Date: Sun, 10 Mar 96 01:00:03 CST From: numan@cs.uwp.edu Reply-To: numan@cs.uwp.edu (Gary Numan) Subject: Gary Numan Digest V1 #208 Gary Numan Digest Sun, 10 Mar 96 Volume 1 : Issue 208 Today's Topics: Gary Numan Digest V1 #207 (2 msgs) Gary to chart in top 10? Happy Birthday Living Ornaments Music wars Numan Mania sound-quality sound quality (2 msgs) Sound quality - suggestion Support bands for Premier Tour Web Performance ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 09:48:21 -0500 (EST) From: abfalter@intellivoice.com Subject: Gary Numan Digest V1 #207 To: numan@cs.uwp.edu RE: 'Cars' For what it's worth: Here in the US there is a show called 'Entertainment Tonight' which is a nightly show covering daily entertainment news. They used 'Cars' as backround music to the news item that David Copperfield bought the car used in the movie 'Batman'. RE: 1999 & U Got the Look Yes, Gary sunk to a low in a moment of weakness and covered U Got the Look on his Machine+Soul albumn. It's not very good, neither is the rest of the albumn although I rather liked the title track. RE: Conversions My 19 year old grunge-wanna-be Nine-Inch-Nail's worshipping cousin recently heard Sacrafice and has become an overnight Numan fanatic scouring record stores for anything Numan. He found a copy of 'Telekon' for US$0.49 --sigh.... He first heard of Numan because of Marylin Manson's cover of 'Down in the Park' and flipped when I played the real version. RE: URGH: A Music War I have a copy of the video which is pretty good. Numan has one song, he sings 'Down in the Park' dressed in a red leather jumpsuit and driving around a weird little cart. The rest of the tape is various artists of pre-Alternative alternative music (punk, reagee, synth, etc) now is the time when all good typing comes to and end ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 07:37:55 -0800 From: tgould@alumni.caltech.edu Subject: Gary Numan Digest V1 #207 To: numan@cs.uwp.edu Leaving town, so could you please unsubscribe me for a while. I'll resubscribe when I get back and thanks for all the great news! Tim Gould tgould@alumni.caltech.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 09:44:05 -0800 From: dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: Gary to chart in top 10? To: numan@cs.uwp.edu Again, I have taken a these things off of NuWORLD for the WWW impaired. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- MIDWEEK UK CHART POSITION. (News date: Mar 8) Not that it means that much but the mid week chart position of the 'Cars Premier Mix' single is No 8. Mid week positions are notoriously inaccurate but, nonetheless, it is a very positive sign. LATEST PROMO NEWS. (News date: Mar 8) Gary has been incredibly busy over the past two weeks as you may have noticed by the lack of updates appearing on NuWorld. He has been on 7 TV shows with many more to follow, countless press interviews including NME, Radio One, Radio Five, Capitol Radio and, according to Polygram, there is so much interest being shown in Gary that they consider it impossible for him to meet the demand. How times change. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Isn't this GREAT NEWS!!!!!! If Gary can maintain or improve this top 10 position for the chart next week, there is no way Radio 1 can ignore him. Can someone in the UK let us know on the Digest where Cars charts in next Wednsday's Digest? I have found myself listening to Cars E. Reg a few times in anticipation of this week. Still sounds great after a 9 years. Let's hope this wave continues and dosn't peter out as fast as it has arisen. Derek -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Derek H. Langsford dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu Dept. of Biology Tel. (619) 594 2885 San Diego State University Fax (619) 594 7831 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Mar 96 22:26:31 +0100 From: na468@fim.uni-erlangen.de (Markus Dietrich) Subject: Happy Birthday To: numan@cs.uwp.edu Hello Gary, Happy Birthday to Yours and all the luck and success for Your great year!!! M a r k u s To other Numanoids, let Us smash the music TVs (MTV, viva, ...) with concratulations for Gary!!! by ... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 13:41:06 -0500 From: Guavabarry@aol.com Subject: Living Ornaments To: numan@cs.uwp.edu I thought the live double album was Living Ornaments 79/80, why am I seeing 79/81 on recent posts? