Subject: Re: the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as prince
Actually, I find the Gold Experience album to be overall one of his stronger more 'recent' efforts. There are many, many wonderful songs on that album. Then again, I doubt one could find any two Prince fans that agree completely on what are the good records. After all, I think Emancipation has mostly great stuff, and Crystal Ball has a large proportion of high quality stuff as well.
A friend of mine once posited that 1999 defined the sound that Prince was to use for the rest of his career, and that every texture contained on every subsequent album was essentially a slight variation on the 1999 album in some way.
- -matt mitchell
>>Hmm, I hadn't seen anyone mention "Come" before as a fave. I thought the
contractual-fulfillment albums ("Come", "The Gold Experience", and
"Chaos and Destruction") were kinda weak, though "Come" does include
one of my favorite of his tracks, "Solo".
- -
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Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 16:38:58 EDT
From: Acousticlv@aol.com
Subject: toys n orchestras/ moek & toyk
dear zornies
a brief snip of a personal letter i got from Corey of Toychestra
(thanks to you all for this toy music thread)
i sent him a fwd of the zorn-list-digest to peruse, and he treated
me to a fab description of a moekestra gig.
steve koenig
n.p.: big city orkestra: a child's guide to noise (7")
"Steve, Thanks for the [zorn] digest. It's cool--reminds me of the
Bay Area New Music list we have here... By the way, the Residents did
some cool toy stuff, and we get compared to them quite often.
By the way, Toychestra played with Moekestra! on that
smashing piano bill that the digest discusses. It was
last Saturday and it was amazing to see and hear. 28
musicians and a whole lot of smashing. I was struck by
how cathartic that destruction ritual can be for a
group of people--afterward, everyone picked over the
piano bits as if it were a turkey carcas atThanksgiving.
<BR></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">i don't think this message is appropriate, being that it actually has SOME
<BR>Zorn content :) but um.. I picked it up the other day, and while I must say
<BR>I'm personally eagearly awaiting Songs of the Hermetic Theater, the pieces
<BR>presented on this album are definitely worth hearing.
<BR>As I've mentioned a lot before, I'm a very big fan of Zorn's semi-classical
<BR>compositions, maybe just a little bit more than his other projects. But don't
<BR>get me wrong, I hold them all in VERY high regard, just ask my girlfriend,
<BR>who thinks I'm a pretentious jerk. :)
<BR>Anyway here are some random thoughts. "Love, Madness, and Mysticism", while
<BR>being a good collection of pieces, is not an excellent collection of pieces.
<BR>Specifically disappointing for me, was the "Untitled" piece for Solo Cello.
<BR>While Friedlander's virtuosity is very well displayed, it was never really in
<BR>question. "Amour Fou", 20 minutes in length, is by far this album's greatest
<BR>achievement. It's hard to point out exactly what's so striking here. The
<BR>instruments mesh perfectly, and his vocabularly of visual sound is as lucid
<BR>as ever. Almost always, I think, he throws in at least one quote from another
<BR>one of his pieces, and I think there's a pretty clear example in this one.
<BR>This album is very different mood-wise from his other written works. I don't
<BR>really have any other ideas on the subject now, I'll listen to it some more,
<BR>and if something pops up, I'll let you know.
<BR>from,
<BR>matt
<BR>http://www.mp3.com/mattwellins
<BR>
<BR></FONT></HTML>
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- -
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Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 22:37:16 -0400
From: "Caleb T. Deupree" <cdeupree@erinet.com>
Subject: Re: weird instruments
At 10:34 PM 5/15/01 +0200, Efr=E9n del Valle wrote:
>
>The author is Bart Hopkin and the publisher "Ellipsis Arts". I think there
>is actually a magazine dealing with strange instruments that has something
>to do with this book.
The magazine *was* Experimental Musical Instruments, but I believe it is
now defunct. Hopkin published two compilations, the one already mentioned
and another whose name is escaping me. Nevertheless, Anomalous carries
many back issues of the magazine as well as the compilations, so interested
parties can check there for specifics.
- --
Caleb Deupree
cdeupree@erinet.com
- -
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 01:10:07 -0400
From: "Jeton Ademaj" <jeton@hotmail.com>
Subject: Consolidated Queer 1
some specific replies, in order of people who first reacted:
Ben: For the most part, when 'scholars' look for 'gayness' in music, they're
not looking for aural suggestions of samesex lordosis or penetration
(although i'd be down with that!), what they're looking for is usually more
complicated: suggestions of emotional coyness or concealment, abstract
(sometimes plainly phallic) inferences into instrumentation ("..the two
violin melodies seem to wrestle with each other...") or a host of other
sometimes shaky techniques. Scholars may also wish to infer a general
existential effect due to an artists sexuality (eg, some 'gay' artists may
have experienced a greater than average amount of anxiety about their
romantic or carnal pursuits, etc)
This is where u err when u say that sexuality is not as universal as
gender/race/religion: in any given locale there will be at least 2 different
gender identities, and consciousnes of racial identity would be in the
context of none (homogenous societies where people don't know/care about
such difference) to one(Us n Them) or multiplicitous (NYC), BUT, They will
ALL share a sexual consciousness just as much as one of joy, pain, boredom,
comedy or drama. i think u confused sexuality with sexual oppression, and of
course gay studies would be concerned about the experience of either or
both. Furthermore, I think reading racial oppression into Coltrane's wails
is a taller order (requiring more abstraction) than hearing an almost sexual
wrestle in the duets of dolphy/mingus---but of course THAT'S JUST ME. I
think both types of reading are possible, incidentally.
ps: (from your first response) your D was really a dressed-up C.
Steve: I'm sorry u felt the need to defend yourself, because it wasn't my
intent to goad u And i'm unpersuaded. i do believe the *particular* things u
said to defend yourself were largely in line with the "multiculturalism run
amok" canard i included to begin with, and i think most responses to this
have been in that vein. When Bill leapfrogged my initial question ("what the
fuck is so ridiculous") by conceding personal homophobia as a factor that
intensified his winking concurrence with your point, it was polite but
banal. i knew that already. When u 1st mentioned the dolphymingus theory u
set it up with "described, in all seriousness, as" it's already clear u
utterly disagree, but it was the Seinfeld reference which irked. it seemed a
way of inoculating yourself against accusation. What i'd actually hoped for
was a focused argumentative rebuttal ("obviously Mingus and Dolphy shared a
contentious relationship as evinced by yadadada but blahblah and foofoofoo
suggest that it was nonsexual, and yet all that the 'scholar' had to show
was zibzibzib..."). instead u joined the growing chorus singing the straight
white man's burden, while complaining about a lack of credible argument.
Thomas: what exactly did the "african aurally raped" story have to do with
the points discussed beyond being an additional complaint on the multiculti
