From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V5 #66 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Monday, March 20 2000 Volume 05 : Number 066 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Alloy: Project B-Day wants you! ["Stephen M. Tilson" Subject: Alloy: Project B-Day wants you! Dear Alloy, Earlier, CRACKERS asked some good questions about our ongoing Thomas Dolby tribute projects: > Now that "Bride Of Aliens Ate My Birthday Cake" (code named > "Project B-Day:Deja Vu") is behind us it's time to start > co-ordinating the work on Project B-Day:III > > Could someone post the URL for the Project B-Day III webpage > as well as the subscription information for the Project B-Day > mailing list (so we can discuss details of the Project B-Day > operation without them reaching the ears of a certain > Birthday Boy). Some of our newer members may be wondering, "What on the flat earth could he be talking about?" In answer to that here is a short background on Project B-Day, which, by the way, is actually being called "Project B-Day IV" (BDay4, if you like) this year. Project B-Day (hereinafter referred to as BDay) began as a concept fostered by the members of the now-disbanded "Tap Room", a BBS-like message board formerly contained within Thomas Dolby's official website dedicated to his art , The Flat Earth Society (FES). The FES is still going strong, but The Tap Room closed up shop getting on three years ago. Many of its members either already had a dual citizenship (Alloy and the FES) or migrated over here at the close and are still with us today. (I wonder how old Barliman is holding up?) And so, a couple of crackers from Canada, uh, I mean CRACKERS and another Canadian, Ian Gifford, brought the BDay idea to Alloy with great enthusiasm and can-do. The idea was to have the musically inclined members of The Flat Earth Society select and record a Thomas Dolby song, all of which would be compiled together and presented to Mr. Dolby for his birthday. Additional copies were produced for the contributors. The only way to get a copy was, and still is, to PARTICIPATE. More on this later. This very thing has been done for the past three years. Our first offering was called "Aliens Ate My Birthday Cake" (1997), and was released on cassette. CRACKERS and Ian produced. In 1998 we released "The Flattery Earth" on two CDs. Keith Stansell and I produced. Last year we remastered and re-released "Aliens Ate My Birthday Cake" on CD with some additions and changes, and called it "BRIDE OF Aliens Ate My Birthday Cake" (1999). Again, Keith and I produced. The latter two releases included the addition of "B-Sides": Original tunes from the contributors of a-side covers. > We should really start to pull together on Project B-Day III > now so that everything gets done on time. October comes much > sooner than you might think and the deadline comes even > sooner. > > And if anyone wants to organize Project B-Day spin-off projects > for those whose talents lie in areas other than music then > you'll want to subscribe to the Project B-Day mailing list too. CRACKERS is referring to the Alloy sub-list, DolbyDay. Around the time of production for The Flattery Earth it occurred to me that we should take our discussions about what is being done for Thomas' upcoming birthday off-list. This, to preserve the Alloy bandwidth and to keep the current BDay project(s) a surprise for Thomas. For a while I ran a private list through my email address and eventually that list found a home and a name. DolbyDay was born. DolbyDay is the place for all discussions of upcoming tribute projects. You won't hear anything about it, except for very general messages like this, on Alloy until all is said and done. If you would like to be involved, or just want to watch the action as our current project takes shape, you are invited to join the DolbyDay list. (see below) Subscription to the DolbyDay list will allow you access to our tribute-specific discussions, various related files such as pre-release versions of our work, and the sign-up lists for projects. I use the plural because our activities are not limited to music. Last year, in addition to the release of "BRIDE OF Aliens...", a group of DolbyDayers put together a clever website-as-birthday-tribute for Thomas. Another great idea which has yet to see fruition is the production of a book of Dolby-related artwork, stories, and poetry. I should also mention that there is an easy way for non-musicians to participate in the musical tribute. Each year we collect voice-only birthday greetings from our members for inclusion with the musical recordings as an audio birthday card. This qualifies as participation and puts the greeter on our distribution list for the recording. To wit, there are copyright limitations on what we can do. By our current agreement with Thomas' management, musical BDay tributes may only be distributed to participants. At last check, about half of the Alloy folk are also subscribed to DolbyDay, and about 77% of those were participants. And what splendid tributes they are! Visit the links below to hear most of our finished work in RealAudio, courtesy of Keith Stansell. LINK TO REALAUDIO FILES OF OUR PREVIOUS EFFORTS - ----------------------------------------------- Here's the link to "The Flattery Earth" http://Keith.Stansell.com/flattery.htm I couldn't find a link to "BRIDE OF Aliens...". Keith? Help us out here. Also the RealAudio files at the Flattery site are not working for me. Could you look into this as well, Keith? I've tried two different computers and two different browsers - no joy. :-( LINK TO DOLBYDAY - ---------------- http://www.egroups.com/group/dolbyday/info.html Submit your email address on this page, or write to me privately to gain full access to this list and related resources. To sum up, as far as discussion on Alloy is concerned AREA 51 RULES APPLY to the current BDay projects. (Birthday presents should be a surprise, yes?) We would love to have your participation, but the only way to stay abreast of and participate in the various projects we might (or might not ) be cooking up is to SUBSCRIBE TO DOLBYDAY. > And perhaps someone can make it a point to post the Project B-Day > III url on a regular basis so that newcomers to Alloy can get > filled in on what this Project B-Day thing is all about. Done. :-) I'll make a point to post this, or a similar backgrounder semi-regularly on Alloy to keep the faithful informed. Thanks for rattling my cage and getting the ball rolling, CRACKERS! Best wishes and Yours in AllThingsDolby(tm), Stephen "/\/\iles" Tilson - DolbyDay List Administriviator Stephen_Tilson@compuserve.