From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V6 #114 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 Sunday, May 6 2001 Volume 06 : Number 114 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Alloy: Bio Late Than Never? [Robyn Moore ] Re: Alloy: One more bio to add [CRACKERS ] Alloy: And we will all go together when he go [CRACKERS Subject: Alloy: Bio Late Than Never? Okay, so it's a -really- bad pun, but I'm sick so I get some slack. ;) I'm Robyn Moore (aka The Other Robyn). I'm pushing 38, am a professional mom to one extremely precocious 9 year old and live in Portland, Oregon. I first really got into TMDR in the early 80's when I saw the Hyperactive video. I knew he'd done Science, but when I saw Hyperactive, I thought it was the most brilliant vid I'd ever seen. I've been with Alloy since it's inception, having signed up with Kaleidospace a month or two before it's TMDR section went under. I was an occasional visitor to The Tap Room, but I didn't post with any regularity. However, I did have a claim to fame there, being the winner of the first Tommy Awards. I'm a semi-lurker, as I tend to be shy and think people aren't much interested in what I have to say. When not listening to TMDR, I can be found occupying myself with various arts and crafts, anime, computer games, and kicking around the internet in a variety of guises. My husband and I just bought our first house, so I'm going to be busy with that for quite a while as well. (As a matter of fact, that's part of the reason I'm so late with this - not only did we have to move, but Qwest lost the transfer order for our ISDN line and we were offline for about a week and a half. :/) Some of my other favourite artists are Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, Weird Al, Jamiroquai, Daft Punk (I -love- their new video with Leiji Matsumoto's work), Fat Boy Slim (Ditto that with their vid featuring Christopher Walken), ELO, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Hiroshima, and Queen. I don't personally know anyone famous in Portland, but I hear Radames Pera (of Kung Fu fame) lives and operates a sound studio here. If I had a chance to ask Thomas a question (assuming I could stop being a raving fangirl long enough), I'd probably ask why he chose to move to America and if he gave up his British citizenship to do so. I'd better wrap this up - it's late and I have to go to the doctor in the am. (ew.) Robyn M @ Robyn Moore @ http://www.wiccans.net/robyn.html @ You knew the job was dangerous when you took it. - S.C. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 09:22:31 -0400 (EDT) From: CRACKERS Subject: Re: Alloy: One more bio to add On Thu, 3 May 2001, Robin Thurlow wrote: > now.... I'm just having a lovely email chat with a friend and recalling > my far-distant guitarist ex-boyfriend's horrid "plaster caster" exploits > backstage with demented groupies... eh, right before we broke up many > years ago. Speaking of which... holy crap! Have you seen how much a "plaster caster" of Thomas Dolby is going for on Ebay!? CRACKERS (Investment with potential for growth from hell!!) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 10:10:26 -0400 (EDT) From: CRACKERS Subject: Alloy: And we will all go together when he go On Fri, 4 May 2001, Robin wrote: > What Thomas said about he and his girlfriend planning to meet up on the > beach after the apocalypse is very cool. I feel as if today's generation > of people (I think anyone born in the 1980s or later) has no idea of the > sort of effect it had on our generation, to grow up under the constant > menace of The Bomb... that we could lose everything forever thanks to one > moment of stupidity in some official office somewhere. I was trying to explain to someone the other day what it was like togrow up hearing the daily testing of the air raid siren as a kid. Each day at noon the town I grew up in used to test the air raid siren. It was an effective way to get everyone to syncronize their clocks too, when you heard the siren go off you knew it was 12pm (time for lunch). But I used to always wonder, if the russians attacked at noon how would we know it was a real attack and not testing. I also find that the nintendo generation doesn't get the joke "This has been a test of the emergency broadcast system", since they didn't grow up with their cartoons being interupted by tests of a system designed to tell you how much time you had to kiss your ass goodbye. The town I grew up in was near a nuclear target but not close enough to be in the immediate incineration zone. We were in the "living will envy the dead" zone. I was also explaining the lyrics to Nena's "99 Red Balloons" to a nintendo generation kid not long ago who had no idea that such a bright little pop song was actually about cold war paranoia causing global destruction. Then of course there was the fanatical right wing christian church I was forced to grow up in which constantly grilled into our young and impressionable minds that the bible said that we would not live to reach adulthood and have children of our own because the world would be destroyed in a nuclear halocaust. I guess I became an adult and had two kids just to spite god. Although I have to say I am thankfull that "the bomb" was able to inspire some wonderful ditties from Tom Lehrer, even if kids today can't fully appreciate the lyrics. I think one of my favorites is the