Introductions: Who Are You?

Aug 10 19:29 UTC 2001

Respond to tell us a bit about yourself and your interests, just 
to let us know you've stopped by in our neighborhood.

response 2 of 74:

Aug 18 20:18 UTC 2001

It's probably my fault that this keeps looking like The Folk Music 
Conference.  The signal event of my musical life was discovering the 
British electric-folk band Steeleye Span in 1975; that one random
encounter has sent me off on a lifetime journey through the folk music of 
England, Ireland and Scotland.   In more recent years I've circled 
back through various American traditional and trad-influenced music, 
and most recently I've been wallowing in contemporary folk/roots 
stuff from all over Europe.   If you're familiar with the UK 
magazine "Folk Roots" or "Froots," well, that's where my brainwashing
is done.
 
Other interests: rock before 1990, with a focus on "classic rock" from the 
1967-1975 period, and then some of the "punk/new-wave"/ early college
rock stuff from 1977-early 1980s; jazz before the late 1960s, 
focusing on Ellington, the Ellington revivalists, and "modern" jazz;
random classical music, sticking pretty close to the Bach/Mozart/
Beethoven mainstream.   Finally: dating, and then marrying, an 
opera singer (Leslie/arabella, who contributes to Grex infrequently)
has led to a significant interest in opera.

I've been a host of the music conference on Grex for ten years.  
I was pretty idle for a few of the early years, but over the last 
five years I've been pretty activist about trying to recruit new 
people to join our discussions.

response 4 of 74:

Aug 19 05:19 UTC 2001

I love many types of music. Acoustic folk/country-folk/singer-songwriter
stuff is my favorite.

I sing that kind of music, and have a backup band The Usual Suspects.
For the past 18 months I've also been singing harmony vocals for one
of my favorite performers, Melanie.

I run a concert series in Ann Arbor called the Green Wood Coffee House 
Series, and in the process I've gotten to meet and sing with many other
of my favorites. We always need more volunteers; it's not much work and
it means you get to attend the shows for free. Please let me know if you
are interested. and are in the Ann Arbor area!

response 6 of 74:

Aug 19 15:48 UTC 2001

        Hi, I'm Tim Ryan.  I have long liked the music that I found on the
radio.  The stations that where once called "Top 40". Even when it really
was the Top 30.  The radio relationship strained when it became "Top 12".
I discovered Folk Music three times.  Once as a kid in summer camp (
camp counselors could sing with just a guitar, tunes I had not heard 
before).  Again in college, as I played it on my college radio station
show.  Finally, the recent run, rediscovering it as a result of finding
the singers at Science Fiction conventions--they play this thing called
"Filk", it is a variant of Folk and many folk music tunes are heard,
along with the originals, the paradies, and the pastiches(?sp?).
        I became a listener and fan of The Dr. Demento show (fun music
for fun people) early on.  Later, merging the two fandoms, I became
a participant of The Dr. Demento show by sending the doctor my 
field recorded filk tapes (he has played near a dozen), introducing
others (I picked up the monicer "Filk Pusher"), and also letting
him know of a number of Folk artists, by sending in tapes, and getting
them played.  My work in getting Dr. Demento to a science fiction
convention (ConClave, 1995, Lansing, Michigan) as a Guest of Honor
has lead to SF cons being his #1 place to be paid to visit, with
university music series about his only other public appearance venue.
        I am currently planning on Doing It Myself, and get into the
fan based internet radio arena.
        (Do we need some more items?)

response 8 of 74:

Sep 7 14:33 UTC 2001

My name's Mickey, and I wandered in here a little over a year ago, thanks to
Twila (and I suppose, indirectly, Ken). I live in Austin, Texas, where one
of my favourite activities is hearing live music performed in an alternate
setting, like a restaurant. Truthfully, I don't support local artists as much
as I did when I first moved here a decade ago, but that has more to do with
my music *buying* habits as with a disinterest in the Austin music scene.

I enjoy many different styles of music. For the sake of nostalgia, I still
listen to New Wave artists from the 1980s, and I still have a aural soft-spot
for female vocalists/singer-songwriters, like Kate Bush and Jane Siberry, to
name just two of my long-time favourites. When the Internet came into my life
in 1995, I "discovered" the ecto mailing list, and thus a slew of other
amazing artists began to fill up my CD racks. It's interesting to note that
after 3 years of reading about Happy Rhodes, it was Twila that sent me the
first two Happy Rhodes' songs I'd ever heard. 

Another large influence in the type of music with which I'm currently obsessed
would be the two vacations I made to Western Europe in the latter part of the
1980s. The first was a rushed backpacking trip around Spain, where a
serendipitous delay in a little Mediterranean village introduced me to the
Spanish folk combo called La Musgana (with a tilde over the 'n'). That seed
seemed to lie dormant for many years, and only quite recently have I
rediscovered the acoustic folk of Iberia, focussing most intently on the
Celtic-flavoured music of Asturias and Galicia.

The other chance encounter also happened in Spain, when I met a busker who
played Roy Harper for me. It was not the most direct route to British
folk-rock, I suppose, but along the way I found many artists that are still
important to me, like Dick Gaughan, Ralph McTell, Christy Moore, Pete Moreton,
among others. 

I guess I've rambled long enough. It's really nice being here; I've learned
much about lots of different types of music.

response 10 of 74:

Oct 30 22:06 UTC 2001

I'm finally here after Ken invited me via e-mail.

My musical tastes vary with my moods and tend to be moderating with age.

