7/4

ok, here's my impression of couw. sheesh! don't get on the wrong side of couw!

Oh yes! How true.

COURVOISIER - VSOP Description: A fine Champagne cognac made exclusively from the grande and petite champagnes, which are the best quality grapes from the Cognac region. Aged for 8-12 years in Limousin and Troncais oak barrels. Amber in colour, silky smooth with some chocolate overtones and a nutty, slightly citrus finish. Hints of vanilla, grilled almonds and port wine. VSOP stands for 'Very Special Old Pale'

ok, here's my impression of couw.

Hakim Bey - writer!

I'll bet one of these are pretty pricey anyways.

Excuse me, Masterhit is the global moderator.

I noticed that too. He's listed as one of the moderators too.

Ahem...THIS IS REALLY WHAT BIG WHEEL WROTE!

September 26, 2004 Nancy Sinatra, Rock Goddess By JODY ROSEN NY Times LOS ANGELES "ROCK," Nancy Sinatra said, "is a business for young people. It's not for people who care about things like hair and makeup. And sleep." Ms. Sinatra was drinking iced tea in the garden bar of a West Hollywood hotel on a sultry September afternoon. On her right wrist, she wore a toy bracelet with imitation diamond-studded letters that spelled the word "rock." "It's one of those play bracelets — you put whatever letters you want on it," she said. "I should probably put a `C' in front of the `R.' That might be more accurate." Ms. Sinatra doesn't exactly look the part of a tousled rock 'n' roller. She's a trim, elegant mother of two grown daughters who clearly cares about her hair and makeup, and she has little taste for sleep deprivation, shoebox-size dressing rooms and other indignities of the rock 'n' roll grind. But at 64, Ms. Sinatra has become an indie rocker. This week, Sanctuary Records will release "Nancy Sinatra," a sleek, tuneful album that finds her surrounded by an all-star team of admirer-collaborators, most of them decades her junior: American alternative rockers (Calexico, Jon Spencer, Pete Yorn), leading Britpop songwriters (Morrissey, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp), arty experimentalists (Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth), rock legends (Steven Van Zandt of the E Street Band, U2). Thirty-six years after she last cracked the Top 40, Ms. Sinatra has made her finest album, and one of the more irresistible pop records of 2004. Trend-watchers may be tempted to compare "Nancy Sinatra" to another meeting between an older star and young rock turks: "Van Lear Rose," the Loretta Lynn album produced by Jack White of the White Stripes, which appeared earlier this year. But while "Van Lear Rose" gave Ms. Lynn's music a makeover, adding an unmistakably White Stripes-like garage rock snarl, "Nancy Sinatra" is a different case. Rather than overhaul Ms. Sinatra's classic sound — a mix of go-go rhythms, country twang and orchestral pop — her collaborators have paid it homage. It's a tribute that invites audiences to look again at Ms. Sinatra, who has been misunderstood and underrated for much of her career. That career was defined by a string of gusty mid-60's hits, most of them made in partnership with the songwriter and producer Lee Hazlewood. Mr. Hazlewood was a true pop eccentric, specializing in lavishly orchestrated, spaghetti Western-flavored songs that hovered just on the right side of the cornball divide. Ms. Sinatra's voice, mixing swagger and girl-child guilelessness, fit his songs to a T, and from 1966 to 1968, the hits (several of them Sinatra-Hazlewood duets) rolled out: "Lightning's Girl," "Sugar Town," "You Only Live Twice," "Summer Wine" and many others, including Ms. Sinatra's signature song, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." Those songs made Ms. Sinatra a fixture of hit radio, her miniskirts and doe-eyes made her a sex symbol and "Boots" was eventually seen as a kind of goofy cultural watershed — an early blast of pop feminism. But critical respect eluded Ms. Sinatra, who withdrew from show business in 1972 to raise her daughters. Rock critics wrote her off as a curio. "A certain period charm may adhere to her fluff, but anything else is disastrous," snipped Paul Evans in the Rolling Stone Album Guide. Ms. Sinatra does not hide her hurt feelings about the slights. "People of my generation never took me seriously," she said. "They dismissed me completely. I never understood it." In part, Ms. Sinatra was a victim of the cultural politics of her time. Rock 'n' roll divided the nation along generational lines, but Ms. Sinatra remained agnostic, a stubbornly independent hip square who kept a foot in both camps. Her high hemlines, big boots and tough-girl vocal style were nothing if not modern. But she also recorded standards, and she remained closely associated with her father, the towering symbol of the previous musical era. (The pair sang several duets, including the fizzy No. 1 hit "Somethin' Stupid.") From today's perspective, her refusal to choose musical sides looks refreshingly cosmopolitan; but in the eyes of the first wave of rock critics, it placed her on the wrong side of the generational gulf. Thirty years down the road, Ms. Sinatra would meet her revisionist historians. In 1995, she began a comeback, recording a new album, "One More Time," and undertaking a tour of rock clubs. (That same year, she had a minor succs de scandale when she posed nude in Playboy magazine.) It was on that tour that she first encountered younger musicians who regarded her as a star. Now, after nearly a decade of sporadic touring, a "small fortune" spent keeping her band together and fruitless attempts to win over listeners her own age, Ms. Sinatra has turned to that natural constituency. "I'd been trying to appeal to the wrong people," Ms. Sinatra said. "My daughter told me, `You've got to connect with the people that love your work.' This generation — the generation of musicians that I've worked with on this album — they get my