[Kevin C.: Kate-iff]

[Nancy Everson <everson@spca.bbn.com>]

Hi again everybody -

Kevin has written a rather lengthy letter in response to all of the things
he's been reading in Love-Hounds for the past few days.  

Andrew, Kevin did not read your Kate vs. Elvis posting before I sent his
"inflammatory" message on Friday evening - I get Love-Hounds in digest
form, and those two articles appeared in Saturday's digest.  I just wanted
to point that out, because you got so upset at him for not addressing
points you raised in something he hadn't read yet.

Personally, I care for neither violins nor banjos.  Give me an oboe, french
horn, or cello instead.

I think Kevin has generated some interesting debates, and I've been having
a lot of fun reading the postings this past week.

By the way, Happy Holidays to everyone out there!

					- nancy

nancy everson  (everson@spca.bbn.com)
bbn software products corporation, cambridge mass


----- Forwarded message # 1:

Date:     Tue, 23 Dec 86 17:09:50 EST
From:     Kevin C.
Subject:  Kate-iff

Okay, you Love-Hounds, here's my response to your responses:

>> I happen to think you {Kate} miss a few
>> times in Running Up That Hill, especially near the end when the
>> "other noises" come in; your usual adeptness at orchestration flags
>> there (Elvis wouldn't have missed on that one).  Anyhow, it was
>> okay.
>
>Seriously, though, Kevin... If, as IED assumes, you are referring to Elvis
>Costello, and you are comparing Kate Bush's voice unfavourably to his, then
>you still have something to learn about the basics of vocal style.

I'm afraid IUD has "made an ass out of u and me", since it is rather obvious
that my note refers specifically to the orchestration and _not_ the vocal
ability of these two singer-songwriter-performers.  His extended flame,
therefore, was rather irrelevant.  I still think the loud hook after "Let's
exchange the experience..." doesn't quite work for me (I have listened to it
at least six time now -- louder and louder...), although the other voice stuff
isn't as problematic to me now, at higher volumes...  One man's poison...

But, while we're on the subject of the voice, I may as well put in my two
cents worth.  Nobody would argue with the fact that Kate has a glorious vocal
instrument -- even to mention Elvis in the same paragraph, if you are
describing simply the facility of the voice, is absurd.  This is obvious.

But the fact is, a singer is not just a voice -- it is a voice put to a
certain use, a voice creating music in the service of the expression of
something.  If a "great singer" = "great voice" then nine-tenths of all the
singers of the world would have to hang it up as a lost cause.  It's like
saying a "great composer" = "great musician".  Or a "great musician" = "one
who makes a lot of money" (as the Immigration people seem to think...)

Now the whole reason we're talking here right now is that we all believe that
Kate uses her instrument with awesome dexterity to express some pretty
amazing and sublime things (actually, THIS is the answer to my original
question -- "why listen to Kate? why bother getting used to this new
initially-harsh-sounding and grating 'foreign language'-- i.e., her way of
communicating: her voice?"; IUD did not seem interested in answering this
question directly, but I have since figured out, almost on my own, that there
is actually an answer: "She has something to say.")

Sure, Kate has an amazing voice, but if she just used it to sing "You're
Having my Baby" backed by the King Family, we'd all barf!!  But no, Kate tries
to capture real experience.  And I would just like to say that Elvis, in his
own way and with an admittedly much more restricted instrument, does the same
thing -- Elvis has a few things to say and he says them well.  Of course, he
is much more mainstream and sells his soul occassionally, but that's one of
the things that make him interesting.  That tension, the tension of wanting to
really say something personal and deep but at the same time wanting to be
popular -- that's dynamite in the man's good songs.  And that's what _King of
America_ is all about.  And if you weren't so busy idolizing Kate, you'd know
that the very same themes she covers in "The Ninth Wave" are covered by Elvis
in his own way (and filtered through his own experiences) on _King of America_
and other songs (e.g., the amazing "I Want You") -- they're both talking about
THE THINGS YOU DO TO GET THROUGH SOMETHING HARD, to ENDURE.

>Despite frequent attempts to alter his vocal style and timbre, [Elvis]
>inevitably sounds like himself.... Never has Costello produced a vocal sound
>that transcended the narrow range of his ideosynchratic self.

This is what it means to be an artist -- to have the courage to "speak with
your own voice", metaphorically.  I don't see why sounding like yourself is
necessarily an argument against someone as a singer; in fact, I could see this
at the crux of an argument _against_ Kate: she only infrequently produces a
vocal sound that nakedly plumbs the depths of her own soul -- as opposed to
Cathy's soul, or the Organon son's soul, or the aborigine's soul...  (And the
word is "idiosyncratic", oh ye who cast the first stone...)

But enough talk of Elvis.

My point is that pure excellence of voice is neither sufficient nor essential
for a truly great singer-songwriter.  Dylan is great, but he can hardly sing
at all.  Tom Waits (sp.?) -- the man is a walking advertisement for the
ill-effects of taking Drano -- but he'll knock your socks off if you get into
his groove.  Consider the classical guys, too -- technically, Pavarotti is not
as good a singer as Placido Domingo, but the big guy still expresses the
essence of his arias with more punch than Placido can ever muster.  

