_________________________________ | Screaming in Digital
        ________________*________________ | The Queensryche Net Digest
                       ***                | queensryche@pilot.njin.net
        __________*__*******__*__________ | Volume 044, 24aug92
                 ******* *******          | Edited by Dan 'Shag' Birchall
              *********   *********       | 
        ____************_************____ | Anonymous FTP sites:
          **** ******************* ****   | glia.biostr.washington.edu
         ***   ***  *********  ***   ***  | 
         **     *     *****     *     **  | 
        _*____________*****____________*_ |   The editor is liable only
                    *********             | for his errors.  Submission
                   ***********            | constitutes license to use.
                  **  *****  **           | Editorial right is reserved
                  *   *****   *           | regarding grammar, length,
        ______________*****______________ | decency, and redundancy.
                       ***                |   Screaming in Digital is 
                       ***                | edited by member 7302 of the
                       ***                | Queensryche Fan Club, who
                        *                 | does encourage membership.
                        *                 | Write Queensryche, Box 70503,
        _SiD_1992_______*________________ | Bellevue, Washington 98007.
        _________________________________________________________________
        _Screaming in Digital______________________________Editor's Note_

                Hello again, and welcome back to those who returned to
        classes this past week.  The digest has survived the summer, as
        promised.  I have also survived that cold I had before, and thank
        all of you who sent me messages telling me to get well.  Being
        out of state since I got better, I _still_ haven't gotten in
        touch with EMI - sorry, Jason and others.  It's on my list of
        "things to do yesterday."
                In this issue: a BBS supporting Queensryche in Michigan,
        more strange rumours about Geoff and family, more on Unplugged,
        instructions on making your own cassette of Unplugged, a large
        chunk of interview, sexism, guitar playing, silly message-size 
        limitations on pay networks, and more.

        _Speak____________________________________________Correspondence_

        shulick@kiowa.ucs.indiana.edu (Sam) writes,
                Is "Empire" _the_ latest by Queensryche?  Have they put 
        any singles out or anything that might convey a possibly new 
        style?
                        {Empire's still the most recent release.  This
                        fall, they're supposed to be back at work on a
                        new album, which is expected to be more like the
                        albums they made before "Empire," and may focus
                        on the subject of adventures.  -sh}

        edju@aludra.usc.edu (Eddie) writes,
                MTV does that kind of stuff - no announcement of any 
        _major_ programs - all the time.  Sometimes you have to resort to
        the TV guide, but even that is not dependable.  This tuesday, MTV
        aired a new Van Halen rockumentary.  I checked and it wasn't even
        in TV guide.

        edju@aludra.usc.edu (Eddie) writes,
                I've been pondering this for a long time... I saw this 
        rather gory B-movie on HBO, I think it was called "Steel and 
        Lace" or something like that.
                The plot is about how a rape victim was brought back to 
        life by her brother, who used her corpse to make a terminator-
        like cyborg to carry out revenges on the gang of businessmen 
        that raped her.  The head of the rapists was an actor whose last 
        name was, get this, Tate!  I think his first name was Nick or 
        something like that.  His face bears a sickening resemblance to 
        Geoff Tate, especially the pony tail he has.  Could this dude be 
        Geoff's brother?!
                        {Well, the plot's almost as warped as that of
                        "Operation: mindcrime," but I don't have any
                        biographical information on Geoff as far as any
                        siblings are concerned.  -sh}

        swolf@aol.com (Scott) writes,
                I really enjoy getting this newsletter, but I do have one 
        problem... For some reason I never do get it all. I seem to get 
        8050-8055 bytes each time of info and then it ends in the middle 
        of a sentence leaving me hanging.  I think that the America 
        Online letter buffer ends at about that.  I was wondering if I 
        could get the newsletter sent to me in 2 parts or as a file.
                        {Now that's a nasty problem.  If anyone else out
                        there is on a pay service and is NOT getting the
                        complete messages, please drop me a line and let
                        me know how large a message can be sent to your
                        mailbox.  -sh}

        kad@iris129.biosym.com (Kinga) writes,
                About 2 weeks ago somebody in the digest (no.42) posted
        something about Queensryche boards (what kind of boards?) in 
        San Diego.  His address is bibb@s912.uucp but when I tried to 
        e-mail him the mail bounced back.  How can I contact that person 
        and find out what those boards are and stuff?
                        {The message mentioned Jester, who uploads the
                        SiD issues to the boards.  Try sending him mail
                        at jester@crash.cts.com.  As for what kind of
                        boards - they're standard dial-up computerized
                        bulletin board systems.  -sh}

