// Enjoy...[BP]

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Subject: NN: Nanci on the List
   Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 22:59:51 -0300
   From: "Douglas Dick" (cddick@viaccess.net>

Nanci got a mention tonight on VH-1 program the List. The topic was =
Desert Island Discs. The four panelists picked their three favorites. =
Actress Jennifer Garner picked as her third desert island disc, Nanci's =
One Fair Summer Evening. This is the first time I have ever seen Nanci =
mentioned on this show. Nanci's CD survived the elimination round where =
each panelist can knock a CD off the list. However in the finals One =
Fair Summer Evening did not finish in the top three. By the way the =
number one Desert Island Disc voted on the show was the CD called Mob =
Hits which is a compilation disc with old Italian type songs by artists =
such as Dean Martin and other mostly traditional pop artists.  =20

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Subject: NN: Nanci on the List
   Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 09:15:09 EDT
   From: VickiStein@aol.com

Hi to all ~

Back from Yellowstone and other points West!  First, I'd wanted to say that I
thoroughly enjoyed reading the posts about the wonderful Atlanta weekend! 
Sounded like a very special time!  I about fell off of my chair when I read
that Emily from the Indigo Girls was in the audience and then sang with Nanci! 
Man, I would have rerouted my trip by 1,000 miles to be there for that had I
known!  Thanks to everyone who took the time to post on that event ~ it was a
joy to read about it!  

Regarding the VH1 Show "The List" ~ I'm glad Nanci was acknowledged. More often
than not, I find the "celebrity" selections on that show to be shallow and
mainstream ~ not really a reflection of great or even good music, just popular
music.  Not that popular music can't be good or great, just that some of it
isn't...

Vicki

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Subject: re: NN: Emmylou Harris tour of Europe and UK
   Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 03:17:11 -0400
   From: Susan Cane (SusanCane@compuserve.com>

Paul mentioned some Emmylou tour dates, including this one:

>November 22, 2000 - Bristol,  England (Colston Hall)(

I phoned the Colston Hall on Monday morning, having seen the date listed in
the Emmylou on Line mailing. According to the box office (and to the
Colston Hall's website and flyers), Bjorn Again (an Abba tribute band) are
playing on 22nd November! I asked if they had another date for Emmylou, but
they knew nothing at all about any definite or even tentative booking.

So if the Bjorn Again date is cancelled, the box office don't know it yet -
and if Emmylou's playing there at any time in November, they don't know
that either!

Susan

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   Subject: Re: NN: Emmylou Harris tour of Europe and UK
      Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 22:17:02 +0100
      From: "Paul" (paul@preeve.clara.co.uk>

I've just seen the dates repeated in the Emmylou egroups list quoted by MCH2
from "Sonicnet"
	http://www.sonicnet.com/news/archive/story.jhtml?id=1122374
so I'm not sure what's going on. The RAH date has been mentioned for the
best part of a month now.

Paul

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Subject: NN: Michelle Shocked Mon 31st
   Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 10:40:11 +0100
   From: "Jenny" (jenny.frog@virgin.net>

Yo

Is anybody planning on seeing Michelle Shocked in Glasgow on monday night?
I saw a poster for the show in Borders yesterday and i kinda feel like
going, even though

a) i only remember hearing 'memories of east texas' and 'anchorage' as a kid
b) i'm spending thurs/fri/sat/sun nights at the cambride folk festival and
will get back at 2pm on monday to go to an audition.
c) the only possible people i oculd go with are my dad (who i'm going to
cambridge with and will be heartily sick of me and music by monday), my
friend shona (ditto) and my mum (HRM... might not be her thing...)
d) there probably aren't any tickets left and i'm broke anyway...

jenny*

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   Subject: NN: Re: Michelle Shocked Mon 31st
      Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:50:45 +0800
      From: "Bob McConnochie" (rsm@ppp.com.hk>

Jenny....  remember -  music will get you through times of no money better
than money will get you through times of no music.

Need I say more?

Bob Mc., Hong Kong, wishing like hell he could wrestle with such a dilemma.
(Call Shona now)

(p.s - free home-grown compilation for anyone who can spot the
paraphrase....)