I have two bands that I enjoy above others.  Metallica and The Eagles.  
I can't really call myself a fan... I would NEVER attend a Metallica 
concert... too loud.  I had tickets to the Eagles' Hell Freezes Over, 
but the concert was in Kansas City and got rescheduled to a work night 
as opposed to weekend.  It would not have mattered to a true fan.  I 
sold my tickets to my boss at face value.

I enjoy occassional classical, although I have very little knowledge of 
composers or classical music as a whole.

I enjoy jazz, although fusion style jazz does not often appeal to me.  

Country music is an occasional guilty pleasure.

My wife has CDs with compiled disco music on them and she has some 
techno/dance stuff.  I do *not* listen to them.

response 12 of 74:

Nov 1 00:42 UTC 2001

First off:

I am Peter, or, as I'm known on the Web, Makevery, Carbyne, Dayus X 
Makina, and too many others to list!

secondly:

My main musical interest is CATS! Anything to do with that gloooorious 
musical by THE Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, I go for it! Soundtracks, T-
shirts, programs, ticket stubs, postcards, puzzles, you name it, I want 
it!

finally: 

My musical interests aren't limitede to CATS; I also like Weird Al 
Yankovic, Linkin Park, Lit, Electrasy, Powerman 5000, and waaay too 
many other musical groups/types to remember! Excepting, of course 
those :puke, gag, retch, hurl: "boy bands" and all the other 
prepackaged pop garbage clutterin the airwaves (such as *NSuck 
(*NSync),  Backstab Bums (Backstreet Boys), and all the rest)!

response 14 of 74:

Nov 22 22:11 UTC 2001

Hi, I am John.  New to grex, new to this discussion group.  Interesting 
collection of tastes and characters.  Not into folk much although there 
is some 60's/70's american folk somewhere in the rack.  Dig classic 
rock, and the new metal.  Linkin Park, Staind, etc..... I think I'll 
read on.

response 16 of 74:

Dec 1 06:56 UTC 2001

Hi, I'm Anna... I'm an ex-music major, used to play horn and still have a
thing for horn music... love the Independence Day soundtrack... those horn
players were kick-@$$.

These days I work in Community Music School, where we sing short songs to
small children, emphasizing 5-1 on all modes except locrian.  So most of the
songs that get stuck in my head are 8 bars long.

I used to be a swing dance fanatic, until I started seeing swing videos on
MTV and lots and lots of people got into swing... 

Anna's ignorant questions:  What is morris dancing and Scottish Country
Dancing?  I've done the contra dancing thing once.

I have no opposition to house/techno/dance.  I have come to have an
appreciation for dance music, and its in another category than other music...
I use that logic to excuse its repetitiveness and all that.

Like how its really hard to swing to "In the Mood".

Anyhow, l8r

response 18 of 74:

Dec 3 19:39 UTC 2001

I second Rane's remarks about Scottish Country Dance, including the ruined
ligaments in the feet.  Mine are still intact, but I kept pulling them, which
is part of why I don't do much Scottish anymore.

Morris is a performance dance from central England, usually for groups of
four to eight people.  Some of its roots seem to be in English social
dances, and there are people who also see traces of old fertility rituals
in it.  It's a showy dance, with lots of leaping and dramatic arm motions. 
Usually, you emphasize these by dancing with bells on your legs, ribbons
on your arms, and handkerchiefs in your hands.  The music is very much
British and not Celtic -- nice solid drinking songs and tunes for the
accordion, with the occasional sea shanty.

Morris was a rural tradition, so it didn't get written down until it had
almost died out.  Every few decades since the dances were first
written down, there's been another big Morris revival, and the tradition
changes each time it's revived.  In the early 1900's, it was associated
with the women's suffrage movement and with some of the weirder
`progresive' trends in education.  These days, Morris dancers are likely
to be ex-hippies, sci-fi fans, or people who use the words `queer' and
`kinky' in conversation without trying to insult anyone.  Go figure.

response 20 of 74:

Dec 20 10:57 UTC 2001

Hey guys-- I'm back.

Ken recruited me here about hmmm.. I guess it's been four or five 
years, now.  I've contributed a lot to old versions of the forum while 
I attempted to pursue a music degree.  I did graduate from Central 
with a degree that was rather pseudo-music; teaching did not work out 
as planned as I was running out of time to complete a standard major, 
and teaching in the general classroom (not music) was disastrous.  Too 
long to explain here.

It's easier to explain my personality than it is to explain my tastes 
in music.  I'm very much a starry-eyed, idealistic dreamer, and I 
sometimes feel like a cygnet amongst so many ducks, with the 
occasional goose passing by to share some comradeship.  (Swans and 
geese are somewhat alike, as some of you may know.)  Therefore, what 
I've been listening to lately has been in that thread, which includes 
New Age, New Romantic, ambient, classical guitar interpretations, 
funk, old-school and funk-fused hip-hop, etc.

For those of you who know instruments often bespeak something of the 
personalities of their players, I share that I played a lot of brass 
in school-- mostly tuba.  I adored brass ensembles but found band 
painful.  I found myself much more comfortable when I began my guitar 
studies, and I favor classical and fingerpicking folk styles, 
respectively.  It was much easier to fit in with the guitarists-- most 
all are very laid back, easy going, and quite accepting of anyone 
regardless of their skill level, which was wonderful since I strugged 
at the bottom of the guitar ensemble.  I remember the last concert I 
did with them wistfully; I remember pinching myself because it didn't 
feel at all like what I had come to expect a concert performance to 
be.  I felt freer, and that I was truly sharing of myself.

response 22 of 74:

Dec 21 20:07 UTC 2001

  re #21:  I'm back in Michigan at the moment, but yes, I live in the
  Seattle suburbs these days..

response 24 of 74:

Dec 22 16:33 UTC 2001

  Bellevue.