Polls and the thin white duke
Jun. 1st, 2002 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkI am an LJ poll hypocrite. I take them all the time
(each poll, by the way, tells me I'm Bjork), but on principle I never paste them into my journal. I just treasure what they say. I will share with you all, though, two non-cyber lo fi polls that are a good substitute for psychic readings. I will not require response, or discussion or cutting or pasting.
My polls are 2 personal theories of mine:
1. You can tell anything you need to know about a person by the order of preference in which they list the bands the Beatles, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones and the Who.
2. You can tell anything you need to know by the titles of their 3 favorite David Bowie songs. I probably also think you can match DNA and intimate compatibility by analyzing the top 5, but as a happily married non-policeman I'll limit this test to 3 songs.
Example:
Poll One: My order of preference is Kinks, Beatles,
Who and Rolling Stones. See? You now have me completely defined.
Poll Two: My favorite 3 Bowie songs are "Memories of a Free Festival", "Life on Mars", and "Warsawa". Again, assuming you know Bowie's repertoire, you now have me before you, all meaning laid bare.
Feel free to try this at home, in my comments section or to ignore it altogether. As with any mail art exchange, no juries, no returns, documentation to all.
(each poll, by the way, tells me I'm Bjork), but on principle I never paste them into my journal. I just treasure what they say. I will share with you all, though, two non-cyber lo fi polls that are a good substitute for psychic readings. I will not require response, or discussion or cutting or pasting.
My polls are 2 personal theories of mine:
1. You can tell anything you need to know about a person by the order of preference in which they list the bands the Beatles, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones and the Who.
2. You can tell anything you need to know by the titles of their 3 favorite David Bowie songs. I probably also think you can match DNA and intimate compatibility by analyzing the top 5, but as a happily married non-policeman I'll limit this test to 3 songs.
Example:
Poll One: My order of preference is Kinks, Beatles,
Who and Rolling Stones. See? You now have me completely defined.
Poll Two: My favorite 3 Bowie songs are "Memories of a Free Festival", "Life on Mars", and "Warsawa". Again, assuming you know Bowie's repertoire, you now have me before you, all meaning laid bare.
Feel free to try this at home, in my comments section or to ignore it altogether. As with any mail art exchange, no juries, no returns, documentation to all.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
a response
Date: 2002-06-01 08:03 pm (UTC)Poll Two: My favourite three Bowie songs are "China Girl," "Young Americans," and "Blue Jean." I will say that when Bowie croons, "O, baby, just you shut your mouth" in "China Girl" it causes me to want to mate with Mr. Bowie--prolifically.
Re: a response
Date: 2002-06-01 08:51 pm (UTC)"China Girl" is wonderful, although Iggy's version to me is so imprinted that I think of it more than Bowie's in some way. Not to take away from Bowie--wonderful song. I love it when Bowie covers other artists...always have...but I always hear the covers as the "original" artists' covers, like Tom Verlaine's "Kingdom Come" or even "Let's Spend the Night Together", where I love Bowie's version much more than the Stones' but it is still a Stones song to me....
sorry to ramble...thanks for getting me thinking,
and I hope you can sublimate all that China Girl raging hormones into other, more attainable significant others....or sainthood, or something
:)
did i win?
Moonage Daydream, Ziggy Stardust, All the Young Dudes (in my mind, this counts)
Brilliant theory by the way... I have nothing to hide here
Re: did i win?
Date: 2002-06-01 09:38 pm (UTC)I feel that I "see" you much more clearly based on your answers. I love all the bands you name, and all the songs you name, but I frankly would enjoy meeting a person whose number 1 song is "Laughing Gnome" as much as someone whose fav is "I'm Afraid of Americans".
It's not what you like. It's what you show by telling what you like. Thank you very much for baring your soul. It's a nice soul.
no subject
Date: 2002-06-02 12:08 am (UTC)Scary Monsters, Modern Love, and Magic Dance. I think. Maybe Cat People. Can I include Tin Machine stuff? Under Pressure definitely.