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    Subject: NN: Narcissus
       Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 08:51:01 -0400
       From: Steve Robertson (stever@mindspring.com>

Recently, we touched on the problems faced by artists and their
relatives who participate in a forum like this and receive some public
praise. Nanci made it clear a long time ago that she wouldn't be able to
participate here because of those potential problems. A quote from
Richard Shindell in the new issue of "Acoustic Guitar" sums it up nicely:
---------------------------------------

"The Internet is a godsend for marginal artists like me. I use it to
distribute my CDs, to notify people about gigs,and even to sell the
records. I once went into one of those discussion lists they have on me,
and it wasn't good from a psychological point of view. It was kind of
like Narcissus staring into the pool."

                                    Richard Shindell
---------------------------------------

Hidin' Out in the Georgia Pines-
Wishin' It Would Rain,
Steve Robertson

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Subject: NN: Bill & Bonnie
   Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 09:55:08 -0500 (CDT)
   From: PhotoTwang@webtv.net (Richard Hill)

My friend Sue, who went to school with both Bill and Bonnie Hearne,
wants you all to be running to your CD stores Tuesday to pick up their
brand new one on their new label Back Porch / Virgin.

>WATCHING LIFE THROUGH A WINDSHIELD
>Scheduled for a release date of August 1, Bill
>and Bonnie's new album, on the Back
>Porch/Virgin, label features Buck Owens, Chris
>Hillman, Herb Pedersen, and Jay Dee Maness.
>The album, titled "Watching Life Through a
>Windshield" is produced by John Wooler and
>Randy Jacobs.
http://bbhearne.adnetsol.com/
Richard

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Subject: NN: Re: Classical and Folk
   Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 01:11:55 -0400
   From: kenn lippert (lippert@nauticom.net>

Listening to the local talk-show moron on the Christian radio station 
the other day (i don't know why, just to keep my heart pumping i 
guess), they were discussing Country Music versus "good" music.  Good 
as in, classical, complicated, written by dead guys who didnt mention 
pick-up trucks and big hair in their concertos.  If i had had a cell 
phone in the car, i would have pointed out that it takes just as much 
genius to create an entire world of pain, sorrow, triumph, and joy 
with ten words and a melody on a magnetic tape, as it does to compose 
"Adagio for Strings" (funny how they can create the same image though 
huh?).  I love classical music myself, but it pisses me off to no end 
when the classical snobery comes out of others.  Taste is taste, no 
argument there, but appreciation of art and genius doesn't require a 
taste for it.

Hell i even appreciate what a great musician Bela Fleck is, but i 
can't stand him.

Oh this thread was about stories and concert programs wasn't it.  Sorry.

Of course good between song patter (when done well) adds enormously 
to the enjoyment and communication of a song.  Nanci is a master at 
it.  Kate is getting pretty damn good herself.  She had such a great 
repore with the audience in atlanta.  i'm still working on that bit.

Oh my gosh, look at the time!  I gotta get to bed.

Night all,

kenn "going up" lippert
-- 

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Subject: NN: Re: Classical and Folk
   Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 10:18:30 GMT
   From: "Steve Gilmore" (svgil@hotmail.com>

There's good and bad in all kinds of music.  Agree, it takes genius to 
create all kinds of music, even that you don't like.

wrt classical, I like the old masters of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven.  
Bartok, Mahler, and Schoenberg are difficult to swallow, but I'm sure they 
put a lot of effort into their works.

Growing up in the Midwest, country music was dismissed as being low class 
hillbilly music.  What a shame.  I missed out on a lot of classic country in 
my youth while listening to late 60's top 40 AM radio like everyone else my 
age.

I like all kinds of music myself.  What matters is that it's GOOD!

SVG

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Subject: NN: Re: Classical and Folk
   Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 04:08:00 EDT
   From: BMiller224@aol.com

Boy, I was out of town for a few days and I see I've been missing out on a 
cool discussion of the role of classical music in the grand scheme of things.

