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- Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!paladin.american.edu!auvm!MITVMA.BITNET!MHB
- Message-ID: <ALLMUSIC%93012211124820@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU>
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
- Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 11:11:43 EST
- Sender: Discussions on all forms of Music <ALLMUSIC@AUVM.BITNET>
- From: "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
- Subject: Gimme three steps out that door
- Lines: 179
-
- From: WK7@CORNELLC.BITNET
- Subject: Richard & Linda
-
- > Some of the songs Linda sings conjure up visions of someone languidly
- > floating along, eating mushrooms, and playing with a stiletto for that
- > 'special someone' ;)
-
- Heh. There's a story from the last Richard and Linda tour-- they were playing
- at (the late, lamented, but soon to re-open) Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in sunny
- Providence, RI. Linda was obviously pissed off, and alternately sucking down
- a bottle of wine and flirting with second guitarist Simon Nicol. Later, off
- stage, the bottle was empty, and Linda started hefting it, mumbling something
- like "I bet this could break a skull-- bet you can't guess whose!" Eventually
- Richard walked into the dressing room, where she was kinda hiding behind the
- door, holding the bottle at ready. He saw her and just rolled his eyes.
-
- And that, brothers and sisters, is why the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) forbade wine.
-
- From: "Gary M. Gettier" <gmg@ACCESS.DIGEX.COM>
- Subject: More Bungle
-
- > What is this song "Travolta"? I've seen this song referred to before. My
- > Mr Bungle CD has no such song. The name Travolta is mentioned in "Quote
- > Unquote" but that's not the name of the song. What's the deal here?
-
- Hmm, I have a song with "Travolta" in the title. It's the first cut. I think
- I detect the fingerprints of lawyers.
-
- Nobody knows who the other Bunglers are. They're not Naked City personnel.
- They claim they were doing that cutup technique before they hooked up with
- John Zorn-- it's not hard to imagine, if you generalize from the writings
- of William Burroughs to rock'n'roll :-)
-
- From: Hosko <RMCB@DLRVM.BITNET>
- Subject: Ricgard Thompson
-
- > the incredible 'No Roses' by Shirely Collins & the Albion Band.
- > If anyone likes the type of music that we're talking about here and
- > hasn't heard 'No Roses', then I suggest that they just go out
- > and buy it - there's no need to listen to it first, just take my
- > word.
-
- I can't agree with this recommendation. Collins' voice has never appealed to
- me-- it's wispy and somewhat ragged, and her sense of pitch is unreliable.
- Not that I demand perfection in singing, but she seems so microphone-shy, I
- just don't wanna hear it. To compare her to Sandy is ridiculous. My favorite
- Albion-related record is probably _The Complete Dancing Master_, a doctoral
- dissertation disguised as a record album-- 'Tyger' Hutchings took a lot of
- primary sources about prevailing community standards regarding dancing, as
- early as an extract from Chaucer (but mostly from the 17th-18th centuries),
- had his friends recite them, and complemented them with appropriate music.
-
- From: "Out,
- out - you'll not feel the fall-out..." <OLIVOTTO@ITNCISCA.BITNET>
- Subject: Tape dubbing aethics (WAS: LW listened to PG)
-
- > ... if someone dubs Pink Floyd the loss is different, since they
- > usually receive enormous advances from their record label, and so the ultimate
- > damage is really done to the label (not a bad idea, corporate rock still sucks
- > 90% of the time) rather than the band.
-
- They'll take it out of the band's hide. They might do it anyway-- remember
- Zappa's story about the pressing overruns that were never properly accounted
- for, and got snuck out the back door of the pressing plant late at night into
- a waiting car... But the way major labels pay bands is, ultimately, mechanical
- royalties on copies of the songs sold; all the front money is considered to be
- advance loans against their eventual royalties.
-
- Turns out something like 88% of the records released by major labels never
- sell well enough to make up these advance payments in actual sales, so the
- claim of the majors that they need to raise the in-store price of product
- to finance new artist development isn't entirely bogus. What is bogus is
- the thoroughly abysmal character of the new artists they choose to develop,
- but that's a whole 'nother story.
-
- > But at the same time, speaking -- so to say -- of the non-commercial
- > sense of the thing, I don't care that much. Advertisement is as important as
- > gain, in this field, and I had an interesting discussion about this with our
- > own Michelle May, now not on this list anymore, who "confessed" she wanted a
- > copy of our album on tape rather than purchasing the CD, and somebody talked
- > her out of this -- so she wrote and apologised. I wasn't upset about it, in
- > a sense, since I am curiously (and wierdly) torn between the idea that one
- > more copy, even if non-official, might possibly help us somehow indirectly,
- > and the need to recoup the production money.