        _Roads to Madness__________________________________________Shows_

        jfdintin@eos.ncsu.edu (Joe) writes,
                I listened to the MTV Unplugged session simulcast on 
        radio.  I was very impressed.  I thought it was great they got a 
        chance to play 'I Will Remember' (my favorite acoustic-type 
        Queensryche song) and 'The Killing Words.'  They won't often play 
        those again anywhere.  The only disappointments were that it was 
        only five songs, and that they didn't play 'Scarborough Fair,' 
        which I was looking forward to.

        edju@aludra.usc.edu (Eddie) writes,
                I didn't find the acoustic arrangement for 'The Killing 
        Words' from the Unplugged session that appealing, either, 
        especially the "over" part.  However, the original version 
        recorded on "Rage for Order" involved multiple overdubs, I 
        suspect.  It'd be rather hard to recreate that live, even with 
        all five band members chipping in their share of vocals.  
                As for nothing being taken from "Operation: Mindcrime," 
        I found it disappointing that segues like 'Waiting for 22' had 
        such a potential for the Unplugged show, if they could improvise 
        a bit and jam on the basic chords.  Well, Queensryche wasn't 
        famous for improvisation, anyway.

        _Spreading the Disease_________________________________Resources_

        ksloan@bnr.ca (Kerry) writes,
                What is the possibility that the gif files you referred 
        to could be posted on Usenet, in alt.binaries.pictures.misc? I do 
        not have FTP capability for my machine at work but I would love 
        to see the gifs.
                        {That's actually a very good idea.  I'll see if I
                        can get a little practice with UUencode, and send
                        them up.  If I do, I'll put instructions on
                        retrieving them in the digest.  -sh}

        grendel@jaflrn.uucp (Don) writes, 
                HOW TO GET A COPY OF QUEENSRYCHE UNPLUGGED ON CASSETTE:
                Items needed: 
        A 60 minute cassette tape
        A stereo VCR (or a mono VCR and an audio splitter)
        A tape deck
                Put your videocassette copy of Queensryche Unplugged (the
        vast majority of you have recorded it) into VCR.  Look on back of 
        VCR for one or two jacks that say AUDIO OUT.  If this is a stereo 
        VCR, there will be two, otherwise there'll be only one.  Connect 
        RCA audio cables to the two audio jacks (NOTE: If you have a 
        mono VCR, connect the cables to the splitter, then plug the 
        splitter into the audio out jack).  Connect the other ends of the 
        RCA cables to the AUDIO IN jacks on your tape deck.  Put your 
        60-minute Audio tape into the record deck and press RECORD and 
        PAUSE.  Press PLAY on the VCR.  After the "MTV Unplugged is 
        sponsored by..." message, press PAUSE on your tape deck to start 
        the recording.  Watch the video tape. Whenever the video fades 
        out, press pause on the tape deck so you don't record the 
        commercials.  After "The Lady Wore Black", press stop on the tape 
        deck and VCR . You now have a cassette copy of Queensryche 
        Unplugged, ready for your walkman. 
                I did this on a mono VCR and a crappy tape deck, and I got 
        a good (bootleg quality) copy. If you have decent equipment, it 
        will come out MUCH better.
                        {Next week, for those of us without tape decks,
                        Don will explain how to make CD's... NOT!  -sh}

        mcapp@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mike) writes,
                My BBS finally went back up with most of the QR stuff 
        from Glia.  Got all the digests, GIFs, text, some discography 
        stuff, and lyrics.  Most people that like Queensryche would enjoy 
        it, around 4-5 file sections devoted to them.  Also been spending 
        my time working with their songs figuring them out on my guitar.  
                Here's some info on my BBS too..
                Executive Enterprizes (616) 327-8912
                FidoNet, Brigadoon Nets, 340 Megs

