From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V6 #176 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, July 9 2001 Volume 06 : Number 176 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Alloy: completely OT - carthedral ["Robin Thurlow" ] Alloy: leipzig cover [Jon Drukman ] Alloy: Stupid Question ["Fudai" ] Alloy: The Alloy Q&A discussion Part IV [jonathan.chiddick@nokia.com] Re: Alloy: The Alloy Q&A discussion Part IV ["Robin Thurlow" Subject: Alloy: completely OT - carthedral This is completely OT... but some of you car enthusiasts might want to visit this site to see the ultimate in car modifications: http://www.carthedral.com/about.html As described by the person who recommended this link, this shows when one's modifications to a 1971 Caddy hearse go from absurd to sublime... xxx Robin T who of course wants one.. do you think she'll make one for me?? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 16:26:37 +0100 From: "p.latham2" Subject: Alloy: Email Failure Hi everybody, Not sure if your going to receive this or not, but just advising that last few days ive had some problems with email and havent received any messages from alloy -- now this could be a hint from yourselves - but ill take my chances. Just in case anyone has sent any email directly to myself and wondering why ive ignored you -- its because of the above - so apologies. Think I may have rectified problem now , as two were received earlier today, but ill keep monitoring . Its been a lonely few days. Paul ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 09:54:09 -0700 From: Jon Drukman Subject: Alloy: leipzig cover i was websurfing for info on dave stewart & barbara gaskin. as i'm sure you know they did a very lush cover of leipzig years & years ago. here's a blurb i found on their website about it, which you may find interesting as well: Leipzig In the early '80s, Thomas Dolby (then known simply as 'Tom', was a regular football-playing colleague of Dave and Barbara's. (Barbara, alarmed at the effect it was having on her leg muscles, has since given up the game, but Dave remains up for a kickabout.) Being a little guy, Tom was a regular target for Dave's (6'2") catalogue of cynical body checks and illegal shoulder charges, but the Brazilian skill with which the young Dolby evaded the taller man's clumsy challenges proved to be second only to his ability to fashion a great pop song. In most cases, Dolby's recordings of his own songs are so superbly and imaginatively executed that it would be silly (as with some Beatles and Beach Boys tracks) to attempt a cover, but 'Leipzig' was arguably an exception. Originally appearing as a 'B' side to an early Dolby single produced by Andy Partridge, 'Leipzig' sounded like a great song in embryo - the backing was very minimal, the overall mood dark and introspective. Dave & Barbara's version of the song is, by contrast, expansive and technicoloured, with a big, rolling beat adorned by electronic percussion, twinkling keyboards, and cartoony sound effects. The chorus remains one of the great pop anthems of the 80's, and engendered two characters (Henry & James) who have subsequently appeared in another Stewart/Gaskin song. Tom, being an Internet kind of guy who learned to live in cyberspace before most of us learned to program a toaster, is probably reading this right now, so let's all give him a big 'HELLO' and bellow in unison - 'Hey Tom! Still got those baggy shorts?!!!'. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 13:22:59 -0500 From: "Fudai" Subject: Alloy: Stupid Question Hi. I'm new here and have a question for you fellows. What is "The Wreck of the Fairchild?" What album is it on? What's it's history? Thanks for any help. See ya later. a.k.a. Fudai ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 22:55:02 +0300 From: jonathan.chiddick@nokia.com Subject: Alloy: The Alloy Q&A discussion Part IV Hi all, I'm back from the woods after a quite exhausting two weeks felling trees and doing other 'light work'... Thanks for the comments that came off list about the last two episodes. Believe me it was really my pleasure doing this. So where were we then? Aha, Keiths question about what Thomas thinks about Alloy. Read on. Jon: To change the subject a little now. Keith Stansell wondered when you read Alloy; you seem to read it quite regularly - from the responses that I've had anyway, what do you feel when you read people impressions and reactions to your art and your music. Do you feel compelled to answer all of them or is there some kind of limit which you set for yourself of how to react? Thomas: Well the first thing is that I am incredibly proud of Alloy. Primarily because they are a really smart group of people. Plus, I'm very proud that it is so self-regulating; not to belittle the moderation work... Jon: Robin really does do an excellent job. Thomas: Oh she does, as did Paul before her! --but the fact that it is kind-of self-regulating... people come in and if they're not behaving right, they kind of get squeezed out, or else they fall in, and I'm very impressed with that. I'm very impressed when people get off-topic and start talking about the election or the cold-war or