I think the kind of comparison Kenn Lippert complained about from the weird 
radio commentator (of popular music vs. "good" music) is in many ways a false 
one.  You don't hear the term "art music" used that much to stand for what is 
normally called "classical" music.  But I think it's a useful distinction, 
even though it inevitably sounds like a suggestion that popular music is not 
"art." "Classical" music does require a high level of formal training that 
popular music does not.

That's a broad generalization. But I'm thinking about what Emmylou Harris 
calls "living room music."  She referred to her "Angel Band" album as having 
been recorded that way (literally in a living room, as I remember).  Arlo 
Guthrie is always reminding his audiences that most of music for most of the 
history of the human race was not so much a formal performance as it was 
people sitting around the campfire singing.

Okay, so I'm sure there are some anthropologists and musicologists who would 
quibble with that.  But that is the basic idea of "popular" music.  I 
remember in the mid-70s an interviewer asked Mick Jagger what he thought of 
the then-new "punk rock."  He wasn't totally enthusiastic about it.  But he 
said that he was glad to see a return to a simpler style because it let 
people do rock-and-roll who couldn't really play music.

Regarding the complexity issue that Heidi, Justin and others have brought up, 
I think this is one of the fascinating things about art/classical music.  Up 
until roughly a century ago, urban audiences related well to contemporary 
compositions.  Whereas today, classical music fans often prefer stuff written 
250 years ago to works by living composers.

What happened to change that was in large part the technical developments in 
music composition, involving more and more experimentation with rhythms, 
harmonies and tonality.  Much of the new music became less "accessible" to 
the listener, or, to put it another way, required more effort on the 
listener's part.  A Brahms piece pretty much anyone can follow, even if it 
puts you sound asleep within a couple of minutes.  But Arnold Schoenberg's 
music is, as someone on another music list said of Nanci Griffith's music, an 
acquired taste.

Not that popular music is entirely free of that issue.  Most people could 
sing along with "If I Had a Hammer."  That might not be so easy with a 
Talking Heads song.  Most listeners would consider the jazz of Al Hirt more 
"accessible" than that of Charles Mingus.

I was surprised to learn that Baroque music (Bach, Handel), which is known 
today for its complex polyphonic harmonies or "counterpoint," started out as 
a movement toward simpler music, reacting against earlier styles that had 
gotten too complex.  Sort of like Mick Jagger's comment about punk rock.

Bruce Miller
Oakland CA

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   Subject: Re: NN: Re: Classical and Folk
      Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 19:31:53 -0400
      From: Tony Cox (tonycox@pacific.net.au>

A fellow audiophile friend (whose musical tastes are quite different from mine)
recommended a Decca Legends series CD of Beethoven's Violin Sonata #9 as being
a
particularly fine recording.

Well, as an example of good sound quality I couldn't argue with that, but as a
piece of music to be appreciated I was obviously missing the point.  I don't
know
what the Latin musical term for "all over the place" is, but that or something
similar would have been the composer's instruction to musicians attempting the
piece, I was sure.  Not that Itzhak Perlman needed to go back and practice his
scales or anything, but this piece was just too damn difficult to listen to to
be
enjoyable in any sense of the word that I could relate to.

The next time I saw my friend I asked him what emotion it was that I was
supposed
to be experiencing when listening to this piece, and in the manner of a patient
master dealing with a fool he told me that it wasn't so much the emotion as the
virtuosity of the playing that was to be admired.  So, in other words, it's
*very* difficult to play, so it's good.  Well, in the words of one of the great
composers of *our* time (G>: that don't impress me much!!

Suddenly the whole musical debate took on a new perspective; the music that I'd
thought must be good (because that's what the experts said) but that I lacked
the
sensitivity to appreciate was often really just a display of technique.
Accepted, there are some moving pieces in the classical repertoire, but
squeezing
a bit of phoney emotion out of a note by wiggling the violin bow around a bit
is
quite often all that's necessary for a performance to be labelled great.  Well,
excuse me for rejecting that whole pretentious show-pony stuff while I continue
to admire music that genuinely speaks to something inside of me.  That's not to
say that the only good music is simple music, but I've got more out of a single
good Nanci song (for instance) than out of my entire classical collection
(about
10 CD's).

Tony, evidently still missing the point.

