[mod.music.gaffa] Kate Bush, of course...What the hell else is worth discussing?

Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (12/24/86)

Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU

Thanks once again, Neil. You're providing an
invaluable service to Kate fans in the Western
hemisphere. This film sounds like the best one
Kate has done so far.
In the latest issue of Homeground, one of the
fans who played a dead body in the "X4" film
made reference to two or three sources for the
subject of the song and the film. (He didn't say
where he'd heard of these sources, but pretty
clearly he'd learned of them from Kate during
the filming.) One was a nightmare Kate herself
had had. Another was a true story of a French
scientist working with sonics who created a
huge steam whistle, which actually did kill
several people, including himself. Then there
was either a movie or a television show which
involved the same idea, and the name Professor
Jericho was used in that. IED will go home and
check the article to get these facts straighter
for a future posting, but this may help to
clear up your question about the name. Of course,
your association of Jericho with the trumpet and
the tumbling walls is completely correct, Neil.

Also, the writer claims,
experiments in sonic weaponry
are being conducted even as we speak by both
superpowers...

> ...Elvis C's music is much
> more closely secured to western music than Kate's is.

Well, Doug, although IED applauds your latest response to Mr. Slime's
heretical tract of a couple of days ago, he is not sanguine that
the above remark is entirely accurate; or, it may be accurate,
but it is misleading. Costello's music is heavily influenced by
American musical idioms, and is the product of a mind wholly
oblivious to and ignorant of any musical sources outside of England
or the United States. Obviously, since Kate's music draws from
a very wide range of musical cultures, what you say is true; but
most of that influence from outside is a supplement to the
English roots of her music, rather than being the root itself.
Basically speaking, both Costello (gulp!) and Kate are exponents
of Western musical traditions -- assuming that the term "Western"
is used in its broadest sense, to include both the Old and the
New Worlds, i.e. both the pearls and the swine.

-- Andrew Marvick