KATE-CHISM REBORN

[IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU]

Let IED apologize again to Blore (and to any others who may have felt the
ugly sting of Andrew's temper, which tends to rise at intervals in
response to the goadings of more dispassionate admirers of Kate).
The ad hominem remarks were uncalled for, this cannot be denied.
Henceforth let IED confine himself as well as he is able to the
matters at hand.

>The term "over-produced," to me, indicates a piece of music which
>has had too much production done to it.

Words fail IED in the face of such a powerful argument!

>In other words, something that
>would have sounded better with less production.

Blore, don't you see how empty these comments are? "Production"
is a GENERAL term -- there's production and there's production,
it's not a SPECIFIC THING! You seem to be visualizing "production" as
some kind of sandwich spread: an "over-produced" record
is like a hotdog with too much mustard! The point is,
production is about as vague a term as any in modern music,
and The Dreaming offers perfect proof that a HEAVILY produced record
need not be an OVER-produced record.

>At any rate, "Hounds of Love," to me, exhibits not necessarily
>less painstaking production but rather a level of production which is
>more in line with (what I would consider to be) the optimum amount
>for the material involved.

The problem is, Blore, that Hounds of Love is MORE heavily produced
than The Dreaming!

>>IED is relatively confident that The Ninth Wave is the most
>>elaborately processed popular recording ever made.

>     I'm afraid I don't share IED's confidence on this matter.  I would
>point to Mannheim Steamroller (although I don't enjoy their pretentious
>pseudo-classical muzak), early Alan Parsons Project (surely those syn-
>thesized human voices took a lot of processing in 1977), or, to really
>zero in on the "pop" in "popular," Queen (the multi-tracked vocals on
>"Bohemian Rhapsody" and the choir effects on "Somebody to Love" stand
>out as examples of an optimum level of production).

This issue can be considered in the context of Billy Green's recent
posting about "Hounds of Love" and "Curse of the Demon":

The connection between "Hounds of Love" and
"Curse of the Demon" has been noticed before, most
memorably by Dave Cross, who presented a home-made video
to the song at the 1985 convention which included scenes
from the movie.
The really amazing thing about the
quotation from the film ("It's coming...It's in the trees!")
is that, despite the almost
perfect likeness of Kate's version to
the original, Kate's is NOT lifted from the
film. John Carder Bush has said that the
bit of dialogue at the beginning of
"Hounds of Love" is not the original,
but a re-creation.

This will give you an idea of the level of production Kate achieves
with Hounds of Love. IED could cite dozens more such instances to show
that Hounds of Love is arguably the most highly processed
popular record ever made. The comparison which
"Blore" makes to early Alan Parsons and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is
pretty much what IED expected. Such a comparison is
misguided: a distinction has to be made between
overt, flamboyant and obvious alterations in the recorded music and
SUBTLY, DECEPTIVELY altered sound.
Certainly there are moments where the production becomes the
most striking aspect of Kate's music on Hounds of Love (the
most obvious example is the "scatter-voice" effect in "Waking
the Witch"), but these are only the surface effects of production.
It is the alternative style of production referred to above --
production burnished to an almost supernatural lustre, yet still
containing an infinite number of enigmatic details -- that
characterizes Hounds of Love.

>First of all, I never said that complexity is the same thing as
>over-embellishment.  Over-embellishment, much like over-production,
>is a result of not knowing when a song is done and continuing to add
>things to it.

The problem is that you still seem to be confusing the complexity of
Kate's sound constructions with "over-embellishment".
The two phenomena are entirely dissimilar.

>Take a listen to "And Dream of Sheep"--one of the
>best cuts on the album.  No balalaikas, no pan-flute, no digerido,
>in short (and to avoid any further misspellings of words not found
>in "spell") a nice little un-embellished song.

Blore, it's YOU who should take a listen to "And Dream of Sheep"!
Really LISTEN to it! "A nice little un-embellished song" -- it is
NONE OF THESE THINGS. It's not "nice", it's not "little", it's
certainly not "un-embellished" -- hell, it's not even strictly
speaking a "song"!

You are demonstrating what IED feels is an all too common tendency
among many relatively casual fans of Hounds of Love: namely, a
tendency to consider Kate's conception of music in the same context
as CONVENTIONAL popular music. Because "And Dream of Sheep" seems,
on the surface, to fit in nicely with listeners' preconceptions about
what is right and proper in pop music (e.g., it takes the form of a
ballad, it follows a relatively simple
and easily accessible chord progression, it features Kate
at her piano  -- HOW nice and comfy!), listeners who look for
this kind of familiar territory are bound to see the music that follows
"And Dream of Sheep" as a kind of huge mistake -- "over-produced"
-- in other words, they are bound to miss the point.
"And Dream of Sheep" is the introduction, the preamble, the set-up,
the overture to the Ninth Wave. The song has no ending. At least
a dozen things are happening in the music at the same time that
Kate and the piano are "performing" the "song". And these elements are
a CRUCIAL part of the overall piece: they make no sense outside of the
context of The Ninth Wave as a whole.