I have found that people tend to own at least one of the following four albums (or have owned them at some time in their shady past):
Eagles Greatest Hits Vol. 1
Ghostbusters Soundtrack
The Best of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
and some version of Pachelbel's Canon in D Minor.
no subject
Date: 2002-06-02 01:49 am (UTC)John I'm Only Dancing, Golden Years, Breaking Glass
such a beautiful person....
Date: 2002-06-02 03:35 am (UTC)and I sure don't want to be like that poor couple in the movie Manhattan with their "overrated people" list, but a non-rating is still a rating, and tells us a great deal about you.
I love each of your song choices. I definitely think Tin Machine is "in". Under Pressure is also in, and wins Freddie Mercury bonus points. But everyone is right...this is a "personality index", not a quiz.
I feel that your answer, too, lets us see within your soul more than a thousand self explanatory posts might.
I like your "four albums everyone has owned" list.
I don't think I owned any of them altho both the Greatest Hits Volume 1 and the Pachelbel are so familiar that I cannot remember one way or the other.
Of course, Dark Side, Tapestry, the Runes album, and Fragile might have also been a list like this. Good idea...I'd have to think on it.
yes!
There is no right answer, and it is entirely permissible to prefer the Beach Boys and the Shondells instead.
I am really into each of your Bowie song choices.
I guess I like my own poll (which makes me a good LJ poll sponsor I'm sure) so much because there are so few Bowie songs I dislike. I like the disco version of John that only appears on one of the outtakes albums, and I was born to sing "Golden Years", except for having 2 octaves fewer pitch than Bowie does and all....
Thanks for revealing your inner soul to me.
Re: such a beautiful person....
Date: 2002-06-02 04:08 am (UTC)Now, if only I played chess... :)
Here goes nothing!
Date: 2002-06-02 07:29 am (UTC)Ashes to Ashes is my all time favorite song PERIOD- I drew Bowie as the clown all through high school, ahhh memories
JeanGenie/BlueJean, because my middle name is Jean, these count as number 2 even though there are 2 I can't separate.
spaceoddity-because i love it, i just do :)
but how can you pick three?
Bowie is now playing way to loud for lil turtle's tastes.
no subject
Date: 2002-06-02 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-02 07:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-02 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-02 07:58 am (UTC)[I agree with
I'm not really a connoisseur of Bowie, but I'll give it a shot:
Oh, You Pretty Things, Little Drummer Boy (with Bing Crosby), Under Pressure (with Queen)
I, too, have pet theories, but they don't really reveal much about personality. More about differences between boys and girls. Like, for instance, take Pet Sounds. If you think it's one of the greatest recordings ever, you are probably a boy. If you are totally ambivalent about it, you are probably a girl. Not very profound.
ohmigoodness, they're gonna say I'm a girl!
eccentricity for orientation come back to me,
as I, too, am ambiguous about Pet Sounds.
I can surely tell you this, though--I am anything but
ambiguous about the theremin in Good Vibrations.
Next time I'm 70 dollars ahead, I'm gonna get me a theremin on ebay. OTOH, my first electric football field came in yesterday, and I'm on the verge of being ready to make pet sounds of my own.
I am going to write a post about this, but the exercise does work with Pink Floyd or any of a number of other bands. "Wall" people are markedly different than Umma Gumma people, for example, and there's the whole Question of Syd Barrett. I like all PF people.
I daily become Comfortably Numb, but I'm not as saintly as Bob Geldof.
But I am grateful to you for showing your inner soul.
I would have guessed your order, btw, except that I would have thought that Mick's long hair might have overcome his general sexism to put him in 3rd place on your list.
As far as gender differences, Tori Amos manages to
both evoke marked differences between men and women, but also marked difference in the "type of man" and "type of woman" who is a fan of hers. Generational difference probably accounts for Richard Thompson v. Billy Bragg, and I learn much more about someone by knowing if they prefer "Daydream Believer", "Last Train to Clarksville", or, as I do,
"Pleasant Valley Sunday".
Thanks for participating. You are, like everyone else here, a winner!
now THAT is in the spirit of the poll!
