IED0DXM@UCLAMVS.BITNET (10/05/86)
Well, it looks like IED finally got a rise out of you (T.) Gristle-heads. Notice that although IED is considered the unreasonable party on this issue, his is the ONLY entry re-printed below which contains any substantive argument. When considered as a group, the responses (which follow afterward for the Love-Hounds' collective edification) are messy, ill-written, blindly emotional, and foul-mouthed. First, you will recall, IED's original plea to reason: >Frankly, this kind of flippant, ill-considered >denigration of Kate's recent work on the dubious grounds that it is >somehow "easier" or less avant-garde is getting harder to take. >If those who insist that this is so could just ONCE produce >some concrete evidence for the notion, perhaps it might gain >some respect as an idea. Having gravitated strongly >toward the last LP, this writer is presently of the opinion that >"Hounds of Love/The Ninth Wave" is a BETTER album than "The Dreaming". >What it lacks in shock value and the "inaccessibility" which >you folks seem to covet so blindly, it more than compensates for >in depth of meaning and musical complexity. Although "The Dreaming" >was without doubt the best record released since "Abbey Road", >even it has nearly been eclipsed by the shadow of "The Ninth Wave" >-- which latter recording is certainly the greatest piece >of popular music ever produced. Next, your devastatingly eloquent rejoinders: >Andy, >Better than the Dreaming????? I'm going to assume that I somehow >misread your posting. (In case I didn't, will someone take his temp.?)) >Mark Kat(e)souros A perfect example of the kind of sloppy debating techniques which have come to characterize most of the Bush-related discourse in Love-Hounds. Mark, work that brain: try to explain WHY it is so silly of me to argue that Hounds of Love is better than The Dreaming. >Please don't tempt IED into another Dreaming vs. Hounds of Love debate! >We've already been through this several months ago. Heck, I'll even >suggest a bunch of new topics so we can flame each other to crisps: >Instead of "Which is better, The Dreaming or Hounds of Love?" try... >Bill Hsu Sorry, Bill, but no dice. The alternatives you offer just don't hold a candle to the HoL vs. The Dreaming debate. However, IED would be willing to drop this subject for the time being in favor of one of the following topics, provided you folks made a serious effort to support your opinions with comprehensible reasons: 1.) Which is better, Kate Bush or anything else? 2.) What is the first object of music, to entertain or to enlighten? 3.) What is the first object of Love-Hounds, to enlighten or to make churlish and contemptibly sexist slaggings? (This in reference to postings like the following:) >>Please don't tempt IED into another Dreaming vs. Hounds of Love debate! >>We've already been through this several months ago. Heck, I'll even >>suggest a bunch of new topics so we can flame each other to crisps: >and why not ?? what I really want dude is someone who can fill my >mailbox with complete and utter nonsense, and still have people believe >in it. I can safely say that IED feels that Kate shreds his face AND >cums in his mouth....how about that. >wank IED may be a minority of one in the HoL/Dreaming debate, but surely he is not alone in deploring "Wank"'s brand of gutter-brained slop? >> Please don't tempt IED into another Dreaming vs. Hounds of Love >> debate!!! >But I just won't settle for such heresy!!!!! I WON'T. This is not a >matter of debate. This is a matter of undeniable religious FACT! >*The Dreaming* is the greatest album that ever was and that ever will >be. Those who take *The Dreaming* as their personal saviour will >achieve eternal life. Those who don't are doomed to eternal damnation >with a tape loop of "Dress You Up in My Love" playing!!! Death to >heathen unbelievers! Praise Kate! Amen! Amen! >-- Doug A sterling example of the kind of hysterically defensive response referred to above. Once more, IED begs, EXPLAIN WHY -- GIVE A REASON! >Thought this deserved a second posting. I couldn't have said it better >myself. >Mark Kat(e)souros That fact, Mark, with all due respect, is abundantly clear. >I agree that we shouldn't drag through the debate again... >However, to settle it once and for all, I would suggest >taking a poll to see which album is the favorite among Love-Hounds. >I definitely cast my vote for *The Dreaming* !!! (I agree with >Doug -- the greatest album there ever was or ever will be...) >-Dan Stewart This is pointless. IED is perfectly aware that the majority of L-Hs prefer The Dreaming to Hounds of Love. One of the reasons that Love-Hounds was founded, however, was to demonstrate that the majority's musical preference is not always well-founded. Now that you have all been duly admonished and are busily tugging at your forelocks in shame and contrition, IED announces an important new Bushological discovery: HE HAS IDENTIFIED THE ORIGINAL SOURCE OF THE MEN'S CHORAL PASSAGE FROM "HELLO EARTH". Let him take this opportunity to retract and apologize for his earlier vague reference to some Czech folk group named Zinzcaro in relation to the passage in question. This was quite false, and frankly IED is ashamed to say that he can't for the life of him explain how he came up with this false reference. He thought he had read it in the credits of Nosferatu, but in this it seems he was completely mistaken. IED will have the original score and the text (WHICH IS NOT IN CZECH OR RUSSIAN AT ALL), together with an English translation, within one month. Until then, let him confine himself to the simple statement that the passage, as Kate herself has said, is indeed "HOLY". Welcome Carlo Samson, whose questions are all challenging and interesting: >So now I play the cassette almost every day. And as you would >expect from a first-time Kate-listener, I've a few questions. >(These have probably been answered before, >but as I said I'm new here). >1.) What does the aborigine say? Doug, what DOES the aborigine say? "Or-eh-mee-kah-ee-nah" or something like that. What's it mean? >2.) Exactly where does "The Dreaming" end and "Night of >the Swallow" begin? Do you mean, what are the precise timings of the tracks? The best way would be to time the single version of "The Dreaming" which fades out completely without the "Swallow" being mixed in with it. But then, Kate originally wanted to release "The Dreaming" as a twelve-inch single, which would probably have been a mix of the a- and b-sides of the seven-inch, so who really knows? >3.) What or where is "Gaffa?"? Gaffa does sound like a place-name in the song, which is intended, since Kate purposely re-spelled the word to which it refers in order to make it seem like a place. The word it seems to have been taken from is "gaffer", which refers to "gaffer's tape", a heavy tape used to secure cables on stage and in film work. Kate apparently means to conjure up the image (more or less as illustrated in the film version) of the character in the song hanging in some void, helpless to escape from her station in both the physical and metaphysical worlds. >4.) Why is knowledge "something sat in your lap"? It's not, but "They say" that it is. The song is more or less about the character's impatience with the difficulty of absorbing knowledge. The expression "to be sat in (one's lap)" is part of English ideom, meaning "to be sitting in". The distinction is a subtle one created by the shift from the active to the passive mode.
wicinski@NRL-CSS.ARPA (10/05/86)
IED pontificates: >(T.) Gristle-heads. Notice that although IED is considered the >unreasonable party on this issue, his is the ONLY entry re-printed >below which contains any substantive argument. When considered as a >group, the responses (which follow afterward for the Love-Hounds' >collective edification) are messy, ill-written, blindly emotional, and >foul-mouthed. The dude's saying that all of the responses generated are blindly emotional (besdes other things). This is from the man who claims to be fanatical about ms. bush. Fanatics are fanatics, wheteher they're Muslim terrorists, Christian fundamentalists, or bushians. They can't be taken seriously because they do not think in logical thoughts. Therefore you can't be taken seriously. Not until you wake up from your brainwashing. What he's trying to say is that we're blindly emotional while he's a sane and rational person. Also taken from a person who likes to refer to himself in the third person, as he is ashamed in admitting his self worth. IED, if you want verbal abuse, maybe, we can dig up charley chaine for you....
nessus@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Doug Alan) (10/06/86)
> [IED:] Frankly, this kind of flippant, ill-considered denigration of > Kate's recent work on the dubious grounds that it is somehow > "easier" or less avant-garde is getting harder to take. If those > who insist that this is so could just ONCE produce some concrete > evidence for the notion, perhaps it might gain some respect as an > idea. Now, Andy, don't you think it a little silly to ask for "concrete evidence" on issues such as artistic quality? What would such "concrete evidence" look like? Have you provided any such "concrete evidence" for your notion that *Hounds of Love* is better than *The Dreaming*? I can provide my reasoning, though. In my opinion, artistic quality is directly related to the beneficial power it has on me and other intelligent people. To answer your question about whether or not the purpose of music is to enlighten or entertain: for me, enlightenment is the highest form of entertainment, so that music which will entertain me the most, will also enligten me the most. Now things that are enlightening, I usually also tend to find "weird" or unusual, because that's how one perceives really new things. If you don't find something unusual, then how can you say that it is really new to you. Now, there are some things that I find weird but which I never seem to really absorb. These things present new ideas to me, but perhaps I can't relate to the ideas, or perhaps they are presented in a way that I can't relate to. The most enligtening art will be that which I find very weird, but also that which I can eventually relate to very strongly. In this case, I have absorbed the unusual ideas; I have received the most enlightenment. *The Dreaming* is an album which I found *very* weird, but which I am able to relate to immensely. I find *Hounds of Love* not nearly so weird, nor can I relate to it as much either, so it loses on both counts in the enlightenment department. Now to expand this notion to other people, I have found that among Kate Bush fans, most of the ones that seem to me to be highly enligtened by her music, prefer *The Dreaming* to any of her other albums. Furthermore, most of the Kate Bush fanatics I know that prefer albums other than *The Dreaming* seem to be more obsessed with Kate Bush as a woman, than with Kate Bush as a musician, which to me indicates less enlightenment. Now, I mentioned before about how the quality of art is directly related to it's power to affect people beneficially. I think *The Dreaming* is a more powerful album. I know that it changed my life. It changed me from being interested mostly in science to being interested mostly in art. I don't think that *Hounds of Love* could have affected me this strongly. Surely, if it were the first KB album I heard, I would have thought it were a great album and KB quite an artist, but it would not have changed my entire outlook on life. I just can't see HoL affecting anyone like this, and most of the people who seem as affected by Kate's music as I am, also seem to prefer *The Dreaming*. I also tend to think that the best art is that which is daring. The reasons for this follow from the above discussion about enligtenment. Art that is not as daring, that carefully intertwines interesting stuff into a commercially acceptable form, might require more talent to pull off well and might also be quite lovely, but I think that this always results in the concentration of enlightenment being dilluted. I also worry a lot about artists like Kate Bush becoming complacent as they get older. I mean look at David Bowie or Paul McCartney, etc. A lot of times, they work really hard to make really bizarre and interesting things when they are young, and then find when they get older that they can spend much less effort doing boring drivel and they'll sell even more records. I don't want this to happen to Kate, and the fact that money speaks and *Hounds of Love* has already outsold *The Dreaming* by an order of magnitude, means that Kate may get the idea that people don't really want her to be too weird. Well, I want to do my bit to try to make it clear to such artists that the reason many people listen to them is for the weirdness, and that Kate should be extremely proud of *The Dreaming* even though it only sold one tenth as many copies as *Hounds of Love*. It really pisses me off when in interviews she starts apologizing for *The Dreaming* being too intense or too painful for most people. Why the fuck should she be appologizing for making the greatest fucking album that's ever been recorded? Who gives a shit about those other 90% who wouldn't buy *The Dreaming*, anyway? They probably also like Madonna. >>1.) What does the aborigine say? > Doug, what DOES the aborigine say? "Or-eh-mee-kah-ee-nah" or > something like that. What's it mean? I dunno what it means. (I asked JCB but he couldn't remember. He said that Paddy would probably know, but I couldn't find him at the time.) I do know that they are lyrics from an Aboriginal song entitled "Airplane, Airplane" which supposedly is one of the very first Aboriginal songs about airplanes. This is pretty cute, because along with the airplane-like noises of the digerdoo, it makes the prefect segue from "The Dreaming" into "Night of the Swallow". >> 2.) Exactly where does "The Dreaming" end and "Night of the >> Swallow" begin? Where does Night end and Dreams begin? >oug
showard@udenva.UUCP (Steve "Blore" Howard) (10/08/86)
>IED may be a minority of one in the HoL/Dreaming debate, >but surely he is not alone in deploring "Wank"'s brand of gutter-brained >slop? > Actually, he's not alone on either subject. I'll take "Hounds of Love" over "The Dreaming" any day. Why? Because "The Dreaming" (along with "Lionheart" and to a lesser extent "Never For Ever") suffers from two major flaws: a.) over-production and b.) over-embellishment. ("Lion- heart" also suffers from having no interesting songs and the Dumb Lyric Syndrome, but that's another debate.) "Hounds of Love", on the other hand, shows a bit of restraint and a greater maturity on Bush's part, as far as knowing when a song is done and doesn't need to be fiddled with anymore. But then, what do I know, I'm from Pueblo. -- "I don't need a course in self-awareness to find out who I am and I'd rather have a Big Mac or a Jumbo Jack than all the bean sprouts in Japan" Steve "Blore" Howard, giving Godot just five more minutes to show up {hplabs, seismo}!hao!udenva!showard or {boulder, cires, ucbvax!nbires, cisden}!udenva!showard