YOU'VE GOT YOGMAEL!!!

Hi. Sorry for the delay, a possibel sinus infection has fallen
your fearless leader. Just what I need, one more thing that
could fuck up my trip...which is why there has been such a
delay in the 5th YM weekend memo.

Also, a new member to YM asked if there are any must read
issues in the archives. There are two that I know of. YM85
was the Big Issue interview, and the two part YM74 was the
Radio One interview. I know there have been some other
great ones, but I don't know their #'s offhand. What issue did
Beverley's backstage at Unplugged run in?

AND AWAY WE GO...
***************************
cummings-at-acusd.edu (Leeanna Cummings) writes:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a post in regards to Cherylyn's post about chats. As far
as I know, right now there are no set days or times when fans
meet. The most common place is #gm on irc.dal.net. The
most common nights seem to be Wednesday and Sunday, but
it is always changing. I am on IRC almost every night for a
period of time. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
I am sure someone else will provide some info also. It is a lot of
fun, hope to see you there.
***************************
Numama696-at-aol.com writes:
---------------------------------------------
Amanda,
I liked your vanity photopage . All I want to say is that
Andrew Ridgeley hasn't aged well . I always envision him
looking at least like he did when his solo album came out,
but I guess that people get , "Older". In the picture of him
and Keren , he looks like Woody Allen. Yuck ! I'm sure it
must have just been a bad angle , someone that good
looking can't turn into a pumpkin that soon. Sorry , Andrew.

(Like I said, Shirlie says he looks nothing like that solo pic.
No comment on the shot with Keren. Hmmm.... AG)

George on the other hand looks rather sexy in that speedo.
Has he aged well or what ?! He has the same build as my
husband, except George is taller .
Thanx,
Lisa
***************************
SynChrone-at-aol.com writes:
------------------------------------------
Any word on a new album or songs my dearest Amanda?

(No word at the moment. Believe it or not my e's with Shirlie
have little to do with new material. I guess I should ask huh?
But for the moment, assume George will ride the wave of Star
People '97 and work on AEgean biz. He did say he wanted
some time off. Expect a new wave when the GH comes out
next year. NOT AEgean info. AG)

Thanks for posting my commentary first,
I am sure to recieve a number or replies to that.

BYE
***************************
HelzBea-at-aol.com writes:
-------------------------------------
Hello everyone,

Just a quick point:
GM is like Elvis??????
What????
I'm sorry, I can't see any likeness or even any reason for
comparison? Maybe cos I'm English and don't like Elvis??
Beatles were much better....

(I'm a Canadian who agrees with you. AG)

Also WAD - we all know that this is a song FEATURING GM,
but is fundamentally a song BY Tony Bourke. I think GM is
beginnning to become more interested in the production and
encouragement side of other artists - good for him!

BTW, I picked up Star People 97 Aegean Promo in Soho
yesterday, does anyone know anything about this one?

Side A: Healy, Amos, Koglin club mix
Side B: Supernova Dub
Cat No: 12 AE003

Is it an exclusive promo?

Helz
***************************
papoose-at-l-a-net.net writes:
------------------------------------------
Hi,

Isn't it amazing how Yog fans admit that the first thing they ever
tried to look up on the internet was GM? Even though I'm
several decades older, and not computer literate, I have to admit,
the first thing I searched for was GM. Thank goodness, there
are many more of you, and thank goodness for Yogmael, LWP2,
and other great links.

Love,
OLDER Yogger
***************************
CGaWatson-at-aol.com writes:
-------------------------------------------
Amanda, the following is a long excerpt I typed from a book I
discovered browsing at Barnes & Noble. I was just flipping the
pages when a photo of George caught my eye and I was
surprised to see quite a long discussion that includes George
(albeit in a rather superficial way).

(Not a bad thing afterall, they end to be catty when they're serious.
AG)

If you ever have a lack of things to post, you might post this, if
you think it's interesting enough. Reading this reminds me of
the reasons I used to burst into loud laughter during "Pop Culture"
classes I took at school. So much of the analysis of pop/roc
music and videos by members of this field is laughably two-
dimensional and lacking in even a rudimentary historical

understanding of rock music. I've read feminist critiques of
music videos that made me split my pants laughing. Often,
Beavis & Butthead are more "dead-on" in their analyses.

Anyway, here it is if you're interested.

