Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Fri, 6 Nov 1992 12:20:02 EST
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Libby Doe may be your Santa Claus

From:         Hosko <RMCB@DLRVM.BITNET>
Subject:      AAD-ADD-DDD-DigRem-DigMas-DigReMix-Help!

>   In the meantime some record companies have said that they will no longer
> mark CDs as AAD/ADD/DDD - why?  Could it be that ADD/DDD CDs sell better
> that AADs or is it just that this system is out of date, and that a new
> one is needed?

It has become a commonplace that analog recordings tend to sound "warmer"--
without getting too Cagean here, a little bit of tape hiss does seem to more
closely resemble the sound of the Real World (tm), with all its imperfections.
I have heard that many recordings are now being made in a manner that would
have to be called DAD: recorded digitally for maximum fidelity in each part,
then mixed down to an analog master for that "warmth," and then converted to
digits. Maybe they can't use DAD because there's a band using that name-- they
were originally known as "Disneyland After Dark," but the Disney conglomerate
sued, so now they use the initials. They're a pretty humorous band, BTW, if
you like stuff on the punk/metal interface.

From:         "Leonard Watkins" <ISTS024@UABDPO.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Moose calls for the touring impaired

> Some may not understand this, but alot of people treat their pets better
> than their mate, pampered may not be the right word, but i'm old-fashioned
> and think the man should provide for the woman and beware of her needs and
> give not only the things she needs, but also want she wants if feasible

Reminds me of that classic bumper sticker you see on cracker pickup trucks:
"My wife, sure. My dog, maybe. My gun, NEVER!"

From:         "Leonard Watkins" <ISTS024@UABDPO.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Idiocy incarnate

> I hate to say this , but Daron is right on this one if you'd like the chapter
> and verse i'll supply it. I don't want to sound like i'm Gay bashing, but from
> birth we are attracted to the opposite sex, all of nature is this way, birds
> bees, all the animals. So IMHO if you are gay there are some crossed wires
> somewhere......Apologies to any one who may be offened, but it's just my
> opinion and my opinion is not law, so take it with a grain of salt...L.W.

It's something like "Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, it is an
abomination in my sight," it is not, and buried somewhere in Leviticus or
Numbers? There's a lot of proscribed behavior in there, most of which nobody
cares so much about any more-- for example, you probably eat cheeseburgers,
and I do too, despite that I grew up with the laws of Kashruth. To anyone who
really wants to take that verse literally as an excuse to dump on homosexuals,
I would invited them to show how they explicitly follow *every last one* of
those incalculably tedious laws in the Bible's most boring chapters, or else
explain why they should be exempted from a later analyst's opinion that "Let
he who is without sin cast the first stone."

The verse that was the source for kashruth referred to a specific idolatrous
practice of the day: there was one real sicko Baalist sacrificial rite that
really did involve cooking the kid in its mother's milk. It was later taken
out of context and expanded to the whole canon of keeping kosher, for the
highly pragmatic reason that the ritual cleanliness happened to result in
better public health: much lower incidence of food poisoning.

Similarly, a lot of the Biblical and Talmudic law on sexuality was codified
from observations of what worked for the community's purposes. A menstruating
woman was considered unclean (which is common enough among primitive tribes),
but the Jews went further and declared that the uncleanness persisted for a
week after the menses stopped. Well, if you know your calendar, you observe
that that basically coincides with the beginning of the fertile period: it
was a way of encouraging population growth. My gut feeling is that the ban
on homosexuality was similarly motivated-- at least to keep the menfolk from
attaining sexual relief during the two weeks they couldn't sleep with their
wives!

I bet if the prophets were alive today, they would repudiate nearly everyone
who presumes to speak in their name. Pat Robertson is one of the money changers
Jesus would drive from the temple IMHO.

From:         "Leonard Watkins" <ISTS024@UABDPO.BITNET>
Subject:      RE: Ear Trouble

> Thats basically the way i do it i understand all of what you said and know
> all that although i really don't consider it 'theory" i look at theory as
> much more in depth...Well it looks like i'm going about it the right way.
> I just need to go about it more

A lot of music theory is stuff you know anyway, just the theory gives you the
names for it.

From:         Ken Koester <MAINT2@ERS.BITNET>
Subject:      Kilopost

> A quick question:  what albums is O'Connor with the Dregs on?  I missed
> out on the short time he was with those guys.

Just the last album-- not the live reunion thing that just came out, but the
last one they did before they broke up, the one where they incorporated vocals
to try and get some hits, can't remember the title now, dammit...

