Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (12/24/86)
Really-From: Nancy Everson <everson@spca.bbn.com> Hi again everybody - Kevin has written a rather lengthy letter in response to all of the things he's been reading in Love-Hounds for the past few days. Andrew, Kevin did not read your Kate vs. Elvis posting before I sent his "inflammatory" message on Friday evening - I get Love-Hounds in digest form, and those two articles appeared in Saturday's digest. I just wanted to point that out, because you got so upset at him for not addressing points you raised in something he hadn't read yet. Personally, I care for neither violins nor banjos. Give me an oboe, french horn, or cello instead. I think Kevin has generated some interesting debates, and I've been having a lot of fun reading the postings this past week. By the way, Happy Holidays to everyone out there! - nancy nancy everson (everson@spca.bbn.com) bbn software products corporation, cambridge mass ----- Forwarded message # 1: Date: Tue, 23 Dec 86 17:09:50 EST From: Kevin C. To: everson@spca.bbn.com Subject: Kate-iff Okay, you Love-Hounds, here's my response to your responses: >> I happen to think you {Kate} miss a few >> times in Running Up That Hill, especially near the end when the >> "other noises" come in; your usual adeptness at orchestration flags >> there (Elvis wouldn't have missed on that one). Anyhow, it was >> okay. > >Seriously, though, Kevin... If, as IED assumes, you are referring to Elvis >Costello, and you are comparing Kate Bush's voice unfavourably to his, then >you still have something to learn about the basics of vocal style. I'm afraid IUD has "made an ass out of u and me", since it is rather obvious that my note refers specifically to the orchestration and _not_ the vocal ability of these two singer-songwriter-performers. His extended flame, therefore, was rather irrelevant. I still think the loud hook after "Let's exchange the experience..." doesn't quite work for me (I have listened to it at least six time now -- louder and louder...), although the other voice stuff isn't as problematic to me now, at higher volumes... One man's poison... But, while we're on the subject of the voice, I may as well put in my two cents worth. Nobody would argue with the fact that Kate has a glorious vocal instrument -- even to mention Elvis in the same paragraph, if you are describing simply the facility of the voice, is absurd. This is obvious. But the fact is, a singer is not just a voice -- it is a voice put to a certain use, a voice creating music in the service of the expression of something. If a "great singer" = "great voice" then nine-tenths of all the singers of the world would have to hang it up as a lost cause. It's like saying a "great composer" = "great musician". Or a "great musician" = "one who makes a lot of money" (as the Immigration people seem to think...) Now the whole reason we're talking here right now is that we all believe that Kate uses her instrument with awesome dexterity to express some pretty amazing and sublime things (actually, THIS is the answer to my original question -- "why listen to Kate? why bother getting used to this new initially-harsh-sounding and grating 'foreign language'-- i.e., her way of communicating: her voice?"; IUD did not seem interested in answering this question directly, but I have since figured out, almost on my own, that there is actually an answer: "She has something to say.") Sure, Kate has an amazing voice, but if she just used it to sing "You're Having my Baby" backed by the King Family, we'd all barf!! But no, Kate tries to capture real experience. And I would just like to say that Elvis, in his own way and with an admittedly much more restricted instrument, does the same thing -- Elvis has a few things to say and he says them well. Of course, he is much more mainstream and sells his soul occassionally, but that's one of the things that make him interesting. That tension, the tension of wanting to really say something personal and deep but at the same time wanting to be popular -- that's dynamite in the man's good songs. And that's what _King of America_ is all about. And if you weren't so busy idolizing Kate, you'd know that the very same themes she covers in "The Ninth Wave" are covered by Elvis in his own way (and filtered through his own experiences) on _King of America_ and other songs (e.g., the amazing "I Want You") -- they're both talking about THE THINGS YOU DO TO GET THROUGH SOMETHING HARD, to ENDURE. >Despite frequent attempts to alter his vocal style and timbre, [Elvis] >inevitably sounds like himself.... Never has Costello produced a vocal sound >that transcended the narrow range of his ideosynchratic self. This is what it means to be an artist -- to have the courage to "speak with your own voice", metaphorically. I don't see why sounding like yourself is necessarily an argument against someone as a singer; in fact, I could see this at the crux of an argument _against_ Kate: she only infrequently produces a vocal sound that nakedly plumbs the depths of her own soul -- as opposed to Cathy's soul, or the Organon son's soul, or the aborigine's soul... (And the word is "idiosyncratic", oh ye who cast the first stone...) But enough talk of Elvis. My point is that pure excellence of voice is neither sufficient nor essential for a truly great singer-songwriter. Dylan is great, but he can hardly sing at all. Tom Waits (sp.?) -- the man is a walking advertisement for the ill-effects of taking Drano -- but he'll knock your socks off if you get into his groove. Consider the classical