Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU.UUCP (01/29/87)
Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU >'Listening to Kate is a lot like looking into the sun. Some people >can't bear to, while others become blinded to all else.' This is GREAT. >If by this IED means that Eno's lyrics are less 'meaningful' or >'artistic' than lyrics by your average run-of-the-mill pop band, >then I differ with him. The method doesn't matter, just the results. >Just because the are written the way they are doesn't mean they aren't >great. It's kind of like dismissing a doodle by Picaso, Rembrant, >DaVinci or Van Gough as 'just a doodle'. IED doesn't mean that, so calm down. You're right: in general, the end justifies the means (or renders them irrelevant). And when compared with virtually all mainstream pop or rock lyrics Eno's most flippant nursery rhyme is Shakespeare. But the issue was the relative complexity and multiplicity of meaning in Eno's lyrics to KATE's; IED, at any rate, can't really find too much depth of meaning in the majority of Eno's lyrics, whereas the words in The Dreaming and HoL are laced with symbols, hidden personae, dramatic situations, and syntactical mysteries that are -- for about the first time in rock music -- entirely free of bombast and pretension. Mind you, this comparison of Kate to Eno does neither one any harm, since Eno is (or was, anyway) definitely a major figure. >By the way, IED, the Swales interview is great. Thanks for taking the >trouble to share it with us. > > - Nancy > >nancy everson (everson@spca.bbn.com) You're extremely welcome, the pleasure is his. By the way, there's still two more pages of it to come, as soon as IED shakes his typer's cramp. Michael Knight's remarks about David Lynch are right on the button. And it's not just Blue Velvet and Eraserhead that make him one of the two really significant American visual artists directing films today. Dune, whether the moronic critics and upset Herbertites panned it or not, is one of the best films of the decade -- with a lot of luck, the uncut four-and-a-half-hour version that Lynch wanted to release in the first place will come out on video by the end of the year. The second director is, of course, Terry Gilliam. >I like this one. I don't think that anyone has found a person whos >music is undeniably great. Again, its all a matter of opinion. I could say >that Sylvester Stallone is an undeniably good actor, but that would only >be an opinion. Im sure that if I tried I could find "enough" people to say >anything. Obviously there can be no absolute acceptance of any artist's worth, but a consensus over time among a significant number of qualified judges -- preferably artists working in the same general area -- is about as reasonable a justification for according value to the artist's work as our civilization has been able to come up with so far. Beethoven is a good example of an artist whose acceptance by musicians has been so universal for so many years that it is only reasonable to call him a "great" artist. Obviously Kate's rating is less sturdy than that -- so far! But there have definitely been a LOT of testimonials to her brilliance by other artists already. As for names, just start reading the British music magazines' interviews with other rock musicians. At the end of 1985, after HoL had become a hit in the UK, there were literally dozens of musicians who praised it and her in their year-end polls. Not all of them were wonderful talents in their own right, but some of them were. It doesn't mean much, IED agrees, but it doesn't hurt, either. As for Doug's PAL tape problem, IED doesn't even own a machine, but he dittoes Doug's plea to UK Love-Hounds, wherever they may be. U.S. Kate fans are desperate for UK video connections! -- Andrew Marvick