Repost of a reply to musicalsushi, and a big Zappafrank
First, here's part of what musicalsushi wrote:
So I've only heard it once...
...but a pleasingly large number of my friends are raving about Ladytron's new single, Destroy Everything You Touch. I'm sure there's a reason for the buzz....
Naturally, I'll be buying it when it's released on Monday. I hope anyone reading this will buy it too - Ladytron purchases are rarely regretted.
I ended up replying:
I got an e-mail from ladytron.com advertising that the single was going to be released on 19 September. I'm out of town, but I actually spent part of 19 September looking for a music store. Didn't find one...
...and then realized that it wouldn't make any difference. The "z" in "realize" should give you a clue as to why. It seems ladytron.com e-mails don't target the specific market, and DEYT is only available in the USA as an import. Wait for the album, I guess.
Now I'll provide the sordid details to my audience.
As you know, I'm in San Francisco attending a convention at the Moscone Center. While going between sites today, I ended up in a Sony music store. "Hey," thought I, "why don't I look for that new Ladytron single here?"
That's when I realized that this Sony music store was...literally...a Sony music store. Artists from other labels were not sold here.
The only new Ladytron music that amazon.com lists for U.S. release is the Witching Hour album itself.
Still haven't heard Sugar as of this moment....
OK, now I have. Very retro in a Reed College retro sort of way, if wimmin sang in 1980s Reed bands. Oh, wait a minute, Lo-Tek had a female singer.
Back to Ladytron...here's what their US label says about their new album:
Serenly [sic] beautiful at times and noisy and disturbing at others; Like all the best records should be.
The Electro-Clash pioneers return with their stunning new album!
In pop folklore, bands were allowed three LP's to become themselves, yet the labeled third album is an increasing rarity in this low-attention span era.
It comes as a rare threat to find that Liverpool-based boy/girl four-piece Ladytron have reached this mythical milestone with "Witching Hour", their best album yet, and one that fizzes and sparks with the band's own idiosyncratic charms.
"Witching Hour" is an album that reaches further than its predecessors: warm and dense, there is a feeling of susceptible magic wrapped within its thirteen tracks.
Ladytron just fulfilled their potential. Prepare to fall in love with them all over again.
By the way, isn't it interesting that Rykodisc has separate links for "Artists" and "Frank Zappa." Detractors would claim that this means that Zappa wasn't an artist. Vaclev Havel would disagree.
But Zappafrank is just an assteroid:
In late July 1994 the International Astronomical Union announced that a five-mile long astral fecalith (in an orbit falling between Mars and Jupiter) had been named Zappafrank....How this happened involved hundreds of Zappafans from 17 different countries, the Internet, an astrophysicist who is into Deep Purple, the government of the Czech Republic, the Minor Planet Center of the Smithsonian Observatory and a child psychiatrist in the cowboy city of Phoenix, Arizona (USA) who should get a life....
When Frank died, I knew about the family's request for donations to certain organizations. I had done this before, such as contributing to the Cousteau Foundation in honor of the Zappa's 25th anniversary (marriage). I wanted to do something different and seemingly private, but absurd at the same time. The first thing I did was to register "Zappa" as the name of a star. The International Star Registry is a private firm which, for a fee, will register as a trademark any name for a particular star....
In early 1994 I was told by Michael Packer, a radio producer and Zappa collector that news stories had been running about the discovery of three planets in orbit around a pulsar in Virgo. These were the first planets discovered outside our solar system. Michael knew of the star I has registered and he suggested that we try to get one of those planets named for Zappa. He had done the work and located the man who discovered the planets and found out that the discoverer of such things has the option of naming it if he/she wants to....
An interesting sidelight happened when a message was posted in the newsgroup from someone who was a lab assistant at Pennsylvania State College Astrophysics department who worked for the guy (Dr. Alex Wolszczan) who discovered these planets. This assistant posted this message about his boss: "I don't think he is a Zappa fan, because he has Rush and Deep Purple tapes on his desk....I'll tell him about your idea, although I don't think he'll get real excited about it. I would suppose that he might have some say in the naming of these planets."...
Meanwhile, Dr. Brian Marsden had an alternate suggestion:
It would be quite appropriate to have one of the minor planets (or asteroids) in our own solar system named for Frank Zappa, and I could probably arrange this and get it properly announced within the next three months. As a matter of fact, the possibility of doing this crossed my own mind at the time I heard of Zappa's death last December. I noted then the interest of President Havel in Zappa's music, and it occurred to me that it would be particularly appropriate to use for this purpose a minor planet discovered by astronomers in the Czech Republic.
So that's what they did.
Let's hope that Landreneau doesn't touch it, 'cause he may destroy it. Heh.
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