Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (01/07/87)
Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU > If you want to know one of the things I would have liked to get >for Xmas: > I wish some of you would quit filling up my screen with worthless >drivel, arguments over moot points, personal character attacks, and general >egomania. Don't you have anything good to say about anyone or anything? >Go listen to more KB or Elvis or the Chipmunks Christmas or something. >-- dno I agrees with dno that alot of recent L-Hs material has been less than entirely worthwhile, and is ready to accept part -- PART, mind you -- of the blame. Clean slate, what do you say? I will try to improve the level of his contributions to the Digest, and sincerely hopes that he is not alone in undertaking this New Year's Resolution. As for never having anything good to say about anyone, dno, surely you jest? If there's one thing everyone in LHs can agree on, it's that I -- and several others out there -- have a LOT of good things to say about SOMEONE, at least. Speaking of whom, her new video -- or at any rate, a VERSION of it -- was shown on MTV yesterday at least THREE times! "'Experiment IV'-- The Movie" appeared last night on the USA's still omnipotent cable video channel for the first time. It was, however, apparently edited, although most of the film had been left intact. Several interesting facts about "X4". First, the body which has elsewhere been referred to as "steaming", and which has been described as appearing somewhere near the end of the original version -- thus precipitating considerable argument within the interior ranks of the British television industry -- is nowhere to be seen in the American corporation's reproduction. This would appear to indicate, Watson, that some editing -- probably unauthorized by the artist herself -- was undertaken prior to the screening of the film in America; and certainly the synchronization of the music with the imagery at the conclusion of the altered film creates a singular effect -- one scarcely warranted under the present circumstances, given the implication of the song's subject and theme. Second, Watson -- and here, unless I is very much mistaken, you will recognize the agency of a new and particularly fearsome and pestilential evil -- Kate has changed the music (much as she did in "Cloudbusting") in order to meet the exigencies of her filmic vision! On this occasion, Watson, she has introduced into the midst of the song an instrumental episode which prominently features the very same VIOLIN passage around which much of the TWELVE-INCH mix revolves. And yet, though it's I who say(s) it, so subtly has Kate altered this passage -- so slyly and cunningly has she merged this snippet of transcendent violinistry with the rhythmic basis of the original single mix -- that it constitutes, in sum, no mere augmentation, but, in truth, a positive and laudible improvement over the song in its first stage of genesis. Also, the very end of the film, wherein Kate's character boards the van and smiles conspiratorially at the camera, was omitted by MTV. -- Andrew Marvick