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Subject: NN: Re: The nature of art
   Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 17:44:34 EDT
   From: BMiller224@aol.com

Shawn writes:

(( I'm not sure I could list a twentieth century composer, in any genre, who 
has exhibited the artistic or technical genius of Mozart. >>

I would count Aaron Copland and Charles Ives in that company.  There's got to 
be at least a couple of Americans who rank up there with that Austrian 
fellow. :) I've also heard that the composer whose songs have been recorded 
more than anyone else in history is Sir Paul McCartney.  I have no idea if 
that's really true.  But his work may turn out to be just as enduring as 
Wolfgang's.

The new Penguin Lives biography series recently published a Mozart biography 
by the historian and psychoanalyst Peter Gay.  I'm in the middle of it now.  
It's a very readable -and relatively short - piece about one of the most 
famous composers and about the music business as he knew it.

(( Peering into my crystal capo, I think it's the film and theater scores 
that will probably still be around in 2222.  Contemporary composers such as 
James Horner (Glory), John Williams (Star Wars), and John Barry (James Bond 
flics) come immediately to mind.  Patriotic songs  like "America the 
Beautiful" and "This Land Is Your Land" will also survive. >>

I think Shawn's crystal ... thing may be focusing pretty well.  One of 
Beethoven's best-known pieces is "Egmont," which is "incidental music" (a 
musical score) for a play of Goethe's.  Copland also did musical scores for 
movies.

The musical scores actually make a huge difference in many movies.  If any of 
you have seen the exceptionally creepy "What Lies Beneath" yet, the music 
adds a great deal to setting the atmosphere of suspense - which this movie 
achieves largely through devices other than special effects, gory or 
otherwise.  One of my top ten CDs for last year was a new score that Philip 
Glass did for the classic Beli Lugosi movie, "Dracula," performed by the 
Kronos Quartet.  It sounds great on its on, and it works beautifully with the 
film.

Continuing in a Seegeresque vein, Shawn says:

(( Classical compositions are more likely to endure because they're most 
often preserved by the more influential elements of society.  If Bach had 
never performed for the queen, would we still know his works or those of his 
prodigies? How many great folk songs were written in 1767 that we'll never 
hear? >>

I'm sure being knighted by Queen Elizabeth will help preserve Paul 
McCartney's legacy.  And I understand a certain pop star is getting some 
attention from Prince William these days.

But I'm not sure Bach ever performed for a queen, though he might have.  One 
of his most famous works, "A Musical Offering," incorporates a musical theme 
written by King Frederick the Great of Prussia, known rather bizarrely and 
affectionately as "Old Fritz."  The fact that that is also a nickname for the 
Devil is probably appropriate.  Frederick was married, but I don't think his 
wife was considered Queen, though I'm not sure.  Frederick reportedly 
preferred male partners, but not exclusively.  Come to think of it, the 
Beatles liked the King's music, too.

Bach also performed for King August the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of 
Prussia, whose choice of intimate partners would make even Kenneth Starr 
blush.  Old Fritz in his younger days almost provoked a diplomatic crisis by 
courting one of August's mistresses.

But Shawn's point is a good one.  The music sanctioned by the Church and by 
the wealthy and powerful in secular society has been preserved.  While the 
songs that were sung by ordinary people and reflected their concerns and 
interests are largely lost.  We still sing hymns written by Martin Luther - 
even in the Catholic Church (e.g., "A Mighty Fortress is Our God.")  I don't 
recall ever seeing a hymn by Thomas Muentzer, the pastor who led the famous 
and unsuccessful Peasant War which Luther demanded be ruthlessly suppressed.

Ironically, many folk tunes from earlier times were preserved because they 
were incorporated into pieces by classical composers, including Beethoven and 
even Bach, down to Bela Bartok, Ives and Copland in the 20th century.  
Copland made an obscure Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" one of the most famous 
tunes of today by arranging it for performance as a song ("'Tis a gift to be 
simple/'Tis a gift to be free") and especially by making the melody the basis 
of "Appalachian Spring," probably his best-known piece and one that is 
regularly performed as a "patriotic" American classical piece.

Bruce Miller
Oakland CA

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