innovative revelation of sound or her best masterpiece, I still find the songs getting stuck in my head non-stop and have already got into the album. I enjoy walking with her with headphones. - -ellen __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 11:32:16 -0500 From: "T Taitt" Subject: Re: The Beekeeper - My faith restored. hi richard & jeffrey & hello for the first time to tony =) what i love about music is how subjective each person's reaction is to it and how an album will impact 100 different people 100 different ways. actually, i do have two close friends, one an amazing writer and the other an equally talented musician, who felt the same way i did about Pele. one of them said he was barely able to listen to the whole thing from start to finish, due to what he referred to as "extraneous inclusions". for me, Pele was the first Tori in which i could be completely bowled over by one track and then hear several that left me cold. each artist has a vision for his or her album, and the challenge is in realizing that vision. Tori made the record she wanted to make and that's fantastic. as i said, some tunes on it i absolutely adore. (i forgot to list Doughnut Song as one of the tracks that i liked). i do listen to the record, just very rarely and when i do i program several of the tracks out. listening to it from more of a producer's standpoint, i just think it's a classic case of less-is-more, and to me, BFP would have been an infinitely more affecting album with 5 or 6 fewer tracks. i don't have anything against long albums - i love them - but only if they're focused and cohesive and i just didn't feel that way about Pele, especially after LE and UTP which i found to be such beautifully contained portraits. anyway, it's not as if my feelings for tori changed because Pele wasn't my cup of tea; i don't expect to love everything that any artist does any more than i'd expect anyone to like everything that i do. my stint as the catering assistant was during the Dew Drop Inn tour so obviously i was still crazy enough about her to want to be at her shows. just because i didn't think the album held together as a whole, it didn't mean that Hey Jupiter and Putting The Damage On couldn't make me weep! and, in a nice turning of the tide, the followup to Pele turned out to be her finest hour, in my opinion. Choirgirl blew my mind like nothing had since LE and although LE will always be my sentimental fave, from a musical and production standpoint Choirgirl remains my favourite Tori album to this day. As a collective work, it was everything to me that Pele wasn't. anyway, i'm gonna shut up now. criticizing another artist's work in a post, even mildly, feels a little weird... especially someone who's been as inspirational and influential to me personally as tori has. i'm in awe of her and always will be, and i'm sure that The Beekeeper will bring its share of goosebumps as every album has before it. peace&love, t.t. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 23:25:01 +0000 From: "Pete Lambert" Subject: Re: billboard beekeeper review Me said > > >Genre: EASY LISTENING > > > > Thwack. > > > > This is going to take a lot of open mindedness on my part. Richard said >Surely you don't put much stock in the categorization of a Tori Amos album >by some record company hack, Pete. Yes. Thank you. I am taking deep breaths. It will be fine. It will be brilliant. It's just, a part of me cant help thinking, why does she have to be so darn HAPPY these days?!? It's very selfish ;o) No, only kidding there of course. I'm actually fascinated to see how Tori is going to deal with that thorny issue of Contentment In The Female Singer Songwriter. And I'm sure its going to be amazing... Pete xxxx and i hate and i hate and i hate easy listening _________________________________________________________________ It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN Messenger today! http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 20:51:01 -0500 From: "Jon Haverman" Subject: a new way to hear Tori ELVIRA MADIGAN - Angelis Deamonae Third album from this one-man Swedish gothic/dark/black metal force is an interesting one: a cover album unlike any you have heard before. Mastermind Marcus H. Madigan tackles tracks from a diverse handful of artists: Tori Amos, Chris DeBurgh (4 songs!), Scorpions and others! ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V10 #18 *************************************