the KeTtle whistles -- "too-lee-ay, too-lee-o..."

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

>     Wheee!  New Kate!  Now let's just hope it doesn't get blocked from
>US release by some nasty record company...
>                                               -Peter

To answer this question, IED has been assured by a rep for
EMI-America that The Whole Story is slated for domestic
release November 14. No word on the single, though my
source thought it would likely be released about the same time here.
No clear plans in the US, if any, to release
The Single File in NTSC. If such plans still exist,
they will likely be long in coming to fruition now, since
Kate will still be editing the film for "Experiment IV" on November 9,
according to Pete Morris.

Kate WILL appear in Peter Gabriel's video for "Don't Give Up".

After considerable time wasted with the UC library computers,
IED has given up searching for possible sources for Kate's
latest subject, the use of sound as a weapon. If there was
a real "Experiment IV", she'll have to give us more of a clue
than the name. The Experiment that IED was associating with
the Nazis was "Experiment E", altogether different.
Somehow it seems unlikely that MM is accurately identifying
the source as a futuristic idea of Kate's. IED still thinks
the source is probably some movie or TV show in which the
Experiment was carried out. Anybody got an idea?

The Whole Story will be a gatefold LP, with a black and white photo
of Kate on the front cover, and color photos on the inside. The
singles NOT included are: Hammer Horror, December Will Be Magic Again,
There Goes a Tenner, Suspended in Gaffa (not a UK release to begin with),
and the Big Sky (too recently released, IED supposes). All other UK
single a-sides are included. No clue what NME had in mind when referring
to "hits and bits".

Now to return our Guy's latest thrown gauntlet, as politely as possible.

>Why shouldn't I be able to make a judgment after hearing it once,
>or twice, or (in Doug's case) half a dozen times? I make decisions
>about music, books, movies, etc. all the time, usually based on only
>one listening/reading/viewing/whatever. Do I have to own a videocassette
>of "Runaway Train" and have watched it every day for the past three
>months before I can voice my opinion?  No, I don't think so, and I
>also don't think you can show that a record album is any
>different from a movie in this regard.
> This, by the way, is exactly the reaction I expected.
>How about responding to the meat of my argument?

>Steve "Blore" Howard, Average Guy

The fact that you make judgments based on insufficient
understanding "all the time" does not constitute a
justification for doing so, Average.

Whether "Runaway Train" can be fairly judged after one
viewing or not depends upon both the knowledge and
experience of the viewer, and the nature of the film.
The same is true in judging anything, whether it be
a film, a record, or a building. First you have to
know what you're talking about, second you have to
apply standards of judgment that are appropriate for
the subject in question.

Example:
A new skyscraper is completed downtown. The building is generally
liked by the public. A successful architect
points out that the vaulting on the ground floor is
inelegant and possibly unsafe, and judges the building
harshly as a result. Clearly the architect is right,
and the fact that the lay public disagree is irrelevant.
Why? Because the public's experience of skyscrapers,
although possibly considerable, is for the most part
superficial and untrained, whereas the architect's
experience of skyscrapers is technically and aesthetically
informed.
The notion that "anybody can judge art", and that
anyone's judgment is as valid as anyone else's, is
entirely invalid.

Now, before you take all this personally, let it be said
that IED does not doubt that Blore has listened to a great
deal of what he is so fond of labeling "conventional pop music".
In the present case, however, Guy, you have chosen a revolutionary
record -- a record unlike virtually any other recorded
piece of music in history, one which defies all previous
standards of judging "popular music" -- and you have passed an
uninformed judgment on it without having listened to it
long enough even to BEGIN to hear the subtleties involved.
NATURALLY you find it wanting! YOU HAVEN'T LISTENED TO IT YET!

But since you insist, let's look (BRIEFLY) at the
"meat" (mostly fat and gristle, Blore) of your argument.

>But if it's indistinguishable from the original (or at least
>indistinguishable
>without electronic testing), why bother?  Why not lift the dialogue
>from the film soundtrack?  There're other "borrowed" sounds on the record
>-- the helicopter from Pink Floyd, for one.

That's a valid point. IED supposes the explanation of this particular
puzzle has to do with copyrights. The reason the example was given
was to show how much more sophisticated are Kate's
production techniques than those of "Alan Parsons" or "Queen".
In this respect, the example serves perfectly.
A similar example would be the men's choral passage in "Hello Earth".
In this case Kate contracted the choral director of the London Symphony
Orchestra and a successful contemporary British composer of conventional
orchestral music to help re-create a piece heard in the film "Nosferatu"
note for note, retaining every vocal texture and nuance of phrasing
heard in the original -- but adapted, in the most understated ways
imaginable, to the context of the song "Hello Earth". The changes
are far subtler than anything ever heard on a popular record before,
and in this case the motivation both for the fidelity to the
model and the alterations made are clearly aesthetic in nature, and
deeply personal to Kate.

