The Two Faces of Melody Maker

[Doug Alan <nessus>]

Here is something I just posted to net.music.  I hope the redundancy
doesn't bother anyone....  There are some people on this list who don't
get net.music.  Also, messages to net.music seem to have a high
likelyhood of disappearing mysteriously.

Also some people have mentioned that they'd like to discuss other music
besides that of Kate Bush here, and that's fine with me!  (I hope that
doesn't bother anyone.)  So feel free to mail to love-hounds whatever
you want to about anything at all.

From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: The Two Faces of Melody Maker
Keywords: Kate Bush at number 4!!!
Posted: Mon Aug 26 02:57:04 1985

[Or Melody Maker changes its tune....]

Strange but true, the magazine that only two weeks ago told us that Kate
Bush must have phony nipples and should be burned at the stake now tells
us in the August 24th issue:

	Just like the phoenix really.  Once every two years she rises
	out of the ashes to once more bestow a touch of mysticism, a
	hint of myth, and a copious supply of inspired vision upon the
	burned-out landscape we call the charts.

This is the opening paragraph to a feature article on her and interview
with her.  (I'll tell you some of the interesting things that are said,
soon).  In general the writer raves about how wonderful she is.

Also, the letter section of this issue of Melody Maker is literally
half-filled with hate mail to Helen Fitzgerald regarding her "review" of
"Running Up That Hill", including a collage of Kate shooting Fitzgerald
with her bow.  (You don't mess around with Kate Bush fans!)  Three of
the four signatures are female too.

Not only that, but only two weeks after release, RUTH is at #4 on Melody
Maker's chart!  Madonna holds at #1 and #2 though.  Go get 'em Kate!w
Show Madonna and the brain-washed masses what *real* music is.

Strangely, after the initial wave (of 3) bad reviews for RUTH (none of
them on the basis of the music!  One was because, though the guy liked
the music, he didn't like the picture sleeve!  Which is laughable
because the picture sleeve is perfect for the song!  Kate is aiming a
bow, which in the context of the song and the album, is clearly symbolic
of Cupid's bow, but this is no cute little Cupid's bow she is aiming!
This is a longbow.  The kind that is used for killing things!  So the
bow becomes a symbol of a love/hate relationship.  ("Is there so much
hate for the ones we love?")  Just another example of how wonderfully
and perfectly thought-out everything Kate Bush does is!)

What was I saying...  Oh yeah, strangely, after the initial wave of bad
reviews for RUTH, there have been nothing but rave reviews:  Melody
Maker changed its mind (via changing reviewers) apparently and drooled.
The reviewer for Smash Hits reviewed it 5 times in one column!
(Needless to say, he thinks it is great!  He named it Single of The
Fortnight.)  "No. 1" said it is "fab".  The reviewer for Sounds was
"seduced by the sheer strangeness" of it.  The Face said "Not quite a
solid state symphony, but certainly a prelude to it from this engagingly
perverse songstress."  Billboard (U.S., not British) recomends it, but
strangely enough put it under their Black music section....  (I guess
Kate's got soul!)

So, is all this really just a cruel trick they are playing on me.  Right
after they convince me that the British music press has no redeeming
value and their opinions are worthless, they turn around and say Kate
Bush is great?  So what does this mean, if their opinions are worthless?
It's too bad that I don't like "Running Up That Hill" as much as some of
these reviewers seem to.....

In any case, I want to include some interesting quotes from the article
/ interview in Melody Maker.  (I'd almost like the guy, except that he
describes Pink Floyd in the article as being "chronic boredom"!  So who
is he to be a Kate Bush fan!):

	....

	"Oh yes, and I've met *you* too before as well," she smiles.

	I try to explain that this is not the case.  Mistaken identity
	perhaps?  I'm damn sure I'd remember.  But she's adament.

	"Perhaps it was in another life," cries a whimsical voice from
	the room.

	"Yes," she stares at me, considering the matter thoroughly.  "It
	*must* have been in another life."

	...

	Once more she has  created an album to besot and bewitch the
	coldest of hearts.

Unless you're Helen Fitzgerald!

	Once more she has come out of her isolated refuge with the charm
	of a siren, and the innocence of a child.  Ms Bush is incapable
	of growing old, she has merely grown up.

	...

	"I didn't want to produce it ["Hounds of Love"] in the wake of
	'The Dreaming'."

	...

	"I found an inspirational new dance teacher," Kate replies with
	growing enthusiasm.  "The teacher's energy made me really
	enthusiastic about writing again."

	...

	"Yes, I wanted something new, and to begin with it was extremely
	difficult.  All the songs I seemed to write sounded too much
	like the last album.  I've never seen any point in repeating
	things you've already done before.  I think it's a dangerous
	thing not to search for new ways of approaching songs.