From "Cult Heroes" by Deyan Sudjic, published by W.W.
Norton & Co., 1989.

George Michael is caught in the beam of what appears to be the
landing light of a jumbo jet, trained directly at the top of his skull.
Five thousand lux blaze down through atmospheric clouds of
smoke and dust, turning his carefully streaked and moulded hair
into a neat rectangular halo. One hand is punched high up over
his shoulder, in a gesture of aimless defiance. In the other he
grips a radio mike.

Since technological obsolescence put an end to the dominance
of the guitar, the microphone has become the essential prop for
an aspiring rock star. Stunted high-tech guitars made of plastic
make attempts to emulate the pyrotechnics of Pete Townshend
look as risible as the Coldstream Guards drilling with miniature
modern rifles. Hence the importance of the mike, freed at last
from the shackles of a stand. Some are designed as headsets,
strapped in place to allow vocalists prepared to go on stage
looking like air traffic controllers to indulge in frenzied outbursts
of unfettered, hands-free emoting. But Michael's is of the more
macho, hand-held variety: matt black, and with a pistol grip like
a Beretta.

Michael wears jeans that have clearly been frayed by experts, a
belt as big as a spare tyre, and a white vest (Muscle/under shirt.
AG) of the type once favoured for their leading men by social
realist theatre directors attempting to signify proletarian authority.
The look is Spartacus meets Che Guevara. Taken at face value,
it is a trifle far-fetched for a singer who is the product of
prosperous north London suburbia, especially one with a $10
million sponsorship contract with a Japanese electronics
company in his pocket. But then music should never be taken
entirely at face value.

Post-Wham, George Michael has sharpened up his image, getting
to grips with an incipient weight problem. His act mixes the two
conflicting impulses--to outrage and to succeed--that have shaped
pop music. He uses the trappings of youthful rebellion to give an
edge to his winsome glamour. His pose has been carefully
constructed as part of the marketing effort for his new album.
And it expertly recycles imagery from a variety of sources to create
an identity that quickly takes on an independent existence.
Conspicuously lacking in menace, but amply endowed with charm,
Michael is the apotheosis of the rock star as entertainer. He is
as much a part of popular culture as Charlie Chaplin or the music
hall stars once were. Michael's success represents a remarkable
transformation of the music industry. In the 1950s and 60s
fashionable music was the preserve of rebel rockers, outlaw
heroes to the newly discovered genus teenager, folk devils to
adults driven to paroxysms of moral panic at the prospect of
jungle music sweeping all before it.

The young Elvis Presley, sounding like a black man and looking
blatantly sexual, was every red-neck nightmare come true. He
opened the flood gates of permissiveness that allowed Chuck
Berry, Little Richard, and a host of other blacks onto previously
all-white radio stations, and thence into the charts. His bruised
lips and blue-black quiff were painted by Andy Warhol, and,
after Presley's death, became the stigmata of a quasi-religious
cult that was scarcely diminished by revelations of barbituate
and junk food binges.

Despite the best efforts of Elvis' manager, Colonel Parker, the
traditional slickness and glitz that has characterized music
business professionalism suddenly became a joke. Marooned
on the wrong side of the generation gap, music entrepreneurs
were temporarily baffled about what was happening, as they
were meant to be. All the ins suddenly became outs. The
quickest, most effective way to make a unilateral declaration
of independence from the grown-up world was to elevate
conspicuously to hero status a band of musicians who
apparently embodied contempt for everything that their elders
held dear. Both sides of the age divide briefly got carried
away, and behaved as if there was real substance to all the
Oedipean symbolism. For the tabloid press,publicity-conscious
clergymen, and the more simple minded of pundits, the young
started to look very menacing indeed. But far from representing
a revolutionary vanguard, rock and roll turned out to be just
another sunrise industry, one that produced at least as many
new millionaires as computers did a decade later. And whatever
their enthusiasm for narcotics, bourbon and groupies, most of
them share the comfortable values of successful self-made men
the world over. The survivors take up polo, play at being
gentleman farmers, and have their shoes handmade in Jermyn

Street. In the last decade, enterprise culture has overtaken the
cheerful anarchy of the early days of rock; and musical outrage
has become increasingly ritualized. George Michael's clenched
fist cheerfully acknowledges the triumph of form over substance.

