Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU.UUCP (01/18/87)
Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU > It's only fair to point out that IED's statement does not necessarily >apply only to Kate Bush, nor does it apply only to negative criticism >of her. I personally feel that IED's view that Kate Bush is perfect >reveals far more about him than does my more reasonable position that >her music is very good with occasional serious flaws. To Steve "Blore": IED admits the logic of your statement, and is the first to concede that his opinion of Kate is not always defensible to others who aren't as deeply committed to her art as he. But your statement does nothing to answer the primary criticism which IED made concerning your earlier comments: namely, that a piece of music can hardly be said to be flawed BECAUSE all of its ideas have been compressed into a more potent form than the listener is used to hearing! Wouldn't it be far more logical to criticize other music for habitually spreading too few ideas too thinly, than to knock the rare piece whose every second is filled with powerful ideas? Sure, IED is prejudiced in favour of Kate Bush, and his criticism says a lot about him. But just consider what is revealed about the critic who objects that a piece of music is bad because it contains TOO MANY IDEAS! It's pretty clear that IED's prejudice is far less limiting than such a bias as that! Now, then, let's get on with more important matters! Kate Bush's The Whole Story has actually moved UP the UK charts this week, to take NUMBER ONE, after nearly two full months on their charts. That is a real achievement for a greatest hits package nearly a month after Christmas! It shipped platinum in the UK (300,000 units over there), but given its recent resurgence, expect it to go double before it gives out. (This is from the Music Week chart, which is one of the two most accurate for the UK. There are at least five different UK weekly chart services.) Things are proceeding well for the LP in the States, too. After a slow first four weeks (in at 158, up to only 115 last week), it has jumped TWENTY-TWO more places to take the 84th spot on the Billboard Album Charts for the week of January 24th. This means Cashbox, a trade mag with typically more inflated chart figures, will probably have it up into the top fify next week. (Incidentally, Doug, those Rolling Stone charts you mentioned are highly inaccurate: they're based on the most unscientific in-house polling, they favor the big cities, and they get compiled at least two weeks before they're published. (RS is consistently the most behind-the-times of any music magazine, because they go to press ridiculously early.) Final bit of good news: Capitol/EMI-America have confirmed the release of the Beatles catalogue on CD, and will ship (the first four Parlophone albums) in the US sometime in February, or so they say as of now. (Apparently, these circa- thirty-minute "LPs" -- Please Please Me, With the Beatles, Beatles for Sale and A Hard Day's Night -- will be released as SEPARATE CDs, so if you're a must-have Beatles fan, expect to get milked dry over the whole of 1987!) At least they're releasing them in the original UK LP format, instead of those stupid rip-off Capitol pseudo-LPs. Furthermore, unspecified LPs of Kate Bush are "scheduled", although still no more specific info was published. This does not mean you might not get somebody over there to tell you more, if you ask. So if you can find the time Monday, please give EMI-America a call, asking about Never for Ever and The Dreaming on CD. If you're polite, it doesn't hurt to impress upon those knuckleheads the size and dedication of Kate's US fan community. Jonathan Drukman asks about the "new" three-LP bootleg set called "Live in Europe '79-'80". IED recently posted a detailed description of all the available (or once-available) bootleg KT LPs in the U.S., which must have been overlooked. Doug's description is essentially correct. Allow IED to add, however, that the audio transfer from the Hammersmith video-tape is not even true stereo, unlike the video itself, or even the two-record bootleg called "Wow!", put out by the same fly-by-night outfit a couple of years ago. Also, the third LP, which was done by some fan in the audience, is supposedly from a Paris concert of '79, since it is exactly the same record that was put out (again by the same jokers) last year under the title "Live in Paris, 1979" under the authority of the apocryphal "Kate Bush Fan Club of Taiwan". Anyway, if you don't have any of that stuff, it's worth a few bucks -- but probably not the prices IED has seen it going for (as much as $50.00, at Bleecker Bob's in L.A.!). No time for it now, but keep your eyes glued to the screen for Part Three of The Second True and Only Gospel...