Just a couple of words from your favorite set of initials...

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

Before beginning his response to the latest
message forwarded to us by Nancy, IED would
like to get it straight who is saying what.
Apparently a guy named Kevin is writing through
the agency of Nancy; and another guy named
Slime is writing through the agency of a third
guy named Kyle. The problem is that
since both Kevin and Slime have been making
a very large number of silly remarks recently,
and since they seem to be supporting
each other's positions, both they and IED have tended to lose
sight of their individuality. For his part, IED apologizes
now, since he is likely to continue confusing the remarks of
Kevin with those of Slime until such time as one or the
other starts making a comparably larger degree of sense.
It should be pointed out here that "Kevin" has, himself, been
mistaking IED's responses to "Mr. Slime" for answers to his
own flames, as in this case:

>>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.

Kevin, you were apparently unaware that IED was answering the following:

>OK, I have a question for you, which is a more versitile instrument?
>
>    a) a guitar
>    b) a drum
>
>The answer in my opinion is very dependent on what one values in an instrument
>and one's personal cultural experiences.  Are you going to tell me that the
>only valid way to evaluate these instruments/voices is relative to Classical
>European culture?  Take a few moments to consider before you answer.
>
>Now, think about Kate VS. Elvis.
>
>-- Joe Slime

Although IED admits that Mr. Slime's remarks on this
subject were less than sensational, it doesn't seem
too much to expect that Kevin would notice the name of
the author to whom IED's response was addressed, and
realize that not everything IED writes need be directed
at Kevin himself to be relevant to the general discussion.

Next, IED has another apology to make,
that in regard to his denigration of others'
writing ability. IED did spell "ideosyncratic"
incorrectly, and has been made to see how unfair
his remarks were. (Of course, if you really want to start counting...)

>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...

This is fine. As long as you say it doesn't work four YOU, IED
has no objection at all. The problem is when you conclude that
the flaws are real, and not merely a function of your own taste.

>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.

The point was that it wasn't obvious to Mr. Slime, Kevin. IED is very
happy to see that there is agreement on this point.

>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.

This is exactly what IED has been saying! His whole point has been
that Kate's voice is not characterized by shrillness (for example),
or by high pitch, or by roughness or preciousness or any other
clear, recognizable quality of sound or timbre -- at least, it is
not usually so characterized. Instead, it is Kate's MUSIC which
determines the character of the voice in any given passage.
How you derived from this point the idea that IED had equated a
"great singer" with a "great voice" is altogether mysterious.
This was, in fact, precisely the distinction he was making himself.

>Or a "great musician" = "one
>who makes a lot of money" (as the Immigration people seem to think...)

God knows WHAT this is in reference to. If you want to talk about
making relevant points, Kevin...

>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.")

IED's mistake was genuine here, Kevin, sorry. The reason he was
so confused by the above remarks is that he interpreted your
questions as rhetorical: it seemed to him that you wanted
us to agree that the answer to your question "Why listen to Kate?"
was "We shouldn't;" but apparently you actually do think she's
worth listening to. So what's the big issue here, then?

>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!!

Speak for yourself, Kevin. It sounds like an intriguing session to IED.

>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.

Yes, but look, you could say the same thing about dozens of
current musicians. The point is, given the vagueness of your
analogy ("having something {real} to say"), there is no reason
to narrow down the list to just Costello.
Kate and Costello may share this one characteristic, but so what?
You could argue by the same token that Kate is like Springsteen,
for chrissake! What IED is saying here is that the differences between
Kate and Costello are so much greater than their points in common, that
attempts to associate one with the other are ludicrous.

>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.

The same objection here, too. OK, so Costello has covered the
same general theme that Kate covers in The Ninth Wave. If you
have to reduce the specificity of your modifiers to such a degree
in order to find a kinship between one artist and another, why
bother? The theme of enduring hardship (and the effects which that
hardship may have on the human spirit or psyche) is so common in
art and literature that it's meaningless to say that two artists
who may have explored this theme are somehow "comparable".
It's not the theme that makes The Ninth Wave great, just as
the theme of "The King of America" does not redeem Costello's
music from its own essential conventionality. We're talking about
music, not just the general theme.