music. And I love their work, too. There's no one on this record who wasn't already in my CD collection." In the spring of 2003, Ms. Sinatra's eldest daughter, AJ Azzarto, began to recruit musicians to play on her mother's new record. Ms. Azzarto, a musician and co-owner with her husband Matt of a recording studio in the ancestral Sinatra homeland of Hoboken, N.J, has a wide network of prominent indie rock friends, many of them professed Nancy Sinatra fans. She contacted Joey Burns of the Tucson-based band Calexico and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, who immediately agreed to take part. Word spread, and soon more prominent admirers signed on, bringing original songs. U2 supplied "Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad," a "One for My Baby"-style saloon ballad that Bono and the Edge had written for Frank Sinatra. Jarvis Cocker flew in from England with two chiming pop tunes. Morrissey donated "Let Me Kiss You," which also appears on his recent album "You Are the Quarry." "Morrissey said, `I have a song for you,' " Ms. Sinatra recalled. " `Record this and you'll be on the charts in the U.K. for the first time since 1972.' " Some collaborators "found musical personalities in me that I didn't know existed," Ms. Sinatra said. Sonic Youth fans will relish Mr. Moore's "Momma's Boy," a tense, dissonant piece of Lower East Side art rock, which Ms. Sinatra says she deliberately sang "à la Kim Gordon," a reference to Mr. Moore's wife and bandmate. But Ms. Sinatra's collaborators are students of her back catalog; for the most part, "Nancy Sinatra" plays like a tribute album. The most sumptuous of these homages is Calexico's "Burnin' Down the Spark" — a ringing, wide-screen ballad, spiced with strings, pedal steel guitar and mariachi horns, that nods to the atmospheric Dust Bowl tunes Ms. Sinatra made with Mr. Hazlewood. The fact that such songs sound utterly contemporary is a tribute in part to the album's crisp production — but it's also an indication of how, 35 years later, indie rock has caught up with Ms. Sinatra. In the 1990's, young musicians who had exhausted the classic rock canon began to explore 60's pop, discovering a trove of imaginative songwriting and arranging. For these listeners, Ms. Sinatra's records held surprises: who could resist the sheer weirdness of "Boots" and its signature riff, that drooping, sliding bass line, panned to the far left side of the stereo spectrum, while an acoustic guitar jangles cheerily in the right channel? (Ms. Sinatra's work with Mr. Hazlewood is filled with such moments of casual psychedelia.) Then there was Ms. Sinatra's singing: not always conventionally pretty, but bursting with personality and a sexual forthrightness that few white female vocalists of her time dared touch. Today, the music Ms. Sinatra's contemporaries dismissed as hokum is fashionable; you can detect traces of the Sinatra-Hazlewood style in modern rock and alt-country acts — Nick Cave, Tindersticks, Lambchop — and in the work of several of the artists who contributed to "Nancy Sinatra." The most avid of Ms. Sinatra's famous fans is Morrissey, who brokered her new record deal and has emerged as her high-profile champion. The two met several years ago, when Morrissey turned up at Ms. Sinatra's London hotel room with an armful of LP's for her to autograph, and they became friends, e-mail correspondents and, eventually, neighbors in Los Angeles. "He's a brilliant poet, isn't he?" Ms. Sinatra said. "He reminds me of my father — his body language onstage, the way he never hits a wrong note." He's also supplied the album's single, "Let Me Kiss You," and this quintessential Morrissey song, with its wavering minor-key melody and aura of doomed romance, makes a remarkably good fit for Ms. Sinatra. Indeed, most of the songs on "Nancy Sinatra" seem tailor-written to update her classic persona; the "boots girl" has moved into her seventh decade, speaking in a wised-up woman's voice of experience. In Mr. Cocker's "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time," Ms. Sinatra offers gruff motherly advice to a younger woman: "He can have his space, he can take his time/ Now he can kiss you where the sun don't shine/ No, baby, don't let him waste your time." Ms. Sinatra delivers those lines with sass, but she is also capable of delicacy and expressiveness that may surprise listeners familiar only with "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." There was a brooding undercurrent in much of her music with Mr. Hazlewood, and she's always done her best work as a torch singer, a fact that filmgoers were reminded of last year when Quentin Tarantino used her spooky 1966 recording of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" as the theme song of "Kill Bill Vol. I." You hear it in the raspy blue notes she hits in "Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad." A knack for cutting to the heart of a lyric — and a streak of bruised romanticism — was handed down from father to daughter. Back in the hotel garden, Ms. Sinatra confessed to some doubts about her album's commercial prospects. "I can't imagine it will sell," she said. "I'm beyond hoping for that. But I want to hear it on the radio so bad." In the meantime, Ms. Sinatra is not resting. She has plans for more collaborations: there's a possible duet with Debbie Harry, a half-finished song with the English band Doves, some tracks with the electronica group Reno. Her latest idea involves another blonde who has taken critical knocks: "I met Billy Idol at the rehearsal studio last week. I've loved him for years. I asked him if he'd like to record something and he said sure." Ms. Sinatra smiled. "I'd love to do one of his songs. Maybe `Sweet Sixteen'? I hope we'll record something and get it out there — even if I just throw it up on iTunes." Jody Rosen is the author of "White Christmas: The Story of an American Song" (Scribner).

