Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Mon, 11 Jan 1993 10:29:04 EST
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Get a life... with the dreamer's dream

OMC (obligatory MasterCard :-)-- on the strength of several net.mentions I
picked up the Eric Gales Band record with the three guys on the front cover.
It's not half bad-- I can hear a lot of Hendrix wannabe-ism, but they're not
gushing about it, it's more like that's the rhythm they grew up with and so
that's how they play it. Used copies are available here real cheap, under $5,
so if any of you fans want me to pick you up one, send me private E-mail...

From:         Hosko <RMCB@DLRVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Manassas Lyrics

>   I've got a little problem making out one of the lines from the song
> _Bound To Fall_ from the first Manassas album. Maybe someone could
> help me out? The line in question is the third in the second verse:

That was the song I liked best on the album, and it turned out to have been
written not by Stills and company but by Brewer and Shipley of "One Toke Over
the Line" fame (talk about yer one hit wonders). It appears on one of their
albums, which may have a lyric sheet. You'll probably have to scour the real
dusty part of some classic rock radio station's record library to find it...

From:         Hosko <RMCB@DLRVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: The rain, the park, and other things

> >There are a number of Tull CDs that clock in at 77-78 min.  - Tim
>
> My longest CD is Fairport Convention's _The History Of_ which clocks in
> at 78:29 .  I did once come across a file somewhere on the network which
> contained a list of the longest CDs. I'll have a look tonight and see if
> I've still got it, but I think the longest was just over 80 mins!!!

The longest I can think of offhand is Rykodisc's Mission of Burma compilation,
which consists of all of their _Vs._ album (good pun, no?), the six song EP
_Signals, Calls, and Marches_, the A sides of the singles "Academy Fight Song"
and "Trem Two," and a couple of unreleased demos (different takes than Taang!
got hold of for their posthumous Burma collections). This thing clocked in at
80:11, if I remember correctly. _Sonic Geology_, Rykodisc's similarly diverse
collection of the early Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, is also over 80 minutes,
and may in fact be even longer than the Burma. The Burma CD misbehaves in my
player: I can play it through, if I want to listen to an hour and 20 minutes
of Mission of Burma (right), but I can't skip ahead to particular songs :-(

From:         spideroni <REWOICC@ERENJ.BITNET>
Subject:      boiled alive

> i finally got around to listening to the _boiled alive '92_ cassette that
> they released last year. i don't even remember when i got it, but it fell
> behind a bunch of books on the floor and i completely forgot about it until
> i unearthed it when cleaning the house last week.

This was the tape they were flogging when they were here last. I didn't pick
it up. Is there enough new material that I'm going to regret this? Their set
hasn't changed much in their last three tours-- not that it's not a good show,
but unless they get some serious new material, they're in danger of becoming
a nostalgia act, Robin Adnan Anders' amazing dumbeg and quality footwear
notwithstanding :-)

From:         I Dream in Infrared <gmgettie@THAMA1.APGEA.ARMY.MIL>
Subject:      It's after midnight...

> Second, I borrowed a few of my brother's CDs. 1) toad the wet sprocket _fear_
> 2) Soul Asylum _Grave Dancers Union_ 3) Dramarama _Vinyl_.

The other guys don't do it for me, but I admit to having some Dramarama, on
cassette.

> The Alternative / Modern Rock stuff has never really done anything for me.
< other stuff deleted >
> Who knows, maybe I'll finally acquire a liking for REM......nah :-)

Gary! You are in peril of your immortal soul!

From:         EdD tHe MaDd <DERLECT@CLEMSON.BITNET>
Subject:      tape thing

>       On second thought
>         Brevity at 480 seconds sought,
>       Since my collection runs long,
>         just cut that Night Time Song...

Did I misread the instructions? Do *all five* of my selections have to fit
within 8:00 total time? It'll never happen...

From:         Jeff Beer <ujwb@UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Dizzy Gillespie - RIP (sob)

> In article <ALLMUSIC%93010720451815@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU> MASUDA@SJSUVM1.BITNET
> (Mike) writes:
> >
> >IMPO, I think that the next innovation in jazz will incorporate
> >other senses, like visual arts.  Lighting has been a part tof the live
> >set for a long time, but I think with the advent of computer generated
> >graphics and real-time holography (in the near future), there will be
> >more for the artist to control.  MIDI will play a big part in the
> >control of these things.
>
> Sun Ra has done multimedia things like that.  But remember, the grits
> and gravey of jazz is the interaction in improvisation...

I saw one of these Sun Ra concerts. Behind the Arkestra on stage was a large
lighting system, a hexagonal honeycomb structure with a couple hundred cells
in it. Each cell had three bulbs in the three primary colors behind a frosted
pane, so each cell could effectively be any color. All this stuff was hooked
up to a computerized controller which could do things like sunburst patterns
automatically-- colors would ripple out from the center to the edges. Or the
patterns could be generated manually with joysticks, but the computer would
do things like duplicate the joystick action in mirror symmetry, or radial
symmetry, or more radical patterns-- it was a cool device, I'm glad I saw it.
There's one Sun Ra movie clip that shows this device. I don't know where it
is now, but I think I heard that the Boston Computer Museum inherited it.

> Oh yeah, look at Han Bennink and Tony Oxley.  They have real lost-and-found
> drum kits.

There's a group hereabouts called the Concussion Ensemble, guitar, bass, and
*five* drummers, one of whom has a kit that includes a "No Parking" sign and
a bedpan.

