Toyah. More on *The Dreaming*

[nessus (Doug Alan)]

> [John Lorch on Robert Fripp:] The second lp is a duet with Fripp's
> new wife, Toyah Wilcox. I'm not familiar with her music, so no
> guesses here.

Toyah sounds a lot like she wants to be Kate Bush but is guitar-based
and only of average talent for a rock musician.  She likes to sing
about occult and SF type things, and bounces up and down a lot while
singing.  She's also fairly well known as an actress in England (on
TV, I think).  With Robert Fripp producing her, though, who knows...
she could turn out to be pretty decent.

> [Joe Turner on *The Dreaming*:] Because of its visceral attack on my
> senses, I find it hard to listen to TD sometimes - literally, it
> hurts too much. I find listening to HoL a much more enjoyable
> experience - not because the music is easier to listen to.

So, how'd you become such a Peter Gabriel fan?  PGIII (his best album)
isn't the easiest thing in the world to listen to.

> People talk of TD's "importance". If it was so important, why is it
> that it never got mentioned?  Why is it that I only heard about it
> through this digest?

I never said it was a smash success pop album.  That doesn't mean it
wasn't a big influence.  Among some circles it caused quite a
stir.  You can hear its influence in all sorts of unexpected places;
like on Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Meta Terra, Danielle Dax, Lisa
Dabello, The Cocteau Twins.  The trumpets from "Sat In Your Lap" can
be heard in something by Tina Turner (which sure irked me, when I
heard it!).  Orch-5 can be heard everywhere.  The drum sound, the
Fairlight sound, the no cymbol sound, the ethnic eclecticism --
they're things that are now becoming quite common, but weren't in
1982.

Also, before *The Dreaming*, there were no Kate Bush fazines.  Shortly
afterward, four Kate Bush fanzines appeared in four different
countries.  Then a while later, three more popped up (including this
one).  Do you think *Hounds of Love* would have catalyzed seven
fanzines?

> [Andrew Marvick:] Thus arises an old argument, namely whether
> "originality" is more important than "quality". Simply SAYING that
> HoL isn't as "good" does nothing to prove the point.  You offer no
> specific reason for ascribing a label of superior quality to The
> Dreaming, only reasons for according it the quite different
> distinction of greater "importance".

I think that *The Dreaming* is a better album because it has the
potential to affect people more deeply than *Hounds of Love*.  And I
think that originality has a lot to do with how much something can
affect people.  If something that has no originality fascinates
people, then they haven't been affected -- they've merely been handed
a mirror.

> I personally agree with you that The Dreaming is highly original in
> ways that seem to us, living in our period, significant.  But there
> is really nothing specific that can be pointed to in the LP that had
> never been done before, at least as far as use of studio techniques
> goes.

I disagree.  There is no individual technique Kate used that you can
point at and say that Kate was the first person to do that.  But I
don't feel that that sort of thing is very important anyway.  What
Kate did was much more important than that, and much more difficult to
formalize, which means that unfortunately, it will probably not get as
much recognition.  What Kate did is use the studio as an essential
tool of the composition to make music.  *The Dreaming* is the earliest
album I know of that sounds like music, yet if you removed the studio
effects would probably not sound good at all.  Faust and people like
that did albums that were largely studio compositions, but Faust rarely
sounds like music.  They sound instead like interesting noise.

[John Rossi:]

> Yes, all people when cornered usually stick them into their lists of
> great influences (Kate may have liked them but I don't see the great
> musical influence showing in her work, besides she's just a kid).

Kate has said that John Lennon's "Number Nine Dream" is her favourite
song on several occassions, and I think the John Lennon psychedelia
influence is unmistakeable in her music.  In fact, I'd say that the
whole album *The Dreaming* is  flavoured with John Lennon's death.

> Now to the heart of the matter.  I do not believe that Kate stands a
> chance in a quadrillion of being remembered for her contributions to
> the 70/80 period anything like the Beatles were for their period.

Neither do I.  I don't think anyone has.  But I think that Kate will
surely be remembered.

> That is to say, I doubt Kate Bush will ever achieve classical
> status.

This, I disagree with.

> In fact, it is probably true that Madonna will be more revered by
> the masses who secumb to what is pushed at them as classical.

I truly doubt it.  What she's done in the past is the stuff of fad.
And if she continues doing MOR ballads, then she'll just be remembered
as one of all those zillions of singers who made zillions singing MOR
ballads.

> The fact that Kate Bush is not a household word, I believe, works
> strongly in her disfavor in achieving enough memorable clout to sway
> the aristocrats of the 22nd century.

In the U.S., Kate Bush is not a household name.  In England she
certainly is!  Aristrocrats own CD players, right?  Well, in England,
HoL is the third biggest selling CD ever.  And they own VCR's and both
of her video tapes (one two years old and one brand new) are in the
video tape top 10.  She may not ever be classical music here, but in
England she probably will be.  (Actually, the world will probably be a
radioactive wasteland.)

> I believe that TD will soon appear in cut-out bins.  And will be
> the first of Kate's albums to go 'Out of Print' (this is again a sad
> commentary on our times).

I doubt that it will.  In fact, it will probably come out on CD
someday.  *The Dreaming* may not be Kate's biggest seller, but it has
an intense cult following.  It was the popularity of *The Dreaming* in
the U.S. that caused EMI-America to release *Lionheart* and *Never for
Ever*.  In England, *The Dreaming* is one of those specially priced
albums (not cut-out, but "Nice Price" type things), but places like
Virgin Records have been running full-page ads with *The Dreaming* as
one of three of four prominently displayed albums.

			-Doug

"I close my eyes and I see
 Blood and roses"