🚀 go-pugleaf

Love-Hounds Digest			    Sunday, March 16, 1986, 12:23

Today's Topics:

			 My two cents (2 msgs)
			     Les Miserables
			Television Personalities
	       Re: My two cents, Robyn Hitchcock (2 msgs)
			       Rema, Rema
			     The Residents
			    American Express
		Re: CTwins "Tiny Dynamine", lyrics, etc.
			     Cocteau Twins

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Date:         Wed, 12 Mar 1986 11:11 EST
From: David M. Hardy <HAADAV@MITVMA>
Subject:      My two cents

Since the subject of onscenity has come up again, I decided to throw in my
opinion.  I find obscenity to be TOTALLY out of place in discussions of music
or anything else.  I just can't take seriously anyone's opinion if
they can't state it without swearing.  It shows that there is a certain lack
of mental ability to communicate, when people have to refer to bodily or sexual
functions in a vulgar way, when talking about something unrelated to them.
One of the reasons I started reading this mailing list was to avoid the kind
of stuff that goes on in net.music, vulgarity among them.  I am disappointed to
see what it appears to be turning into.

I'm not the person that sent the original message, but I'm glad to see that
someone else noticed this problem.  I suppose that in a list where not only
does the moderator not care but uses obscenities himself that nothing will be
done about it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

DISCLAIMER:  I'm not a geek, a wimp, nor an expert on language by any means.
If I was a language expert maybe I'd understand half of the bizarre phrases
that are used here.  I'm not going to go away, either.
                                      Flames and obscenities to /dev/null...
                                      >>> Dave


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Date:         Wed, 12 Mar 1986 11:15 EST
From: David M. Hardy <HAADAV@MITVMA>
Subject:      Les Miserables

If there are any musical theatre fans out there, Les Miserables is a must
for your collection (if you don't have it already).  I'd been hearing cuts
from it for a few weeks on a local radio station, and been mostly impressed,
but finally heard one song that made me decide I had to have this!  (It was
called Do You Hear the People Sing).  I looked all over Boston (at least in
the places I was told might have it and a couple others that I knew about)
with no luck and was seriously depressed after that day with no success.
However, on a visit to New York, I was able to get ahold of one, and it was
very well worth it.  If anyone's interested I'll post more info on this, but
consider it highly recommended.

Golly, look at this!  This is easily the best record out in 1986 (maybe 1985
too, but I'm not sure of that).  It puts everything I've heard recently to
shame (and I've heard some good stuff!), and I was able to post this entire
message without using ONE DIRTY WORD!  Think of it!  What is the world coming
to???   :-)
                                               >>> Dave


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Date:         Wed, 12 Mar 1986 11:24 EST
From: David M. Hardy <HAADAV@MITVMA>
Subject:      Television Personalities

Anyone out there know about the Television Personalities?  I just got a new
EP from them called How I Learned To Love the Bomb, and their song A Sense
of Belonging from the album The Painted Word is one of my all time favorites.
However, I was recently told that they had more records out than TPW and
HILTLTB.  I'd like to get some more of their records, but I've never seen any.

                                                  >>> Dave


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Date: Wed, 12 Mar 86 10:08:58 PST
From: jordan@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu (Jordan Hayes)
Subject: Re:  My two cents

	Really-From: David M. Hardy <HAADAV@MITVMA>

	I find obscenity to be TOTALLY out of place in discussions of
	music or anything else.  I just can't take seriously anyone's
	opinion if they can't state it without swearing.

Look, I guess it's just a matter of what you call `obscene' ...

That's certainly a moral judgement call, and I think you're in a
position of being adult enough that if you can't take the discussions
going on here seriously that you would unsubscribe. I don't think we're
talking here about people who feel they "can't state it without
swearing" (by the way, swearing is much different than being obscene)
but rather using "those words" (which you may or may not be offended
by) has become commonplace. Look, we're living in an immoral world,
and I don't think you should project your morality on a group of
people who you associate with by choice.

That's called oppression.

	It shows that there is a certain lack of mental ability to
	communicate, when people have to refer to bodily or sexual
	functions in a vulgar way, when talking about something
	unrelated to them.

Communication, and it's effect on those who are being communicated
to has nothing to do with the `correctness' of speech. If you think so,
then you should only talk to your snobby friends who also have the
handle on `upper crust' communication. Being offensive is a right
that I covet strongly. Notice that I don't implore you to swear ...

