KT news; L-Hs mailbag; and the Convention Interview, Part Two

[IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu]

KT news:
According to the brand new issue of the official Kate Bush Club
Newsletter, Kate not only sang but WROTE the theme song for Nicholas
Roeg's film "Castaway". Still no news about whether it -- or "Brazil"
-- will ever be released as a soundtrack, however.

Furthermore, the lead singer (?) of Go West fell seriously ill a
while back, thus delaying the duo's concert schedule and consequently
the release of their new record (which features a duet with Kate).

Next, the mailbag:
>> The Dreaming.  So this is like the one IED orgasms to?  It is much
>> better than that Hounds of Love junk.
>> -- Douglas Trainor

>No, it's the one that |>oug orgasms to because it's the greatest
>entity in all of space and time.  But listen, smegma breath, even
>though *Hounds of Love* isn't as good as *The Dreaming*, it's still
>great.  You probably haven't even listened to "The Ninth Wave" part of
>*Hounds of Love*, you pathetic non-squid.

>-- |>oug

Looks like IED's recent reserve is bringing out a tendency in other
L-Hs to compensate: first Mark Kat(e)souros, now |>oug.
For the record, IED orgasms to The Dreaming, too; and enough of the
argument over which is "greater", The Dreaming or Hounds of Love --
it's like arguing over which is greater, the Old or the New Testament
(although of course that's a much less important issue): holy writ is
holy writ.

>From: nessus (Doug Alan)
>Subject: Re:  KB & Playmate
>Does she have a boyfriend?
>
>-- |>oug

Huh? Who?

Many thanks to Neil, our number one foreign correspondent, for
the HMV Big Country extract.

>From: ganzer%trout@nosc.mil (Mark T. Ganzer)
>As mentioned previously, Kate won best British female award (they have
>such good taste).

Hah! As happy as IED is that Kate won, it has nothing to do with good
taste. The whole ceremony displayed the BPI's sickening, horrible,
sycophantic tendency to pander to the U.S. market, and the most shameful
hypocrisy about awarding the prize to the "best" performer/album/
single when all they really care about is the number of silver, gold
and platinum albums sold. Kate seemed more than normally uncomfortable,
and Mark Knopfler -- whose "Brothers in Arms"
LP won AGAIN for "best" album or something -- had the decency to wonder
out loud how their LP could win in 1987 for a record released in 1985.
(Not that it should ever have won a damn thing in the first place.)
Add to that the embarassing Five-Star, a group of attractive young
British men and women who try to sing as much like Americans as they can;
the inept lip-synching of the performers; and -- worst of all -- the
fact that ALL FIVE of the "international" artists in competition were
Americans; and you'll see why this viewer was not impressed.

>Indeed, I still prefer <the Hammersmith version of "W. Heights">
>to either the original or new version.  That ought to start
>another argument.
>
>-- Mark T. Ganzer

Not from IED; except about the BPI's, he's all mellowed out!

>She looked smashing in her black dress...

Yes, she did.

>...although
>it appeared she might have been hitting the Kit-Kats a little much
>recently (Could this be the results of a new album in the works?
>Naw, probably just normal TV distortion.)

Not distortion, Mark, sorry. Katie has definitely been cultivating
a slight embonpoint, but it's nothing new, really. She's looked more or
less that way since about 1984 or so. You're right about the Kit-Kats,
and chocolate eclairs are high on the vegetarian's list, as well.
At most of her public appearances she's been dressing to minimize
the changes; she wears her hair up more and more often
to distract attention away from the horizontal
lines, and there are a couple of outtake photos from
the Whole Story cover session in the latest Club Newsletter that
reveal lapses in the touch-up artist's skill with the chin area...
All of this is certain to change during preparations for the next
tour -- in other words, expect her to stay blimped up for about three
more years. (Can this be IED writing about his IDOL? What gives?)

>She also presented
>Peter Gabriel with the best British male award.

More accurately, she was dragooned into presenting it by
Jonathan King, who grabbed her by the arm before she could
sneak back to her seat! Though she did seem pleased that Gabriel won.

Now, Part Two of Tony Myatt's Capital Radio interview.

M: I've mentioned one song that I thought was weird, and you say you're
quite happy about that. The only other one that frightened me a little
bit was "Under Ice". What was the thinking behind that song?

