Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-eddie.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!mit-eddie!nessus From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan) Newsgroups: net.music Subject: Jethro Tull, Kate Bush, and jcp losingness Message-ID: <4148@mit-eddie.UUCP> Date: Wed, 1-May-85 04:45:55 EDT Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.4148 Posted: Wed May 1 04:45:55 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 2-May-85 01:37:59 EDT References: <268@osiris.UUCP> Distribution: net Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA Lines: 139 > From jcpatilla: > It amazes me that people can get so wrought up over a band [Jethro > Tull] that hasn't had an original thought since 1978 (some would say > never).-- > The case could be made that a fair percentage of this newsgroup is > mired in mediocrity and past glories. Why is this stuff mediocre? Because you don't like it? Well that's a god-awful stupid reason! Jethro Tull is certainly many many steps above most of the vapid, boring, uninspired, unintelligent, insulting, formula, pop commercial trash that pollutes the air-waves! They may not have forged a brand-new path of avante-guardeness through the jungle of music, but, then again, they didn't take a well-trodden path either. And what is this crap about being mired in past glories? Does art suddenly become invalid five years after it was created, or something? I must really be committing a henious crime when I listen to "The Rite of Spring" then! Your attitude is just as repugnant as the attitude of the people who claim that only classical music is worth listening to, and something isn't art unless it has survived a hundred years of weathering! > We have the devoted followers of a Dead band, the young men trying to > get into Kate's bush (pardon the vulgarity, Fred), the aural wallpaper > of Andreas Vollenwieder, and Rush, which (together with Triumph) must > be Canada's answer to acid rain. Well I'm not a Deadhead and can't properly support them, but your attack is certainly just another example of your narrow-mindedness. I don't know who Andreas Vollenwieder is, but what do you have against aural wallpaper? Brian Eno creates some wonderful aural wallpaper, and even tells you that that is what it is. Rush may have sold out, but they were (and still are even if they now produce crud) an intelligent and tallented band that does not deserve to be compared to the nadir-ish Triumph. And regarding Kate Bush, it's ironic that one who claims to be upset with mediocrity should resort to a bad, sophomoric, cliched, and inaccurate pun. About half of Kate Bush fans I know are female. How does Kate Bush relate to "past glories"? Her by far best album "The Dreaming", is also her most recent. How can you possibly insinuate that Kate Bush is mediocre? Perhaps you don't like her music, but that's a totally different thing. No one else (besides perhaps Peter Gabriel) creates music that is anything like Kate Bush's. Mediocre music doesn't get reviews like these (and notice that most of these stress not just quality, but originality, weirdness, unconventionality, and lack of mediocrity): "The Dreaming" can't even be spotted in the hills. It pulses with new shapes and guises, voices crawl over your ears and gnaw the brain like beautiful maggots. ... I don't care what they say, Kate Bush is a technicolor lighthouse in all the murky cover and boring crap. She deserves more from many quarters. Maybe you. --Zig Zag 1982 "Never for Ever" is a dangerous album because it unlocks the archetypical daemons and angels buried, but active in us all. --Rockbill 1984 It's about the only music I like that I can't dance to! --Zig Zag 1980 She allows you complete emotional release in the tenderness, the abrasiveness, the sadness, the madness -- all the possible extremes, and the subtleties between, can be found in that Voice... For she possesses the Voice that will enable to to live in a dream world, to experience such joy and pain. --Fred Mills 1982 This is what progressive rock might have become had it actually progressed, rather than congealing into the massed, lumbering cliches that came to distinguish its latterday forms. Oblivious to all fashions, Britain's Kate Bush has advanced into a musical area that's unquestionably her very own -- a kind of mystic and semi-inscrutable artsong that slowly draws you in and keeps you marveling at her unending invention and oblique, multilayered meaninings. --Musician 1983 ... she's the only female rocker out there doing anything original (or experimental).... -- Record I must have been waiting all my life for Kate Bush. She took me by surprise though, appearing unobtrusively in a pile of records -- played once and heard superficially as "weird noise".... I played the record ["The Dreaming"] again, it was perhaps, the most important musical decision I made all year.... A question reared up in me and demanded an answer -- Who is Kate Bush and where has she been all my life? -- RockBill Feb. 1983 > Not that there aren't also lots of people with different tastes - > we've seen Los Lobos, U2, John Cale, Einsturzende Neubatten (means > "collapsing new buildings", by the way) and dirge music discussed > also. So what's so much greater about these guys that places them in your non-mediocre category? Believe it or not, some of the people that like what you have claimed to be mediocre, also have varied enough tastes to range from Einsturzende Neubatten, Faust, Kraftwerk to Windam Hill, Pat Metheny to Pentangle to Roy Harper, Donovan, Neil Young to Invite the Spirit to The Residents, Tuxedomoon, Art Bears, Fred Frith to Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson, Peter Gabriel, Bill Nelson, Godley & Creme to African drumming, Bob Marley to Captain Beefheart to Pink Floyd, King Crimson to Tom Tom CLub, B52s to Sex Pistols, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Fade to Black, Joy Division, Bauhaus to Stravinsky. > But can we have more ? What about R&B ? Is anyone into the > Staple Singers or Sade' (pr. "Shar-day") ? Japanese jazz ? Surely > someone must have an opinion (pro or con) about Madonna ? Sunny Ade > and the African Beats ? Well if you want to see this stuff discussed why don't you post stuff about it rather than just being a jerk and insulting those whose interests are different than yours! (And sure, I have an opinion about Madonna: I'd rather eat bat guano than be subjected to one of her worthless songs. [Oh my, I can be obnoxious too! But I do disagree with everything I've ever heard Madonna do, musically, intellectually, and ethically.]) > Guess I should sit back now and let the flames roll in. Hop and > down all you want but I *promise* I won't reply to any letter that has > nothing better to say than to call my opinions 'moosepoop' (yes, I've > gotten some of those). I'd rather see the argument go on in the > newsgroup, liven things up a bit (seems awfully Dead around here...). But your opinions are moosepoop! "Go stick your head in a pig" Doug Alan mit-eddie!nessus Nessus@MIT-MC.ARPA