THE ERISTIC PERIPHRASMS OF A SESQUIPEDALIAN ENERGUMEN

[IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA]

>I shall never write something this lengthy again, and I hereby propose
>to Messrs. Hofmann and Wicinski that this discussion be transferred to
>net.music, if they wish to continue it.

Well, Messrs. H. and W., how about it? Be sports, and carry on your
little tiff somewhere else. It doesn't belong in Love-Hounds.

>I'd just like to take this opportunity, as the person on this
>list who usually loves the "pop"-type songs, to say that I
>*hate* "Don't Give Up" with a passion. It's even worse than
>the run-of-the-mill Lionel Richie/Diana Ross duet.

>Ick.

This is an understandable reaction (although it's really not
fair to say the song is WORSE than Lionel Richie, etc. Come on!).
You haven't made any direct criticism of Kate here, but given the
purported subject of L-Hs, criticism of her has been implied.
And as all the L-Hs are now aware, any criticism of KT in L-Hs
will be responded to by IED0DXM.
Let's remember that this is not Kate Bush's music!
Peter Gabriel has frequently made maudlin, trite and slightly
simple-minded "social consciousness" music in the past; whereas even
Kate's most emotionally self-revealing or socially aware recordings
have always been sufficiently unusual in their musical and lyrical
approach to avoid such criticism. Don't blame Kate
for following Gabriel's directions -- according to one of those
UK rags, Gabriel first tried to get Dolly Parton to do the guest
vocal; and he himself did say that Kate was not his first choice.
I happen to like Zaine Griff's "Flowers" a little, but the rest
of that LP is pretty lame stuff -- much like So. And what of this
Big Country record, and Kate's vocal on "The Seer"? That's a pretty
silly track, despite the care taken with the syntax of its lyrics.
(The worst thing about it is the lead singer's insistence on taking over
Kate's part, with Kate relegated to the background! As if there
wasn't quite enough of his voice on the rest of the album!)
Kate seems to enjoy doing session work for other musicians. It doesn't
mean she should be judged for the quality of those records. This
despite the fact that her voice on "Not This Time" may be the only
distinctive touch on Gabriel's album.

>definitely worth listening to: orders of magnitude better than Lionel
>Richie/Diana Ross crap, and significantly better arranged than "Not
>This Time".

Better arranged? Well, maybe the phrasing in 6/8 time (it is 6/8,
isn/t it?) is o.k.; but that's not arranging. The thing that bugs
IED most about the new Gabriel LP is the MOR instrumentation on
most of the tracks. This frustration is exacerbated by the U.S.
critics' nearly unanimous praise for what they seem to think is
some kind of adventurous amalgamation of pop accessibility and
progressive musical ideas. The use of Laurie Anderson and a few
ethnic third world musicians does absolutely nothing to disguise
the fact that most of the record -- and virtually all of side two --
is empty vamping by a bunch of tired session musicians, punctuated
by two- and three-note droning from Gabriel about his usual sort
of social bugaboos.

>{Toyah's} also fairly well known as an actress in England (on
>TV, I think).

She made a big splash there in a Jonathan Miller-directed production
of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" a few years ago.

>>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.

IED sees what you mean, but really, none of PGIII is unpleasant to listen
to; in fact, most of that album has a strong, pop-sensitive groove
which, in this L-H's opinion at least, is its main saving grace, usually
compensating for the heart's blood with which it drips.

> 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.

This is a misattribution of the rise in popularity of a few tricks
of the sampling synth (orch-5 most obviously) to the "influence" of
Kate's The Dreaming. Keyboard magazine asked her about this sound,
and she seemed to accept the fact of that sound's popularity.
It is extremely unlikely that the sameness of sampling sounds among
ca. 1983 pop music can be attributed to The Dreaming, since there was
at least one black dance track that came out in mid-1982 which used the
same Orch-5 sound. It's possible that this kind of minimal and
superficial influence can be detected in Duran Duran, but not in
Depeche Mode -- as disposible as this band's music may be, it's not
fair to attribute their discovery of sampling synthesizers to
The Dreaming, especially since Kate's LP is miles beyond their pedestrian
musical understanding. It is far more likely that they were introduced
to the new range of synthetic sounds through their own interest in
electronic instruments. The ethnic music fashion in English pop music
was already quite strong before The Dreaming. In fact, one critic
commented that Kate seemed to be following the trend herself. Since
Kate was definitely aware of earlier third-world-influenced rock
by that time (TH's "I Zimbra" and the RiL LP, for example, as well as
the Adam Ant/Annabella crap that was permeating UK airwaves about
then), such an assumption may not be entirely unjust.