KT: It was totally connected to the track that had come before, and
they were written together -- "And Dream of Sheep" goes straight into
"Under Ice" and they were almost conceived as one. It was very
much the idea of going from very cold water -- it's getting dark,
you're alone, the only way out is to go to sleep, no responsibilities,
and forget about everything. But if you go to sleep the chances are
you could roll over in the water and drown. So you're trying to fight
sleep, but you can't help it, and you hit the dream: the idea of the
dream being really cold, and really the visual expectancy of total
loneliness, and for me that was a completely frozen river, no-one
around, everything completely covered with snow and icicles. And
it's that person, all alone in this absolute cold wilderness of white,
and seeing themselves under the ice, drowning, from which they wake up
and find themselves under the water.

M: Where did that idea come from? It's not something one would usually
write a song about.

KT: I think the imagery for the whole piece -- a lot of it I think
came from moving out of London, in that I was surrounded much more
by elements than by people and man-made things; the power of things
like the wind in the trees. It sounds corny, but it's very earthy,
and I think it does affect you. Also some war films that covered people
coming off ships, out of planes, into the sea, in situations where they
were alone and frightened, into a huge thing -- the sea is just enormous,
and really so unknown, and very taken for granted. I don't think that
many people consider that CRUEL side of the sea, and how...ULTIMATE it
is...And also the whole thing of almost...sensory deprivation, where
you've been in the water a while, you start losing all sense of where
you are, whether you're upside down or whatever. And I just found
the whole thing terribly fascinating, and although a very physical
event, very much a mental event as well in that you are travelling in
your head, even though your body is just floating in water.

M: I'm being a little unfair because I'm taking the individual songs
on side two. The Ninth Wave: as far as you're concerned, would you
like people to listen to that entire side just straight through?
<Laughter from the convention audience.>

KT: Yes, I would, ideally.

M: But I think people would. Once you start from the top of side two
you have to keep listening all the way through. Do you find that yourself
or not?

KT: It's very hard for me to tell. You do try to stay objective -- and
considering the time we put into projects, the objectivity sustained
is incredible -- but you can't help but be subjective, and there are
lots of things I know I can hear perfectly well, but I will never
really know if other people who hear it for the first time will hear that
stuff, unless they write to me or report to me that it's come through.

M: Do a lot of your fans actually write and ask you about the meaning of
your songs?

KT: No, I think most of them don't have to. I think they actually
understand it, or if they don't, they still FEEL it and understand
it; that's really what it's all about. I do get a lot of feedback
from them and it's very important to me, and it's very interesting,
just to hear what strikes them, what they like.

M: They must ask you, as I would when I listen to your albums --
particularly the songs on this new one -- where do the ideas come
from, because they are really the most original...Every album you've
done from the first one has this stamp of originality, and that is
why I asked earlier if it is a burden to keep thinking of totally
new ideas for songs. Where do they come from?

<Laughter and groans from audience.>

KT: It's very kind of you to say that. I think that originality is
something that really doesn't exist, that everything has been done
before, and it's just that there are so many ways of doing things.
People can be sparked off by something that already exists and create
something quite different from that, and I think that's what's
exciting, in that -- in a way -- that is what people like myself are
doing. We're looking for pieces of gold, and if you see something
glitter you try to grab it and just get to work on it.

M: This album is the first you've produced yourself?

<More laughter>

KT: No, it's the second.

M: Is production exciting for you? As exciting as writing and singing
the songs?

KT: Yes, totally a part of it for me now, and it's just become a
continuation of the writing process and it's through that control
that I feel I can afford to spend the time on stuff. I don't feel
that there are that many people who could be as patient as I am with
the work, because I can hope that at the end of all these mad ideas
something will come of it, and perhaps it would be harder for someone
else to have that kind of faith in my ideas; and I feel I can take
as long as is necessary to make the song better.

M: How often did you have to go back to songs and do a little extra
piece?

KT: Never. The structures of the songs were as were, except for
"The Big Sky", but that was just because that was re-written several
times.

M: You knew exactly what you were going to do with each song before
you went into the studio?

KT: Yes. The songs were written in the studio. What we were hoping
for as well, with this album, was that the demos as such no longer
existed, in that they were the masters. So everything that I wrote
went straight onto master tape, and then we built on top of that.
So from the first we had one take, and that was what we worked on
and built upon.

M: That is in itself very unusual.

KT: I think it is, and I don't think I could have done it a while
ago. It's the involvement of working in studio, you just find you
can put things down and they either work or they don't, and again
that's why I think I can leave songs in an unfinished form, knowing
that they're not going to be as good as they could.

M: Obviously, having your own studio to do everything makes an enormous
difference...?

KT: It's the best decision I think I've ever made, certainly to do with
my work.

End of part two. More to come in L-Hs soon.

-- Andrew Marvick