> Umm--the Saltarello was a *kind* of music, not the name of a particular
> piece.  What is often called the saltarello is actually "Lamento di
> Tristan," often followed by a piece called "La Rota."  Both of these
> pieces are on the Renbourn =Lady and the Unicorn=, not =Sir John Alot=,

Dammit again, of course, you're right. Both of these CD reissues came out at
the same time. If you can only do one, I venture the opinion that _Unicorn_
is the better. But I think I'd rather hear Pentangle than either.

> Uhh--a V-I w/o inversions or any other funkiness is a perfect authentic
> cadence, the most final sounding way to end a song in western tradition,
> for the past, oh, 600 years or more, so I'm not surprised--how else you
> gonna end it?  And I-IV is nearly as common a start.

Zappa once said something about the difference between white people's music
and black people's music boiling down to the notion that white music will go
directly from I to V, setting up for the cadence, but black music will go
from I to IV, and then often right back, bypassing the cadence altogether...
something in there about the philosophical difference between "being" and
"becoming."

> His court operas are in Italian, because that is what the court wanted.

That's right, blame everything on the bourgeoisie :-)

From:         MIke Masuda <MASUDA@SJSUVM1.BITNET>
Subject:      YOWZA

> How do you think people come up with new chords on the guitar?
> I think most of them come about from just messin around on the
> guitar, or a blatant misfire on a chord being played by an amateur.

I once heard the notion that a lot of what was interesting about Chuck Berry
and Bo Diddley as guitar players was, because they had these huge fingers,
they kept hitting extra strings in their chords, fingering added sixths and
other additional notes that they didn't necessarily intend, but which added
an unprecedented harmonic richness to the tried and true chord changes.

> Hats off to Sonia for taking her first step into guitardom! :) :) :)

I agree, and I would add my best wishes for staying on the net.

I may disappear myself-- layoffs, and rumors of layoffs...

From:         Ilia <CC29@IONA.BITNET>
Subject:      far too many...

> I wonder, do you know why "Gibraltar"? Is there any connection with
> Weather Report song? BTW, how would I sign on to those lists? (if you
> recall, I don't have Interent access).

Gibraltar just got its name because it was originally just about heavy rock,
and Gibraltar was one of the heaviest rocks they could think of. (Ayers also
comes to mind, but then we might think of Kevin-- who, I just found out, just
backed out of a proposed American tour in December :-( ).

You can subscribe to Gibraltar from a Bitnet address, I did myself. But it's
not the Listserv style of list. You send a message saying "Subscribe me" to
an administrative address called "gibraltar-request" at whatever node it's
on (sorry, I forget again) and a human takes care of it, eventually.

But I did remember to bring in Can's _Landed_. Here's the track list:

"Full Moon on the Highway"   3:28
"Half Past One"              4:34
"Hunters And Collectors"     4:17
"Vernal Equinox"             8:39
"Red Hot Indians"            3:34
"Unfinished"                13:20

Enjoy!

From:         RTURNBUL@TOROVM1.VNET.IBM.COM
Subject:      The irreverent reverend

> Why the knock from everyone on Fleetwood Mac? Now I know many of you prefer
> early Mac stuff (I only know "Hypnotized" and "Oh Well", but from the high
> praise they've received I think I'll check into their blues stage a bit more),
> but do you really think _Rumours_ is that bad? Or is it just a comparison?
> Yeah, I guess they have been kind of "loungy" since them Californians joined,
> but I still rank _Rumours_ right up there with other albums from the 70s

Even "Hypnotized" is too late-- the author of that was a different Californian,
Bob Welch. Peter Green was the balls-- had B.B. King's high-tension vibrato
down pat, but unfortunately had some of his own hellhounds on his trail and
flamed out early on.

I once got to play with a device Lexicon made to change the speed of a source
tape without changing its pitch. It was kind of a backwards harmonizer synched
to a variable speed tape recorder; it would take the signal at the speed the
tape was played at, and restore the pitch to its original. It was intended to
speed up things like radio advertisements so you could cram them into shorter
time slots, but we tried it on some of those damn turgid Stevie Nicks tunes.
Sped up by 50%, they almost begin to rock out.

> Not a huge fan of anything from _Tusk_ on though...

Actually _Tusk_ holds some interest for me: Lindsey Buckingham recorded his
part of the album at home, and tried some peculiar low-budget Eno stunts.
Not hugely successful, but at least interesting...

From:         Chris Marshall <XP53@IONA.BITNET>
Subject:      PINK FLOYD

> I have heard comments lately that the recently announced
> boxed set was for "Kollector" types ... why wouldn't
> it be recommended as a starter set for someone who
> doesn't have anything?

