Chalkhills Digest Volume 6, Issue 211
Date: Friday, 28 July 2000

         Chalkhills Digest, Volume 6, Number 211

                   Friday, 28 July 2000

Topics:

                    no XTC, TSOTT, TP
                     Mis-heard lyrics
                       120 Minutes
              Rap bands who also write music
                   Streaming chalkhills
                   Breaking the silence
                     French Chalkers
              Open minds, rap, techno, etc.
                      ham-'n-eggers
                   give me back my name
                 Re: personal theme song
                      Comedy albums
                Contempt and other Nonsuch
       Bronze coins showing Jim Morrison's genitals
            You must mean the old same place!
                 Louie Hewis & The Noose
             All You Need Is Your Toothbrush!

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    Chalkhills is compiled with Digest 3.7b (John Relph <relph@tmbg.org>).

But swallowing is easy when it has no taste.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 13:16:34 -0700
From: "Hiatt, Randy" <Randy.Hiatt@fsbti.com>
Subject: no XTC, TSOTT, TP
Message-ID: <F34536084B78D311AF53009027B0D7EAE3DA7F@FSBEX01>

KiRK Gill said:

<<Randy Hiatt says:"What I will pass on to you Prog/Art Heads is a band
from Denver calledThinking Plague, yikes, don't even attempt to chart this
stuffout... might be impossible.  Female voice, Crimson meets Gentile
Gianttimes 10.  If you haven't puked yet you'll love them."This band is
past tense, so far as I know. I live here in Denver, and thedrummer for my
old band was once a member of Thinking Plague. They haven'tbeen around for
a long time, at least not here in town. The one disc oftheirs which I own
(In This Life, I believe it is called) is truly worthyof interest.>>

They may have moved out of town or even more underground.  Their new 2000
release is titled "In Extremis" and they played live at NEARfest 2000 to
rave reviews.

I'd like to hear about your Xdrummers experience with them, they are out
there!

Tom Kingston said:

<<Question to John Relph or anyone who might have Andy's ear - has he
heard The Shaming of the True by Kevin Gilbert?  On top of being such
anincredible piece of music, there's so much that he would relate to in
hisown experience.  Then again, maybe the topic disturbs him....By the
way, I'm going out on a limb and delcaring TSOTT one of the
greatestrecords I've ever heard.  I found it so overwhelming that it
totallyeclipsed my Wasp Star ecstasy.  I'm at a loss to describe what it
does tome when I hear it.  Splunge!>>

I too am getting an extreme kick out of TSOTT, it has taken over my
players.  and for you ProgArtRockers out there (come on I see two of you)
Kevin Gilberts love for Genesis, Gentle Giant, Yes, Zep.... is a return
home for me.  I have recieved a copy of Gilbert's band Giraffe doing The
Lamb Lies Down On Broadway live at Progfest 94 (Thanks Joe Funkster), it's
solid and Drummer Nick D'Virgilio did go on to play 4 cuts on the new
Genesis CD.  small world.

On the Kevin Gilbert Digest at http://www.topica.com/lists/lawnmower/read
I was informed Kevin died one week before his Genesis audition (that could
have saved both their lives).

Randy (6 degrees of seperation) Hiatt

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 16:28:39 EDT
From: Jxnsmom@aol.com
Subject: Mis-heard lyrics
Message-ID: <2b.8a86970.26b0a3f7@aol.com>

I've been reading the alien top 5 for quite a while now. I'd be interested in
starting another thread, this one being lyrics that you mis-heard and later
found out were wrong.

I'll start it with an XTC connection. My first few times through Wasp Star
were at a very low volume so as not to wake my napping son, and I was certain
that Andy had stumbled and fell and then bit off his own tongue like a
wounded whore. The mental images were stunning.

My greatest misheard lyrical achievement would be from grade school, when I
believed with full conviction that the Fleetwood Mac song was "Thunder
rolling, can't go swimming, raining." Please, share.