        _I Will Remember_________________________________________History_

        cynthia.beckett@ebay.sun.com (Cindi) writes, 
                This is an interview with Michael and Chris from 1988. It 
        is generally slanted towards guitar players, since it was 
        published in Guitar magazine, but there is a lot of insight into 
        their personalities and the things that were going on in their 
        lives prior to the "Operation: Mindcrime" release.  The article 
        is long, so I will send it in 3 installments. So, here's part I.
 
                The High Road by John Stix
                From: Guitar for the Practicing Musician, Oct. 1988
                (Interview with Michael Wilton and Chris DeGarmo; 
                copied without permission)
        
                Queensryche's trip to the top started at 90mph down the 
        fast lane of the superstardom expressway, only to ultimately find 
        itself detoured on the much more frequently traveled highway of 
        hard knocks. Originally eschewing the live club scene completely, 
        they headed straight for Boardwalk with a demo tape that yielded
        an immediate record deal, the tape itself becoming an EP that has 
        sold over 300,000 worldwide and yielded a metal classic, "Queen 
        of the Reich." While subsequent albums, The Warning and Rage for 
        Order, found the band to be on the leading edge of progressive 
        metal, unfortunately for Queensryche, the style had been 
        overshadowed by thrash and pop metal, leaving the band with a 
        small but solid core audience much like that for the fusion 
        pioneers of the 70's. In these times of Metallica and Poison, 
        Queensryche still seems an acquired taste. And just as DiMeola, 
        McLaughlin and Zawinui are back to playing clubs and colleges,
        Queensryche's circuit is the same metal clubs they thought they 
        could transcend. Though their fourth album, Operation: Mindcrime, 
        is easily their best, both for songs and guitar playing, the road 
        ahead remains clogged with pretenders and also-rans. So the quick 
        getaway has clearly been a mixed blessing, one which Queensryche 
        was more than eager to confront in this interview.
        
                There's been a long time between records. Were you doing 
        musical things during that time?
                M: It was a real down period. If anybody was put in that 
        situation they would say life is a bummer. We kept writing. 
        Chris would come over and write on the Fostex X-15 and trade off 
        ideas. We worked on riffs. Music is my addiction.  It keeps me 
        normal. Or is it abnormal?
                C: The big time consumption that happened between our 
        last album and this one has been a heavy reorganization on the 
        business side.
 
                What did you learn about the business that would help 
        our readers?
                C: They can expect that along with writing the music, 
        which is the main thing we love to do, there is another side. 
        Once you sign to a record company and there's management 
        involvement it becomes a business as well. We've changed 
        management in the last year. To recover from the reasons why we 
        had to part from our former management and get into this new 
        situation took time.
                M: We had to learn the hard way. It all came down on us 
        like a ton of bricks.  We were put in a position where peoople 
        would say, we'll handle everything: you guys just play your 
        music. Don't worry about the money. We went through hell three 
        times and learned a lot. You have to realize there is the 
        business side of the music that you have to keep in touch with. 
        The music and the expression is great. It's freedom and you get         
        to do what you want. But you've got [to] keep on top of business. 
        As soon as you start giving out power for other people to run 
        your business there are more headtrips, ego trips. Money 
        disappears. You've got to keep in touch with the whole 
        organization. It's not fun anymore, it's business. If you look at 
        the positive side you can say I can still do what I want. A bank 
        teller has to dress a certain way. I can still go out on stage 
        and create and do anything I want. Keep that in your mind.  
                C: All this vital feeling for music can get sucked out by 
        business. Look at all the legal violence involving the Beatles. 
        It seems the music is put on the back burner. It's the tail. 
        Starting out the music is all consuming. There is nothing else. 
        Once you get into a record company situation there are a lot of 
        other concerns that come in that split your time up. Our music 
        has always been the most important thing. We've also always had 
        the freedom to write what we want. As you can tell from this 
        album, nobody came in and handed us a list of outside writers and 
        said you're going to write formula pop metal for the air waves. 
        We are very fortunate to have management that is very supportive 
        of the band's ideas. We've chosen a road that maybe is longer. 
        It's a more crooked road and certainly not an instant winner. 
        We're not trying to put as many eggs in our basket as possible to 
        jump to a CHR crossover situation. We've chosen a longer road 
        because we're trying to be unique, where people can't expect 
        what's coming on the next Queensryche album. They can't say on 
        their next album we know exactly what it's going to be because 
        they churn them out like formula records. It's taking us longer 
        and we did hit a precipice now. After we released our first 
        record we climbed to a level of success where we feel we've been 
        able to write our own music and obtain a good core. It's a good 
        springboard for us to go to the next level.
        
