[net.music] the worth of the love-hounds list

mem@sii.UUCP (Mark Mallett) (10/27/85)

Alexander G. Burchell writes:

> 	So, let me get to the point.  There is a mailing list for Kate Bush
> and Kate Bush related topics.  I believe it is: "love-hounds@mit-eddie", and
> to get on it, send to "love-hounds-request@mit-eddie" (correct me if I am
> wrong, Doug Alan, as I am sure you will).  So please, Bushians, you have a
> forum for your endless discussions ...


To which I say: true, there is a mailing list for the convenience of Kate
Bush fans.  But a) it does not exist to be a closed club (i.e., to deprive
the rest of the land about kate bush and other information), and b) it depends
on the gracies of uucp mail transmissions, which are less than reliable.
I am theoretically a member of the love-hounds group, yet I believe that I
get only a small portion of its mailing and conversely submit things to the
group that as far as I can tell never show up.  How the uucp mail system can
fail to deliver mail and fail to notify the sender simply astounds me, but
that is another story.

Alexander G. Burchell also says:

> Funny Graphics have been deleted at the insistance of the USENET Police.

I don't know about funny graphics, but I do know that I occasionally read
articles in which some insensitive twit puts escape sequences that do
clever things on his terminal but cause my terminal to lose its mind.  If
usenet police are supressing this, then tell me where to send my donation!



And speaking of partial connection to the love-hounds list, here is a part
of an article which I mailed to that list a couple of weeks ago.  If anybody
saw it, please let me know.  It certainly never got back to me...

-----------------------------------------


Re: whether Kate Bush is popular in boston or only in Doug's imagination.
I live in the Boston broadcast area, and I tend to agree with him.  I
turn on V-66 (the music TV channel) only rarely, yet it seems like whenever
I do, there is the RUTH video.  Talking to some of the people in the
record stores, there has been quite the rush on the new album; though
this wasn't unanimous: one person said that her album was very popular,
for HER, but not for a big name.  Guess it depends on your point of view.
I walked into a Strawberries (the junk capitol of rock record stores) and
they were playing Hounds of Love.  I couldn't help from grinning.  I hear
RUTH on the radio quite frequently.  For the amount that I listen to the
radio, that is.  Which, to go off on a tangent, is the reason that I like
net.music and this mailing list:  I suspect that there are lots of you
out there who have the ability (i.e., time and exposure) to hear a wide
variety of new music.  I do not-- I live in NH outside the range of any
good radio stations and only listen during the commute to work; plus being
an older(31) and lazy single parent keeps me ignorant.  Having comments
and information come across my computer is wonderful, and I am glad that
so many people take the time to share them.  (Sorry for this drivel)

I think, like everybody here, that Hounds of Love is an excellent album.  I
did not "love" it the first time i heard it, but it sucked me in so that
I found myself listening to it over and over.  Everyone was expecting
Kate, following her progression from Kick Inside & Lionheart through
Never for Ever to the Dreaming, to come out with something very different
and wild and original.  Except that we all thought that "something different"
would mean "more like The Dreaming".  She did not seem to believe that she
had to be different in the same way that she was before.  What she did, I
think, was to create a very intricate album which can be heard in many ways
and enjoyed for many different reasons (though maybe not to hear pop music).
"The Ninth Wave" songs are each unique but they are all connected.  Every
one of them is a different piece of music, with a different style- yet they
are similar: each begins in one way, and continues in another.  Completely
different, yet (I think) ingeniously tied to each other with phrases of
words and sounds and melodies borrowed from each other.  Each song gives
a vivid image with its own message, but on the whole present a complete
portrait with an absorbing story.

I don't believe that this album is a concession to popular pressure, or
lack of fame.  Someone in this mail-group mentioned the train sounds at
the end of "Cloudbusting".  Did you notice that "Under Ice" sounds like
a train starting?  I am not certain that the two parts of the album are
completely unrelated.

Someone (Doug, I think) was asking about the phrase "though pigs can fly
they'll never find me".  I don't have a response to whatever it was he
was talking about; but I remember when hearing this song once, I thought
of a passage from Nostradamus ... ok, i looked it up.  Here it is:

	De nuit soleil penseront avoir veu,
	Quand le pourceau demi-homme on verra;
	Bruict, chant, bataille, au ciel baittre aperceu;
	Et bestes brutes a parler lon orra.

which Erika Cheetham translates as:

	At night they will think they have seen the sun,
	When they see the half-pig man;
	Noise, screams, battles seen fought in the skies.
	The brute beasts will be heard to speak.

and interprets as a vision of modern fighter pilots with their masks, (which
would appear to an ancient mind as half-man half-pig) fighting air battles
with searchlights and bombs and such.  Having heard that Kate Bush is into
mysticism & mythology, it seemed reasonable that she would have read this,
but though I thought about it, her line seems to go better with different,
more obvious interpretations of the whole of the song.

---------------------------

Mark Mallett
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