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 09:38:12 -0800 (PST) From: Elaine Linstruth Subject: Alloy: Who knew mullets were so funny. OT I am so sorry this is completely off-topic, but rarely do I find a website that makes me laugh out loud for this long. I know some of you are gonna find it hilarious. http://www.mulletsgalore.com My 3-year-old is so confused. She keeps coming in here to see what's so funny and finding me holding my stomach and howling, at preposterous looking men on the computer screen. Achy-breaky-bad-mistakey! Muhaahaahahah.. This guy is almost as good a comic writer as Crackers. - -- Elaine Linstruth Palmdale, CA (USA) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 22:31:38 -0500 From: "D'Arcy Salzmann" Subject: RE: Alloy: Who knew mullets were so funny. OT This is a multi-part message in MIME format. - ------=_NextPart_000_001E_01BF91F2.E425D120 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I saw this site about a month ago, and sent it to everyone I knew. IM(not so)HO, this is the one of the best comic sites on the net. Really priceless. - -------------------------------------------------------- D'Arcy Salzmann Strategic Partner Manager KL Group Inc. 260 King St. East Toronto, ON, Canada M5A 1K3 e: darcy@klgroup.com v: 416 643-3593 f: 416 594-1919 w: http://www.klgroup.com The mysteries of Partners explained, mailto:partnerQ@klgroup.com Software Development Productivity! - --------------------------------------------------------- - -----Original Message----- From: owner-alloy@smoe.org [mailto:owner-alloy@smoe.org]On Behalf Of Elaine Linstruth Sent: Sunday, March 19, 2000 12:38 PM To: Alloy@smoe.org Subject: Alloy: Who knew mullets were so funny. OT I am so sorry this is completely off-topic, but rarely do I find a website that makes me laugh out loud for this long. I know some of you are gonna find it hilarious. http://www.mulletsgalore.com My 3-year-old is so confused. She keeps coming in here to see what's so funny and finding me holding my stomach and howling, at preposterous looking men on the computer screen. Achy-breaky-bad-mistakey! Muhaahaahahah.. This guy is almost as good a comic writer as Crackers. - -- Elaine Linstruth Palmdale, CA (USA) - ------=_NextPart_000_001E_01BF91F2.E425D120 Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="D'Arcy Salzmann.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="D'Arcy Salzmann.vcf" BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:2.1 N:Salzmann;D'Arcy FN:D'Arcy Salzmann EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:darcy@klgroup.com REV:20000121T200914Z END:VCARD - ------=_NextPart_000_001E_01BF91F2.E425D120-- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 23:58:23 -0500 (EST) From: Chris Cracknell Subject: Alloy: Yippie! Yahoo! I've gone semi-digital! Well, another St. Patricks day has come and gone for me. This year I played a marathon gig at a local pub fending off drunks who would come onstage to grab a mic and attempt to belt out some drunken irish song (often stepping on my accordion's patch cord, unplugging me with a loud pop). To make matters worse, I'm nursing a cracked rib I aquired after suffering an unpleasent circumstance of physics at Judo class last week. (the Japanese word for "pain" is "itai" incase anyone is wondering what I screamed out). I've discovered that you don't want to be playing the accordion for more than an hour with a cracked rib. But all my suffering was worth it for I got PAID, and with my St. Patty's day money I was finally able to aquire a little something I've desired for oh so long.... I've got me a CD-RW!! (Woohoo!!!!) Guess that means I'll be sending in my submission for Project B-Day-IV (say, somebody should repost the Project B-Day FAQ. We're overdue) on a CD. Of course I'm still mastering on my trusty old 4-track. I've got the software to go fully digital but I need to get a better sound card. One that's full duplex stereo. And I'll need to upgrade my pitifully small hard drive (I remember when 2.5 gig was HUGE beyond belief... but then again, I remember when 20 meg hard drives were HUGE beyond belief) Besides, I like my ol' 4-track and I'm a bit of a fuddy-duddy when it comes to changing my technological habbits. (Hey I still do all my midi work on an Atari ST despite the fact that I now use my Pentium for just about everything else. But that's not so much a matter of my techno-fuddy-duddiness as it is due to the fact that my ST is just so much more reliable for midi work than my Pentium) But the REALLY neat thing is I can save all my old cassette tapes before they pass into oblibion. All my old out of print albums from the 80s that I haven't played in ages because the tapes were begining to deteriorate baddly can now be played one last time so as to be recorded on CD (I think I'll do my Debbie Harry "Koo Koo" cassette first). Oh joy, oh bliss! Not only that but I can make a CD that's only the A-side of Madness's self titled album thus sparing me from ever having to listen to that horrible B-side again. ^_^ Then again... Generation-X are now 30-somethings and we all know what happens when a Generation becomes 30-something. K-Tel collections out the wazoo! But somehow I doubt my beloved "Koo Koo" will ever be released again. Hmmmm... maybe I'll pick up a turntable the next time I go out thrifting and start thumbing through the record section. Lots of CD fodder there. It feels sooooo good to finally have my CD-RW (and it cost $600 less than my friend paid for his CD-R almost 3 years ago). Now I'll have to start work on a CD of my own to peddel when I'm out playing. I'm one happy Geekboy! CRACKERS (Doing a dance of joy from hell!!!) - -- Collector of Atari 2600 carts - Accordionist - Bira Bira Devotee - Anime fan * http://www.hwcn.org/~ad329/crab.html | Crackers' Arts Base * * http://www.angelfire.com/ma/hozervideo/index.html | Hozer Video Games * Nihongo ga dekimasu - 2600 programmer - Father of 2 great kids - Canadian eh ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V5 #66 **************************