                Doesn't that next level involve a hit song?
                C: All we wanted to do from the start was write good 
        songs together and try and feature our contribution to the 
        fretboard in that context. We're hoping we will write songs that 
        a lot of people will like.  
                M: If we tried to write pop metal like Bon Jovi it would 
        be disastrous because we're not like that. When we try and write 
        top 40 it doesn't work. We have to write what we want without 
        going over people's head. We started out one way and if we tried 
        to go pop it would destroy us.
        
                How do you write a better song?
                M: It's age. Each time you go into the studio you learn 
        more about songs and different ways music flows and which ways 
        seem to work. On "Revolution Calling" we had the basic music and 
        Geoff came in with the lyrics to the whole song and said, guys, 
        I need this changed, and within ten minutes we had that whole 
        song. Structurewise, it's got a groove. It just can't be a 
        domineering guitar riff throughout the whole thing. It's got to 
        be a song that flows.  
                C: With each record we've done we've learned something 
        from the last record. This time, writing a better song was trying 
        to structure a song in terms of the strength of its parts to 
        equal a whole. If we came up with a verse and a strong melody we 
        tried to leave space for the strongest parts to breath.  If the 
        strongest part of a particular thing was a guitar passage we let
        that be the forte and let each thing shine through in its moment. 
        Before, everybody was doing their thing at the same time. What we 
        try to do now is create a focus in different parts of the song 
        where people's attention is drawn to a certain thing throughout 
        the song. Trying to write a better song is something somebody 
        will interpret as a couple different textures that we haven't 
        used before. It may be better to us because we tried something 
        new. It could be a chorus that we feel is stronger than choruses
        we've done in the past. If you throw out all the lyrics, we 
        wanted to make the best songs that we could from a musical 
        standpoint. Solid songs that stood up on their own.
                M: Depending on what you're listening for, you'll hear 
        some special effects that pan in the mix and come out and grab 
        you. There are certain little high points that if you're a 
        headphone listener will keep you very satisfied. For a guitar
        player, finally on this album we have guitars that are audible. 
        The solos are loud, finally. We had less control in the past. The 
        music grooves. If you're in your car and not interested in 
        concentrating on the lyric content you could still get off on the 
        music. It's in your face and more street. It's hard core and now.
 
                So you didn't have to be a better guitarist you just had 
        to bring out extra colors?
                C: I'm constantly playing guitar. I think I'm a better 
        guitar player now than I was last year. We spent seven months 
        writing the album and for me it was a lot of time sitting with a 
        Fostex portastudio four track and it was hands on.  I didn't take 
        any big course that expanded my thinking. It was just a personal 
        attack at the instrument. I tried to expand the tools I use to 
        braoden my ideas for what I can come out with. This year I picked
        up a Roland GM70 MIDI converter and suddenly I had access to a 
        whole array of other things aside from guitar sounds. Just being 
        able to actually play all these other sounds on my fretboard 
        shined a new light on what I could do with my Fostex portastudio. 
        When an idea comes up you can go and work on it. We had a vision 
        when we started this album to make a conceptual album that was a 
        full story from the beginning of side one to the end of side two 
        and we were pissed off last year because a lot of business stuff 
        going down. I think that added to the aggressive nature of the 
        album. I think it's a more aggressive album than our past albums,
        with the exception of the Ep, which had out of the box hunger.
                M: We've been out of the business for two years. We have 
        all this bottled up energy. Chris is right, it reflects in our 
        music and writing. We're angry young dudes. As far as the guitar, 
        I see a lot of these new guitar gods that come out in this 
        magazine and I borrow albums and say, wow, these guys know their 
        scales and can pick fast. I can still learn the acrobatics and 
        gymnastics of the guitar. I've always been into DiMeola, Morse, 
        John McLaughlin. Of the new group I like Steve Vai. He is very 
        creative. He is not just a person who can go 0 to 22 frets in two 
        seconds and play a harmonic minor scale in four different 
        patterns. He shows his personality when he plays and that's 
        really important. I like his craziness; his personality is a 
        standout.
        
