Liner Note #42: July 2014

ctan: I think we’re overdue for a liner note, aren’t we?

Daron: You’re asking me a time question?

ctan: Point. Well, let’s do one anyway. I didn’t want to interrupt either your angstfest or your lovefest for one.

Daron: You… that’s… (shakes head) How’s that Kickstarter fulfillment coming along?

ctan: I sent links to everyone who got ebooks and digital rewards. And I’ve now collected most of the physical rewards except for the T-shirts and the books themselves. We’ve got the laminated backstage passes. Here’s a preview of the book cover:

Daron: That explains what Ziggy was doing with those stuffed animals. And why he was chuckling to himself so much.

ctan: Yes.

Daron: Good. I was a little worried it was some new fetish he had picked up. Did we miss wishing everyone Happy Pride?

ctan: Well, only those who don’t follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

Daron: In any case, Happy Pride everyone. It’s convenient that the Stonewall Riots happened in June so we can have nice weather for all the parades and festivals.

ctan: If it had happened in the winter I wonder if we wouldn’t have parades. We’d have something else.

Daron: Caroling?

ctan: Um, maybe. The first Pride Parade I marched in was at Brown, and it was during Pride Week. The LGSA would erect a pink triangle on the college green, and we’d have to guard it round the clock to keep homophobes from vandalizing it. The northeast gay and lesbian Student Union had its conference at Brown during my freshman year. On my freshman hall, our head Resident Counselor was openly gay, and one of the assistant RCs was, also. He gave the okay for some of the visiting students to sleep in our lounge, just like he did for the Princeton Marching Band and other groups, and people went ballistic. We had to have a huge meeting of everyone on our floor where people demanded to know why he hadn’t taken a vote on whether “those people” should be allowed to sleep there. It got very heated. The result was that all of us had to come out. Out of the 50 people who lived on that hall, there were 6 of us, and we basically told the rest of them, hey, if you’re afraid you’re going to get cooties from gay people, it’s too late. You’ve been living with us all year.

Daron: Wow. Don’t call it cooties, though. It was AIDS they were afraid of.

ctan: Yeah. This was April 1986. But I kind of wonder even if there wasn’t HIV to worry about if they wouldn’t have freaked out anyway. But yeah, that made marching with a thousand student activists around the campus a pretty important statement. First time I chanted “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.”

Daron: Jeez. I never thought of it as that… personal. But you had people in your building flipping out.

ctan: People I’d been living with and eating dinner with every day since September. Smart, articulate kids–it was the Ivy League after all. But ugh.

Daron: I saw in the news one of the instigators of Stonewall died at 93 years old. Drag king Storme Delavarie. Check out the obituary in The Advocate.

Link: The Advocate

ctan: Wow. As messed up as stuff is in the world right now, I at least feel like gay rights is a hell of a lot better off now than ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. How about the music industry, though? Better or worse?

Daron: I’d say generally for musicians it’s better now, but it’s worse for a lot of people. It depends. It’s changed a lot for the better in terms of diversity of musical styles and there are ways to reach fans now without a record company controlling everything.

ctan: Check out this article I found about a somewhat Carynne-like woman, Vicky Hamilton. Link: Wikipedia

Daron: Wow. It’s still a male-dominated industry but it’s not quite as terrible as it was. Hey, have we done a liner note since the Kickstarter chat?

ctan: I don’t think so?

Daron: Then people need to see the YouTube playlist we made of Moondog Three musical comparisons.

ctan: You’re right! Here you go folks: a list of 12 songs that all cluster around the Moondog Three sound somewhat.

Daron: I also wanted to try to give people an inkling of what Ziggy’s voice sounds like. He’s a tenor legere. They’re rare, and since the “grunge” era have gotten even rarer in rock. So I only have 5 songs on the list:

ctan: Speaking of activists who made a difference, and also changes in the music industry, did you see the Tibetan monks breakdancing tribute to the late Beastie Boy, Adam Yauch, aka MCA?

“Unconventional promotion for MCA-DAY-an annual tribute to musician & humanitarian, Adam “MCA” Yauch of the Beastie Boys. MCA was a devout Buddhist who fought for Tibetan independence.”

MCA-DAY “Buddhist Monks” from KNARF® New York on Vimeo.

Daron: That is so random and wonderful. Which I guess is what the Beastie Boys were about. Speaking of random, you should post the photo of corwin’s band you know.

ctan: Right! Here they are, Platypus Rex, playing a reunion gig after 7 years apart! They sounded pretty good, too. And look what T-shirt corwin is wearing:

(Hear some of Platypus Rex’s songs here: http://www.platypusrex.org/sounds/)

ctan: I caught the first song of the reunion, “New Taco Girl,” on video:

Daron: That is a great song. Jeff is really a great songwriter. Clever and catchy. What more could you want.

ctan: Any closing thoughts for tonight?

Daron: Be kind to each other. Be kind to the world around you. I know I’m supposed to do the angry young man thing, but you know, Nelson Mandela may have had it right when he said hate isn’t something people are born with, they’re taught it. That means we can teach love, too. So let’s do that.

ctan: Well, I’ve always said DGC is a love story. Thanks, everyone, for all the love.

17 Comments

  • Lenalena says:

    I missed that chat. Is it posted somewhere?

  • Cris says:

    …were the links to the Kickstarter digital stuff in e-mails, or was there a post somewhere that I missed? I got the thing for “I Speak Guitar,” but not anything else. Not a huge deal, but just curious.

  • Amber says:

    The cover looks awesome as do the stuffed animals. I can’t wait to get mine.

  • cayra says:

    Oh, thanks for the Ziggy vocal comparisons. It really bugged me that I had no mental audio for him.

  • Tina says:

    Daron I really loved you 5 song mix thank you for that I have added it to my own personal play list. Hearing it has also help with the visual and feel of what attracts you to Ziggy’s voice. I’m a very visual and feel kind of sponge so now it as opened me to even a deeper level of feeling and understanding of your journey during that time. Thank you and to ctan for bring this to us.

  • Joe says:

    It’s interesting, and possibly dangerous, to listen to the playlist. Interesting both because there was a lot of music on there I didn’t know and found I liked, and because it was fun to hear what you thought they sounded like, which is as close to actual as it’s gonna get. Dangerous, though, because I already knew how they sounded, and sometimes it can be a real turn-off to have reality and fantasy collide. Thankfully that wasn’t the case here.

    • ctan says:

      I’ve tried to be consistent with my descriptions of the music so that when people hear the influences and comparisons, they’ll match up at least somewhat. 🙂

      • Joe says:

        Just listening to the tenor legere samples. I like Jesse Clegg, a lot, beautiful voice. I predict that some of the songs from both lists will be finalists for my 2015 music sampler (I put together a sampling of different music each year for friends; this year’s just came out last week and had Lara y Reyes on it).

        • ctan says:

          I had serious goosebumps the first time I heard Jesse Clegg because of his vocal similarity to how Ziggy sounds in my head. I saw him do a live acoustic set. You have to filter out the Nirvana/Kurt Cobain influence to really get close, though. I’ve had his two albums on repeat for like two months now.

  • s says:

    Thanks so much for those two playlists. Now I want to listen to M3 songs even more than I did before, but I feel pretty good that those sounds were similar to what I was imagining and I have zero musical background, just a music junkie. I’ve learned so much from this story. And I think my love for Ziggy just got a little deeper…damn it.

    The Glee song…I can’t even tell you how many teenage tears I’ve dealt with over that show…and specifically that couple. My daughter’s got a sensitive soul.

    And I’m once again asking the question: Are there words to describe the beauty of Dave Navarro? I don’t believe there are…

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