Amy

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 14:52:07 -0600
From: KirK.Gill@equifax.com
Subject: 120 Minutes
Message-ID: <85256928.00726A1C.00@noteswetc15.fin.equifax.com>

Speaking of Andy not listening to any current tunes, does anyone remember
Andy co-hosting an episode of 120 Minutes years ago? The MTV rep was Bill
Bellamy (I think that was his name anyway) and he was WAY over his head
when talking to Mr. Partridge. I seem to remember BB asking AP what music
he was listening to, and AP replied that he was into 16th century recorder
music. BB asked what popular music he listened to, and AP said that the
only time he listened to pop was when he was making records. BB then asked
if Andy listened to any of his old catalogue, and Andy replied something
along the lines of "Our turds are for others to chew on."

Nice !

k

"it doesn't matter where you put your world"

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:51:45 +0100 (BST)
From: Rory Wilsher <rory_wilsher@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Rap bands who also write music
Message-ID: <20000726205145.17422.qmail@web1504.mail.yahoo.com>

Run DMC.
Dream Warriors.

Anyone, anyone?

Rory "Next time someone's teaching, why don't you get
taught?" Wilsher

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 16:17:07 EDT
From: Jxnsmom@aol.com
Subject: Streaming chalkhills
Message-ID: <7b.75c0aa7.26b0a143@aol.com>

It's been a whole hour since I received my last Chalkhills Digest. What's
the hold-up??

Amy "hooked on phonics worked for me" Nickel

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 22:00:11 +0100 (BST)
From: Rory Wilsher <rory_wilsher@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Breaking the silence
Message-ID: <20000726210011.28320.qmail@web1505.mail.yahoo.com>

Chalkchaps and chapesses

On the best band/worst/band/peaked in the middle
thang...

And I hate to bring this up (so to speak), but we've
yet to discuss Mr. Meatloaf. Not telling you which
category I include him/it/them in.

(Stands back and quickly dons flame-retardant suit)

Band name: Dr. Pelvic and the Thrusters.

A while back, someone (I'm too lazy to check) posted a
list of spurious band names. But, hidden in amongst
them, was at least one band who actually existed - as
in got a recording contract and released records - I'm
sure some of the other were used at some stage by pub
bands. So, who can spot the real band? First prize: an
all-expenses-paid night on the town with international
celebrity superstar Mr. Vee Tube. Second prize: TWO
all-expenses-paid nights...(ahh, the old ones are the
good ones...)

Lyric comp below:

Rory "I played you all my favourite records" Wilsher

p.s. Vee...;-);-);-0

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 14:59:32 -0700
From: "Henson, Mary Beth" <Mary.Beth.Henson@disney.com>
Subject: French Chalkers
Message-ID: <ABBE3EE821C9D311ABF500508B786B50252B01@cpusbum02.cp.disney.com>

It takes me a while to catch up with all of the Digests - I've just finished
#6-197 from a week ago - yikes!  Anyway, fellow Chalker Emmanuel wrote from
Paris regarding Fluide Glacial and reminded me that I'm going to be in Paris
during the last week of August and first week of September.  This will be
the first time that I'll be visiting Paris for fun and not for business (the
laptop stays in LA - woo hoo!) and it got me to wondering.....

How many Chalkers do we have from the City of Lights?  Is XTC well-known in
France?  Judging from the friend that I will be staying with, the answer is
a resounding 'non!' - he's never even *heard* of them.  Well, until I
started ripping songs and sending him MP3s via e-mail, that is.  So far, a
pretty tepid response.  Not quite 'beurq!' but something close to it.

Ok, seeing as I will have some time on my hands to explore Paris and it's
environs - are any of the parisien(ne)s chalk denizens willing to offer me
advice as far as music in Paris is concerned?  Are there some places or
bands that I should know about?

Quelques conseils sera merveilleux!  Merci en avance pour vous m'aidez!