Musicians like Michael look the way they do, because that is
the way rock stars are meant to look. Nobody professes to
believe that music will change the world anymore, but
appearances are still important. The lonesome outsider caught in
the spotlight is the superstar ideal. And George Michael's poor
boy get-up is part of the traditional rock star act. It harks back
to a golden age of interminable drum solos and patchouli for its
legitimacy. In the same way that the founding fathers of the
fledgling republic of the United States of America were forever
having themselves painted and sculpted wearing the togas of
republican Rome as a testament to their evaluation of their own
worth, so popular music keeps on referring back to its past.

Showmanship, the other strand to popular music, is equally
important. With no cultural pretensions, it draws on the
tradition of slick black performers dating back to the Tamla
Motown label, and the white bubblegum pop of the same period.
It's an approach to music that grew out of the sequin-stitched
style of the circus, and puts a premium on glamour and
entertainment. Michael, a true pop star, is a natural inheritor
of the tradition.
***************************
fastluv-at-ameritech.net (Emily Fiorite) writes:
----------------------------------------------------------------
The wonderful, great, almighty, talented, smart, witty, gracious,
caring, supermael woman AMANDA...

I am pond scum! I need to ask you to put this link in again! I
typed it wrong! I am a horrible person!

http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Boardwalk/7397

BACKTALK! Come on in and speak your peice!

Also, what's the deal with this new single...is this real? This
Empty Kisses or whatever? Do you know Amanda?

(Not the real thing. AG)

Emily
fastluv-at-ameritech.net
***************************
DERBYMIN-at-aol.com writes:
------------------------------------------
Hi Amanda and fellow Yog fans,

Have just been reading a weekly woman's magazine (Now/Here)
when I came across a two paged article about "Celebrity
Addicitions". Low and behold there was a little snipit of info
on GM's addiction .......

"Black Clothes - George Michael

Back in the days of Wham! the only thing brighter
than George's shirts was his dazzling smile. But
he's gone all serious and these days is clad in
deepest, dullest black. Gone, too, is the designer
stubble. Instead, he spends hours perfecting his
goatee unaware of his strong resemblance to an
extra from a spagehetti western. Oh, that a
heart-throb should come to this. Hey George,
amigo, why not lighten up a bit?"

How does this reporter possibly know how long George spends
on his grooming? Are we really interested? It's this kind of
trashy journalism that really infuriates me. If the media hasn't
got anything worthwhile and interesting to say, then they
shouldn't even bother.

I've got just one thing to say ......

"Sometimes the clothes do not make the man.."

Right, I'm off now to listen to George ~ his voice always easies
my ruffled feathers.

Bye for now.
Michelle.
***************************
LEGIONWOO-at-aol.com writes:
-----------------------------------------------
Hi, Peeps!
I am sorry for writing again so soon but I was reading Yogmael
#201 and was wondering about a greatest hits CD for George,
as well as the other songs mentioned. I honestly had never
heard of them-no store in my town has anything remotely close
to that (I was lucky to get a copy of Older! Uncultured North
Carolinians!). So if anyone has any knowledge of where a kid
could get this music, please please pleeze let me know, okay?
Thanks a lot!

(The GH is not due for release until '98 -- expect a lot of Fony
press. As for other tracks, you just have to hit the import co's
and the like online. AG)

Stan
***************************
lebois-at-mail.dotcom.fr (David Lebois) writes:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Amanda and Yogcrew,

There's a nice shop here in Paris and they received the folowing
items:

* CD Single Promo Only from Holland
JTAC (short radio) 4'15 / 6'50 for 200 FF (about US $40)

* CD Single Promo Only from Holland
Star people '97 (Radio Edit) 4'39 for 200 FF

* 2 French Press Kit:
JTAC or STW
for 220FF each w/ 1 CD Promo Only

If anyone is interested, email me.
David
***************************
SynChrone-at-aol.com writes:
------------------------------------------
AMANDA!!!!!!

(I have a pounding headache, please refrain from yelling... AG)

It is time to petition Fony to release the LWP II hidden in the vault

album.

LETS GET IT OUT!
***************************
To Wrap it Up:

ATTN MEGAN (dm010004-at-pop.state.net) I need the address you
signed up using, this one is not it, when I tried to send you mail
telling you this it was bounced back.

"Sometimes you think you're gonna get it, but you don't and that's
just the way it goes."

 
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