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Kate, Eno, and consistency.

From: KNIGHT@MAINE (Michael Knight)
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 87 11:43:53 EST
Subject: Kate, Eno, and consistency.

RE: IED's challenge regarding craftsmanship.

As much as this sounds like blaspamy, I have to disagree that ALL of
Kates music is HIGHLY crafted.  Remember Lionheart?  Now if you want
to qualify your challenge to refer to only her OTHER albums, and the
last two in particular (I don't count 'The Whole Story' as an album),
then I have just blown your challenge out the door, and made this
discussion of consistency and craftsmanship irrelevant.

I believe most of us can think of a few artists that we FEEL
(comprehend/grok) to have made a number of albums that are of
comparable or higher craftsmanship than Lionheart.  All HUMANS are
subject to making misstakes, including the production of 'imperfect'
albums.

Which brings me to something Doug said:

>From: nessus (Doug Alan)
>as planned ones.  But since some of Eno's work is intentionally
>largely uncrafted, it is clearly false to say that his music is
>consistently as crafted as Kate's, much less that it is consistently
>more crafted.

I guess the key word of my argument here is 'consistency'. I'm saying
that ONE of Kates albums is not as crafted as say, some of Eno's
albums. 'Before and After Science', 'Another Green World', and 'Taking
Tiger Mountain' spring to mind.  Anyway, assuming that 'Lionheart' is
Kates 'bad' album, that make her score 1 of 5, or 20 percent. Now how
many of Eno's albums and collaborations can be 'uncrafted' and still
have only 20 percent 'bad'.  I admit I can't remember all the Eno and
Eno collaborations/productions there are. I'd guess 15 or 20.  That
allows him to have quite a few 'misses' and still be in the 80 percent
good category.

I kind of think of Kate as being something like a big gun on a
battleship.  It doesn't fire very often, but nothing else even comes
close to its power.

--Mike

P.S. I think I know why we sometimes see the song 'Cloudbusting' call
'Cloudbursting'.  The spelling checker here assumes that cloudbusting is
a misspelling of cloudbursting.