S'il vous plait, ne repondez pas au liste, mais ecrivez-moi a mon adresse:

mary.beth.henson@disney.com

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 15:58:48 -0700
From: Ed Kedzierski <ed.kedzierski@blvdmedia.com>
Subject: Open minds, rap, techno, etc.
Message-ID: <08B5DDC2BABCD311BFC6005004A884B013B783@mgcservices.com>

Over the last few digests, the whole rap, techno, modern pop sucking thing
has intensified again (yes, they're different issues, but have become all
muddled together...), particularly back in 6-203, when one Jim Allen took
various people to task for venting:
		Yawn.  What a boring, lazy thing to say.  I like some rap a
lot.  Snoop Dogg's "Doggystyle" and Dr. Dre's "The Chronic" are great
records IMHO, for example.   I think most anti-rap people latch on to
obvious examples like the appalling Vanilla Ice "Ice Ice Baby/Under
Pressure" or MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This/Super Freak" and say "That's
the way it is!".  Of course, now we have the execrable Puff Daddy doing the
same thing.  So what! They are buffoons---if someone takes the drum pattern
from a totally obscure 70's funk record that only 9 people knew of in the
first place, samples it and then layers a new bass line, chords, melody etc.
on top of it, so what?

True enough, but you also admit that a lot of it is only accessible by
searching it out (which can involve shelling out cash before hearing). I
always used to pride myself on giving everything a listen with an open mind,
but the problem I have now is that my connections/support network just ain't
what it used to be. There used to be so many people who I could hang out
with and be played all sorts of things I wouldn't have bought myself (mixed
tapes from the "old days" are so much more eclectic because the range of
things I had access to was so much wider), but people age, die, move away,
move apart, get married, or just settle down into their own musical ruts
(the person who listens to nothing but 100% ambient is no better than the
person who clings exclusively to guitar pop like some extra-tenacious tree
monkey). I didn't notice that you made much of an offer to help people
expand their horizons. Isn't it somewhat understandable that some people,
after searching out things they like and finding themselves here, having
climbed to the top of the hill with a "whew! This is what I like, now I can
relax!" react less than positively to "well, unless you make another 100
mile trek, hacking through the bush all the way, and climb that other peak
way over there, you're just a close-minded sloth!"? This list has brought me
more reccomendations and avenues to check out than I've had in years; sure,
a lot of it veers towards poppy guitar stuff, but that would be an odd thing
to have an aversion towards while being on this list...
I agree, though that the end result is more important than how one actually
got that sound (ie that the whole "sampling is inherently dishonest in some
way" argument is specious). Technology is not the problem.
Maybe I'm not trying hard enough, but there are only so many hours in a day,
and I only have one set of ears and so much money (and I've never sold or
thrown away a record in my life, and for some reason I have a real
discomfort with the idea of ever doing so, so I only want to shell out cash
for things I'll want to keep).
I used to l quite like a lot of rap (especially Public Enemy and De La
Soul), but I really miss the stuff with all sorts of samples (musical and
otherwise) exploding in every direction, with words that are about
something. Now, if I hear that slower, shuffly beat that seems to have taken
over accompanied by one continuing sample that sort of oozes around it (one
thing that puts me off in Snoop Dogg's stuff), I tend to switch off,
especially if the words being rapped either start with "girl-comma-whatever"
or mention the rapper's own name 500 times (people singing about themselves
and mentioning their own name repeatedly should have ended with Bo Diddley).

I'll try anything backed by an honest recommendation, but how is harping on
people's close mindedness any more productive than the compaining you have
such a problem with?
Yes, F**k tha Police is a great record.
And:
	>......the state of affairs of Pop Music today.....   is FUCKIN'
	>SCARY!!!!!

	No it's not.  I just laugh when people get so apoplectic about music
these days.    As the discussion of cheesy pop here recently has proven, the
mainstream sucks, always has and always will, so why the near-hysteria about
the whole BritneyChristinaBackstreetNSyncBoys thing, bland stuff like
Matchbox 20 or rap-metal like Limp Bizkit? People get all misty eyed about
how great AM/Top 40 radio was in 1967 just because they played "Penny Lane"
and the latest Stones song.  Nostalgia has the nasty habit of filtering out
the crap that completes the picture.  For every "Strawberry Fields" there
was 10 things like "Please Release Me" by Englebert Humperdink.
Well, fair enough, but that's not really a good reason for people to just
shut up and stop complaining about bad music. Besides the catharsis of good
old fashioned venting, the fact that there's always been crap means that
there's always been just cause for complaint. The ever-increasing narrowing
and insularity of the various market niches IS getting worse, however, and
"scary" is as good a term as any, especially with the continuing
conglomeration of the music industry into larger and fewer corporations.
Saying "well, we have indies" just accepts the continuing subdivision and
isolation of genres. The fact that some of the most pedestrian, uncreative
bands I've heard in years are marketed as "alternative" is galling to say
the least, as scornful as I'm supposed to be of that meaningless term.