And, to knock the "classicist's" argument all the way to infinity: if a
Stradivarius is so much more awesome than a drum, classically speaking, and
Kate is the quintessence of classical greatness, why doesn't Kate use violins
on all her songs instead of drums??  Huh?  (I'm being ironic and don't expect
an answer...)

>Where shrillness occurs in Kate's singing, it is because shrillness is applied
>by Kate deliberately to specific notes, phrases and songs in order to express
>the emotional content that is appropriate for the music. But her vocal
>instrument is self-LESS -- it is timeless and perfect.

I agree about the shrillness -- but in many cases you can't tell that it's in
the service of some emotional content until you've listened a few times and
acclimated yourself to the milieu and, especially, made out some of the words.
Before you've done that, it just sounds like little-girl whining.  (This is
the answer to another question of mine.) But as for Kate's instrument being
self-LESS, you'll have to explain THAT one again. (Maybe this is what I mean
later about Kate being Shakesperean...)

> ...[the Stradivarius has been] honed to a level of finish that defies the
> mundane plane of our mortal existence; the [banjo] is a crude, innately
> vulgar contraption fashioned over a few years of rustic sub-culture

This whole analysis makes presumptions about the nature of Culture and Art
that are extremely problematic.  As if Real Life were somehow inadequate, a
thing to be "transcended", "escaped from"!  For all I know, the violin was
developed by random street musicians in a "rustic sub-culture" of old Italy.
Ancient Greece was a rustic sub-culture.  Jesus came out of a cultural
backwater.  The Renaissance and the Exploration of the New World were all
funded by the banking communities of a few opportunistic (and very bumpkinish)
Mediterranean city-states.  Dostoyevski and Tolstoy wrote in a peasant-based
agrarian kingdom.  The United States developed out of a collection of social
misfits and rustics into the most influential "Culture" of our era: mass
culture.

The Culture you refer to, IUD, is a small thing in world history.  It is an
ASIDE (some would say that it is the aside that justifies all the rest, but it
is still a tiny "sub-culture").  [I was going to get _really_ ad hominem here,
but I stopped myself.]

Anyway, get off your elitist hobby-horse.  It is this attitude -- the "I know
worthwhile culture and you don't" attitude -- that prevents people from coming
over to Kate in the first place.  What good is Kate to anyone who knows that
"the important culture is the culture I share with my fellow Americans --
rock-and-roll"?  That person, with that attitude, is going to find Kate
value-less, just as that same person will pass over jazz and classical-music
stations as so much white noise when trying to find something to listen to on
the radio.

Actually, I should point out that the one element that most prevents me from
wholeheartedly enjoying Kate now is the adament asinine flaming of her fans.
I finally read the Kate interviews (the one that |>oug did, and the French one
that IUD translated): Kate is awesome!  But you guys -- you oughta be ashamed
of yourselves.  She shows you up at every turn for the wimpy, inexperienced
mutts you are.  Fortunately, she makes up for the pack of you lovehounds and
your pointless inexperienced baying.  [oops, a little too strident there, Kev,
back off...]


Anyhow, Kate is like Shakespeare: she borrows all her plots and makes
beautiful music out of them that touches us deep deep down.

But I don't feel like I know Kate herself, what SHE feels, and I find that
troublesome.  Is she a great "artist", after all?  Can someone be a great
artist without baring her soul?  (For example, a friend of mine finds
Beethoven awesome, but finds Mozart kind of boring because, in spite of the
indisputable excellence of the Wolf-man, my friend finds that Mozart did not
put his soul on the line in most of his music, while Beethoven always did.)

Of course, Kate moves me, Mozart moves me, Shakespeare moves me -- but Dylan
moves me, Neil Young moves me, Elvis moves me -- even Elvis Presley moves me,
sometimes -- Christ, the Carpenters can get a rise out of me sometimes!  So
what, after all, are we talking about here?  What makes Kate special?

Of course, I know what Cathy feels towards Heathcliff, I know what the son in
Organon feels, and I suppose that I actually also get some sense of what Kate
cares about, what she's scared of, in "Running Up That Hill" and "Hounds of
Love".  But how much of that is her and how much is me?  And does any of that
matter?

--"Kevo"


P.S., Thanks to all who responded to my queries about how one comes to know
Kate (W. Lefebvre, Jon Drukman, "Joe Slime", |>oug, and Andrew, among others)

P.S., I didn't mean to focus so much on IUD's comments, but they were
certainly the most irritating -- although, unlike Kate's voice, IUD's comments
do not win one over on repeated listenings, they simply continue to
irritate...

P.P.S., Why _do_ you refer to yourself in the third person, Andrew?  Don't
duck the question this time by apologizing again -- just answer it, please, if
you would: _why_?  _what do these silly letters stand for_, and, more to the
point, _why do you use them_? and _why in the third person_?  (I realize that
they're part of your login name, but that still doesn't explain _why_ you use
them.)

----- End of forwarded messages