Date: 2002-06-02 09:32 am (UTC)Residents, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Dusty Springfield.
and for your favorite Bowie songs, we'll count that as "Laughing Gnome", "Boys Keep Swinging" and "Drive in Saturday" (although I cannot imagine you typing "where we both looked at Jagger's eyes and scored)....
Everyone's a winner! Thanks for playing.
time and again I tell myself....but the little green men are following me....
I worked with a woman named Janene once, but if she'd taken an axe to me, she'd have killed me and not another man at all.
It's funny, I would have guessed all your list of bands, except I would have put the Kinks 2, and i really think that Guess Who are cool, but then, I believe that the whole universe could be inside my little sister's purse, just like the Guess Who song.
I think you can't pick 3 or 5 or 7. You just have to let whimsy be your guide. Thanks for playing!
Do you find this amazing?
Date: 2002-06-02 10:09 am (UTC)You have a billion comments on this subject.
What are the most comments you have had on a subject?
"thanks for playing, everyone is a winner!"
Where's my turtlewax BUSTER?
Re: Do you find this amazing?
Date: 2002-06-02 11:20 am (UTC)As for the turtle wax, I can offer only a corruplast postcard with a nature photo--which will be headed your way as soon as I can get today's rolls developed.
I'll run your "interests" thing later; I think as a "paid user" I can run not only mine but also yours!
no subject
Date: 2002-06-02 03:15 pm (UTC)Suffragette City
Putting Out a Fire With Gasoline (Love the title, song is only okay)
Space Oddity
Changes (Love the song; a better title would be Ch-Ch-Changes)
Young Americans
(Side note: In the late '70's, David Bowie put out an album called Low.
Later that year, Nick Lowe put out an album called Bowi. I love that.)
I've given you my Big English Rock Band listing before, and I'll do it
again-- but I have so many annotations, footnotes, caveats, provisos, ...
that I'm thinking it's not telling you as much as you might believe it is.
Stones Mostly Mick Taylor-era.
Favorite Stones album-- Get Yer Ya Yas Out
Who In high school and in at least part of college I loved early Who.
I never listen to them anymore, though.
Favorite Who album-- Live at Leeds
Beatles Early Beatles gripe: Nasal harmonies + Ringo's cymbal-happy
drumming
Late Beatles gripe: They sounded more like three guys each
doing his own thing than a real rock and roll band.
Favorite Beatles album-- Rubber Soul
Kinks I really, really like their early punky stuff. I'm not as crazy about
their later, nuanced-and-literate stuff, though I do kind of like
Well Respected Man.
Favorite Kinks album-- uh ...
By the way, my favorite poll question ever came at the end of the test and let
me rate how much I agreeed or not with this statement:
The way many of these questions were worded has kept me from providing
an accruate answer to them.
But you probably knew that about me already
I always love to hear your take
Date: 2002-06-02 08:30 pm (UTC)Of course, all answers are right. I personally am more a Village Green Preservation Society Kinks-as-England kind of guy, and I love Revolver and Sergeant Pepper. If I were a Beatle, I'd be George, but I'd choose my wife over Patti. I was so sad when George Harrison died. My favorite George Harrison song is Crackerbox Palace.
Ch-changes is a great song. I love it. I also love Young Americans. Real karaoke material. Somehow, I would have imagined you as a Hunky Dory or Space Oddity man...given the Scott M__ Exp. stuff, I'd have imagined that "Andy Warhol" might have been in order.
I agree, but do not apologize, for the fact that
the problem did not permit a complex and hedging answer. Message to recipient: consider law school.
I suspect that you would have more fun with
I, of course, only know the words to "Comfortably Numb", though I wish I knew "The Machine" as well.
How are you coming with the new recording box?
Box in hand and waiting to dub? Or waiting to get box in hand?
I know you have other things on your plate now, and there is no hurry. I caught myself actually getting into hurry on something unrelated today when no hurry was required. It's a lawyer thing, or something. So I reiterate: no hurry.
But where do we stand anyway?
Hey, we were saying that we should go with y'all to our favorite restaurant in McKinney some time soon.