Techno...
(there was a bit of a techno debate months ago, but I didn't jump in then,
this is generally what I would have said...)
At the start of the 80s, I was a musical luddite, wanted all synthesizers
destroyed, and was constantly bitching about "syntho-pop" (I excempted Devo,
who have always ruled since that first SNL appearance). A few years into the
decade (middle to late-ish), and I'd made a complete turnaround, and I loved
tech-heavy music. Bands like New Order, Severed Heads, Portion Control,
Chris & Cosey, LPD, and a ton of others (I can't spend all day remembering
names) were the centre of my musical diet (though I remained pretty eclectic
- I remember quite a few of my gothic-industrial friends being scandalized
at some of the guitar-pop bands I refused to totally abandon). I like to
think I'm pretty adaptable, and not one to be automatically and immovably
put off by unfamiliar sounds.
However...
Perhaps it's more of the old "loss of community through which I can be
exposed" thing, but I've totally lost track. I don't even know what all
these new terms for all the various new subdivisions really refer to (ie I
have no idea at all what the difference between techno and electronica might
be). Industrial was the last techy genre that I can really remember liking.
One big difference, though, is that SONGS still predominated in a lot of the
stuff that I liked (Tom K. had a point there). I used to go out dancing
every night of the week (something I'm definitely too old & employed for
now), and I liked the fact that songs ended after a reasonable amount of
time, and I could often sing along to myself as I danced. I owned (or had
tapes of) the stuff I went out to dance to. Please, correct me if I'm
totally off-base here, but so much stuff now seems to be "leave the drum
machine & sequencer on the same program for 20 minutes and drop a sample in
here and there", and has no basis in the whole "hey I love this song and
want to dance to it" motive that always used to get me onto the floor.
That's not meant as a major criticism, it's just that I find it hard to
relate to (maybe I'm getting old). The whole DJ-culture thing of one endless
mix that you just dance and dance endlessly to (usually with a 4/4 beat
fascistically ordering one's own style of dancing around) is fairly alien to
me. I miss dancing, but I don't want to hit the oldies nights, and at the
same time I want to be able to relate to what I'm dancing to, so I guess
it's leaping around the bedroom for me...
You also said:
		The days of 4 great friends buying guitars, writing
songs/practicing and then going in to a big expensive studio to lay down
tracks is fading fast.
And
		It's just that it's often far outside the mainstream but
there's a ton of cool indie labels and GASP!!! a good portion of it doesn't
have 2 guitars, vocals, bass and drums as its basis.

True enough, (although there'll always be enthusiasts for every genre), but
that doesn't mean that you need to abandon lyrics, personality, humour, etc.
If you put out a few samples hung on a drum track and can't be bothered with
making a song out of it, writing lyrics, or even making any variations in
texture, claiming to be above that sort of thing because you're so cutting
edge just seems wanky to me (but then I was never a prog fan). Drum
machines, synthesizers and samplers don't put me off in and of themselves;
the lack of a human presence does, and the facelessness of many of the
artists and apparent scorn for the song form has, I have to admit, been a
bit of a problem for me.
The last "techy" thing that I bought & enjoyed was that Propellerheads album
(like I said, I've completely lost track of all the names of the ludicrously
proliferating subgenres, so I don't know what exactly it falls under); I was
attracted by the cover of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (John Barry
rules! Also loved the fact that they mentioned him in their liner notes.
Liked the Portishead albums for the touches of Barry-influence they showed
as well), the Shirley Bassey song, and the presence of a track called
"Spybreak" (spy music is one place where I have no problem with the absence
of lyrics). I've also liked some of the Aphex stuff that I've heard, but
there is hesitation to spend money if the bulk of the disc is going to be
dominated by monotonous instrumental dance stuff.