whatever it is. There are some really smart people in there and that's great. I was impressed with the overall musical talent with the birthday CD and so on. When it comes to people doing interpretations and so on... is that what you were thinking about? Jon: Yeah, you mentioned a couple of tracks, let's take for example 'I Love You Goodbye'. If someone were to write their interpretation of what that song meant to them or what they thought that song meant to you and they were completely wrong it must be very difficult not to bang away at the keyboard and put everything to rights again. Thomas: Well usually there are multiple interpretations of things so it is rare that you get one person who says, "well that's what it means to me" without someone else chiming in and saying, "well this is what I think." In reality there has never been a situation where I have thought that someone has been completely on the wrong track. Whenever there has been something that I didn't think was quite accurate I have been more amused by it than anything else because it is usually balanced by somebody else that is uncannily close to the truth. I think that there is a lot of richness there. If I was to go in and totally spew out the background behind ever song from every angle... Jon: It could kind of ruin it for some people? Thomas: If it was in print it would be, like, the definitive answer, the gospel about that stuff and any further speculation or interpretation would be pointless because it says here in black and white that that was not what he was thinking. Jon: Yeah, if somebody has a [Thomas Dolby] song that means something very specific to them and then you come and say no, this it what it really means it could ruin it for them and then song would never be able to hold the same meaning again. I suppose it is quite a thin line to walk; either giving too much or too little. Thomas: Yes, I think that's right. I think that it can be intriguing if I supply a little bit more information about some of the background, like when we were talking the other day about Suffolk, [Shingle Street] but yes, it is somewhat treading a thin line. I think some of the 'One Of Our Submarines' stuff, for example the one about heavy-water... Jon: Ah! That one is coming up! Thomas; OK. Jon: I can imagine from my viewpoint that there are many aspects of many of your songs that really don't have a specific meaning. They are just things that kind-of fit in or they are from some abstract concept that you came up with. If someone were to have a particular personal meaning to an aspect of one of your songs and then you were to come along and say, "oh, no, it didn't really mean anything", that could also spoil it for the person who had something deeply personal attached to a particular phrase or particular piece of music. Thomas: Yes, that's exactly right. Jon: Chris Good, the webmaster of Lene Lovich's website, he is interested in knowing if you are going to work with her again. Do you have anything that you written where you have thought ah! that might suit her? Or anything that you have specifically written for her? Thomas: Ahm...I don't think I have specifically written anything for her since New Toy! (laughing) Jon: It's been a long time hasn't it! Thomas: That must have been '79 or something when I wrote that. I'm still in touch with them as they live not far from me in England and I haven't heard any of their recent stuff. I know that they have been doing some writing and recording. I would like to catch up with it. I kind of have this picture in the back of my mind that... this old-aged... I see myself in a rocking chair, you know, with a sweater with a pipe! [assumes the croaky vibrato voice of a very old man] "Oh! Lene's come over! Let's put down some vocal harmonies!" "Oh! Paddy was 'round last week..." (much laughter!) ...with all my old cronies... The idea of dealing with commercial realities is not very interesting and this is one of the very liberating things about what is happening with digital music and the Internet. I could do something with Lene and get it released to the public without having to worry about getting a record deal. Ten years ago we could have made a demo but then you hit this barrier where you start to wonder if anybody is looking to sign an 80's artist? Are they going to want her to do something like 'Lucky Number' or 'New Toy' again? You just hit this barrier where you are only allowed to play the game if you fall in line with what the music industry expects from you. It's terrific that nowadays we can make a decision to do something for us, and release it on our own terms. The expectation is much lower. If it got to 5000 people then that would be a success. Jon: It is interesting that you say that as there was one comment made by Russell Millner about the Discover Awards when you did 'Science' egged on by your children. What was that like after performing that live after such a long - -time? Thomas: It was fine. On isolated occasions I have done that song and 'Hyperactive' in situations ranging from showing up at a radio station with a little Casio keyboard through to that [Discover Awards] through to the National Hockey League