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From: Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: mod.music.gaffa
Subject: Re: the KaTastrophic state of music in our time
Message-ID: <8701212341.AA14099@udenva.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Jan-87 18:41:56 EST
Article-I.D.: udenva.8701212341.AA14099
Posted: Wed Jan 21 18:41:56 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 22-Jan-87 20:08:49 EST
Sender: daemon@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: Love-Hounds
Organization: Fawlty Towers
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Approved: nessus@eddie.mit.edu

Really-From: seismo!udenva!showard (Steve "Blore" Howard)

>For the sake of argument (and out of a profound sense
>of desperation), IED challenges anyone reading this to name ONE record
>made since the early Seventies that attains a level of thematic and
>musical complexity, multi-level meaning and sophisticated cohesion of
>music and production comparable to that achieved by Kate Bush since 1982.
>IT CANNOT BE DONE! SUCH MUSIC DOES NOT EXIST!

  One?  I can name a couple dozen.  Let's see, you want a) thematic
complexity, b) musical complexity c) multi-level meaning and d) soph-
isticated cohesion of music and production. 

  A partial list:

  Peter Gabriel:   Ouevre
  Talking Heads:   Fear of Music, Remain in Light, Speaking in Tongues
  King Crimson:    Discipline
  Pink Floyd:      The Wall, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here
  Alan Parsons:    Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Pyramid
  Shriekback:      Big Night Music
  Joy Division:    Closer (Fact XXV)
  Various Artists: Lost in the Stars:  the music of Kurt Weill
  Neil Young:      Rust Never Sleeps
  Pete Townshend:  All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, White City
  The Who:         Who's Next (you said early 70s)
  XTC:             Black Sea, The Big Express
  Boomtown Rats:   The Fine Art of Surfacing

  I count 24 albums here (5 for Gabriel), each of which I am prepared to
defend as examples of IED's four virtues.  Each of these, I contend, is
equal or superior to Kate Bush in the first three categories.  The fourth
(sophisticated cohesion of music and production) I will amend somewhat to
read "sophisticated cohesion of music and production, within the limits
of the available technology," as none of these albums were recorded at
Abbey Road since 1982.  I still dispute whether d) is a virtue or not,
but that's a whole 'nother thing.

-- 

"Wait a minute!  These aren't blender wounds!"

Steve "Blore" Howard, not playing with a full deck
                      {hplabs, seismo}!hao!udenva!showard
or {boulder, cires, ucbvax!nbires, cisden}!udenva!showard