Well, $150 is hardly "starter" money. I may get it myself, as I don't have
any of the Floyd material on CD-- but it would depend on a number of things,
like cash flow... I'm really trying *not* to replace my entire collection
with CD's, only to have them dangle another new format in front of me just
as soon as I've finished :-( The new digital cassette format is scheduled
to be rolled out for this Xmas shopping season; any of you gonna get one?

From:         Ilia <CC29@IONA.BITNET>
Subject:      RE: Pink Floyd Box Set

> sound clarity and a higher signal-to-noise ratio do not increase one's
> pleasure from listening to a piece. I think, Syd-era music is such
> a case. Anyway, if the musical industry keeps remastering every
> single band it puts on CD, one day we will see a blank tape labeled
> something like: "Velvet Underground. Digitally remastered to reduce
> noise." :)

Heh. I'm tempted to agree; I've heard some pretty lame CD remasterings.

When I was a kid, I heard most of my music on clock radios with 2" speakers,
or in the car, or on $25 close-and-play type phonographs, and having to pick
out musical information (e.g. chord changes) under these rather user-hostile
conditions, I kinda got to where fidelity wasn't terribly relevant to my
listening. I like clarity above noise, and I like to hear all the parts,
but I can't hear the detail the hi-fi snobs hear. And of course concert
realism doesn't apply in a medium where producers commonly go for effects
that could never happen in a real world situation.

From:         SEARS_ER@BENTLEY.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Wrap ourselves in The Constitution

> Maybe it's me but I could have sworn I signed up for a list discussing all
> types of music, not the Constitution and the definitions of words.

Obligatory revolutionary comment: ever heard "Independence" by This Heat?
It's a song setting of part of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold
these truths to be self-evident" through "... to alter or abolish it." One
of the best political tunes I've ever heard, highly recommended.

From:         "(Russ Gelinas)" <R_GELINAS@UNHH.UNH.EDU>
Subject:      Gentle Giant

>   Put down another vote for Three Friends from Gentle Giant.  Spent
> much time listening to it in college.  I especially like the section
> that starts out quietly, then hits you with these loud guitar power
> chords.  Great shocker at parties!

Really, I don't remember any power chords... I remember, in "Prologue" (the
first song, duh), an intricate melody played on a loud guitar, then a quiet
bit, then the guitar coming back in, but it's single notes-- admittedly a
powerful, Marshall-amp kinda sound.

From:         G_SWANK@TWU.BITNET

> I've read about Glen Branca before...was he ever in the Swans?  He sounds
> really interesting. What album would you recommend as an introduction to his
> music?

If anything, it went the other way. I'm not a Swans aficionado, but I know
that the guitarists in Sonic Youth were all Branca alums-- I seem to recall
that they all met in Branca's band, or at least the happy couple. There's a
real good source of Branca information, a book called _Sonic Transports: The
Future of Our Music_, by Cole Gagne, a NYC music critic. He discussed what he
considers the four most significant musical creators of our time-- Branca,
Fred Frith, "Blue" Gene Tyranny, and the Residents; interviewed them all
(except of course the Residents), wrote some history and very insightful
criticism, and provides real detailed discographies.

Myself, I like "Ascension," but I think it was on an obscure indie label and
may not be currently available. Some of his "symphonies" are cool, but not #1.

> Sal "sorry I skipped the subject line"

Don't let it happen again :-)

From:         DARON MCNAB <IDPM@SNYCENVM.BITNET>
Subject:      re: Bravery & Cowardice

> I suppose you went to every concert and heard every thing Hetfield said!
>
> I know what song it was and I also heard what Hetfield said. Thank You!
>
> But of course I'm going to wrong, according to everyone else!

Right or wrong is independent of what the list thinks, so stick to your guns
if you've got better information that we do. Obnoxiousness, however, is a
matter of opinion, and it seems like we're all in pretty good agreement:
you're an asshole, dude.

From:         DARON MCNAB <IDPM@SNYCENVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Idiocy incarnate

> I've got one word for you:
>
>                           GET_A_LIFE!

On the other music list I subscribe to (I'm not McIntyre; this one's often
more than enough!) there was a series of insulting postings from someone who
claimed to be from Singapore, who called himself Darryl Dung. He was later
revealed to be a hoax. I can only hope that Daron is likewise; I'd hate to
think of someone with his manifest character flaws voting, for example :-)

From:         MIKE <VANVMIKE@VAXA.CIS.UWOSH.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Public Enemy

> OK.  Let's screw the "expected public morals."  What the hell.  You
> reformed me.  One question......can we keep morals though?

Presumably you have principles that govern your behavior, whether you can
articulate them or not. These are your morals. (Unless you're a complete
aleatoric fruitcake, and decide every action you take in your day by throws
of the dice! Heads, I go to McDonald's and eat lunch; tails, I walk in
with an assault rifle and blow everyone away...)
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