Oh, Kate, you are tearing me asunder!  The thought that have written
more songs like those on "The Dreaming" and are throwing them away!  My
poor little heart....  Yes, everyone should grow and change, but if
you've discovered perfection, maybe it wouldn't be such a waste to mull
over it a little more....  "Running Up That Hill" is flawed (as
everything that's commercial is!  If you are trying to compete with
Madonna, well...  But why?).  Then again, if "Under The Ivy" is one of
the directions you are moving in, go for it!  (But why was it relegated
to a single B-side and not put on the album?)

Kate, do you have to be such a perfectionist?  Couldn't you be like Bill
Nelson, and have your basement four-track demos thrown onto an album and
released as a rare collector's item?  Oh, that's right you have your own
48 track studio... (Maybe I can see while Bill Nelson is a little bit
bitter...)   Well couldn't you throw those demos onto a collector's
record?  (I'm not holding my breath....)

	"There are always so many voices telling me what to do that you
	just can't listen to them.  All I ever do is listen to the
	little voices inside me.  I don't want to disappoint the little
	voices that have been so good to me."

	Of course not.  The finely-tuned songs that have made the final
	selection on the album differ greatly from the diversions of
	previous albums.  They are all love songs (sigh) using elemental
	imagery that form a cogent and cohesive panoply of emotion.  A
	search and a struggle to secure some sort of meaning.  The
	discovery that although you can strip away everything from a
	person, there will always be a residue of love awaiting
	resurrection.

The goddamn bastard's heard the album!  Ooooooohhhhhh!

	...

	Phantasmogorical voices tilt the rose-coloured world off its
	trite axis with jagged eerie phrases.  Outside observations are
	slanted metaphors revealing states of mind.  No longer are we
	presented with the eclectic collage of "The Dreaming" whose
	continual shifts and spirals allowed an escape with diversity.
	No longer is the entire history of Houdini crammed into three
	minutes, until a new fable takes up the torch.  Now the texture
	is more subtle, the production more adroit,

Hold on a second, buddy!  "The Dreaming" is perfection incarnate.  There
will never be an album more "adroitly" produced!

	and the mesmerism unrelenting.

	"The last album contained a lot of different energies.  It did
	take people to lots of different places very quickly and some
	people found that difficult to take.

So what?  You always have to work hard to appreciate the best things in
life!

	"I think this album has more of a positive energy.  It's a great
	deal more optimistic."

	...

The album is divided into two sections, the A-side and the B-side.  The
A-side is entitled "Hounds Of Love" and the B-side is entitled "The
Ninth Wave".  (If you were on the Kate Bush fans mailing list, you'd have
known the names of all the songs on the album.... and no, you won't find
them in Melody Maker!)

Regarding "The Ninth Wave":

	"It's about someone who comes off a ship and they've been in the
	water all night by themselves, and it's about that person
	re-evaluating their life from a point which they've never been
	before.  It's about waking up from things and being reborn --
	going through something and coming out the other side very
	different."

	...

	"I don't really know why people think my songs are strange.
	Perhaps because I bath in goat's milk!!  It's not something you
	should really ask me.  My mum could probably help you more.
	It's probably something to do with my childhood."

	...

	"I would want to be Breugal, definitely".

Does anyone know who Breugal is?

	...

	"His work is so real, and yet depicted in a fantastic way.

My god!  Sounds just like Kate!  Sounds.... in fact, "surreal"!

	"It's so beautiful and elemental.  And his faces are *so*
	haunting."

	...

	"My most striking visions of reality always seem to come to me
	when I'm in such a strange situation I feel 'this isn't real'.
	It's very simple really.  Simplicity is a thing few people dare
	to go for.  They think it's too easy.  In fact, it's the hardest
	thing to do.

Well, Kate, I think that's because good simplicity contains a lot of
hidden and subtle complexity, which is what all your "simple" stuff
does.  Would you call "The Dreaming" simple, though....  I sure
wouldn't, and its by far your best album....

	"I like the hypnotic quality of nursery rhyme repetition.

Hmmmm....

	"A lot of traditional music has that as a basis -- that
	something tumbling, rolling, droning throughout the piece.  It's
	very primeval really.  Getting back to when we were creatures of
	the earth rather than cement.

Hmmmm....

	...

	"I'm sure we'll see each other again very soon."

	Yes Kate I'm sure we will.  I hope we will.  Probably in another
	life.

	We exited, floating through the nearest wall.

So, Mu, what does it all mean?


				"Ooh I remember
				 That rich windy weather"

				 Doug Alan
				  nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (or ARPA)