From: Level42-request @ worldmachine.com (Level42 Digest) Subject: Level42 Digest V97 #189 _ ____ _ ____ _ _ ___ // //__ // / //__ // /__// __// //__ //__ \\_/ //__ //__ // /__ D I G E S T Level42 Digest Volume 97 : Issue 189 500 subscribers Today's topics: RE: Level42 Digest V97 #188 Mike Brooks RE: Level42 Digest V97 #188 Mike Brooks My Hero - Selling Up Jason Bell Levelhead Richard ! RiKmG What's the truth? Gert Emmens IMHO Pat Flanagan Stuff Lolitaj Cripes! Marc_Dupuis Distortion, and high frequency response Jeff Grous San Fransdisco Bill Wilson Oops & Vanelli winston.walker Marriage\MK situation Chuck Joe Vanelli Winman42 Nigel's note MScore0696 Re: Level42 Digest V97 #188 ReeseTee1 Re: SAY Video Message mark IDEA!!! JNSMITH ------------------------------ Subject: RE: Level42 Digest V97 #188 From: Mike Brooks Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 11:33:09 +0100 Hi guys and girls. My name is Mike Brooks. I haven't been on the digest for nearly two years now. Eric tells me that some of the old faces are still around so if Mr Crowson and Mr Ashby are still around, send me an email lads!!! Other than that, good to see the digest alive and well. I found out today that Mark is giving up....what the hell is going on??? I'm going down to the Bass Centre this Saturday to pick up some of his gear. The guys there were very cagey as to Mark's reasons for giving up....they certainly weren't letting anything slip. Anyway, look forward to speaking to you all over the coming months. Take Care Of Yourselves!!! Mike ------------------------------ Subject: RE: Level42 Digest V97 #188 From: Mike Brooks Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 12:14:42 +0100 All, anyone in London this weekend....I am doing a gig at Gunnersbury Park in West London this Sunday at about 15.00 -16.00 with my band The Sugar Plums. Come along and say hello if you are about. Look forward to seeing some faces. Regards, Mike ------------------------------ Subject: My Hero - Selling Up From: Jason Bell Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 07:29:19 -0400 Dear All Well, it all seems a bit of a shock. Mark packing all his gear off the Bass Centre. I have contacts at the Bass Centre too (tis where I got my Stick). Reading the last post made me think about without Mark King, I wouldn't be a bass player, and foremost, a musician. The learing 'Love Games' until your thumbs fell off. Watching the Live At Wembley video and buying a real tidy black suite to wear at your next gig. I even wear braces (I think that's suspenders to you in the US, but that's something completely different over here !), that was because of Mark as well. WE won't go in the Pearl Pink Jaydee phase, I didn't get that far, but I know people who have. Well, all I can is thanks Mark. I owe you a hell of a lot, I wanted to shake you by the hand, but have never had the chance. Please remember I was a young teenager and completely direction-less until I got into music. Glad I got into 42. These acts of heroism don't last, which is just as well, as I light have shaved all my hair off by now (senseless acts of Tony Levin listening !). Mark, if you ever read this. I wish you luck in everything you do. If need a Chapman Stick player, you know where I am. Kind Regards From York. Jason Bell (York, England) Chapman Stick Player and Web Designer Email : jason.bell @ dial.pipex.com OR Jason.Bell @ PEmail.net WWW : http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/jason.bell/ ------------------------------ Subject: Levelhead Richard ! From: RiKmG @ aol.com Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 08:32:31 -0400 (EDT) Hi yall Iam from England South Yorkshire and I have been a level fan for 10 years since the running in the family album, I have seen them in concert on every tour since then and my favourite was the Staring at the sun tour of 1989.So does anyone out there have any very recent news on Mark and mike ? things have been very quite for a while now? Bye for now Richard. ------------------------------ Subject: What's the truth? From: Gert Emmens Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 13:59:44 +0100 So, first Mark is gonna collaborate with Wang Chung, then he is in Milan to play bass with Joe T. Vannelli (Gino's brother????) and Matt Goss and writes: I SHALL RETURN, and now he seems to sell everything to a London Bass Centre, because he's quitting? I really don't know what to believe anymore! I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Gert ------------------------------ Subject: IMHO From: Pat Flanagan Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 09:36:01 -0400 > Pat what is IMHO? You mentioned that it was their (Jamiroquai) most > "slammen" song. I went and looked on all of my CDs and found no such song > listed. As for the comparison to Stevie's SITKOL, I don't see much