	DISCLAIMER:  I'm not a geek, a wimp, nor an expert on language
	by any means.  If I was a language expert maybe I'd understand
	half of the bizarre phrases that are used here.  I'm not going
	to go away, either.

Right, but you are trying to force a moral issue. That makes you a
wimp, geek AND a weenie to boot.

	Flames and obscenities to /dev/null...

That's real brave of you. Throw in your two cents worth and then say
"I won't listen to your side".

Foo Bar. If you don't want to hear what I say, that's pretty close
minded.

Flames and obscenities to jordan@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu (ucbvax!jordan).

/jordan

ps: god, have I complained recently how hard it is to tape the 12" of RUTH?

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Date:  Wed, 12 Mar 86 11:54 MST
From: "James J. Lippard" <Lippard@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA>
Subject:  Re: My two cents, Robyn Hitchcock
Reply-To:  Lippard@MULTICS.MIT.EDU

> Really-From: David M. Hardy <HAADAV@MITVMA>

> I just can't take seriously anyone's opinion if they can't state it
> without swearing.  It shows that there is a certain lack of mental ability
> to communicate, when people have to refer to bodily or sexual functions in
> a vulgar way, when talking about something unrelated to them.

That's bullshit, and this sentence is an illustration of why.  I could have
said "That's nonsense", but it would not have come across as strong and would
not have adequately expressed what I wanted.  Strong opinions require either
strong language or being unnecessarily verbose.

As far as I can tell, the only reason people get "offended" by "obscenity" is
that it embarrasses them.  There are polite euphemisms used for most of the
so-called "dirty words" which such people use all the time ("shucks" or
"shoot" for "shit", "darn" or "dang" for "damn", "geez" for "Jesus H.
Tapdancing Christ", etc.) and for some reason masking a letter or two in the
printed representation seems to make it acceptable as well.  So it's obvious
that it's not the referent that's offensive (it's pretty obvious what "f--k"
refers to), but rather the actual characters and sound.  This seems to imply
that "being offended" is purely social conditioning, we are taught that these
certain sounds and images are "dirty" and have no place in polite
conversation.

It's true, however, that these words are overused.  But to say that they should
never be used is to remove some useful vocabulary from the language.

BTW, David, in your message about Les Miserables, I was unable to tell that
you considered it to be the best album of 1986 until you said so.  Saying that
it's "highly recommended" and "very well worth it" and that you were "mostly
impressed" doesn't make it sound all that great.  I think you could have
expressed your opinion more strongly by using a good metaphor and still
avoided vulgarity, but it would have been much easier just to say "it's
f*cking amazing".

   Just to throw some music into this message, I just bought Robyn Hitchcock's
"I Often Dream of Trains" the other day, and I'm not sure why it's everyone's
favorite RH album.  I like "Fegmania!" and "Black Snake Diamond Role" better.
IODoT seems to be a more personal album, as people have said, but I like his
more upbeat stuff better.  (There are no drums on IODoT, are there?  I don't
remember hearing any.)
How does "Groovy Decay" compare to these?

   Jim (Lippard at MULTICS.MIT.EDU)

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Date: Wed, 12 Mar 86 14:46:47 EST
From: hsut@ed.purdue.edu (Bill Hsu)


Synchronicity strikes again... (a little drum roll, please!)

David Hardy (paraphrase): Widespread use of obscenities shows a deficiency
				in the ability to communicate

Repo Hacker and Hoffman: Band with obscene name does not imply lousy music


I personally don't think that using obscenities has anything to do
with somebody's ability to communicate. A much better benchmark is to
see if they love convoluted sentences like mine :-) :-)

Seriously, I've known people who write and talk brilliantly AND use
lots of obscenities/profanities (e.g., Allen Ginsburg :-) :-) There's
obviously no correlation between the two. (Try convincing the PMRC of that.)
I've been known to use obscenities on occasion, tho I'm usually pretty
sedate when I write. Old habits die hard :-)

Re: I Often Dream of Trains...