Lennon fans threaten his killer as release looms Paul Harris in New York Sunday September 26, 2004 The Observer Mark Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon, could be released from jail next month in a move that has sparked fears of retribution from Beatles fans. Chapman will have a parole hearing in the week beginning 4 October, officials at the New York State Parole Division said. It will be held behind closed doors. However, one official said they had 'no idea' what the outcome of the hearing would be. But if Chapman is released after 24 years in prison, some Lennon fans have already threatened to take action. News of the parole hearing has spread on the internet and dozens of websites have been filling up with messages from fans around the world, many already promising to take revenge on the man who gunned down Lennon on 8 December 1980 as he arrived at his New York apartment building off Central Park. 'Chapman should be executed. I would gladly get rid of him myself,' wrote a fan from Finland on one website. Another fan has already set up an online petition to have Chapman's parole denied. It is already full of messages that show Chapman's safety outside jail would be difficult to maintain. 'If Mark David Chapman is let out of jail, he wouldn't last a day. There are too many people who want him dead,' wrote a New York-based female fan. Any security conditions for protecting Chapman if he is released will be down to the New York State Parole Board. 'It is up to them. It is nothing to do with the police,' said a spokesman for the New York Police Department. New York is used to handling such releases. Recently Joel Steinberg, jailed for 17 years after the violent death of his six-year-old daughter, was released from jail in a move that shocked New York and generated huge media interest. Steinberg faced numerous death threats from the public but still travelled back to the city from jail in a white limousine trailed by a pack of journalists. He has since been living in a charity-run halfway house in New York and reportedly considering a career in television. However, other recent attempts by high-profile prisoners to get parole have failed. In August a California prison board refused to parole Leslie Van Houten for the 15th time. Van Houten was a disciple of notorious 1960s killer Charles Manson and was convicted for her role in cult murders carried out by Manson's 'Family'. Van Houten, now 55 was rejected in her bid for parole despite having been a long-term model prisoner and making a tearful apology for her part in the grisly 1969 crimes. Chapman has had two previous requests for parole, in 2000 and 2002, denied. In 2000 he outraged Lennon fans by saying he believed his victim would want him to be freed. 'I think he would be liberal, I think he would care,' he said. He was originally sentenced to at least 20 years in prison. Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, has supported keeping Chapman in prison out of a fear for her own safety and that of their child Sean and Lennon's other son Julian.

What Jon Abbey said.

nothin' but good times....good times!

cheap shot!

from the latest Downtown Music Gallery newsletter:

Capt. Beefheart is amazing. Shiny Beast, Doc and Ice Cream are an amazing trilogy, if you leave off Harry Irene from Shiny. I really should revisit the whole catalog soon.

So how is recording going guys?

Good one! How many Organissimo posters does it take to change a light bulb? Two - one to change the light bulb and the other to tell the first that the RVG light bulb is going to be so much better when it's released next year. And a third to rave about the Mosaic box of light bulbs and how great the liner notes and remaster is.

Dan's A-Z.

I'm a ratio.

nah. I do have pointy ears. Not everyone can see them. couw, do you wear slippers with curly toes?

nah. I do have pointy ears. Not everyone can see them.

Why?