>This is what it means to be an artist -- to have the courage to "speak with
>your own voice", metaphorically.

What do you mean, "this is what it means to be an artist"?!
Says who? Why on earth should "being an artist" demand that one
be self-absorbed? This is nonsense, and is an idea that has gained
popularity only within the last century. As IED sees it, speaking with
one's own voice is by no stretch of the imagination an act of "courage".
What Kate does is far more dynamic and challenging a task for the
artist, more healthy for the artistic process, and more consistently
interesting than any of the five hundred run-of-the-million
so-called artists whose only real subject is their own pathetic,
smarmy narcissism. This is related to what IED meant (and said) by the
statement that her voice is self-less: it, like her whole artistic
make-up, is a kind of blank slate. She does not allow the creative
process to be trivialized by self-aggrandizing obsessions. Instead, she
expands the scope of her art through an absorption of and reaction to
subjects outside herself.

>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...

There is nothing wrong with sounding like oneself, of course. (And
incidentally, IED didn't mean to give the impression that he thought
Kate's own voice was unidentifiable; only that it approximated, more
closely than most currently popular voices, a kind of basic, anonymous
mezzo-soprano vocal timbre.) But if you remember, the context in
which this whole discussion arose was the relative "versatility" of
voices and instruments. Obviously, some voices are naturally
moving in and of themselves, and that's fine. But the idea that
if an artist doesn't confine his voice to its plainest and least
interpretive or creative range, he is not truly
"plumbing the depths" of the soul -- that is utterly absurd!
You have expressed two related ideas now, Kevin: first, that the
best artists focus on themselves as subject; and second, that
singers whose vocal style changes in relation to the music they
are singing are inferior to those who somehow
stay "true" to a personal style of singing that was evolved
out of some kind of "natural" process. Just how wrongheaded and
shortsighted are these assertions? Well, just imagine:
one would have to conclude, from these standards, that Rembrandt
was a more profound artist than Cezanne because the former
painted many more self-portraits than still-lifes, and the latter
more still-lifes than self-portraits; that
landscape painting, or fantasy illustration, or science fiction
writing, or newsbroadcasting, or any of literally thousands of
forms of human creative enterprise, are somehow inferior to
those forms which allow for the maximum of self-criticism,
self-absorption, and basic navel-contemplation. Don't get IED wrong:
he isn't saying that self-directed creativity is less worthy
than outwardly directed creativity. Not at all. The point is,
it's not the theme or the subject that allows for the infusion of
depth of personality into art; rather, it's the talent, seriousness,
sincerity and taste of the artist that makes art profound or shallow.

>But enough talk of Elvis.

At last you and IED agree!

>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.

First of all, IED hasn't been saying that Kate's voice is
innately "excellent", only that it is, in itself, rather
characterless. By the same token, it's not the roughness or
hoarseness or dullness of Dylan's or Waits's voice that limits
their vocal ability, it's their predictable interpretive styles.
(In fact, however, IED wouldn't have named Waits in this context,
since his style of delivery has changed radically over the years,
and even Dylan has shown some degree of versatility.)

Look, no-one ever said that Costello, or Dylan, or Waits weren't
talented artists. All that was said was that their vocal styles were
somewhat limited. On that there is accord. IED will even agree that,
within the boundaries of their respective ranges of artistic
expression, each of those musicians has created an impressively
large and interesting oeuvre.

Kate has never covered a song by any of these people, but she
did re-record Donovan's "Lord of the Reedy River", and since
Donovan, as a singer-songwriter who uses a more or less conventional
musical vocabulary, has a great deal more in common
with Dylan, Waits and Costello than Kate has, his song will serve as a
good example of the kind of amplification of expression that Kate
can bring to that genre of music. In the case of Donovan's original
recording, we had a beautiful melody  with a multi-faceted lyric,
performed by a man with a relatively attractive and expressive but
stylistically unchanging (or nearly unchanging) voice, accompanied
by an acoustic guitar. This is no small achievement in itself,
and IED, for one, has nothing bad to say about it.