Yes, this is my favorite Robyn Hitchcock album, and I do like it more
than Robyn's more upbeat stuff. Maybe it's because I have a weakness
for more personal, slightly self-indulgent stuff :-). Because it is
so personal, I find the zany parts in IODoT just a little more deranged
and funny than, say, most of the stuff in Fegmania!. The great lyrics
are easily intelligible because of the spare production. Most of the
more serious songs on side 2 are painful and nostalgic, and more subtle;
took me quite a while to warm up to them, tho they seem much simpler
in construction than most of Robyn's other songs. I guess it takes time
to like ALL of IODoT (you do like some of it, I hope, Jim?) because
it's so varied and personal.


				"This could be the day
				 I cut a malignant growth
				 With a steel knife"

				 Bill Hsu

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Date:     Wed, 12 Mar 86 17:28:01 EST
From: Hofmann@AMSAA.ARPA
Subject:  Rema, Rema


A couple of days ago, the latest release from 
Big Black came in the mail.  It's a limited, one-side
only edition from Forced Exposure for subscribers only.  

Steve Albini, the driving geek/force behind Big Black,
said in an interview that you can tell alot about a band
by the covers they do.  Up until this point, I didn't know
of Big Black doing any covers but Albini kept referring
to this Rema, Rema as if everyone should know what he was
talking about.  Probably an inside joke ... I haven't the
foggiest.     The label says Rema, Rema was written
by someone named Rema Rema of whom I have never heard.  I
pretty much figure this is some sort of joke or something
because the song basically consists of a monotonous, brooding
beat with the words, "rema,rema" yelled at the end of
phrases.  OK to do dishes by but not a primo slab in the
least.  In ways, it's derivative of the Buttholes (one of
the few contemporaries Steve lists as major influences) if
they had a drum machine.

Note:  Big Black doesn't have a drummer and uses a preprogrammed
Roland machine.  If anything is interesting on this record, it
is how they have succintly simulated African drums.

So, The Bottom Line is:  if you aren't already subscribing to
Forced Exposure and like stuff like Mission of Burma, Big Black,
Tesco Vee, Lydia Lunch, Couch Flambeau and Sonic Youth, you should.
And if you do, you should still be able to get this one sided
45 as a bonus but don't subscribe just for the 45 ... well, you're
all smart and wouldn't do that anyway so why am I wasting space
here.



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Date:  Wed, 12 Mar 86 16:20 MST
From: "James J. Lippard" <Lippard@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA>
Subject:  The Residents
Reply-To:  Lippard@MULTICS.MIT.EDU

I finally got around to buying something by the Residents to listen to
last week.  I bought "The Residents Commercial Album" and "George and
James".  My first reaction was that I had wasted my money, but on the
second (and third and fourth) listens I decided I liked it, even if it
is incredibly strange.  I love the lyrics on the Commercial Album
(especially stuff like "Moisture").
   For those of you unfamiliar with these albums, the Commercial Album
is 40 one-minute tracks of very UNcommercial music with bizarre sounds
and lyrics.  The Residents remind me a lot of Barnes & Barnes (Billy
Mumy of "Lost in Space" and Robert Hamer) on this album.
   "George and James" is music by George Gershwin and James Brown,
supposedly the first in a series of at least 16 albums of music by
American composers to be released between 1984 and 2013 or something
like that.  The Gershwin songs are "Rhapsody in Blue", "I Got Rhythm",
and "Summertime".  It's weird, too...  RiB starts out with what sounds
like an air-raid siren.
   The James Brown side is subtitled "Live at the Apollo" and includes
"I Get Crazy", "Think", and "Night Train" ("Are you ready for the night
train?" "yeah!").

   I've heard good things about "Third Reich 'n' Roll" and "Eskimo", are
there any other Residents' albums of note?

   Jim (Lippard at MULTICS.MIT.EDU)

P.S.  to Bill Hsu:  yes, I do like stuff on IODoT, especially
"Uncorrected Personality Traits".

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Date: Wed, 12 Mar 86 18:40:20 EST
From: nessus (Doug Alan)
Subject: American Express

So, what do all you antiyuppies out there think of Laurie Anderson
becoming the college spokesperchild for American Express?

			"This is the card
			 And this is the carbon of the card"

			 Doug

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Subject: Re: CTwins "Tiny Dynamine", lyrics, etc.
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 86 21:22:51 -0800
From: J. Peter Alfke <alfke@csvax.caltech.edu>

seismo!cmcl2!floyd!stolaf!robertsl (Laurence C. Roberts) writes:

>I've been listening to the Cocteau Twins' Tiny Dinamine for the past
>couple of months.  (no, it wasn't my first exposure to them...snobs.)
>Is anyone else annoyed by what appears to be a slight case of tape bleed?

