Be Kind to My Mistakes, Wow, video party

[ganzer%trout@nosc.mil (Mark T. Ganzer)]

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What a week! A sneak preview of the west coast l-h video party,
much time spent listening to "Be Kind to My Mistakes", 
"The Whole Story" video tape, and a stack of love-hounds
digests in my mailbox when I get back (Thanks, |>oug. Looks
like it's working now).

For something that was written fairly quickly, "Be Kind to My Mistakes"
is GREAT! It has elements of structure quite similar to X4 but with the
energy of "The Big Sky". In fact the structure is so similar to X4 that
I would have to speculate that they were both written at approximately
the same time. The tempo (140 beats/min) is the same, the rhythm patterns
are not the same but similar in effect, and the use of single bar guitar
"loops" is the same. But BKtMM has a much stronger base rhythm,  and adds
single bar bass "loops" ( a beautiful effect by Del on the fretless bass).
There is definitly a lot of music there. IED gave a good breakdown of the
song, but I have some additional comments:

    a) The 16 bar intro builds the layers of the music, starting with a
    basic percussion, bass, and keyboard rhythm in the first 4 bars, then
    adding background chorus in the next 4 bars. The 3rd 4 bar segment
    adds the guitar, and the 4th segment combines them all.

    b) In the vocal climax, when the 4 bar pattern is cut to 3 bars, to
    heighten the climax, the basic 2-4-and rhythm is changed twice to
    a strong 3-and-4 pattern twice and then to a 2-and and-4-and pattern
    once two bars later. A very nice effect to heighten the climax.

    c) During the extended vocal coda, layers of the music are being
    lifted as the chord progression breaks down.

    d) During the fade-out, it almost sounds as if the the rhythm of 
    the right and left channels looses synch (this is very apparent
    with headphones). It almost sounds as if everything is coming apart,
    yet when listening to each individual channel, the rhythm stays 
    together to the end!

So I've raved enough about this song. Any criticisms? Well, the
experimentation with various sounds is not present (the song is basically
written around the instrumentation of her "core" group). And it's basically
a commercial song, but it's a damn good one. 

About "The Whole Story" Wow video:      I thought I read that the reason
she changed the video was because in putting together the compilation,
there was no live footage and she felt that there should be some because
the tour was an important milestone in her career. It was just
that the Wow video was the logical one (was this in the Zwort Finkle
"interview"? I don't have it in front of me).

West Coast Love-Hounds: I got a preview of the videos to be shown at
the party Fri 22 May and can definitely say that if you don't make it,
you're definitely going to miss something. With the laser video and Dolby
Surround Sound, this is probably the best picture in the western hemisphere.
It made coming home to watch "The Whole Story" video on VHS-HiFi pale
in comparison. Now, how to convince the wife that we need a laser-disk 
player...

"It is this that brings us together..."

MarK T. Ganzer                    Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Internet: ganzer@trout.nosc.mil   UUCP: {ucbvax,hplabs}!sdcsvax!nosc!ganzer
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