But then Kate Bush heard that song, and, without deleting an iota
of its original meaning or beauty, transformed it into something
much, much larger than its original creator could ever have dreamed
possible. Kate's version of "Lord of the Reedy River" may not be
"better" than the original by Donovan; but it is immeasurably
more complex and sophisticated. Those who prefer the original are
welcome to their preference -- but their choice reveals the limits
of their taste and aesthetic sensibility. Now, as strong and effective
as Dylan's, Waits's and Costello's music is, there can be little doubt
that a cover of any of their songs by Kate Bush would produce a far more
dynamic, more intricate, more refined and more challenging result than
the original composers could ever have created themselves.

This is, admittedly, a more or less
elitist view of art; Whistler was an elitist, too, and IED would
far rather share Whistler's view than Joe Public's. As democratic
and fair-minded as it may be to insist that everyone's taste
is equally valid, it has never been true.

>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.

This point has already been answered, but let's have it on the
record that the above statement is extremely debatable. In IED's
opinion, neither of these singers is really top-of-the-line
(just listen to Bonisolli or Bergonzi, just to mention relatively
recent singers),
but if anything, Pavarotti's technique is superior to that of
Domingo. As for the actual beauty of their instruments, it's
really a matter of taste.

>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...)

IED would appreciate the irony more if you could for once read what's
actually being posted in this forum. The likeness was between a
Stradivarius and a banjo -- another, but far cruder, STRINGED
instrument -- not between a violin and a drum. These are, as
someone pointed out just today, obviously apples and oranges.

>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.

But why is this bad? The idea that something has to sound pleasing
to the ear the very first time it is heard in order to be good is
absurd. It is a testament to the richness of Kate's singing that
it has to be listened to carefully and often to be appreciated.

>But as for Kate's instrument being
>self-LESS, you'll have to explain THAT one again.

OK, further explanation has been supplied above, although it
hardly seemed to be a difficult point to grasp the first time
it was posted. If you recall, Doug paraphrased it succinctly
and accurately the first time you were confused.

>For all I know, the violin was
>developed by random street musicians in a "rustic sub-culture" of old Italy.

Well, it's wise of you to qualify your contention like that.
The violin began as a crude instrument, yes. The Stradivarius and
its kind were, however, the product of more than three centuries of
refinement. Don't you get this elementary point yet!?

>Ancient Greece was a rustic sub-culture.

Again, Greece BEGAN as an unsophisticated society. It BECAME
one of the most highly civilized societies in human history.
THIS IS SO OBVIOUS!

>Jesus came out of a cultural backwater.

Oh, Jesus!

>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.

Look, this is utterly false. Describing the Este, Medici
and Borgia families (for example) as "bumpkins" reveals an astonishing
ignorance on your part.

>The United States developed out of a collection of social
>misfits and rustics into the most influential "Culture" of our era: mass
>culture.

The fact that even you put the word in quotes in this case
demonstrates exactly the point that IED has been making all
this time. The United States IS a recent phenomenon, and its
art has been, for the most part, crude and vulgar. The fact
that American art and entertainment has proliferated
throughout the world doesn't raise the status of that art;
quite the contrary, actually.

>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.]

Although the artistic achievement of Western civilization is
certainly not supreme (and IED has never said it was), it is
a gross overstatement to call it a mere "aside" in world history.
There have been other, non-Western cultural achievements,
of course; but it is just as wrong to say that they are more
important in the history of art than those of the west, as it
is to say that they are less important.

>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.

Why is elitism a hobby-horse, and populism is not?
Anyway, IED did not say that he, personally, "knew worthwhile culture,"
as you put it. He did, however, present a well illustrated argument
for the superior sophistication, variety and versatility of Kate Bush's
art.

>What good is Kate to anyone who knows that
>"the important culture is the culture I share with my fellow Americans --
>rock-and-roll"?

