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Rm101 is B-Noir Film and friends' band.  The music highlights our sound design ethos.    

The latest Rm101 CD is “Green  Light Go Daddy!”  and finished.    Most of the songs are at the Rm101 Soundclick site below, although they are not all mastered.  The songlist for "Green Light" is listed on the back cover below.  Songs below them come from "Pretty to think so." 

Rm101 at SoundClick




"Pretty to think so" is a mythic look at NYC before 9-11 and some of the consquences after.  


"Pretty to think so" varies in styles and genrés.  This is not so much due to musical Attention Deficient Disorder but the various music software Alan reviews, which leads in differing musical directions.  The tools provide the inspiration, rather than the tradition of a hammer which sees everything as a nail. Since “Pretty to think so” is printed in a slim-line case, there is no room for linear notes.  They are included here, along with some other thoughts.

Rm101 is

Mary Hestand, vocals
Sue Norman, vocals and Casio
Alan Tubbs, synths, loops

Special thanks to:

“JP” Painter and the Kitchen Studios, Dallas, TX
       for mastering and all instrumentation on Trouble
Diane Harris, sax on Rikers Island Blues
Jarrett Kinard, keys and bass on Wisteria
Martha German – drum programming on Wisteria
James S. Robbins for help in tracking down some samples of ululation

Notes:

Commercial releases ought to be in a single, marketable style.  But it is no secret that most listeners today use selected play lists, so think of “Pretty” as one.  It skips from electronic genrés to almost pop to almost country to blues, tho always with an electronic touch.

Pretty to think so is also a concept album - not in the narrative, but in a thematic sense.  The first half of the CD explores characters that could have lived in New York City pre 9-11.   “Tin Angles” is the midpoint, beginning like a teenage-angst rant “nobody understands me” song before it becomes apparent that the character is one of the 9-11 hijackers.  From there, the songs switch from character studies to the different sides of the “Great Debate” of how to respond to 9-11.   Various sides of the argument get their say, providing something for every person to agree and disagree with. 
 

Song notes:

What you wish for
doesn’t fit the template well since it was originally written for two voices – a jihadist and a liberal prespective talking over one another.  Mary took the best lines from each and it came out as a twisted sort of love song.  

Ton of Bricks
The lyrics are referential, so following is some explication.  The little green men are G.I.s - American soldiers.  German soldiers wore gray in WWII and Hitler said that Operation Zitadelle (Citadel), made his stomach turn every time he thought about it.  It took place in high summer in Russia, with the sunflower fields in full bloom and was Germany's last big attack.  Leonidas is the Spartan king who died at Thermopylae in 480, B.C.  Fabrizio Quattrocchi, one of the 1st kidnapees in Iraqi, ruined a jihadist’s video op by ripping off his hood and shouting “I’ll show you how an Italian dies.”  Oderint dum metuant is Latin for “Let them hate so long as they fear.”  Variously attributed to Caligula and Cato about how to handle the Roman Empire’s enemies, external and internal.  homunculi – Latin for “little men.” Refers to the press, with their Pinocchio noses.

A Still Life doesn’t seem to fit in with the others, but was written along with the rest.  As such, it seemed an appropriate end to the song cycle.  It is probably as much a comment on finishing the CD as anything else.


Their previous CD was a compilation of their older work, most of it from their stint in NYC as

X & the Mermaid '69.




We also post songs at MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/rm101

A humorous history of the early days of Room 101 neé X & the mermaid '69 can be found at:

http://worldartco.tripod.com/bnoir_film