Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Fri, 22 Jan 1993 11:11:43 EST
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Gimme three steps out that door

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...
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