AHoL

[Elgin Lee <ehl@su-navajo.arpa>]

I got the single a couple of weeks ago, listened to it four or five
times, and hated it.  Since Doug's been giving it rave reviews
recently, I decided to give it another chance.  This time, I even
turned up the volume to see if it sounded better at wall-shaking
volumes.  No go; it sounds awful at any volume, except maybe OFF.

I don't understand what people like about this version.  The album
version is one of my favorite songs on the HoL side; it's got good
lyrics, a catchy melody, and an arrangement that really evokes the
fear, desperation, and strange fascination at being pursued by a
howling pack of (metaphorical) hounds.  ("It's in the trees!  It's
coming!")  All the single version evokes is the image of Kate loping
along, jogging in the park and listening blissfully to a Madonna album
on her Walkman.  ("Run, run, run, run, run, run, honey; run from the
hounds of love."  Bleah!  And that's basically it lyrically for this
song, unless you count the remarkably silly "Doodly doo doo!  Doodly
dah dah!" in the background.)

The second side isn't much better, either.  "Jig of Life" is a great
song, but it sounds incomplete, stripped of its context in "The Ninth
Wave".  And it cuts off abruptly in the middle of the astronaut voices
leading into "Hello Earth", too.  I mean, they could have at least
mixed out the voices or cut the song just before the voices come in.

I don't really have much problem with "The Handsome Cabin Boy" -- it's
fine if you like this sort of thing (and I do).  Is the melody the
traditional one for this song?  I've noticed that it's exactly the
same as the song "Galtee Farmer" by Steeleye Span on their "Commoner's
Crown" album.  The song there is credited as "Trad., arr. Steeleye
Span".  "The Handsome Cabin Boy" is credited solely to Kate Bush.
This bothers me somewhat -- why is she claiming a song for which she
obviously wrote neither the music or lyrics?

Wow -- I've been wondering what it would be like to get flamed by Doug
Alan ...


			Elgin

ARPA:  ehl@su-navajo.arpa
UUCP:  decvax!decwrl!glacier!navajo!ehl