thing that I did a while back where I was out on the ice. Jon: That must have been weird? Thomas: No, well it was pretty weird... I got a kick out of doing that and that song is loose enough that you can't go far wrong with it anyway. Doing it for my kids was interesting. My kids... during their lifetimes, I have not been active as a professional musician and yet they see my records on the shelves and hear their mum talking about it and stuff like that, so they have a fairly skewed vision of it all. Where we live here, a lot of the other families are the sort-of Silicon Valley -types, so they will be playing in the playground with other kids and one of my kids will go up to one of the other kids and say, "well, my dad's really a musician." And the other kid will say, "Oh, my dad's a musician too, he plays guitar." And mine will go, "No, he's really a musician!" and the other will reply, "well, my dad is REALLY a musician!" and they will be talking about two completely different things. The funniest thing that I heard from the playground was when one of mine was about six and this other kid said to her, "I know that your dad's a musician because he was the one that stole that song from the Backstreet Boys." (laughing) It turned out on further investigation that this other kid's dad or mum had heard 'I Want It That Way' by the Backstreet Boys and had later heard 'I Love You Goodbye'. He thought that was me ripping off their melody... so it came to be that they said, "oh yeah him, he stole that song from the Backstreet boys!" Jon: That's an unusual quote! In two years time Hyperactive will be twenty years old. How do you feel about that? Looking back over that period of time do you really want to get up on stage and do that again or is it really just Beatnik now? Thomas: Oh no, absolutely not. I'm still happy to do that but balanced with other stuff that I do. I've done two live performances of my own stuff in the last couple of years. I did the same set at both and the set list was only about seven songs - and that ['Hyperactive'] was one of them but the others were favorite songs of mine that I wanted to do. I don't feel compelled to play that song but what I miss most is the sort of 'communion' that is playing my favorite songs to people for which they are also their favorite songs. Jon: I must admit that if I'm totally honest 'Hyperactive' is not one of my favorite songs. Thomas: This is one of the things that is great about Alloy. To the average person on the street... if they have heard of me they have heard 'She Blinded Me With Science' but with the people on Alloy, their favorite songs are my favorite songs. What is wonderful about that is that if I sit down at the piano and write something and I make a decision about a chord or a melody or a lyric that really means something to me versus a choice that goes 'oh I could imagine this being played on the radio' or 'I can see that a radio programmer will really go for this or an A&R man will go for this' or whatever. Those are two very different choices; in some ways it is easier to predict what is going to work on the radio than it is to predict whether something that means a lot to me will connect with other people. For example, when I wrote 'Screen Kiss' I had no idea whether it would connect for other people and I wrote that whilst 'Science' was in the top 5 in the USA! Jon: - - Well those two couldn't be more different. Thomas: Yeah, it meant a lot to me but I had no idea whether that it would connect emotionally with anybody else... yet when I read the kind of stuff people obsess about on Alloy it's the same things that I was obsessing about when I did it. So that choice of chord change... somebody will write about that same chord change or that sound that I used, and someone will comment on it. So clearly it did connect. That is so much more meaningful to me. Whether it is ten or a hundred people and the fact that six -hundred thousand people bought She Blinded Me With Science. I can't really conceive an number like six - -hundred thousand and I don't really know what it meant to them either; I don't think it really got under their skin, it was just something that they were aware of, they liked and they bought. It is way way more important to me and more gratifying to me if I read ten people agreeing about something that they feel about 'Screen Kiss' or a song like that. Jon: Coming back to 'The Wreck Of The Fairchild'/'Sale Of The Century', you mentioned earlier that you had a recording of 'Sale Of The Century...' I don't know whether you noticed last week but I made a posting where I mentioned that I had tried to sing the 'Sale Of The Century' lyric over 'The Wreck Of The Fairchild' but after many attempts realized that I just couldn't figure it out. Thomas: You wouldn't know from 'The Wreck Of The Fairchild' that the only part that survived from the original melody was the middle eight. Jon: Well that explains a lot then! Thomas: The middle eight was the same in the vocal version of it and that stayed in. Basically what happened was that I had this whole song and I didn't think that the song was anything special but the arrangement, the parts, were very interesting