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!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!gds From: gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner) Newsgroups: mod.music Subject: Love-Hounds Digest Message-ID: <1038@mit-eddie.UUCP> Date: Fri, 24-Jan-86 12:13:22 EST Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1038 Posted: Fri Jan 24 12:13:22 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jan-86 05:22:03 EST Organization: MIT Lusers and Hosers Inc., Cambridge, Ma. Lines: 291 Approved: gds@eddie.mit.edu Love-Hounds Digest Friday, January 24, 1986, 12:15 Today's Topics: Kate in the Wall Street Journal Re: KB in Tower Records' "Pulse" SPIN rejection letter Anyone heard of... Did Kate put it there? babble Today's dose of Katrivia Re: KB interview [][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 10 Jan 86 02:43:28 est From: nessus (Doug Alan) Subject: Kate in the Wall Street Journal "Pop: Music for a New Year" by Pam Lambert Wall Street Journal 12/30/85 With "Hounds of Love" (EMI), Britain's Kate Bush compellingly stakes her claim as a major voice in pop music. On this album, her fifth, Bush's craft as a producer has blossomed to match her creative vision. The result is at once the artist's most accessible release -- and the brightest sound I've heard in quite a while. Bush took two years to make the record. It shows. Her four-octave range and Fairlight synthesizer are the base for impressionistic aural landscapes that at times swell to orchestral complexity, at others simplify to the directness of a march. Though the album opens with the exceptional "Running Up That Hill", whose loping rhythms made it a natural first single, the second side is the real showpiece. A phantasmagorical seven-song voyage through the ebbing consciousness of a drowning victim, it flows from dreamy numbness to terror to something approching euphoria. Which is just what Kate Bush is likely to leave you feeling. [][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 10 Jan 86 03:04:42 est From: nessus (Doug Alan) Subject: Re: KB in Tower Records' "Pulse" > From: tsung@aero > Bush calls herself lucky as her wildest fantasy > is coming true: the ability to remain true to her inventive mind > without worrying about its results being accepted by the commercial > world. > Bush sings about that fantasy on _Hounds of Love_. "You > want my reply?/What was the question?/I was looking at the big > sky." > Well the last paragraph (about "The Big Sky") certainly made a lot of > sense to me. Actually I think the quote from "The Big Sky" is actually more of a jab at some of the British music press, rather than the commercial world. Except in the U.S., she's been remarkably successful commercially. The British music press, however, until recently, were often pretty nasty to her. > Say, do you think that The Ninth Wave could be about her own > artistic/internal struggle? I think it could be seen as being about any life crisis. > It's that witch part above (and the discussion a while back of > KB-the-witch) that gave me the idea. For instance, the bit with the > witchfinder is about KB not understood by outsiders (critics, etc), Yeah, I think that "Waking The Witch" is in some ways another jab at the British music press. They sometimes called her a witch, or spaced-out hippy, or whatever. Being accepted by the British press might seem like an old fashioned witch trial. If you pass, maybe you've forsaken your art for praise. And if you fail, then perhaps you will never get the recognition you deserve. > and "Watching You Without Me" (she sees loved ones but they can't see > her) is about her not understood by her close friends. Just a wild > speculation. Seems quite reasonable to me! > By the way, where does all that angry energy of "The Dreaming" comes > from? I don't think anybody can produce a work of such STRONG emotion > without some stimuli of an equivalent magnitude. Traumatic childbirth? Existential despair? I dunno. I often get as upset as Kate is on "The Dreaming" and nothing all that bad ever happened to me. Most of the time it's when I ponder the meaning of life and stuff like that... "I don't know why I am crying Am I suspended in Gaffa?" Doug [][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 10 Jan 86 14:19:00 est From: nessus (Doug Alan) Subject: SPIN rejection letter I got my rejection letter from SPIN for my KB interview. Here's what it says: Dear Doug Alan: What is this strange power Kate Bush has over the soles of men? I don't know, but I don't get it. Anyway, I think an interview with the burning one at this time would be untimely. Thanks anyway. Best, Richard Gehr Oh well. Maybe I'll try the Smallville Weekly Reporter.... [][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 10 Jan 86 16:54:39 EST From: hsut@purdue-ecn.ARPA (Tsun-Yuk Hsu) Subject: Anyone heard of... Has anyone heard music from Univers Zero, Art Zoyd or However? Wayside was out of some stuff I ordered (no Bill Nelson --- AAAARRGHHHH) and I need some recommendations for alternatives. Thanks in advance... Bill Hsu [][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 10 Jan 86 17:10:17 EST From: hsut@purdue-ecn.ARPA (Tsun-Yuk Hsu) Subject: Did Kate put it there? Doug brought up some interesting points in his interview with Kate: if there's a fairly transparent allusion or pun in some poem or lyrics, is it REALLY there if the writer denies he put it there intentionally? Harlan Ellison, for example, likes to claim that his stories are very simple and straightforward, and complains that people read too much into them. It's