of a > resemblance of the two. Anyway, just wanted to share that with ya. Oh, > and by the way, TWM is a great album in my opinion, just barely edging > the two previous great albums they've put out. IMHO = In My Humble Opinion, a geeky net abbreviation. You can't see any similarity between the sound of the music in "Use The Force" and Stevie Wonder's Songs In The Key Of Life? Break out SITKOL and give "Contusion," "Ordinary Pain," and ESPECIALLY "Black Man" another listen. Someone back me up on this -- I know I'm right!!! :D Pat Flanagan Publishing & Design PO Box 281, Granger, IN 46530-0281 email: pfpd @ pfpd.com website: http://www.pfpd.com TOTALMEDIA PUBLISHING: Print * Disk * Interactive * CDROM * Internet ------------------------------ Subject: Stuff From: Lolitaj @ aol.com Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 10:59:20 -0400 (EDT) Warning: This is a non-Level post..... Hey All: Just caught up on a few Digests, and I have some comments: * Rock Me Amadeus - the best version is the one with the German rap, by far. Particularly because it came out while I was taking German in high school, and I felt cool because I knew what they were saying. Sort of like 99 Luftballoons. * Inversions is the best song on the Positivity CD IMO. Incognito is my favorite group outside of our boys. Their instrumentals remind me of Level 42 if they had followed the jazzfunk track and had horns. Randy Hope-Taylor kicks butt on bass. * I'm a musician of sorts, but I'm sort of all over the map. I have been involved in music to some degree for 22 years - I started playing clarinet when I was eight, and then morphed into tenor saxophone, triple drums, violin (briefly), bass clarinet (my best instrument, and my fave), and am currently teaching myself the bass. I am also a singer, and I dropped all my other instruments when I began singing in earnest, but the bass is my newest thing. * I have a favor to ask: Is anyone good at charts? I'm having a gig in two months, and I'm singing a lot of songs. I will have to get them all charted, but about six of them are very easy to chart. The more difficult ones, I will have to pay an arm and two legs for, but I was wondering if someone here could help me out a little. I will pay, but I don't have much $. As I said, the songs are easy, and the arrangements need to be for keyboard, acoustic or electric bass, and conga. If anyone can help, please send me an e-mail. Lolita ------------------------------ Subject: Cripes! From: Marc_Dupuis @ MADISONUSA.CCMAIL.CompuServe.COM Date: 08 Jul 97 12:09:03 EDT Will we ever find out what the hell is going on with Mssr. King? What about the correspondence tying him in with Boon? That wasn't a ruse, was it? You never know with some of the tricks we've seen "pulled" lately (read: wanking). Seriously though, I'm kind of worried. This will probably turn out to be like the rumors of Nik Kershaw doing a new album - lots of rumors and nothing too firm to substantiate them, then all of sudden nobody talks about it anymore. I hate that! Speaking of Kershaw, I was listening to The Works today - his best, I think. No Mark King on this album, unfortunately, but some great drumming from Vinnie Coliuta (and one cut from Porcaro). One World is worth the price of the CD alone, but just try to find this rarity! -Marc ------------------------------ Subject: Distortion, and high frequency response From: Jeff Grous Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 09:38:09 -0700 Hello, everyone! I've really been buried, and only now getting caught up on Digests - gotta rebut something here that got put up a few issues ago... Andre writes: > The worst thing to do is record with Dolby on, and play it back with > Dolby off !!! The audiosignal will be reproduced _VERY_ distorted. Well, I guess that depends on your definition of distortion. The audio signal will not contain any additional harmonic or intermodulation distortion. However, it will be artificially bright, with frequencies above 5 khz moving around by a varying amount. Most people have great difficulty hearing and identifying band-limited compression or expan- sion, so they'll just notice (_if_ they notice!) that the reproduction is too bright. So I guess if your definition of distortion is _any_ change to the signal, then yes, it is. But there's none of the con- ventional things that people commonly associate with distortion going on. > Other problems are due to the limitations of the sytem: the very best > decks can only record up to 17.000 Hz, that is using very expensive > metal tape. This is caused by the fact that Philips develloped the > Compact Cassette for memorecording only. The tapespeed is simply to > slow to record high frequencies. My respected friend, this is incorrect. My 20-year old A650's 3dB-down point is 18khz with ordinary Type II tape, my 12-year old C3RX goes to 20 khz with Type II tape, and my TCK950ES (which I no longer own) was spec'd by Sony and verified by me to run out to 22khz with type II tape. Metal performance is even better (except for the '650, which can't record on metal tape) on those machines. And cassette machines have come so far that any run-of-the-mill tape deck you can buy today for 200 dollars or more will easily run to 16-17 Khz before it runs out of gas. 