in themselves so I decided to go for this other way. Jon: Many people have never heard it, for obvious reasons, and when they discover it, it seems to be becoming some sort of 'old favorite' now. I didn't hear 'The Wreck Of The Fairchild' until about five years after the 'other' 'Golden Age Of Wireless' for obvious reasons and it is something that I don't listen to very often but something that I really enjoy to listen to. The reason that I don't listen to it very often is that I don't play vinyl very often and that brings me up to the next question. Would it be possible to get some kind of compilation together with some of the stuff that has never been released on CD before? There are a number of songs that have only ever appeared on vinyl. I don't know whether there would be a big market for it but if it was sold direct - even as a CDR - then you would get 100% of the profits. ... to be continued. So there you go. Apparently we're a smart bunch of people who tend also to like his favorites rather than those that had commercial success. That was gratifying to hear. A couple of people asked in the last couple of weeks whether they could put the interview as a whole on their web sites. The plan is that this content will be rewritten and will appear on the FES in the near future but naturally not until after it has been run in total for Alloy. We did it originally for Alloy and it is only right that Alloy gets it first. The content will appear in a different format. Hang in there and I will check if this OK. Cheers all. Part V to follows next week. What's new? Jon ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 20:11:57 -0400 From: "Robin Thurlow" Subject: Re: Alloy: The Alloy Q&A discussion Part IV Thanks for posting the fifth part of the interview, Jon - and it's good to have you back! Thomas said: > > The funniest thing that I heard from the playground was when one of mine was > about six and this other kid said to her, "I know that your dad's a musician > because he was the one that stole that song from the Backstreet Boys." > (laughing) It turned out on further investigation that this other kid's dad or > mum had heard 'I Want It That Way' by the Backstreet Boys and had later heard > 'I Love You Goodbye'. He thought that was me ripping off their melody... so it > came to be that they said, "oh yeah him, he stole that song from the > Backstreet boys!" > It's funny... back a couple of years ago when my violin contract ran out and I worked in a Chinese restaurant to make ends meet for a while, I used to hear that Backstreet Boys song faintly over the radio & didn't know who it was at the time... but I thought it was kind of a catchy, Motown-y sound. Maybe I subconsciously made that connection! (...or maybe it was just the MSG fumes :) HOw perfectly evil of Thomas to swipe the song *before* it was ever even made. > Thomas: > If it was in print it would be, like, the definitive answer, the gospel about > that stuff and any further speculation or interpretation would be pointless > because it says here in black and white that that was not what he was > thinking. I know it would probably spoil it for some people, but I'm more interested in the creative process than in worrying over having my particular fantasy bubble burst. It's very nice that Thomas takes it on himself to worry over, but I'm at a point in my life that I want reality *very badly*. Though I do understand his not wanting to risk possibly disappointing or alienating those to whom his music means so much. > Thomas: > Yeah, it meant a lot to me but I had no idea whether that it would connect > emotionally with anybody else... yet when I read the kind of stuff people > obsess about on Alloy it's the same things that I was obsessing about when I > did it. So that choice of chord change... somebody will write about that same > chord change or that sound that I used, and someone will comment on it. So > clearly it did connect. That is so much more meaningful to me. Whether it is > ten or a hundred people and the fact that six -hundred thousand people bought > She Blinded Me With Science. I can't really conceive an number like six > -hundred thousand and I don't really know what it meant to them either; I > don't think it really got under their skin, it was just something that they > were aware of, they liked and they bought. It is way way more important to me > and more gratifying to me if I read ten people agreeing about something that > they feel about 'Screen Kiss' or a song like that. I've just been having a very similar discussion with an acquaintance of mine who's a writer. She feels the same way about her readers. Not all of them understand her work but those who do are people she's genuinely connected with, and it's the only satisfying thing she can imagine coming out of her career as a writer. xxxx Robin T ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 22:16:02 -0400 From: "Mary A. Brown" Subject: Alloy: The Alloy Q&A discussion Part IV Robin wrote: > I know it would probably spoil it for some people, but I'm more > interested in the creative process than in worrying over having > my particular fantasy bubble burst. It's very nice that Thomas > takes it on himself to worry over, but I'm at a point in my life > that I want reality *very badly*. Though I do understand his not > wanting to risk possibly disappointing or alienating those to > whom his music means so much. And I couldn't agree more! I've spent years with my own interpretations of his work so those thought patterns are well established. I'd like to know what Thomas was feeling or trying to communicate when he composed his songs. His explanations could rest quite amicably beside my own ideas. They might even make me better appreciate a song I have previously dismissed! And yes, Thomas, I have come around about "Aliens"... One of the things I really admire about TMDR is his ability to take situations from his own life and write about them in a cloaked way so they are more open to interpretation and projection. I'm far too literal of a writer to do that successfully. Guess I ought to stick with my scientific manuscripts, eh? An alternate way of dealing with such questions is to tell a different versions under various circumstances. Neil Finn has given a few stories as the inspiration for his song "Into Temptation" and I am pleased with them all, even if I don't believe them. Good to have you back, Jon! Europa ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 22:35:26 -0400 From: "Chris & Beena Cracknell" Subject: Re: Alloy: The Alloy Q&A discussion Part IV - ----- Original Message ----- > Doing it for my kids was interesting. My kids... during their lifetimes, I > have not been active as a professional musician and yet they see my records on > the shelves and hear their mum talking about it and stuff like that, so they > have a fairly skewed vision of it all. There's nothing like kids to make you feel like a celebrity. I think it stems from a child's natural desire to worship their father ("My dad could beat up your dad!"). I remember when my son was just about 4 years old. We were walking down the street when I ran into two "fans" (for lack of a better word). Two young guys came up to me and said "You're that guy, arn't you? You're that guy who plays accordion. Crackers, right?" I blushed as I answered "yes". And then the two guys went on about how they saw me playing at a bar and just loved my show and wanted to know when I'd be playing next and stuff like that. So after we left them my son looked up at me and asked "Daddy, who were those men." "I don't know," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "But, they knew who you were." he said, the little wheels in his head turning. "Well yes, I suppose. They have seen me playing music at one of my shows." I told him. His little eyes popped wide open and his jaw dropped as he looked up at me with an expression of awe on his face and said "That mean's you're famous!" Well far be it from me to burst his lil' bubble so I just laughed and said "I guess so." We were walking to my wife's office and when we got there Logan was telling everyone in the office he saw "My daddy is a famous musician!" It was so cute, although a little embarassing. When he was two years old I was working on a production of "The Threepenny Opera". I spent much of my day in my studio working new arrangements for the songs and then going over them with my friend Dave who was the musical director to fine tune them. While I was working he'd be sitting on the studio floor with his building blocks (this was before the arrival of a second child forced my studio to move deep into the bowels of my basement "geekroom") or playing with his cars or something. Well I took him to a rehearsal one day and he stunned the entire cast by being able to sing most of the songs from the play. (When I was busy working and couldn't keep an eye on him the girls who were playing the part of the whores in the play looked after him (they thought he was the cutest thing). It of course led to me speaking a sentance few fathers should ever speak to answer the query of where their child is. "Oh he's backstage with the whores.") Of course after seeing me working in my studio on the songs and then performing them at a rehearsal for quite some time after that when asked "What does your daddy do?" he would answer "My daddy wrote 'The Threepenny Opera'." Kids are so cute. Crackers (I can beat up any dad on the block from hell!!!!!!) CrAB - http://www.hwcn.org/~ad329/crab.html The Official Bira Bira Webpage - http://birabira.chaosmagic.com Ghastly's Ghastly Comic - http://ghastly.keenspace.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 23:26:38 -0400 From: "Robin Thurlow" Subject: Re: Alloy: The Alloy Q&A discussion Part IV - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mary A. Brown" > And I couldn't agree more! I've spent years with my own > interpretations of his work so those thought patterns are well > established. I'd like to know what Thomas was feeling or trying to > communicate when he composed his songs. One of my own favorite things is finding out a lyric that meant so much to me was actually absolute nonsense to the composer. I don't know... there's just something funny about that :) xxx Robin T ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V6 #176 ***************************