Hey, Krantz (a non Kate Bush person recommends)

[astroatc!gtaylor (oh...*Gregory* Taylor...never mind.)]

[This is something that Greg Taylor posted to net.music.  I thought
that some of the KB fanatics in Love-Hounds might want to see it and
debate with Greg Taylor over whether or not *The Dreaming* is a
Derridean mistake, whether or not KB is better than sliced bread, and
whether or not KB will ever be able to top *The Dreaming*.  (Nah, the
reason why it's such a great album is because so many intense things
were happening to Kate at once: she was learning how to use the
Fairlight and the studio, she's was risking her career by taking full
control of production, John Lennon had recently been killed, which
shattered her, she was unhappy living in the city, she had to bounce
from studio to studio and was getting uptight about all the money it
was costing to record the album, and from the sound of "Get Out Of My
House" was having relationship problems.  This level of combination of
events is unlikely to happen again.  Miserable people make better
music.  Question: do we want Kate do be miserable so she'll come out
with another album as good as *The Dreaming*?  What a dillema!)
--Doug]

>>>> [mike krantz:] Perhaps I should investigate the music of this
>>>> little Defender Of The Faith.
>
>>> [Doug:] You should!

Hey, Krantz. Blow off all the other stuff and get "The Dreaming." Forget
all the "who did it first, Peter Gabriel or Kate Bush?" nonsense. The
albums are timbrally similar because of the Fairlight technology itself.
Gabriel bought one first, but who gives a hoot.

(Danger. Words of praise for Kate Bush) "the Dreaming" is a great album.
As a whole, coherent piece of work, Ms. Bush will have to really work
to do any better at all-kind of like Boz Scaggs. He should have simply
quit after recording "Somebody Loan Me a Dime" with Duane Allman.
Kate Bush is not, however, the greatest thing since sliced bread. She's
okay, but hey. So is Professor Longhair, and he's DEAD.

If you hate the Dreaming for how it sounds, go and hunt up either an
earlier album of Doug's choice or Hounds. I think that you'll have missed
what makes the Dreaming really good if you can't stand the way it 
sounds, though.

I think that the Dreaming is a properly Derridean collision/mistake:
Kate Bush crossed her sort of usual, precious, privatist, prog-rock
poetic leanings with a Fairlight and made a beast that was bigger
and more resonant than the sum of its parts. To the extent that the
center of her music is essentially Egoistic (I'll do what I want),
she *did* use the studio as an instrument...but I think that it used her,
too. It is the sort of precious and rare fluke that you hope the 
marketplace produces again. I suspect that she'll spend the rest 
of her career trying to formalize what worked about the Dreaming,
or trying to go back to her neo-Gothic stuff, and failing in what
might be some interesting ways.

Put it up on the list with Bob DYlan's "Blood on the Tracks"
There. Is that enough bias for you?

Trust me. Then go buy David Sylvian's "Brilliant Trees". Same sort
of general thing. Ditto for Jan Gabarek's "aftenland" and.....
-- 
"Dangerous? It's very dangerous. It's a liability nightmare. But this
is California. You can do anything here." (-Mark Pauline of Survival
Research Laboratories)  Gregory Taylor/ ...uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor