Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (11/03/90)
Really-From: PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu Today I took a drastic step. I went down to the Record Stop in Lake Ronkonkoma, who had the box set for the best price that I've seen, $159, and told them not to hold one for me. Record Stop is where I forked over $99.95 for the Japanese import video "The Single File," $125 for the original 7" vinyl SF box set (without the box, but otherwise complete and virgin), and roughly $120 per album since HOL, by the time I would lay in the import singles in 7" and 12" and the album itself in vinyl and CD. I don't even want to get started on the imported songbooks, copies of Kerton and Vermorel, original editions of Reich's A BOOK OF DREAMS, and so on. I've been the sort of fan who has prowled through libraries to photocopy old reviews, xeroxed BILLBOARD charts and blurbs from MELODY MAKER, and subcribed to and archived this digest. At the party I put on when TSW was released, a friend contemplating the 6'X 4' sand-through-hands poster on my wall said, "I guess you must be a fan." "Having one of these posters doesn't make me a fan," I answered. "It's having TWO." Just as I have two copies of Jay Bush's CATHY, one that I keep unopened in the original mailer. I don't say No! to this new box release because I've ever stinted on my devotion to Kate Bush, but because this seems to be a marketing scam unworthy of her participation. To me it seems the latest in a culminating series of bad signs. I'm gonna be volunteer lightning rod here and utter lots of heresy, bring down flame and fire upon my head. But I'm only trying to formulate the disquiet that I've heard from many of us in recent months. The love-hounds who will be seeing her in London later this month may have opportunity to help get her back in touch with her audience and her commitment to her work. * Bad sign: how long it took to get working on TSW. Forget how long we had to wait; the questions have to do with how long it took her to get back to her work, and whether she really went back to it with full commitment. The is where the Del Palmer question Richard Caldwell raised comes in, but it isn't Del in particular. I'll come back to this. * Bad sign: for the FIRST TIME in the History of the World, a Kate Bush album was accompanied by only THREE videos. It has always been four. * Bad sign: in those videos, Kate spends so much time showing the bottom of her chin to the camera it gives you a crick in the neck to watch her. Or she drapes herself in upholstery fabric. It isn't vanity, otherwise she wouldn't include the interview, which shows us clearly that she isn't a 19 year old nymph any longer. It's professional indecision: she doesn't seem to know what to do with herself. For me, the redeeming moments come when she's doing what somebody called the funky chicken with the band, in "Love and Anger." There at least she is a little unselfconscious, looks like she is having a good time. * Bad sign (recent evidence perhaps--it can be hoped!--to the contrary): her unwillingness to perform live. She seems to think she has to top the Tour of Life. I can't tell whether this is timidity, nostalgia, or arrogance. Here she is with this great songbook, in a position to put together a killer band, with world's thirstiest audience awaiting her! Vickie put her finger on it. She should either take ten years off and have a baby, and then see whether she wants a professional career any more, or she should get herself into touring shape and bop around in front of a band for a while. The crassness of the current box release has been well brought out these past weeks. Only fans are going to put out $150-200 for a kb collector's item--but we are the very ones who likely have the six albums already amd maybe, like me, all the relevant singles. I'd buy it in a minute if there were two songs I hadn't heard. Even one. A true historical record like Andrew Marvick outlined would deserve support. But the only *rational* market for this release is to be gifts from fans to neophytes. To me, that feels like I am being shaken down. It's not a katelike feeling. Have commercial interests gotten bigger than her talent? One of the reasons I've loved kb is the sheer craft of her search for and achievement of professional power. She had total artistic control over her own product before she was 21; it took the Rolling Stones nearly 10 years to get that far. She made the commercial aspects of pop music part of a new 'performance art'. Remember that a Kate Bush album release has never been the album alone, it has been a whole Manifestation Event: the first single comes out in England, then here; then the album; then Kate's over here, her mug on MTV; the videos start to arrive, the 7" and 12" import singles; long reviews and interviews appear. One could always feel her presence, her darsan, behind it all. This was her work: to be impressario of her own appearance. Vermorel correctly remarks the hostility of photographers to her policy of wanting final review rights over their work before she will grant a photo opportunity; anybody ever wonder why kb is never featured in Vogue, Mademoiselle, etc.? When she was in New York in November, 1985, BILLBOARD reported it in a regular news item, mentioning that she was not only writer, arranger, performer, and producer of her music, but was also now her own manager. Great, I thought. Kate's peaking. Five years later, I am worried. It has helped me to understand all this to have John Carder Bush's CATHY set. Jay is 14 years older than Cathy as they conspire together, he to be a photographer, she to be a presence. One can simply see in these photographs the birth of what beguiles us in the Kate Bush they were inventing, with Paddy as the band: Kate's precocity has always been met with a total, loving acceptance, first from her brothers and parents, later from us as recruits. She projects this expectation when she performs--which is why cynical souls are driven off screaming. The fact that she is also good makes her cosmic. Every so often someone professes that Kate Bush is God. A colleague announced one time in seminar that that's what I think. I said he was wrong; she is God's sister. Well sister Kate is older now, and it's less and less appropriate for her to be working inside an image she came to with her brothers and Del. The Kate Bush they saw in her, and she performed for us forever--in "The Kick Inside" and the Hammersmith video from the Tour of Life--had room for three more albums, but it ended with "Hounds of Love." Dead and drowned, that Kate will forever live again to tell her mother, tell her father, tell her brothers how much she loves them. But she's been milking it since then, first with "The Whole Story," which was useful and deserves its success, but now in TSW and its uncertain promise. Even those who like TSW, me among them, don't claim that it is an artistic breakout. And in that context, the new box set release feels like the Heavy Hand. This woman's work: is it over? ............................................................................ "C'mon, we all sing!" pmanches@sbccmail (BITNET) pmanchester@ccmail.sunysb.edu (INTERNET) Peter Manchester, Religious Studies, SUNY at Stony Brook, NY 11794-3725
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (11/08/90)
Really-From: Jon Drukman <jsd@gaffa.MIT.EDU> >Really-From: PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu I'm all for heresy, but I'm dead set against factual errors. >* Bad sign: for the FIRST TIME in the History of the World, a >Kate Bush album was accompanied by only THREE videos. It has always >been four. From TKI: Wuthering Heights and The Man With The Child In His Eyes. (2) From Lionheart: Wow and Hammer Horror. (2) From Never For Ever: Babooshka, Army Dreams and Breathing. (3) The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love had four videos. Two out of five does not equal ALWAYS in my book. --- On another note, why is everybody so hung up on having KT play live? I don't see how it could possibly be a good thing, given the textural complexities of her later songs. I'd MUCH rather have her lock herself in her garden shed and create some more aural tapestries than to see her strutting her stuff on stage producing what could only be a pale shadow of her TRUE art. Can't you take the hint from the Secret Policeman's Ball version of "Running Up That Hill"? Where's the magic in that? I hope she NEVER tours again. In fact, I wouldn't care if she never made another video or gave an interview as long she just churned out some high quality rekkids. On the other hand, with something as frustrating as TSW, perhaps it is better than she distracted us from it with her interviews and videos... "MATE! SPAWN! AND DIE!" -- +---------------------- Is there any ESCAPE from NOISE? ---------------------+ | | |\ | jsd@gaffa.mit.edu | ZIK ZAK - We make everything you need, | | \|on |/rukman | -Fight The Power- | and you need everything we make. | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (11/09/90)
Really-From: E Welsh <evan@castle.ed.ac.uk> In article <9011072212.AA15483@gaffa.MIT.EDU> Jon Drukman <jsd@gaffa.MIT.EDU> writes: >On another note, why is everybody so hung up on having KT play live? >I don't see how it could possibly be a good thing, given the textural >complexities of her later songs. I'd MUCH rather have her lock >herself in her garden shed and create some more aural tapestries than >to see her strutting her stuff on stage producing what could only be a >pale shadow of her TRUE art. Can't you take the hint from the Secret >Policeman's Ball version of "Running Up That Hill"? Where's the magic >in that? OK point taken. She sounded nackered and G's guitar spoilt the song - although usually he's great, like on Rocket's Tail. But!!! I would refer you to the performance of Breathing on the Comic Relief video. Awesome! And who says she has to play her later songs? I would be just as happy to see a few old songs in there. >I hope she NEVER tours again. In fact, I wouldn't care if she never >made another video or gave an interview as long she just churned out >some high quality rekkids. On the other hand, with something as >frustrating as TSW, perhaps it is better than she distracted us from >it with her interviews and videos... KaTe, don't listen to him. He doesn't know what he's saying. -- / __ /\ evan@castle.ed.ac.uk /\ Are you selling your \ \ |_ \ / \/ rew@lfcs.ed.ac.uk \/ soul to a cold gun ? / / |__VAN \/\/ELSH /\ evan@tardis.cs.ed.ac.uk/\ \ \ ================ \/ ecwu86@ercvax.ed.ac.uk \/ Kate Bush. /
Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (11/10/90)
Really-From: Jon Drukman <jsd@gaffa.MIT.EDU> >Really-From: E Welsh <evan@castle.ed.ac.uk> >In article <9011072212.AA15483@gaffa.MIT.EDU> Jon Drukman ><jsd@gaffa.MIT.EDU> writes: >>On another note, why is everybody so hung up on having KT play live? >>I don't see how it could possibly be a good thing, given the textural >>complexities of her later songs. I'd MUCH rather have her lock >>herself in her garden shed and create some more aural tapestries than >>to see her strutting her stuff on stage producing what could only be a >>pale shadow of her TRUE art. Can't you take the hint from the Secret >>Policeman's Ball version of "Running Up That Hill"? Where's the magic >>in that? > >OK point taken. She sounded nackered and G's guitar spoilt the song - >although usually he's great, like on Rocket's Tail. Anyone can be great in the studio with tons of time available for retakes, multi-tracked solos, etc... >But!!! I would refer you to the performance of Breathing on the Comic >Relief video. Awesome! But!!! I've seen it. Boring! Naff and boring! Screw this "modern day folk song" stuff. I hate people sitting at their pianos and belting out heartfelt songs, it really annoys me. "Breathing" without the synths and voiceovers is like a day without sunshine: dark. >And who says she has to play her later songs? I >would be just as happy to see a few old songs in there. I guess so, but I've already seen them live (well, live on video, anyway.) Many times, in fact. I need NEW SENSATIONS. "Make my funk the p-funk, cos I wants to get funked up!" -- +---------------------- Is there any ESCAPE from NOISE? ---------------------+ | | |\ | jsd@gaffa.mit.edu | ZIK ZAK - We make everything you need, | | \|on |/rukman | -Fight The Power- | and you need everything we make. | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+