M.L.F. Lullaby. Bomb Paranoia and German Paranoia all in one song. Sleep baby sleep, in peace may you slumber No danger lurks, your sleep to encumber We've got the missiles, peace to determine And one of the fingers on the button will be German. Why shouldn't they have nuclear warheads? England says no but they are all soreheads I say a by-gone should be a by-gone Let's make peace the way we did in Stanleyville and Saigon Once all the Germans were warlike and mean But that couldn't happen again. We taught them a lesson in 1918 And they've hardly bothered us since then. So sleep well my darlings, the sandman can linger We know our buddies won't give us the finger. Heil - hail - the Wehrmacht, I mean the Bundeswehr, Hail to our loyal ally. M.L.F. will scare Brezhnef. I hope he is half as scared as I. I rather liked his song about Wernher Von Braun too. "Vonce der rockets go up who cares vere dey come down? Dats not my department" says Wernher Von Braun. You know it occured to me I could live a happy life with only the trinity of Toms on my CD player. Tom Lehrer Tom Waits Thomas Dolby. CRACKERS (Nuclear powered from hell!!!!!) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 05 May 2001 16:43:04 -0400 From: Russell Milliner Subject: Re: Alloy: DISKY records Compilation 12" of Hyperactive via EMI news Tim Hudson wrote: > > Which begs the question what was the first commercially available release > of Toms and was there an anniversary party ? > As for the first commercially available SOLO work that I know of is on the From Brussels with Love - Airwaves 4-Track Here is a little blurb from Thomas on the insert: "My father is a professor of Archaelogy and I've lived all over the place...Italy, Greece, Cairo, France, USA. When I was a kid I used to have my own meteorological box for monitoring the weather the weather, and I was the projectionnist for a film club. I was vaguely interested in jazz piano, but I never had lessons or played any rock music. I started getting interested in studios and especially synthesisers at around 15 (I'm 21 now). I was starting to get good with a synth in my spare time. Later a friend - Bruce Woolley, who wrote "Video Killed The Radio Star"- asked me to form a band with him and play synth and we toured England and USA, which is where I started to have the idea of doing my one-man show. Eventually, I left Bruce to concentrate on my own music." - -Russ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 17:11:07 -0400 From: "Robin" Subject: Alloy: small (cool!) world & Nuclear Survivor I've just gone to finally buy my first pair of drumsticks (to go with my little "ken" practice pad) and talk to the owner of the shop about what my first step should be as a beginner. I'm going to arrange to take lessons with him I think... the 'small world' part of this is that in addition to many other very outstanding associations and professional gigs, this guy has studied in NYC with Joe Morello of the Dave Brubeck Quartet! How's that for street cred? :) I think I'll be in good hands. He says he's happy that I've had classical training, as he thinks it'll give me an 'edge'. So I am definitely going to practice as much as possible before my first lesson. I'll have to gather all the best 'percussion' pieces of Thomas' to try to accompany.. maybe I should start with the early, "Henry" percussion series (good ol' Henry) for a sense of timing, and then move on to the human drummers. Crackers wrote: > I also find that the nintendo generation doesn't get the joke "This has > been a test of the emergency broadcast system", since they didn't grow up > with their cartoons being interupted by tests of a system designed to tell > you how much time you had to kiss your ass goodbye. > > The town I grew up in was near a nuclear target but not close enough to be > in the immediate incineration zone. We were in the "living will envy the > dead" zone. IBM headquarters are located in the town where I grew up, and they claimed to be a nuclear strike priority because of their military/intelligence links, but deep down I always suspected they might have been just posturing (??? LOL, skeptical teenage me...) so we were either to be immediately incinerated, or in the living-will-envy-the-dead zone because of our proximity to NYC and Philly. Crackers, do you think your ability to fix just about anything and your fascination with simpler electronic devices might stem from a similar sense of survivalism? I think Thomas has that too, the ability to take basics and make them into something viable - in his case, the very basics in technology made into brilliant works of art from the time he started as a teenager. And these are not simple creations either (thinking of his early live shows, and, currently, Beatnik!) I think it may be something of the same thing, that survivalist satisfaction at work to some degree :) A bunch of us should get stranded somewhere and have a sort of "Nuclear Survivor" don't you think so? It can be based in a replica of a dangerously radioactive, bombed-out city and surrounding countryside.. and we have to try to rebuild or preserve some portion of civilization while figuring out how to survive from day-to-day. There can be nuclear zombies and mutated giant rats and sewer gators for a little bit of added spice. Who thinks they could survive?? xxxxx Robin T ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V6 #114 ***************************