guys, too -- technically, Pavarotti is not as good a singer as Placido Domingo, but the big guy still expresses the essence of his arias with more punch than Placido can ever muster. And, to knock the "classicist's" argument all the way to infinity: if a Stradivarius is so much more awesome than a drum, classically speaking, and Kate is the quintessence of classical greatness, why doesn't Kate use violins on all her songs instead of drums?? Huh? (I'm being ironic and don't expect an answer...) >Where shrillness occurs in Kate's singing, it is because shrillness is applied >by Kate deliberately to specific notes, phrases and songs in order to express >the emotional content that is appropriate for the music. But her vocal >instrument is self-LESS -- it is timeless and perfect. I agree about the shrillness -- but in many cases you can't tell that it's in the service of some emotional content until you've listened a few times and acclimated yourself to the milieu and, especially, made out some of the words. Before you've done that, it just sounds like little-girl whining. (This is the answer to another question of mine.) But as for Kate's instrument being self-LESS, you'll have to explain THAT one again. (Maybe this is what I mean later about Kate being Shakesperean...) > ...[the Stradivarius has been] honed to a level of finish that defies the > mundane plane of our mortal existence; the [banjo] is a crude, innately > vulgar contraption fashioned over a few years of rustic sub-culture This whole analysis makes presumptions about the nature of Culture and Art that are extremely problematic. As if Real Life were somehow inadequate, a thing to be "transcended", "escaped from"! For all I know, the violin was developed by random street musicians in a "rustic sub-culture" of old Italy. Ancient Greece was a rustic sub-culture. Jesus came out of a cultural backwater. The Renaissance and the Exploration of the New World were all funded by the banking communities of a few opportunistic (and very bumpkinish) Mediterranean city-states. Dostoyevski and Tolstoy wrote in a peasant-based agrarian kingdom. The United States developed out of a collection of social misfits and rustics into the most influential "Culture" of our era: mass culture. The Culture you refer to, IUD, is a small thing in world history. It is an ASIDE (some would say that it is the aside that justifies all the rest, but it is still a tiny "sub-culture"). [I was going to get _really_ ad hominem here, but I stopped myself.] Anyway, get off your elitist hobby-horse. It is this attitude -- the "I know worthwhile culture and you don't" attitude -- that prevents people from coming over to Kate in the first place. What good is Kate to anyone who knows that "the important culture is the culture I share with my fellow Americans -- rock-and-roll"? That person, with that attitude, is going to find Kate value-less, just as that same person will pass over jazz and classical-music stations as so much white noise when trying to find something to listen to on the radio. Actually, I should point out that the one element that most prevents me from wholeheartedly enjoying Kate now is the adament asinine flaming of her fans. I finally read the Kate interviews (the one that |>oug did, and the French one that IUD translated): Kate is awesome! But you guys -- you oughta be ashamed of yourselves. She shows you up at every turn for the wimpy, inexperienced mutts you are. Fortunately, she makes up for the pack of you lovehounds and your pointless inexperienced baying. [oops, a little too strident there, Kev, back off...] Anyhow, Kate is like Shakespeare: she borrows all her plots and makes beautiful music out of them that touches us deep deep down. But I don't feel like I know Kate herself, what SHE feels, and I find that troublesome. Is she a great "artist", after all? Can someone be a great artist without baring her soul? (For example, a friend of mine finds Beethoven awesome, but finds Mozart kind of boring because, in spite of the indisputable excellence of the Wolf-man, my friend finds that Mozart did not put his soul on the line in most of his music, while Beethoven always did.) Of course, Kate moves me, Mozart moves me, Shakespeare moves me -- but Dylan moves me, Neil Young moves me, Elvis moves me -- even Elvis Presley moves me, sometimes -- Christ, the Carpenters can get a rise out of me sometimes! So what, after all, are we talking about here? What makes Kate special? Of course, I know what Cathy feels towards Heathcliff, I know what the son in Organon feels, and I suppose that I actually also get some sense of what Kate cares about, what she's scared of, in "Running Up That Hill" and "Hounds of Love". But how much of that is her and how much is me? And does any of that matter? --"Kevo" P.S., Thanks to all who responded to my queries about how one comes to know Kate (W. Lefebvre, Jon Drukman, "Joe Slime", |>oug, and Andrew, among others) P.S., I didn't mean to focus so much on IUD's comments, but they were certainly the most irritating -- although, unlike Kate's voice, IUD's comments do not win one over on repeated listenings, they simply continue to irritate... P.P.S., Why _do_ you refer to yourself in the third person, Andrew? Don't duck the question this time by apologizing again -- just answer it, please, if you would: _why_? _what do these silly letters stand for_, and, more to the point, _why do you use them_? and _why in the third person_? (I realize that they're part of your login name, but that still doesn't explain _why_ you use them.) ----- End of forwarded messages