From: owner-trajectory-digest@smoe.org (trajectory-digest) To: trajectory-digest@smoe.org Subject: trajectory-digest V1 #21 Reply-To: trajectory@smoe.org Sender: owner-trajectory-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-trajectory-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk trajectory-digest Wednesday, October 1 1997 Volume 01 : Number 021 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: trajectory-digest V1 #20 ["Jeff Donaldson" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Sep 97 10:34:21 EST From: "Jeff Donaldson" Subject: Re: trajectory-digest V1 #20 Am I posting to the correct address?...let me know... Hi Meredith: I was in the audience last night as well... "Pause" *IS* the song about the birds, isn't it? Which means the other one is ? Cannot express enough how fucking raw and edgy "bellyfish" came out at the end of veda's set! It literally clawed at you...jangly and jarring and wacked with the just-offness of veda vs. susanna's vocals. Really the highlight of the evening for me. I'd been aching for her to get back on the guitar, since she'd spent a LOT of time down at the low end of the keyboard (which was wonderful, but it left me feeling awfully dark and low) and I'd been thinking to shout "bellyfish!" but then she beat me to it. My one gripe was the sound problem--when she started my Big Fave "strange, sad" there was some serious short-in-the-mic-somewhere. They accomodated for it eventually, but it kind of spoiled the mood, y'know? Was reminded of having seen Holly Cole have similar problems once (at Fez, a place I would LOVE veda to play) whereupon she stopped mid-song and VERY nicely said "I'm going offstage until you guys can get this fixed"...no diva about it, just no-nonsense. And she did go off and they did fix it--FAST! I know mention has been made of ms. hille's hair in the past--can only say "what up?!" with the current kaleidoscope that's going on there on top of her head these days--loved it. Agree nearly completely with your assessment of Oh Susanna's set--does she ever play with a band? The monotony of composition was hard for me with her set, too...but her voice was great. And you're so right that when veda came out to back her (particularly the first time) her set livened right up, partly due to veda's amazing talent for the piano and partly because they did great vocals against each other. I also stepped out before Ms. Starr, so will be interested to hear what you hear. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 20:10:53 -0400 From: "Michael R. Abram" Subject: NYC SBT and Moog Greetings Hillebeans (as in "it doesn't amount to...") One note about Veda's terrific SBT performance last night at the Merc -- the sound system had a blown speaker, and the engineer had her vocal (and piano) up too loud, so the distortion was very distracting, as well as detracting -- I'm sure it bothered her, as well, judging from the way she fiddled with the mic. Meth wrote: > Oh Susanna has a > great voice, but imho all of her songs sound the same, and given a > week or > so to practice I could probably play the guitar better than she does. Don't say we weren't warned (by Veda), and Susan herself said "I'm here to cheer you up" in an ominous parody of the SNL guys. I said to Bob Moog "she's very monochromatic - black", because all her songs were s-l-o-w dirges and because she was, in fact, dressed all in black. BTW, I already play guitar better than she does, and that's not saying much :) I will agree that she has a powerful and expressive voice. > > As it was growing late we didn't stick around for Kinnie Starr's set, > but I plan to catch her tomorrow night. I'm sure we missed a really cool > contribution by Veda to that part of the show, but hey. You certainly did! Kinnie was much more interesting and varied than OS. She started with a poem, standing in the midst of the audience, and then sang along with a hip-hoppy sort of sampled tape. She moved up to the stage and started to play "Ophelia", broke a string and called for the "Saviour Bitch" (Veda referred to herself as the "Filler Bitch") to do a poem while she tuned her guitar -- Veda did that poem about "My Man" and made it sound completely extemporaneous, while drinking Kinnie's scotch. Kinnie never did restring her guitar, and broke another string later in the performance. She said it was retribution for her never changing strings because she liked them dead. Someone in the audience offered to lend her a Les Paul, but she said they were too heavy for her poor shoulder. She has an attitude reminiscent of Ani (although nowhere near her instrumental prowess), and a mixture of singing and speaking her lyrics (in English, Spanish, and French) that made me wish for more solid singing. The encore was a "contest" for "New York's Scrappiest Bitch", which involved them singing an hilarious "pastiche" (Veda caught some flak as the High Art Bitch for using that word) of lines from about thirty different tunes, and challenging audience members to identify at least five of them, starting with Hall & Oates' "Maneater" and including both Meredith Brooks' and the Stones' "Bitch". Wish I had a tape of that! > Oh yeah, one other seriously cool thing about the show was the fact that > Robert Moog (as in the Moog synthesizer) was in the audience, and I got to > meet him! Thanks, Michael, for giving me the opportunity to blather on at > him like an idiot about the fact that I studied his work in college. :} > (*How* do you know these people?!? And how did he like the show? I didn't > get a chance to ask him afterwards...) OK, in 1975 I had just graduated from Brooklyn Poly in EE -- BTW my senior project was a music "synthesizer" that plugged into a DEC PDP/8 minicomputer, and a compiler for the language that programmed it -- and I was trying to get a job in the musical electronics business. I went up to Buffalo and was interviewed by Bob for a job at Moog Music. I will be eternally grateful for his advice not to pursue it further, since he left the company almost immediately after that, and moved to North Carolina, where he now manufactures theremins (if you don't know what a theremin is, think "Good Vibrations" or Lothar and the Hand People). A few weeks later I got a call from Mike Matthews of Electro-Harmonix in NYC (probably prompted by Bob), and ended up working there for three years. Bob and I have remained good friends -- I attended his wedding last year to Ileana Grams, a philosophy professor at UNC Asheville. Besides being the consummate engineer and inventor, he is also (as you might imagine) a bit of a musician as well, and enjoys hearing many kinds of music. He was in town this weekend for the Audio Engineering Society show, and he came over to the house for dinner with Dorothy and me last night. Dot had to go to statistics class, so I invited Bob to accompany me to the Merc. I _knew_ he would be impressed by Veda, and sure enough he was! What was even more impressive was Veda's reaction when I introduced them - -- she gasped, threw her arms around his neck and gave him a big hug, prattling on about how she _loved_ the Theremin movie (by the "other" Steve Martin, and featuring Bob) and that she used a musical saw on "Sweet" because she couldn't get a theremin, and that she was getting more into electronics these days... I was just glowing. When Bob and I walked to the subway after the show, he thanked me for giving him an opportunity to hear some music that he would never have come across otherwise. That is one of my greatest pleasures in life -- introducing people I know to the wonderful artists like Veda that have been introduced to me by wonderful people like you -- and you know who you are! Lastly, one of Kinnie's pieces featured a lyric about "Grand Poobahs", and I shared a grin with Bob, since that is the title on his Big Briar business card... Great seeing Meth and Woj and Rachel there -- hope I'll meet more of you soon. Michael http://www.phonetheater.com "The air is full of fish and mystery" -- a.d. "Had a wet dream I fucked my stereo" -- Mutter (a BTT production) ------------------------------ End of trajectory-digest V1 #21 *******************************