Then Doug writes:

>The production on *The Dreaming* is better than on *Hounds of Love*.

OH, BOLLOCKS! (sorry)

>The production on *HoL* also adds detail and complexity, but it also
>is used for commercial slickness.

THIS IS QUITE SIMPLY UNTRUE, AND FURTHERMORE DOUG KNOWS IT'S UNTRUE.

>It has less detail, and therefore, there being less of interest.

How eloquently put! The only problem with Doug's great idea being
that Hounds of Love has MORE DETAIL than The Dreaming, NOT LESS!!!!

>Hounds of Love also isn't as good in terms
>of fidelity as *The Dreaming*.

Fidelity to what?
Another unclear, unfounded and entirely subjective remark.

>Parts of Hounds of Love
>I also don't find as interesting musically.  HoL has more harmony and
>less counterpoint than *The Dreaming*.  Counterpoint is better than
>harmony.  Baroque music and Stravinsky are better than Classical music
>for this reason.

This is all a big joke, right, Doug? You're not serious, are you?
Because if you're serious, well...you'd just have to be joking.
Of all the ridiculous ideas in the world! Counterpoint is
"BETTER" than harmony!?! Stravinsky "BETTER" than -- than
"Classical music"?! -- Do you mean the WHOLE corpus of Western
music from Haydn through Rachmaninov, including Mozart, Beethoven,
Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler,
Debussy, etc., etc. -- !?  Simply because the former explored
one aspect of musical construction in a new way, and the latter
was more often harmonically based?  This has got to be the silliest
idea ever posted in Love-Hounds, Doug.
(Anyway, if you're so sold on the contrapuntal in music, why
isn't your favorite Kate Bush track "The Morning Fog", her
most complex piece of non-linear composition to date?)

>> Beyond that, Hounds of Love is OBVIOUSLY MORE painstakingly
>> produced than The Dreaming, NOT LESS SO!

>Says who???

Actually, says KATE, Doug! It's Kate who has said that
she didn't have the kind of studio time she would have
liked to have had while making The Dreaming, and that
the most important new factor in her studio work since
The Dreaming was the availability of unlimited production
time in her own studio. IED strongly suspects that those
"rough edges" which you praise all the time would probably have
been honed down and brought to the same kind of multi-faceted finish
as Hounds of Love, had Kate had the time and facilities she wanted.

>Then again, take a listen to "Jig of Life" and "Waking the Witch", the
>best cuts on the album: dijeridu, uillean pipes, fiddles, synth
>guitar, pitch-shifted distorted vocals, helicopters, etc.  Quality
>comes in many forms.

Yes, many forms besides just "Jig of Life" and "Waking the Witch"!
Why on Earth are these two particular tracks to be singled out as
"the best"?! With this posting Doug breaks all records for the
presentation of subjective opinions as facts.

>>I am surprised that IED (in his usual pseudo-intellectual fog)
>>chose to believe the term was derrived (sic) from gaffer. Any
>>self-respecting symbologist would have more lucidly chosen the word
>>gaffe which refers to social blunder and the following of such
>>(get it, feet of mud, sentementality (sic) or remorse,
>>suspension in Gaffa).
>>           John

>But "Suspended in Gaffa" isn't about "remorse".  In any case, IED didn't
>make up the bit about gaffer's tape.  That's what Kate has said.

>            >oug

>>I don't know why I'm responding

IED doesn't, either, John. The reference to the French word for
mistake ("gaffe") was posed to Kate a very long time ago (since
it is the most OBVIOUS of possible references), but Kate obliquely
indicated that there was more to it than that. She does, however,
seem more or less to have acknowledged the validity of the gaffer tape
interpretation. You'll notice that Doug has backed IED up on this one,
so although he may be in a fog, at least this time it's not a
"pseudo-intellectual" one (though how intellectuality, pseudo- or
otherwise, seems to have got blamed for a simple explanation of
fact is beyond IED's crude powers of reasoning).

>  But what if, in adding all this detail, the result is to ruin a good
>song?  There is a point beyond which any further additions will serve
>only to clutter up the mix, and not make the song sound any better.

Not again! Your fundamental mistake is in looking at
Kate Bush's music as simply a collection of "songs". The idea
is preposterous! As Doug has said several times, the production
IS the music!

>>With significantly less production, *The Dreaming*
>>wouldn't be *The Dreaming*.

>No, but it might be a better album.

OK, then, Average Guy, you're so sure that Kate's music is
"over-produced", IED dares you to point out even one
sound in The Dreaming that's unnecessary. JUST ONE.

re: Peter Lee and Bill Nelson

>My opinion of "Living For The Spangled Moment" (the mini-LP of those
>songs that didn't make the final cut of GTHGA) has risen considerably with
>with repeated listenings.  If you spot it and like Bill Nelson, I'd
>say it's well worth the price of a 12" for the 7 songs...

>                                      -Peter

IED apologizes, then, Peter, and withdraws his earlier comments.
Thanks for the info. Glad to hear that you're coming round
to the "Spangled Moment", though.