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 13:43:20 -0500 From: Ron Peterson Subject: Music wars To: numan@cs.uwp.edu >Could someone pleeeease tell me something more about the film "Urgh, >a music war", which featured Cars as far as I know. I know nothing, It was shown on Night Flight many years ago and did indeed have a segment with Gary Numan. I don't remember for certain, but I think it was essentially a collection of video clips from standard sources that they assembled into a "film" and then asked people to vote for the performances they liked best. I have a copy of parts of it somewhere on video tape. Too bad Night Flight died due to lack of funds and bad management. Video archives of many shows still exist somewhere though; I've seen them replayed years later on C-band satellite. >P.S. Any Residents/Tuxedomoon, etc. fans out there? Heavy music for deep thinking. Kind of like the movie Videodrome; be careful what you put into your CD player. Pay attention to what ideas you let enter your mind. Ron RonP@sover.net ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Mar 1996 10:44:47 +0100 From: Patxi Ltd Subject: Numan Mania To: numan@cs.uwp.edu Hello Numanoids!!! There is a new Numan Network Site in Spain, itīs called "NUMANMANIA" (http://www.kender.es/numan), itīs in spanish languaje, but soon in english too!! It have discography, videography, news, scans, etc... and new areas coming soon!. I need your help, Numanoids, send me news of concerts, tv shows, etc.... reviews, and i put these material in my web. Thanks a lot! emmmm!!!, Is "Cars" single in the UK Top 20?, yes?..... ŋ? Bye friends! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 14:56:08 +0200 (IST) From: Alex Shaltiel Subject: sound-quality To: numan@cs.uwp.edu Hi, If one wants to proove without a doubt that the Dream-Corrosion album lacks quality, what you need is a pc with a CD-ROM capable of transfering CD-DA directly to hardisk (Toshiba/Sony should work NOT 'Creative cdroms or mitsumi they don't work) Shareware programs to transfer the audio like dac22.zip,dido4.zip and the wonderfull cool152.zip to manupulate the audio. all available from the internet. Now grab a few seconds from various tracks on that album load those into cool152 program do a spectrum analysis of the track your interested in , and there you have it, on all tracks ,a constant drop which ends at around 10-12Khz the level above 10Khz is very low and there is nothing listenable above 14Khz compare this to other high qulity recording and SEE the difference. If you have a 16bit sound-card you can use the 'cool' program to compensate and reboost the almost nonexistant trebble, to something very listenable. Make a cassete which sounds better than the CD. I also had a look at 'sacrifice' , The albums quality is fine but the muddy bass is probably the choice of sample or instrument, and lack of high-pitch percussion instruments. could be delibarate so that the album does not sound bright. Bye bye from Israel. --------------- Alex Shaltiel ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 10:24:57 GMT -0500 From: "Dan Coffeyx3685" Subject: sound quality To: numan@cs.uwp.edu It seems that there is a bit of discussion on Sacrifice's sound quality...I for one, have noticed the same thing from the day I bought the album...and i do know a bit about sound, but my particular hang-up isn't as much with how the songs were recorded, as the actual choice of drum machine sounds Gary chooses...for some songs, the drums work...(ie seed of a lie, you walk in my soul etc..) however, when you get into the more upbeat tracks, something is just lost in the rhythm section...Gary told me that he has gone off the 'human drummer' thing..which is cool, but, there are ways to get a more 'punchy' bass and snare drum, which could really enhance the song... I guess its my wordy way of saying that most of the songs sound exactly the same b/c of lack of variation on the drum track...I think Sacrifice is a brilliant collection of songs..I've heard some of Exile..its exactly the same brilliance...but the drums identical. Take a good listen to the track Warriors...best drum sound ever...oh well..... Dan ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 09 Mar 96 01:11:16 -0500 From: Ron Cadieux Subject: SOUND QUALITY To: numan@cs.uwp.edu After reading a few comments on the past few digests I thought I would also comment on the sound quality of some of Gary Numan's recent recordings. First off I would like to note that the sound quality on the Dream Corrosion CD marks the worst recording I have ever heard. It sounds as though someone was holding a microphone in the first row of the stage. Mind you the musical content is great. It's just very frustrating when you turn the volume louder and it sounds worse. It begins making these clicking and crackling noises. It sounds as though there was no EQ involved in the recording at all. In contrast the Dark Light recording is EXCELLENT! Whatever the change was, it was good. I personally noticed that the sound quality of Gary's recordings started to detereorate after Metal Rhythm. In Outland, there is a lower tone, less crisp feel to the recording. Although it is tolerable it is very noticeable when compared to any other CD recorded in the early 90s. Then the Machine & Soul CD actually got worse. Still tolerable, but worse. The sound on this CD is muffled and unclear at times. The definitions on the instrumentation are almost impossible to determine. It sounds like one loud sound. This makes it harder to appreciate the different sounds. Its tone is very low. Even after boosting the tone settings on my 20 channel EQ, it still sounds clicky and muffled. The Sacrifice CD is slightly better but still contains many of these sound quality downfalls. Gary Numan's music is by far the best but I believe that something should be done about the sound quality of the latest recordings. It's obvious to anyone who listens to the CDs. Maybe this should be brought to Gary's attention for the upcoming Exile album. By the way has anyone heard the cover of "Are 'Friends' Electric" by the Replicants? It is pretty good if you get a chance to pick it up. Thanks, Ron. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 10:21:43 -0800 From: dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: Sound quality - suggestion To: numan@cs.uwp.edu There have been several thoughful posts on the sound quality of Gary's output from Outland studio. The original post came from Ireland so it's not just us in the USA who are obsessed about this :-) I agree with you that Gary's music has suffered some. The most obvious example being the "Dream Corrosion" CDs which were very muddy. Gary and others has said the video sounds very good. But Gary did say he was not present for the final transfer from analog to digital for the CDs. Additionally, "Sacrifice" has problems too - there's a level of noise which veils over the whole thing making it sound distant, and I don't think it is an intended effect. "Machine and Soul" had a very poor low end. Maybe Gary should avail himself of a studio engineer again to get a second opinion? While Sacrifice is excellent musically the production and/or engineering bring it down from the highest possible marks. I do not pretend to know much, if anything, about studio recording techniques but I'd like to suggest that someone in the Digest, perhaps one of the posters on this subject, summarize the discussion so that I could pass it along to Gary. I would view this as constructive advice for Gary. The original poster was sbarrett@iol.ie (Stephen Barrett) and Sean Francis <100557.3713@compuserve.com> and Angelzero@aol.com followed up. If one of you could bring together your concerns and suggestions I'd happily forward it to Gary. If there is a fixable problem, then I am sure Gary and many of us would appreciate it being fixed. I do worry that Gary can be blase about technical details and not feel they warrant concern (e.g. having his DAT recorder plugs switched so that Babylon 1 has the channels reversed). I hope you can work something out. Derek -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Derek H. Langsford dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu Dept. of Biology Tel. (619) 594 2885 San Diego State University Fax (619) 594 7831 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 09:44:58 -0800 From: dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu (Derek Langsford) Subject: Support bands for Premier Tour To: numan@cs.uwp.edu I have taken a few things off of NuWORLD for the WWW impaired. Hoep this is of interest to a few of you. PREMIER TOUR SUPPORT BANDS. (News date: Mar 8) The final list of support bands for the '96 Premier Tour is as follows: Folkestone. Sheep On Drugs London Astoria. EMF Bristol. Mesh Cambridge. Interact Ipswich. Code Newcastle. Cyber-Tec Glasgow. Cyber-Tec Liverpool. Code Nottingham. Eroticist Southampton. Cuban 8 Guildford. Cuban 8 Birmingham. Sheep On Drugs Manchester. Let Loose Milton Keynes. Inertia Hammersmith. Sheep On Drugs ------------------------------------------------------------------------- No Jesus Jones at Hammersmith. Derek -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Derek H. Langsford dlangs@sunstroke.sdsu.edu Dept. of Biology Tel. (619) 594 2885 San Diego State University Fax (619) 594 7831 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 10:57:27 -0500 From: Mattholb@aol.com Subject: Web Performance To: numan@cs.uwp.edu I thought I should reply to Sean's message in #207. Basically, Sean's problems are caused by two different things. Firstly, County Internet is on a wind down at the moment. Both NU-Zone and NuWORLD are being moved to servers with Megastream (as opposed to Kilostream) connections. This should hopefully be complete quite soon. The new company is NetForce. However, Sean's main problem is CompuServe. That system is not fit to be on air any more. Performance is truly awful. It's limited bandwidth is being shared between many thousands of users, meaning that each will experience several minutes when there is no activity. UK sites will be more of a problem because all CompuServe traffic is routed through America first. I too am a CompuServe user. I was once very enthusiastic, but not any more. My traditional 20 hours usage per month is now only 30 minutes. This is because all my main activities have been moved elsewhere. CompuServe is now a terrible service. It needs some serious money throwing at it - and no one else should be allowed to join it for six month. Matthew Holbrook ------------------------------ End of Gary Numan Digest ******************************