A pile of Kate related ramblings

[nessus (Doug Alan)]

> From: ROBB LEATHERWOOD <ROBB-LEATHERWOOD%LADC@SYSTEM-M>

> I saw the "Kate Bush" mini album, the one with Sat in Your Lap,
> Suspended in Gaffa, James and the Cold Gun (live), Babooshka, and
> L'Enfant ????  (the Infant Kiss in French, I s'pose.)  Is there
> anything NEW on this record besides The Infant Kiss?  Is James and
> the Cold Gun the same as the "Kate Bush on Stage" version?  And are
> any of the others remixes or anything like that?  Just curious...

Actually, there is nothing new on this album.  It's just a Kate Bush
sampler put together by EMI-America.  "Sat In Your Lap" and "Suspended
In Gaffa" are directly from "The Dreaming", "Babooshka" is from "Never
For Ever", "Un Baiser D'Enfant" is a French version of "The Infant
Kiss" and appeared previously on the B-side of the "Ne T'Enfuis Pas"
single), and "James and the Cold Gun (live version)" is from "Kate
Bush On Stage".  The Canadian version also contains "Ne T'Enfuis Pas"
and was pressed on many different colors of vinyl (which are now
impossible to find at unoutrageous prices).

> I already have The Kick Inside (on CD, which means I can't listen to
> it until I buy a tape, as I don't have a player...) so I don't think
> I'll ever get that on vinyl unless I find one of the funky covers
> (the CD cover has Kate laying on a kite or cross or something in
> oriental dress and the lettering looks oriental, er,
> pseudo-oriental.)  Oh, did I misspell lying?

That's also the *real* cover for the album, i.e. the British cover,
which is the one Kate selected.  She's painted gold and strapped to a
big kite which is flying by this big eyeball.  The US cover is really
obnoxious.  It looks like it was selected by EMI-America to make Kate
look like a country/western singer.  The Canadian cover is much
better, but looks too much like something out of Vogue.  The Japaneese
cover definitely has its... uh... merits.

> ... which reminds me to thank Shelli for the discography on Japan,
> Sylvian, etc.

I think you're getting your girls mixed up, but women -- they're all
the same anyway...  (Oh, no.  Now sexism rears it's ugly tail!)

And don't believe Shelli about having a shaved head with blood red
crosses painted on it and a white mouse in her oversized pocket....

It's a rat.

> From: Elgin Lee <ehl@su-navajo.arpa>

> I don't understand what people like about this version ["Alternate
> Hounds of Love"].  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.)

Well, HoL is my least favorite song on the album.  I think the melody
is too catchy, the rhythm isn't incredibly interesting, and the
arrangement isn't nearly as dense and layered as my favorite KB songs
are.  The lyrics are wonderful (as always), however.

On, the 12" single, the drum sound is more powerful, The vocals are
more interesting, and The melody is more bizarre.  It's also pleasant
to have something by Kate, for a little change, where she isn't being
so serious -- she's clearly having some fun.  The lyrics are
butchered, but that's like the purpose of 12" singles.  I don't think
it would fit in on the album, and it's good that it's not there, but
as a 12" single, it is very nice.

> 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 think it sounds fine by itself, and I often listen to it separately
if I don't want to have to wade through "Watching You Without Me"
(which is the one other song on the album that I don't think is
absolutely wonderful).  I also like the astronauts.

> 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?

Yeah, the whole thing is traditional, except that she left out a
couple of verses and altered the lyrics a tiny bit.

> "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?

She doesn't claim that she wrote it.  The press releases for the
single clearly stated that it was a traditional song.  Perhaps the
record company is doing it.  Or perhaps it makes the legalities easier
to just credit everything to "Kate Bush".  There have been some other
cases of this sort of strangeness.  Her French "Ne T'Enfuis Pas"
single has only her name on the label.  She actually cowrote the
lyrics with someone who knows French better than she does, however.
On the Candian version of the single, he is also credited on the
label.  So Kate is clearly telling some people who did what.  Kate
also doesn't hide the fact that John Carder Bush wrote the narations
in "Breathing" and "Jig Of Life", and the lyrics to "My Lagan Love",
but his name doesn't appear in the song-writing credits on the label,
however.

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

It wasn't so bad, now was it?  Next time I'll bring my dentist
drill...

> From: FULIGIN%UMass.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU  (Peter E. Lee)

> [Regarding the "Cloudbusting" video:]

> I thought that both story and song complemented eachother strongly,
> although I assumed that Kate was the scientists daughter, rather
> than son.  If she was trying to portray a little boy, I don't think
> she succeeded too well, but I don't think the characters gender was
> particulary important anyway...

This was discussed a while back, probably before you were on
Love-Hounds.  "Cloudbusting" is based on an autobiographical book
called "A Book Of Dreams" by Peter Reich, who is the son of the famous
psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich.  Kate is playing Peter Reich as a young
boy in the video.  From the small parts I've read of the book, I think
that Kate pretty accurately captured the spirit of Peter Reich as a
small boy.

> As for the 12"s from Hounds Of Love so far, the only one that really
> stands out for me is the Organnon mix of "Cloudbusting", which I
> think is a good treatment of a great song in a new format.  I found
> the remix of "Running Up That Hill" to be amateurish - she fell into
> most of the standard remix cliches, and didn't really do anything
> original with the extra space, and while I like the new overall feel
> of "Alternative Hounds Of Love", I would have liked a few more
> lyrics, and a few less "run, run, run, run, run, run honey.  Run
> from the Hounds of Love"s.

Kate says that writing the lyrics is the most difficult part of
writing a song, so it makes sense that that's what she'd skimp on when
putting something together quickly.  However, scrambling lyrics into
nonsense is all in the spirit of a proper 12" inch single.

Regarding the 12" single of RuTH: I think it is great.  I love how the
vocal echoes clash wonderfully with the rhythm.  I love the drums in
RuTH, so I like how at one point it just whittles down to the drums
and nothing else for a little bit on the 12".  And then other
instruments come in individually and weave in and out of the drums.
And I think the line "Is there so much hate for the ones we love?" is
much more powerful done with reverb, as it is on the 12", rather than
harmonized, as it is on the album version.

			"And a big 'Woof' to Bonnie and Clyde"

			 Doug