(Ambient: as always, I have no problem with being corrected when I'm
mistaken, but this has always sounded a bit too much like "new age for the
too-cool" to me. I have a friend who decided years ago that he couldn't
stand lyrics of any kind ever; this resulted in years of nothing but
Tangerine Dream at his house [which I actually came to enjoy to a degree].
The last few years, it's all been ambient stuff, and I've been having a bit
of fun bugging him: "what is this? Yanni? It sounds like Yanni to me. It is
Yanni, isn't it?" I usually get an annoyed grunt in return...)

So, do you want to curse the darkness by telling me how ignorant I am, or
shine a light by helping me out here?

Ed K.

PS: Whitney Houston's voice may be considered technically "amazing", but I
don't find it pleasing to the ear in any way at all. A lot of technical
arguments ("if you were a guitar player, you'd know how hard that boring
endless solo was to play" etc.) tend to be wasted on me in similar ways.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 19:08:22 EDT
From: STakesh@aol.com
Subject: ham-'n-eggers
Message-ID: <66.5e85a61.26b0c966@aol.com>

Hi, everybody,

Kudos to Chris Vreeland for bringing the recent Pat Metheny and Dave Eggers
philipics to our attention.  But Harpers only printed an excerpt of the
Eggers/Harvard Advocate dustup; you can catch the excruciating interview, as
well as the ensuing "Addendum" rant (which Eggers then delivered as a speech
at Yale) at:

http://www.cybereditions.com/aldaily/

Third column, sixth item down....  lotsa fun!

(Chris, what do you make of the charges by Dave E.'s sister that he
dramatically understated her role in caring for their terminally ill parents
and raising their younger brother -- accusations excerpted in the same
"Harper's"?)

Egg-heads can get additional fixes at www.mcsweeneys.net and at
www.aphrodigitaliac.com.

I'll have mine over-easy, thanks,
Stephanie Takeshita

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 19:22:41 EDT
From: STakesh@aol.com
Subject: give me back my name
Message-ID: <30.81c6a2f.26b0ccc1@aol.com>

My Fellow Chalkies Anonymous,

Open plea to John Relph:  Please, please, please restore our
e-addresses to our responses!  Half the fun of CH is the networking
that goes on off-list.  Sure, sure, you can click back to the previous
screen and run a search on the name you want to contact and get
the info that way, but it wastes time and won't stymie determined
spammers anyway.   FWIW, I haven't had any CH-derived spam
problem, and I'm not the only one.

John, you can break the address ban with mine:  stakesh@aol.com.

Stephanie ("practicing what a NYT article from 1 1/2 years back
trumpeted as 'The New Transparency,' the risks be damned") Takeshita

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 17:53:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Dorothy Spirito <spiritod@techmail.gdc.com>
Subject: Re: personal theme song
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.00.10007261752170.10917-100000@esun2028>

Ryan Anthony asked:
> What music would you select as the theme song of your own radio or TV
> talk show?

"Call to Arms" by Mike & the Mechanics.
--Dorothy.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 17:32:15 -0700
From: Ed Kedzierski <ed.kedzierski@blvdmedia.com>
Subject: Comedy albums
Message-ID: <08B5DDC2BABCD311BFC6005004A884B013B785@mgcservices.com>

In 6-204, Victor Rocha mentioned that comedy albums had been important to
him, and listed a few...
This really hits home for me.
Until I was about 15, comedy albums dominated my listening; before that
point, my only musical choices were the Beatles Red & Blue collections, Hey
Jude (or "Beatles Again"), Endless Summer, the Casino Royal soundtrack, and
a few other comps & soundtracks. Everything else was comedy; tons of old
Goon records of my mother's, every Monty Python record (which I HAD to have
as each one came out; and I think that those Neil Innes song snippets about
medieval agriculture on the hidden side of Matching Tie & Handkerchief had
something to do with my love for the Bonzos years later) and a couple of
National Lampoon ones (starting with "Missing White House Tapes" which I
picked up with the simple childhood knowledge that Nixon was funny because
so many people did impressions of him - played side 2 repeatedly, as it
contained the broader TV-parody stuff, wasn't able to get into the more
political side 1 until years later).