>Also, before *The Dreaming*, there were no Kate Bush fanzines. 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?

Seven? IED knows of Love-Hounds, The KBC Newsletter,
Blow-Away, Dreamtime, Break-Through, For the
Love of Kate, Homeground and Under the Ivy. Of these,
The Newsletter was begun more than eight years ago, Homeground
before The Dreaming, and Under the Ivy following the release of Hounds
of Love. I'm not doubting you, Doug; but please let me know what
I'm missing!

>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.

This is just plain ridiculous. Complete nonsense. Sorry. Simply
stating that one work of art "has the capacity" to "affect people"
more "deeply" than another does nothing to clarify or support a
contention that one is better than another. All of the terms just
quoted are vague to the point of being meaningless, and more
damningly, they are all entirely subjective. If you hear something
that is "better" in The Dreaming than something in Hounds of Love,
then be specific -- point it out to us; then explain to us precisely
how it is that the former is endowed with greater affective power
than the latter. Next you bring up this business of "originality" again.
All art is "original". This is a meaningless term. There is a ton of
great but relatively "unoriginal" art in the world. And even more
highly "original" crap! What matters is whether it is GOOD or not.
If you seriously believe that novelty is the most important
criterion for the ascription of quality to a work of art, then you
are hopelessly mired in the modernist philosophy of our pathetic,
benighted century. Originality was certainly not a concern of
Bach, all of whose music is directly linked to the formal structures
of the music just preceding his; nor of Mozart, whose entire
oeuvre is a kind of vast extension of the classical formulae already
widely explored by Haydn before him. Yet both Bach and Mozart were
unquestionably "good" musicians. The point is that "originality"
is no more easily pinned down and defined than "quality" -- everyone's
work is "original" in one way or another. The term only acquires
meaning when an individual judge assigns SPECIFIC criteria for its
determination.

>*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.

Here you're getting somewhere, but IED is obliged to disagree with you.
In IED's opinion, what would happen if all but the most basic elements of
production were somehow stripped from The Dreaming is that the
gorgeous beauty of Kate's musical ideas would emerge -- a little
bare, perhaps, but alive and essentially unmaimed -- to reveal
their own kind of simple but lasting beauty. It is agreed that the
studio's presence as a musical element in The Dreaming is very
powerful; but it is unquestionably as powerful in Hounds of Love,
perhaps even moreso. Agreed that both records are enriched
immensely by their musical ideas' studio treatment; yet neither is
BASED on that treatment -- although if you want to see it that way,
The Ninth Wave probably depends more upon its production than anything
on The Dreaming; Kate herself has said that some of the "songs" in
The Ninth Wave are really only fragments.

>In fact, I'd say that the
>whole album *The Dreaming* is  flavoured with John Lennon's death.

The influence of "Number Nine Dream" is undeniable; that Lennon's
music in general was an influence, is not. In fact,
with the exception of that track (which is stylistically
very different from anything else on that album), the only clear
influence of Lennon on Kate Bush stems from his own influence within
The Beatles. As for The Dreaming being flavoured with Lennon's death,
this seems a very odd and far too specific interpretation.
What evidence is there to support such a reading?

>> 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.

This doesn't convince at all. Madonna is definitely junk, especially
the first batch of the stuff. That has nothing to do with whether it will
come to be remembered as representative of our era in music or not.
In fact, your faith that anything but the best of our age will be
remembered by future generations seems excessively optimistic.
It is far more likely that, since the cultural outlook for Western
civilization is worsening as surely and swiftly as its technological
sophistication is rising, future generations (should there be any) will
remember garbage like Madonna rather than music like The Dreaming,
the complexity and relative inaccessibility of which makes it a
true anachronism even in our age.


re: word spiral
IED will check the puzzle to see, and get back to you.