As y'all region-trot so much these days (how was the concert?), perhaps my wife and yours can get calendars together or some such. My calendar is
much more oriented to hearing dates than dinner dates, so as retrograde as it sounds, I'll have to depend on spousal help on this one.
I have in my possession, by the way, a really cool 1950s era field. The speed is screw driven, and just lifting the board is an incredible fx.
This silly idea might work. Do you want to be producer, co-collaborator, or lead vocalist?
(see also, e.g., Frampton Comes Alive)
(I think he was really saying "I want to floss with you" on that album).
:) Always good to hear from you, and you are a winner of this LJ poll, albeit a complex thinking winner indeed!
Re: I always love to hear your take
Date: 2002-06-03 10:30 am (UTC)Pink Floyd kind of guy. I like a lot of what Cream did-- that count
for anything?
I'm reading (okay, I'm thumbing through, but plan to read eventually)
Steven Fry's autobiography, and I came across a passage you might
get a kick out of. It would kill the humor to describe it, and I'm too
lazy to type it, but it involves comparing Captain Beefheart to Edgar
Broughton, the Incredible String Band to Jethro Tull, and Carole King
to Fairport Convention. I don't know why I throw this in-- it just
seems apropos to this discussion somehow.
Some LJist had a poll asking people to volunteer two incompatible facts
about themselves. I didn't enter anything when I saw it because I
couldn't think of anything, but at this late date I've finally come up with
something: I love taking self assessments, but I hedge and kvetch
over all the questions. Now THAT says volumes about Who I Am.
Hmmm... Law school... I worry that my head full of mush is
unmoldable after all the aspartame I've injested since college.
Plus there's that problem that they don't pay you to go to law
school.
Gear update:
Dubbing tape deck and dubbing CD deck have been ordered and
are in transit. I expect to have them by the end of the week.
I saw Doug (the fellow I had lent my 4-track to) yesterday, and he
said he'd like to hang on to the stuff a little while longer while he
finishes some songs. I said sure because from what I'm reading
you're waiting for more fields to come in before you're ready to
record. Am I correct?
On the question of what I want to do: This is your project-- what
I want to do is facilitate, and that means whatever you want it
to mean-- Drop off the gear and wish you luck, show you to the
best of my memory how to use the gear and wish you luck, plug
stuff in and twiddle with switches and knobs while you put
ambience onto tape, make some of my own ambience to go with
your ambience.
I'd love to get with you two. Let's talk to the people in our lives
who can make that happen.
The concert was terrific, thanks for asking. Pharoah Sanders
was way more accessible than I thought he was going to be.
Re: I always love to hear your take
Date: 2002-06-03 01:13 pm (UTC)I would like to get you to get your studio (absolutely no hurry) and get together and actually make the ambience. I am eager to do something that is spontaneous, one-take-ish, and involves little stress or worry. Your musical skills might come in handy, as lack of melody for 60 minutes might strain even my own ambient-tolerant nature. My own skills stop at autoharp and melody line on piano, so
we'll need all your art, artifice and skill.
My current vision is 12 pieces of 4 or 5 minutes each, with the timing being rather rigid so that "whatever happens" during the set time, that is the "take". We'd go through on each track and add additional things. The three fields will be adjusted at different pitches, with slow, whale-like changes in sound, at timed intervals. Kazoos,
perhaps an aquarium pump, slide whistles and your bari uke will be used liberally to add musical atmosphere to the proceedings. I want something slow and "Low"-ish, rather than something club-sounding or jokey. Go over to hypnos.com and
listen to mgriffin and dfulton...I think it's available for download. That's the "dark ambient" extreme. Then listen to Jeff Pearce...that's the light ambient. What I'm looking for is something
spacey and fun, like some odd mix of those two ideas.
Yes, dinner, spouses coordinate, please.
no subject
Date: 2002-06-05 06:56 am (UTC)Assuming that when you said David Bowie you actually mean Richard Thompson:
1) Withered and Died
2) Keep Your Distance
3) the one about a motorbike and a women with red hair that I've never known the title of, but in my mind it's called Sex, Death and Motorbikes