Tracked down Radio Dinner and Lemmings much later on when I was into Lampoon
(the magazine - does anyone else miss it?)

Firesign Theatre - my 2 faves are "Everything You Know is Wrong!" and "I
Think We're All Bozos On This Bus" (once came across the MFSL CD of this and
still kick myself for not buying it), choices which seem to surprise the few
other FT fans I've met (maybe these two stuck because one summer I fell
asleep to them several times after nights up on psychedelics as a way of
counteracting the fact that my friends had insisted on playing the Dead all
evening. When I did that sort of thing.). Also like "Electrician"
(especially the whole-side title piece), "Dwarf" and the rest, but those two
are the peak for me. Haven't checked out the new ones, but have seen some
poor reviews; are they recommended by anyone here?

It's a real pity that the comedy album doesn't occupy the place of
prominence it once did; the majority of audio comedy these days seems to be
all stand up (my least favourite comedy form, unless the performer is
genuinely brilliant; otherwise, the presence of "we buy it by the ton"
standup shows on Comedy Network and late night TV has really devalued the
form for me). It really seems to have almost died out as a form; the
"comedy" section of most record stores these days is usually barely a tiny
part of a shelf and tends to involve a lot of searching, not to mention the
look you get when you ask where it is (although that's nothing like the look
I get when I try to float the idea of putting a group together to make
comedy albums; something that still interests me, and the closest a
non-musician like myself will ever get to having a band).

Comedy pretty much equals (and may at some times surpass) music in terms of
importance in my life.

Even musically, I've always been more attracted to bands that at least hint
at senses of humour on the part of the members (like you-know-who), as
opposed to the "stand with your legs eight feet apart while agonizing over
the serious chore of channeling a solo from the god of righteous licks" type
of attitude.

ReadMeDr.Memory,
Ed K.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 16:45:54 -0700
From: "Steve Young" <sjyoung@hotmail.com>
Subject: Contempt and other Nonsuch
Message-ID: <20000726234627.32771.qmail@hotmail.com>

After quoting from Tom Ewing's generally contemptuous review of "Nonsuch",
Mike/Ned wrote:

>That's the best description of Nonsuch I've ever read.  And I still
>love that album, but that's the painful truth.

The "T" word - eek.  Anyhow, Nonsuch-slagging (as an institution) doesn't
really bother me anymore, but I am having difficulty even fitting my mouth
around this one.  "No play"?  "sickly"?  "lacking in conviction"?  "near to
wretchedness"?  I know there are issues with the production (which
admittedly have never bothered me too much), but it's strange how all of
this apparently somber, sickly, wretched and nihilistic music still manages
to bring me to my feet and to tears and all around the room and laughing in
the span of an hour (funny, that!).  OK, so I only like "War Dance" for the
singing penis.  Sue me.

NORDIC68PJ@aol.com wrote:

>Quite a few of you out there seem to talk highly of Adrian Belew. I guess
>I don't get it yet. I purchased " Inner Revolution" in a bargain bin, and
>found it to be contemptible to my ears. I would welcome any comments
>or suggestions on any thing else he has done.

I have all of his albums (and consider myself a fan), but I know from whence
you come.  Part of me still doesn't "get it".  As in the following lyrics:
"White / Like the white robe of Jesus Christ / whose message was each one of
us is equal in the eyes of God" or "the tears of God fell down through a
hole in the ozone" or "history is full of hurt and tears".  But Mr. Belew
also writes an equal, if not greater, amount of non-preachy, weird, fun,
occasionally gimmicky but generally captivating lyrics.  I find him
occasionally derivative (he's strongly influenced by The Beatles, Frank
Zappa, David Byrne, and David Bowie - he's worked closely with the last
three and grew up listening to the first, and it really shows) but from all
reports he's a super nice guy with a real passion for good pop music (and a
rabid cult following to boot).  And I hate to admit it in this age of
personality-as-art, but knowing that makes his music all the more appealing
to me.