-
- The Grateful Dead feel that much of their lingering popularity is due to their
- active encouragement of the tapers-- that the widely circulating Dead bootlegs
- not only capture those unpredictable "X-factor" moments where the improvising
- is really on, but give the fans more of a sense of participation in the whole
- experience, not being spoon-fed their entertainment like most of contemporary
- culture. Phish, who have often been accused of being Dead wannabes, seem to be
- taking this lesson too. We shoulda made Marco and Fabrizio play us a song at
- Rachel's house, then taped it and bootlegged it all over North America in the
- interest of making them famous (any help pay for Ian's college education :-).
-
- > 1) the album/song is impossible to find otherwise;
-
- I am extremely incensed at the dog-in-the-manger attitude of major labels who
- hold copyrights of important, in-demand records and won't make them available.
- Can you say _It's a Beautiful Day_? Thought you could.
-
- > Needless to say I am totally against unofficial releases which are
- > produced at low cost by some guy and are sold for-fans-only with 500% gain.
-
- This is called "piracy," and is abhorrent. The Dead tapers have a rough code
- of ethics, and one very important notion is that the distribution of concert
- tapes is not to be a profit-making activity.
-
- > But when I dubbed a tape (20 copies) of a Peter Hammill concert I had recor-
- > ded in Munchen I sent the man some money to cover copyrights. Call me what
- > you want, I thought it was just sensible. And, of course, I made no money
- > out of it. :)
-
- That's very sweet of you, Marco!
-
- > P.S.:FYI: the first version of "The Chessboard" on cassette, released in 1991,
- > had *at least* 30 non-official copies around. I know or I have gotten in
- > touch with that many people owning it, but they weren't in my sales list.
- > That cassette actually sold 200, so at least 15% of it were dubbed. I am
- > afraid that 40% is a not-too-crazy percentage, though. So life goes...
-
- Another reason for the push to make CD's the medium of choice for pre-recorded
- music is, they're harder to pirate. Since one of the alleged benefits of these
- new pseudo-fidelity media is that they're recordable, one wonders just what the
- fuck the majors think they're doing...
-
- From: Ken Koester <MAINT2@ERS.BITNET>
- Subject: Re: Trying to keep up
-
- > I thank you, and so do my sinuses--another headache I don't need right now--
- > However, since tape has less dynamic range than a CD, I find I still have to
- > move the knobs from time to time to account for the lows. Actually, what I
- > need is a program to find all the highs and lows & creatively adjust the
- > dynamics proportionally to fit the tape. This is the computer age, after all.
-
- That's called gain-riding, work that highly-trained (and commensurately paid)
- engineers used to do. You wanna throw more people out of work with automation?
- :-) Popular music is already horribly over-compressed, especially on commercial
- radio-- I remember hearing "Baba O'Riley" on an AOR station-- the piano chords
- were enough louder than the synthesizer burbling that you heard the synth fade
- in and out as the compressor tracked the piano. Very silly.
-
- From: Leonard Watkins <ISTS024@UABDPO.BITNET>
- Subject: TV Bands
-
- > Watching Andy Griffith (alltime favorite) and the Darlings were on there
- > playing and singing. I started thinking (that's twice in 1 week) i believe
- > the Darling's were probally the best TV band, are there any others you
- > can think of...........L.W.
-
- Didn't this subject come up at Rachel's house-- seeing Paul Revere and the
- Raiders on _Where the Action Is_? I could be persuaded that the Monkees were
- the best TV band. My wife still carries her Banana Splits fan card :-)
-
- A charming local band called Creeping Anatomy used to do a thrash version of
- the theme from _Maude_-- which was even sillier considering the band consisted
- only of a very good singer and a drummer. The singer has a new band now, whose
- name I forget, but they do _The Beverly Hillbillies_ in reggae tempo.
-
- From: Dave <USTS060@RUST1.DPO.UAB.EDU>
- Subject: LA Times review of TJL
-
- > It's usually time to be wary when a pop-rock artist takes a
- > radical turn from his demonstrated strengths. Remember Lou Reed's
- > "Metal Machine Music," a 1975 collection of grating electronic
- > noise by one of rock's genuine poets?
-
- This is a typical, if contemptible, mis-reading of Lou Reed's history and
- what _Metal Machine Music_ was all about. Of course, the function of rock
- criticism in the daily newspapers is to make the writers for _Rolling Stone_
- or _Spin_ look like they have a clue.
-
- > Sample line from the latter: *Your troubles will vanish / Your
- > tears will dry / Your blessings will just multiply / Guaranteed at
- > a price that is almost unbeatable / This offer is unrepeatable*.
-
- Fuck! I was gonna use this notion. "I don't care that you lied and you
- cheated / This special offer will never be repeated..." Ah well, nobody
- buys Urban Ambience for the lyrics anyway...
-