How is such a sentiment "knowing"? Why is the only "important" culture
the one which one shares with others of one's own small subsection
of American society? What miserable, benighted hermit would be
so apparently proud of his own cultural chauvinism?

>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.

Well, of course he is going to find Kate's art valueless, if
he believes that the only important art is American rock'n'roll!
There is probably nothing that can be done to enlighten someone
as profoundly ignorant as the one you describe.

>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.

Well, first of all, Doug's interview has received considerable
flak among Kate fans, mainly because his interpretations of
her songs are creative in the extreme, and because he didn't
want to give them up even after Kate openly rejected every one!
As for the French interview that IED translated, you're right
-- Kate is, to use your American-car-commercialese, "awesome".
But IED fails to see how Kate's "awesome" personality should make
us "ashamed" of ourselves. IED, speaking solely for himself as
one Kate Bush fan, derives some modicum of self-respect from knowing
that he has learned to appreciate Kate's art as well as he has.
At any rate, there is certainly no shame in it.

>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...]

This is not just nasty, it's really pretty kooky. How on earth
could you know how "experienced" "we" are? And are "we" to understand
from this that you are conscious of feelings of superiority to
"us" because you are more "experienced"?  IED agrees that you're
"a little too strident," and he respectfully suggests that, in future,
you take a little more time to consider the motivation for your
judgments of people whom you have never met and know next to nothing
about.

>Is she a great "artist", after all?  Can someone be a great
>artist without baring her soul?

The point has already been made above that Kate's chameleon-like
assumption of characters in her singing and music-making in no
way preclude her from "baring her soul." In fact, quite the opposite
is true: her honesty and openness in revealing through her art
her specific interests in life give us a far more direct, specific
and detailed look into her personality than countless trite and insipid
"confessionals" by autobiographically obsessed singer-songwriters.

>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.)

In general, IED sympathizes with your friend's feelings, since he
too finds most of Mozart's output to be very routine, formulaic
and impersonal; but this is far more likely a fact about IED,
rather than about Mozart. In other words, some people's own
emotional constitution (such as IED's, in this case) are unable
to respond to the kind of emotion which Mozart's music expresses;
it's really a matter of personal taste, rather than a weakness in
the music. Anyway, just play the Kyrie from the Requiem to your friend
and see if he still feels the same way.

>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?

OK, this is a fair way to raise this whole question. Put this way, it is
possible to see your point of view. The way you see it, so long as
you are affected emotionally in a positive way by the music, it is
as "good" as any other music that has affected you. IED happens to
feel the same way about comedy: so long as he laughs, he is satisfied --
as a result, he doesn't like to spend $6 to see a comedy, since
even if the movie is very funny, he experiences precisely the same
emotion that he could have got from watching David Letterman for free.

The conclusion that IED makes from this fact about himself, however,
is not that all funny comedy is of equal value -- but that IED
IS RELATIVELY INSENSITIVE TO THE SUBTLE DIFFERENCES THAT DISTINGUISH
GOOD FROM LESS GOOD COMEDY. Now, Kevin, why can't you reach a similar
conclusion about your own sensibility towards music?

>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.)

Look, why are you people so aggrieved by IED's reference to
his user in the third person? What is so irritating about it,
after all? It doesn't hurt you, does it? It doesn't even cause
you any great inconvenience. It's IED's problem, not yours.
Anyway, it's a personal choice, with personal reasons which
IED would rather not explain.

>IED, though, must be engaged in deliberate self-parody.  Some day,
>perhaps soon, he'll reveal his true contempt for Kate and have a good
>laugh at everyone who took him seriously.
>
>-- Jeff Dalton

Well, there might just be something in that. Anyway, alot was explained
by him when he first logged on last April, but nobody seemed to notice.

Now, IED will have to shorten his latest peroration
because he has been called upon by our editor
to do some heavy transcribing, and it's going
to keep him occupied at the keyboard for a while.
Please! Protests will not make him reconsider. You'll
just have to be patient.

-- Andrew Marvick