Re: Dealing with detraKTion

[William LeFebvre <phil@rice.edu>]

Well, it seems this friend of yours has already started coming around,
but I'll put in my 2 cents worth anyway.

I too found Kate's voice grating at first.  "Screechy" and "shrill" are
very accurate descriptions of how I felt about her voice (note the
wording here---that is not how I would describe her voice NOW, but
there was a time when...).  But those were the days when I never really
listened to the songs.  I just overheard other people around me playing
her stuff and I never really sat down to listen to it myself.  Then I
borrowed a friend's copy of _The_Kick_Inside_ and listened to it.  "The
Man with the Child in His Eyes" quite simply blew me away!  I wanted to
listen to that song over and over again.  I thought it was one of the
most beautiful and artistic songs ever written and performed.  At that
point I knew what potential Kate has as a singer and composer.  Then I
let the disc continue on into "Wuthering Heights".  And I stopped to
listen to the technique, the mechanics of the song as well as the other
things.  And I was blown away again.  What a magnificent voice range!

Now as I think about it and as I listen to more of her work, I begin to
realize what it was that initially made me dislike her voice.  It's her
falsetto "child-like" voice that she occasionally shifts in to.  She
does it well, but I guess it sounds too much like a child singing.  I
know it's supposed to sound that way, and as I said, she does it well.
And it's not just the falsetto that bothered me, it was the changing
from normal to the upper range:  the inevitable "whooping" up the
octaves that sounded so much like wailing and screeching.  She doesn't
do that at all in "...Child in His Eyes", and although she uses the
falsetto in "Wuthering Heights", she doesn't "whoop" much.  If this is
the same thing that bothers your friend, then I bet he would not be
bothered (and might even like) _Hounds_of_Love_.  That is certainly a
wonderfully artistic disc that does an excellent job of showing off
Kate's talent.  And of course there are the two songs I have already
mentioned.

It's to the point now that I don't even know, from an aethetic
standpoint, why her voice bothered me before.  Maybe I got used to it.
Maybe I was so overwhelmed by her talent that I was able to ignore that
facet of Kate.  Or maybe I began to see the artistic reasons that she
used that quality of her voice.  It is, after all, one of the things
that makes her KaTe.

One thing is certain:  she is a far better composer, musician, and
performer than any of the stuff that gets played on your standard
American pop-top 40 station!  And she is certainly one of the best
all-time musicians.  Isn't it funny how all of today's really excellent
musicians and composers never get air time?  Peter Gabriel had to
resort to something as low as "Sledgehammer" to get his stuff on the
air, and really all they ever play is that one tune.  What a shame.
The only stations that will play the really good stuff are
non-commercial stations---college and the like---because they don't
have to answer to anyone but themselves.

But then I guess that through the years none of the good musicians were
ever appreciated until they were dead.

			William LeFebvre
			Department of Computer Science
			Rice University
			<phil@Rice.edu>