'Course, there are _other_ sonic problems with those cheapie decks, but response isn't one of them! While the slow tape speed is in fact the "brick wall," the other limiting factor in the high frequency response is the gap size on the heads- the practical manufacturing limit on cheap heads is around 1 micron, with better heads coming in at .8 or .7 microns. The smaller the gap size, the better the playback response. And you're correct- Philips never intended the compact cassette to be a music delivery medium. We've come a long way from 1967 and the mono, 6Khz upper limit!! -Jeff "America was calling me, you said I was shoes..." ------------------------------ Subject: San Fransdisco From: Bill Wilson Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 09:46:48 -0700 Hello all! I am going to be in San Francisco not 1 but 2 times this month... I will be there from the 13th-15th and the 27th-30th... I already have plans the 13th and 27th, but am open for other times if you wanna meet! anyone wanna get together for dinner or something? later bill Bill Wilson billw @ xpense.com ------------------------------ Subject: Oops & Vanelli From: winston.walker @ wathneltd.com Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 17:04:36 -0500 Hey everyone, how goes it? First let me apologize for the reposting of two of my messages yesterday. had a bit of trouble with my work e-mail account, hence the retransmission of those 2 e-mails. Thomas, thanks for sharing your letter from Mark King with the rest of us. Pretty cool stuff. I'm assuming Joe T. Vanelli is the brother of singer Gino Vanelli. Joe has played keys and produced most of Gino Vanelli's albums and has worked with some great bassists while doing it. I know that Neil Stubenhaus and Jimmy Haslip have played on Gino's albums. Guess he really went for the best with Mark onboard, huh? If anyone wants to check out Gino, pick up the 'Brother To Brother' album, which is very funky. The first 2 cuts, 'Appaloosa' and 'The River Must Flow' are worth the price of the CD alone. Brad in Vegas will back me up on this. Gino did some real funky stuff, not just the ballads he is famous for, like "I Just Wanna' Stop". That said, Anyone know who Matt Goss is? Tcoy, Winston ------------------------------ Subject: Marriage\MK situation From: Chuck Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 21:08:16 +0000 Hi all! I really appreciate Winston congratulating me on my marriage, but I want you all to know that I'm not making a habit out of getting married every Saturday. Winston, you're a great guy and a great friend, but please, one congrat is enough (you're embarrassing me!) ;-) BTW, Jason, how does it feel? It's been great for me. I came home the other day and my entire house was rearranged! Then I was trying to make extra room in my closet for more of her stuff, piled too much weight on the back shelf, and the thing collapsed on me. Crap all over the floor. Married life: it's an adventure. OK, what's the deal with MK? Is he going to start from scratch or just quit forever? Is he going to play with Boon or not? Nigel's post sounded pretty ominous. Somehow, though, I feel that we'll see him again someday (and the rest of the guys too). Let's all pray that they'll realize how much the world needs them, and that they'll reform, or at least continue to separately produce music in the future. I can't see Mark just completely dropping the thing he loved to do for the last 20 or so years. He just needs a little more time to himself. But enough of my thoughts... Chuck ------------------------------ Subject: Joe Vanelli From: Winman42 @ aol.com Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 17:20:01 -0400 (EDT) I just found some info on Joe Vanelli, if anyone is intrested. If not, scroll to the bottom, where I have a 3 page article on MiniDisc and Dolby noise reduction!! :-) Joe Vanelli A musician in his own right, Joe Vannelli has been the backbone of Gino's career. As producer, arranger, composer and keyboardist, with his own state of the art recording studio, Joe has worked on albums in studios worldwide on a variety of musical projects. In addition to Gino, Joe has worked with Chaka Khan, Gary Morris, David Meece, Kudasai, Marilyn Scott, Jimmy Haslip, Brenda Russell and Pat Thomi, just to name a few. He has also worked with Gregory Hines for the tap dance sequence on "Fallen In Love" from Gino's "Yonder Tree" album, done