The sound generally seemed a but muddy in places, everything smudged out
rather than echoed as with tape bleed.  Dunno.  Especially as rumor had
it that "Aikea-Guinea" was recorded in digital ...

>Didn't someone say this recording is a couple of years old?

They have stated, in Melody Maker, that this is just a bunch of new stuff
they wanted to release without the fanfare of an LP.  From the style alone
I can't imagine the stuff being any older than "Aikea-Guinea"!
Do you have "Echoes in a Shallow Bay" (the companion EP)?  I think it's
quite a bit better.

>On the song "Plain Tiger", I could swear Liz is saying "After the task
>of adding up" at one point, and at another is saying quite loudly and
>distinctly, "You suck!!"  Does anyone have any interpretations of these
>guys' lyrics ...

God (and Liz) only knows.  The "adding up" thing sounds partially cor-
rect, but who am I to tell.  The postscript to my last submission has
as much as I've been able to make out of "Multifoiled".  Things past
"Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops" I don't even attempt.

In the same interview I mentioned above, they haul out some Japanese
editions of their albums -- released with *lyric sheets* -- and just
what those Japanese people were able to make of what Liz is singing
fairly boggles the mind:

	"Let us rock you so / Rock you so good"
	"The wave of the earth has got me all fooled now"
Liz: "Oh, that's f*cking disgusting ... They must think we're a bunch
     of perverts or something."
	"Take this fish / Harder than roe / who sauntered away"
Liz: "Jesus!"
	"Julianne / Was first called a genius / Julianne / A genius too /
	 Our song / Is framed by a genius / Suddenly she got up
	 and turned it on"
Liz: "Definitely drug induced hysteria."
					(Horribly illegally excerpted
					 from Melody Maker, 16 November
					 1985.  Great interview.  Read it)

>...or confirmation of the Greek rumor.

These same friends all suggest French  -- maybe just because of the group's
name.

My conclusion: Let's just leave those poor lyrics alone.
Not that I will do anything of the sort 8-)

						--Peter Alfke
						  alfke@csvax.caltech.edu

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Date:  Wed, 12 Mar 86 22:48 MST
From: "James J. Lippard" <Lippard@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA>
Subject:  Cocteau Twins
Reply-To:  Lippard@MULTICS.MIT.EDU

Are they named after Jean Cocteau, the French writer and Grand Master of
the Prieure' de Sion (a secret society whose members claim to be
descended from Jesus and have definite proof that Jesus did not die on
the cross) from 1918 to his death in 1963?  (For info on the Prieure' de
Sion, see "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh,
and Henry Lincoln (Dell, 1982).)

Jim (Lippard at MULTICS.MIT.EDU)

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Date: Wed, 12 Mar 86 18:07:03 EDT
From: seismo!bdmrrr!potomac!jsl (John Labovitz)
Subject: Re: My two cents, Robyn Hitchcock
X-Mailer: msg [version 3.2]

I like all of the Robyn Hitchcock albums about the same.  ``I Often Dream of
Trains'' used to be my favorite, but that was because it was the first one I
bought (thanks to Doug).  Then I bought ``Fegmania,'' which I played
constantly for about a month.  Sometime in that period I bought ``Black
Snake Diamond Role,'' and didn't like it too much the first time I heard
it.  Played it again a few weeks later, and loved it (especially ``Acid
Bird'').  Lessee, what else do I have... ``Groovy Decoy'' (the re-release of
``Groovy Decay,'' I think) -- Haven't listened to it as much as the others,
mainly because I don't want to get sick of it.  ``Gotta Let This Hen Out''
-- Live album; songs mainly from ``Fegmania,'' with a couple from the other
albums, and stuff that I hadn't heard like ``Leppo and the Jooves.''

Robyn's playing in DC at the 9:30 club on the 28th.  Be there.

By the way, I just bought the Soft Boys' ``Can of Bees'' and the green EP
(can't remember the name of it) at Tower here in DC.  Cheap, too.

jsl

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-- 
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under.

Greg Skinner (gregbo)
{decvax!genrad, allegra, gatech, ihnp4}!mit-eddie!gds
gds@eddie.mit.edu