Oops, got off the track there.  I don't have a desert island list.  So why
don't I just make something up now:

1. Fossil Fuel
2. Beeswax
3. Transistor Blast
4. Gold Releases (Skylarking/O&L) - "It's one album on two CDs," I tell the
aliens)
5. TMBG - Then: The Earlier Years

I am obviously underground-ignorant.

~~Steve Young

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 20:01:07 -0500
From: rnv@mac.com
Subject: Bronze coins showing Jim Morrison's genitals
Message-ID: <B5A4F403.517%rnv@mac.com>

> Right then - The Doors. Alright people, can someone -- in a reasoned and
> reasonable fashion - please explain to me why this band are routinely
> excoriated on this list?

It may just be that Jim Morrison (as opposed to the Doors) is simply an easy
target for ridicule and that the Doors got dragged into it.

Other obvious whipping boys are, of course, Sting & Phil Collins. The reason
why they are such great punching bags is they are exactly what Andy
Partridge would be if he didn't have a sense of humor. Yes: Jim and Phil and
Gordy are Andy Partridge with the humor glands forcibly removed by their
adoring fanbase or crushed under the weight of their ponderous, bloated
egos.

Now, there are a few parallels between each of these guys and Andy...

Jim recited his (often meaningless and always pompous and
pseudointellectual) poetry to music, while Andy contributed text for several
tracks off "Through The Hill" and occasionally muttered quietly in the
background on "Take Away/Lure of Salvage" (not to mention the beefheart-like
effluences printed on, is it Go 2?). And of course, they both have a
preoccupation with their Pink Things. But Jim was such a ramrod Amurican
with as much a sense of humor as a wet cat, that he just puffed up into a
great Hindenburg of self-importance and burst.

And Phil and Andy are both balding, pudgy megalomaniacs, but Phil is a Ringo
Starr who wishes he were Paul McCartney, while Andy is a Hitler who knows
he's really Charlie Chaplin.

And Sting? Well, they're both obsessive-compulsive and influenced by Jazz.
They've both moved from jittery pop to more mature, pastoral stuff (Mercury
Falling does actually have a few real great things on it, but don't go near
Brand New Day for love or money). But again, anyone who's seen that stupid
car commercial with Sting brooding in the back seat knows that this guy has
had a SERIOUS ego implant, or maybe he's taking some sort of Viagra for
would-be Ahabs.

Anyway. Without a sense of humor, you tend to ossify into a
self-congratulatory, intolerably vain canker.

ceterum censeo Eminem esse delendam,

rnv

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:02:35 EDT
From: KINGSTUNES@aol.com
Subject: You must mean the old same place!
Message-ID: <e6.8af8184.26b0e42b@aol.com>

Brouhaha?

Ha.  Ha ha.  Ha ha ha ha ha.
        ha HA ha ha.
    Ha.        ha ha.   HA haha.
        hahah ha
HAHA.    ha.        Haha.

ObXTC - I like XTC.

Regnad Kcin

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:31:44 -0500
From: "Richard" <rjpa1@home.com>
Subject: Louie Hewis & The Noose
Message-ID: <006a01bff772$d1b51060$15ec1718@mckiny1.tx.home.com>

re: The guy looked like he should've been a gym teacher...

I think he played one in the movie "Back To The Future"

Cheers,
Richard "...and
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIII will always
love YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..."
Pedretti-Allen

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:30:14 CDT
From: "vee tube" <veetube@hotmail.com>
Subject: All You Need Is Your Toothbrush!
Message-ID: <20000727023014.50940.qmail@hotmail.com>

         Hate to bust the thread but,
      We have EVERYTHING ever recorded!
      In fact, we have everything that
      WILL be recorded (We're pan-
        dimensional,don'tcha know?)

      So, when you see that bright,blue
    beam beanin' on ya, grab that 'brush,
   (and if you ever listened to your Mother)
    some clean underwear, and HOP ON BOARD!

                 }---:)

P.S. "No throwing cigarette butts out the window!"
      'Stars that play with laughing Sam's dice'
                          J.Hendrix

                 BASSATCHA!

P.P.S. Idrive.com/eels2  has been updated, and
                 /eels3  is now online.

             Yours,Seabasstian.

------------------------------

End of Chalkhills Digest #6-211
*******************************

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