                How does the creative process work for you?
                M: Being creative means I listen to a lot of different 
        types of music. I still listen to the traditionalists pretty 
        much. I'm not in touch with the new scene. I'd rather listen to 
        McLaughlin or DiMeola or jazz records with John Coltrane and 
        Miles Davis. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to that. 
        They are not guitar players but hearing their personalities come 
        out when they solo leads me. I think the whole guitar god image 
        of today has been overblown. It's going to take somebody new to 
        change things. It's going to be real stagnant for a while and 
        somebody new is going to come out and shock the industry again.
        Right now it's peaked and is leveling off.

        _The Whisper__________________________________________Discussion_

        edju@aludra.usc.edu (Eddie) writes,
                Talking about bad journalism, the article taken from the 
        Christian Science Monitor states, "The name Queensryche comes 
        from a song off their first LP..." and if the two writers of the 
        article did any research at all, they should have realized it was 
        an EP, not a LP!
                        {Actually, they also said the song was called
                        'Queen of the Ryche,' but I fixed that spelling
                        deficiency.  That's a common mistake.  -sh}

        kad@iris129.biosym.com (Kinga) writes,
                I am trying to figure out which solos are played by whom.  
        As far as I know Michael plays 'Another Rainy Night,' 'Hand on 
        Heart,' 'Revolution Calling' and the third solo on 'Della Brown.'  
        I would like to know what the differences are between Chris and 
        Michael's guitar styles and if anybody knows how to figure out 
        who plays what. 

        mfairwe%peruvian@cs.utah.edu (Matt) writes,
                Unlike Hal from NASA, I happen to love the tune 'Della 
        Brown.'  I've been listening to Queensryche for the past 6 years 
        so I'm not on the 'Empire' bandwagon.  However, that tune is one 
        of the band's most well thought out songs.  Getting to the point, 
        I was wondering if any musicians out there know the guitar 
        changes to Della Brown (for the verse). 

        _The Killing Words__________________________Lyric Interpretation_

        kad@iris129.biosym.com (Kinga) writes,
                I was just listening to "Last Time in Paris" and 
        something disturbed me.  I always thought of Queensryche as 
        anti-sexist or at least non-chauvinistic but I have a problem 
        with this: "Met a little thing on the Champs-Elysees, stole my 
        heart away, you know I never could pronounce her name."
                What means "little thing?!?!"  Little thing stole his 
        heart away?!  Do I sound angry?  Well, I am.  And disappointed 
        too.  Little thing... Is it something referring to the movie?  
                        {It's in keeping with the spirit of the movie,
                        really.  You have to remember that the star of
                        the movie is Andrew Dice Clay, who's not exactly
                        known for being politically correct.  I don't
                        think Queensryche meant to offend anyone.  -sh}

        edju@aludra.usc.edu (Eddie) writes,
                Another "hospital sound clip trivia": the "Dr. Hamilton" 
        bit of sound used to open "Operation: mindcrime" was also used in 
        the movie "The Handmaid's Tale."  Just in case nobody's mentioned 
        this one before.  :)
                        {That's another new one, yep!  -sh}

        _________________________________________________________________

                In the works for the near future - enhancement of the
        remaining discographical information, an index for the sound 
        files on Glia, a better index for the image files, and of course,
        some communication with EMI.  Oh, and some ads on Usenet for all
        those incoming freshpeople!

                                                        'Ryche on,

                                                                -Shag