interesting that John Bush claims that the wordplay in his lyrics is intentional, while Kate denies many of the puns Doug and other lovehounders found in her lyrics. Maybe John Bush, being a poet in the more traditional sense, is aware of wordplay and punning on a more conscious level, while Kate does things more on a subconscious level. Another theory (close to what Structuralist critics think) which sidesteps the problem of the author "subconsciously" putting things into the text is that which sees texts as constructs, analogous to mathematical constructs. You can build a mathematical object (such as some weird graph) and not realise all its properties at the moment you created the construct. Same thing with poems and other text. Maybe Kate's lyrics has all these puns which she was not aware of. Of course there are problems with this view being applied to foggy, non-mathematical things like poetry. Using this approach, a critic can almost say anything he wants about a text. If the author of the text denies having put something in the text, the critic can always say: "It is an inherent property of your text, you just didn't see it." BTW, Doug, I'd love to get some of John Bush's poetry too... Bill Hsu [][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 10 Jan 86 16:06:03 est From: Tim Wicinski Subject: babble I wished I have heard the bangle's song that hofmann talks about, it sounds like a winner. Too bad your leaving Henry, you always had a good thing to say (not like me, who majors in major babble). No, This person I know has not made the Robyn Hitchock tape. His tape player broke down and he refuse to lend me the tape. I think he's being a prick about it, but he's a friend of DOug's so I'll be nice. speaking of Doug's friends: Turns out that my old roomate was the person responsible for turning doug onto kate. kind of a small world if I don't say so myself. Descendents are playing here next week, that should be a good show. Part of their merchandising includes coffee mugs with pictures of milo on them. [][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 10 Jan 86 18:43:32 est From: nessus (Doug Alan) Subject: Today's dose of Katrivia As related to me by Del Palmer: Kate did indeed do the voice of the priest / judge in "Waking The Witch". Del didn't seem 100% sure what they used in the final mix, but thinks it is Kate through a harmonizer set two octaves down. They also tried using slowed down tape, but that didn't come out as well. Originally they wanted a man to do the part, but they couldn't find anyone who could do it right. I think it's good that Kate sang the part of the judge, because it makes it seem as if she's putting herself on trial in her mind -- which is a really powerful image. >From the mouth of Jay Bush: Originally his poem in "Jig Of Life" was supposed to be read by some famous Irish person, but then they decided to have him read it with a put-on Irish accent, and speed up his voice to sound like an Irish woman (ed note: or maybe like Irish chipmunks...). In the end, they decided to leave it at normal speed. >From the mouth of Paddy Bush: They will definitely do another concert tour -- if not this year, then next. And it will make the last concert pale in comparison. And they will bring it to the U.S. >From the mouth of Kate: They probably won't be doing another concert tour in the near future. She feels she can reach a lot more people with less effort through film or TV, but she hopes to do another concert tour before she's old and grey. I think that Paddy's going to put on a wig and leotard and leg warmers and do it himself if Kate doesn't change her mind.... -Doug [][][][][][][][][][] Subject: Re: KB interview Date: 10 Jan 86 09:21:08 EST (Fri) From: J Eric Roskos X-From: J Eric Roskos > I've written a little bit of (bad) poetry. What's really strange is > that often I just write what I think is nonsense. A bunch of phrases > that pop into my mind, with images and vague symbols -- but nothing > coherent. Then I might find the poem in a pile of junk a while later, > and when I read it, I know exactly what it means. So, did I put that > meaning there unconsciously when I wrote the poem? Or did I just read > that meaning into the poem later? It's hard to know. I say this partly because it's hard for me to know exactly what *I* was thinking when I wrote something, especially with regards to meter. Actually this makes me wonder sometimes about the mechanisms of writing the poetry; it requires a particular frame of mind, which is difficult to attain. Thus I tend to suspect that it *does* involve a sort of subconscious thinking, or at least a thinking in parallel. For example, in this part of a poem I wrote recently: > No. Not only is time stretched into > This hour as empty as before, > But I must measure it too? I had two distinct meanings definitely in mind for the word "measure". Yet, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that the opening line of the poem, "Another hour outside of time" was also involved in these lines, since an hour outside of time (besides being paradoxical in itself, unless "time" means "history", which in a sense it did) would not be measurable. I am not sure if I intended this or not. However, I've been thinking a lot about the interview and why she said some of the things she said there; when I have time (i.e., when I'm not at work) I will try to remember to write more about that... -- jer [][][][][][][][][][] -- It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under. Greg Skinner (gregbo) {decvax!genrad, allegra, ihnp4}!mit-eddie!gds gds@mit-eddie.mit.edu