commercials for Honda and Pontiac and arranged the musical score for the documentary "The Rain Forest Of Costa Rica". Joe has been nominated for several Grammy awards including one for Best Arrangement. He has also been nominated for several Juno Awards in Canada and won for Best Production on six occasions. His musical styles range from universal pop to the eclectic. Joe's career parallels his brother Gino's in many ways in that they performed together and were part of various groups in and around their hometown of Montreal throughout Joe's high school and college years. Later on, Joe played a significant part in the production, arranging, engineering and some of the compositional aspects of Gino's albums. Joe has toured with his brother to many places around the world such as Japan, Mexico, Canada, South America, Europe and the U.S. Joe's formal training began in Montreal as a youngster studying music theory for two years, followed by six years of private piano tutoring. Being influenced by such artists as Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck and Errol Garner just to mention a few, along with the pop and R&B artists of the 60's and 70's also played a major role in Joe's musical development. That's all folks, Winston ------------------------------ Subject: Nigel's note From: MScore0696 @ aol.com Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 19:24:00 -0400 (EDT) Nigel wrote: > With this in mind I asked that the regards of the Level 42 Digest be > passed on to Mark pointing out that there are thousands of people who > think a great deal about him Great work Nigel, you're a gentleman and a scholar!! Does anyone ever wonder if any of the band members are silent subscribers to the digest?? Bonneville Mark Toronto, Canada ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Level42 Digest V97 #188 From: ReeseTee1 @ aol.com Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 21:06:14 -0400 (EDT) Hello fellow LevelHeads, My name is Reese Taylor and I am probally the newest member of your gang. I've been a fan of L42 since 1986 when a friend turned me on to them. One of my lifes goals was to see them in concert. But, after finding the web page I find out that the group has been disbanded since '94. You might think to yourself how can I be a true fan and not know that. The only thing I can say about that is that I am a radio DJ and I constantly asked our Polydor Rep. about the band and she kept saying I'll find out for you. Well I finally found out what I didn't what to hear. Now you are saying that Mark has quit playing???!!!??? I am deeply saddend. I am also a musician (I play 15 instruments). I do play bass but keyboards, trombone and voice are my mains. My point is that when ever I talk to bass students I turn them on to L42. If anyone talks to Mark tell him that Reese Taylor from New York USA is pulling for him and is praying for him also. You have been a BIG part of my musical career and I wish the best for him. My heartfelt best wishes, Reese ReeseTee1 @ AOL.com ------------------------------ Subject: Re: SAY Video Message From: mark Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 23:29:23 -0400 Thanks for that info! Another one of life's mysteries has been explained! :) Mark P "....we got 20,000 million years, until the whole damn thing disappears.." ------------------------------ Subject: IDEA!!! From: JNSMITH @ MSUVX1.MEMPHIS.EDU Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 23:35:31 -0600 (CST) Hey EVERYONE, PLEASE READ THIS!!! I had an idea that I would like everyone to be involved in. Since it sounds like Mark might be packing it in (God, I hope not!) I think we should send him A ton of fan mail thanking him for his work and letting him know how much we really like him and support what he does. I know that he already knows about us from someone else's letter but here's the thinking behind my idea: Mark recorded enough tracks for a new solo release but decided to scrap them because he thought they were too dark sounding (I think that is what we were told). I would like to let Mark know that we like his music no matter what and ask him if he would allow the digest to have these tracks on a digital tape so we could make our own CDs and tapes, STRICTLY NON-PROFIT!! just like the other things we have done. PLEASE take this idea seriously!! I would like to have input from EVERYONE on this digest BUT I AM going to write to him and ask him for this favor! Hell, what have we got to lose? We could possibly end up with some extremely rare unreleased stuff. If you would like to take part in this idea, please e-mail me the message you would like to send Mark as if you were talking to him. The problem is that I can't give this idea very long because I am going to be moving in about two weeks so PLEASE send your messages SOON! THANKS TO ALL! JOE