>What's the point?  If the alteration is so subtle that the listener
>can't tell the difference, why make the alteration at all?

It depends on the listener, doesn't it? As for the reasons, as
admitted above, these are not always clear. Perhaps sometimes
the reasons are prosaic (copyright problems, etc.), and in
other cases -- as with the chorus in "Hello Earth" -- Kate's
own technical and artistic standards simply demand that the
reproduction of the experience which originally moved her be
as faithful as possible, while at the same time adapting to
its new musical surroundings.

>But a complex song that doesn't sound good is not better than a
>simple song that does.

Obviously this is true. The mistake is in implying that Kate's
"complex songs" don't "sound good". They do!

>There are songs--virtually all of The Dreaming--
>probably which would sound better if they were less complex.

"Better"? Is this an objective judgment?

If they were "less complex", they would certainly sound different.
They would sound -- simpler! Easier. Perhaps this is what you'd like.
IED disagrees with Doug about this, since Doug feels that without
their production they would be too simple to hold interest, and IED
thinks their essential value IS in their basic melodic, harmonic
and structural beauty. But one thing is clear -- the qualities
of The Dreaming which make it the subject of such heated controversy
are qualities of production, not of the conventional musical elements.
Those who would PREFER the conventional musical bases of the
pieces on The Dreaming to the finished, highly produced
recordings that Kate finally released -- they are the listeners
who prefer just that: CONVENTIONAL music.

>See, this is why nobody on net.music likes you guys.

Hey, that's not fair to the other L-Hs -- or to the rest of the net.
music-ers, either, for that matter. IED is sure they can
speak for themselves, and they almost certainly don't like being bunched
with IED! Speaking entirely for himself, then, IED
will say that as far as he can tell, Blore doesn't
like IED's opinions because they differ from his own, and because
he's having trouble finding a rational means of contesting them.

>Of course I can
>consider Kate Bush in the same context as conventional popular music,
>because her music _is_ conventional popular music.

You keep trying to call an apple an orange. Your argument
is not substantially strengthened by simply affirming its
validity. If you're so confident that Kate's music IS conventional,
demonstrate how.

>And even if it's not ---

Ahh! So you're NOT really so confident, eh?

>--- it still has to meet the same criteria for popular (and even
>Doug Alan admits it's pop) music:  it has to sound good.

But if you just got through admitting the possibility that it
might NOT be conventional, then why should it still have
to be judged by conventional means? This is completely
unreasonable. And then once again we come back to the
term "sounds good". The Dreaming DOES "sound good"! A meaningless term.
And whether Doug Alan admits this or not, it simply doesn't
follow that all "popular music" HAS to "sound good" to BE good.
The point is, "sounding good" is a relative term: Beethoven
didn't, as a rule, "sound good" to the Vienna public of ca. 1810.
Nowadays, a larger number of people feel that
Beethoven does "sound good". If it DOESN'T sound good to YOU,
does that mean you are correct in saying that it's not good music?
The same goes for "popular" music. If the primary basis for
according value to a piece of popular music were every average
listener's feeling that it "sounded good", what would we be
left with? That can be answered easily: since that is the
method by which records reach the top forty charts, take a look
at what your standard of judgment would leave us with:
Whitney Houston, Phil Collins, Lionel Ritchie, and that's about it.
I assume that these are not your ideals of popular music, and IED
ventures to suggest that they are not those of the Love-Hounds in
general. Therefore, even you, Blore, must be applying some other
criterion besides "it sounds good", or "it's entertaining" --
which brings us to your next winning line:

>Pop music is, after all, entertainment.  If the listener is not
>entertained, or emotionally moved in some way to enjoy the song
>then the song has failed to achieve its purpose: entertainment.

But you're contradicting yourself in the same sentence. Since
when has the verb "to entertain" become synonymous with being
"emotionally moved in some way"? The latter criterion implies
pretty much the opposite of what you've been trying to say:
bland terms like "sounds good" and "entertainment"
are a far cry from the entire range of human emotion. Besides,
all you can fairly say is that The Dreaming fails to entertain
or "emotionally move" YOU.

>And why not look at it as a collection of songs?  That's what it is.

My point all along has been not to deny that Kate writes songs,
but to remind you that her RECORDS are not SIMPLY "collections
of songs". There are frequently (although not always) songs
at the root of Kate's music, but on top of that root she grows a
massive redwood tree of PRODUCTION -- production which is
indispensible to the general effect, appearance and success of
her art. And thank God it doesn't all "sound good"!