The late, lamented Miracle Room (check out their cut on _Live at the Knitting
Factory, Volume 1_ had a kit that included things like discarded propane tanks
from mobile homes. They were also ahead of Eddie Van Halen in applying power
tools to their instruments-- Stephen Marsh took a way cool drill solo when I
saw them. They said they'd done concerts where they actually would take the
stage with a pile of lumber, which over the course of the set they would cut
to shape and nail together, and by the end of the gig they'd have a doghouse
or something all built, having made a bunch of entertaining noise all along.

> I remember riding on a Greek boat to an island, with the Greek music
> playing.  Could this ever become jazz-ized?  Probably not.  I only heard
> one piece that I felt might possibly work over in a jazz concept.

Why not? I like rembetika music, the more low-class populist funky stuff.
As long as it's got a groove that inspires dancing, I bet a decent jazz guy
will be able to work with anything!

From:         mjferzig@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU
Subject:      Da Bluesssss...

> This guy played and everybody treated him like he was famous, so I'll ask
> you guys if he is. His name was James Cotton and he played the harmonica -
> I loved it! - and sang. Very interesting!

Wow, I felt about James Cotton exactly the way you felt about Philip Glass.
I heard him take one solo, two choruses, 32 full bars (it was a 16 bar blues,
not a 12 bar), where he played the same three-note lick over and over and over
again for the entire solo. He wasn't even doing much variation in how he bent
the blue notes. Bored the piss outta me.

From:         Leonard Watkins <ISTS024@UABDPO.BITNET>
Subject:      Copulation Tape..+

> A friend's daughter broke a string on her guitar last night and asked for help
> replacing it. She has one of those Ibanez 4x4 Turbo Enviromentally Safe
Locking
> Nut and Floating Trem kinda like guitars. I never had so much trouble changing
> a string in all my life...I had a Kramer for a few days that had this thang
> but a young man showed up with a BLANK check from his mother to purchase it
> so i sold it (just for the record i gave him a good deal), anyway are these
> locking critters worth the trouble..(she doesn't even have the trem arm on it)
> Advertising works..........L.W.

When I play, especially when I play with the whammy bar or do a lot of string
stretching, my biggest problem in staying in tune is all that extra slack in
the strings behind the nut. The locking nut is intended to take care of that
problem: if you're well in tune when you clamp down that locking nut, your
string stretching won't be able to take in that extra slack, so you'll stay in
tune. That's the theory, anyway. The strings themselves may stretch, however,
especially if they're new. And I have grown to think that the right approach
to dealing with that slack is not to have it at all-- get the Steinberger,
where there isn't any part of the string other than the playing part. That's
what I want-- right after I get a Nakamichi cassette deck and a DAT machine.
And another CD shelf unit. And repair my storm door and gutters. And...

From:         RTURNBUL@TOROVM1.VNET.IBM.COM
Subject:      Not quite one-hit wonders

> ("Van De Graff Generation Blues" is one of the better song titles I've
> seen recently).

If you like that title, you should check out the band of the same name. Van
der Graaf Generator was Peter Hammill's old band, and they were terrific. I
recommend the albums _Still Life_, _Godbluff_, _The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure
Dome_, and my all-time favorite, _Pawn Hearts_. Marco will have more to say
on this topic when he returns to net.land.

From:         Adam Levin <Adam.Levin@LAMBADA.OIT.UNC.EDU>
Subject:      Re: LW's copying query

> In the case of the compilation tape. If I find there is something that I
> like I will buy the original.

I'll contribute an Urban Ambience song (our big hit single :-) to try and get
more ALLMUSICers to buy our stuff!

From:         H B Lee <ghblee@NTUIX.NTU.AC.SG>
Subject:      Re: weird instruments

> A saw.  Not a chainsaw, but a good old (acoustic? :) saw which cuts
> wood by being drawn back and forth.  I remember watching this Chinese
> guy play the saw as a musical instrument in a variety show on tv when
> I was younger.  I can't remember exactly how he played it, but I think
> he clutched the handle-end of the saw between his legs (!), held
> the other lengthwise end of the blade with one of his hands and draws
> some kind of bow (a rod of sorts) across the non-cutting edge of the
> saw's blade (like you'd draw a bow across strings on a violin).  (He
> did all that in a sitting position, in case anyone wonders. :)  He
> varied the pitch of his notes by bending the saw to different degrees
> as he played it and one could see the saw vibrating quite a bit,
> producing sounds that were most eerie in nature.

I've seen this. Something about how the saw blade reacts to the bending
partitions it into independent vibrating areas, like an ad hoc steel drum
surface. You get various notes by allowing the bent-over part to be larger
or smaller, for lower or higher pitches. I got a short lesson in musical saw
technique from improvising drummer Charles K. Noyes, but it's a fairly well
known technique in the Appalachian old-timey circles, I believe.

There's a band that works real sporadically in Worcester called the Invented
Thing Quartet. They have instruments like the Fortylove, a tennis racket
with a pickup and strung with guitar strings; the Cyclodrone, a bicycle wheel
similarly accessorized; and the Lid, an old washing machine lid with pickups
mounted on it, and the signals from the pickups routed through a whole forest
of guitar stomp boxes; it makes a sound like the tide coming in, only made of
molten metal. The Lid also plays occasionally with Judas & Natasha.

From:         Thumper <watson@HG.ULETH.CA>
Subject:      Re: MTV

> I ask, again, what do y'all think of his video for "Steam"??

Haven't seen this yet. Sandra spotted it once while channel surfing, said it
looked like "Sledgehammer" with additional computer graphics. She said the
image of women cutting him to pieces was disturbingly prevalent.

> My fave Gabriel tune:  Hum Drum.

How come? Is it because of the couplet "Out of woman comes a man / Spends
the rest of his life getting back again..." :-)
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