MisK.

[IED0DXM@OAC.UCLA.EDU]

     Regarding the request for a recommendation of a Kate Bush bootleg
with good sound, there is no such item. No way no how. They're all
definitely sub-par in comparison with any of her official releases,
even the U.S. vinyl junk that EMI-America put her recordings out on.
     Comparing them strictly to each other, however, the best bootlegs
are probably the old _Wow_, which featured a reasonably clean transfer
of the Hi-Fi audio track from the _Hammersmith_ (5/13/79) film to
vinyl. After that, _Passing Through Air_ (2-record set) is
better-than- average, for the same reason (it consists mainly of
copies of Kate's own official b-side studio releases, etc.)
     As for the live concert bootlegs, IED thinks the boomy but
relatively clear sound of the _Kate Bush in Manchester_ 2-LP set is
best. It's a reasonably listenable, not disastrously edited document
of the Tour of Life concerts, but that's about all you can say for it.
You might rate the others in this order, soundwise: Mannheim/Hamburg
(just a few tracks, from a German TV documentary); _Bird in the Hand_,
_Moving_ and _Live in Europe_, which are mainly just inferior
re-pressings of _Wow_ (and _Live in Paris_); _Dreamtime_ (London
Palladium); Bristol; _Under the Ivy_ (a mish-mash of live and
lip-synch recordings with reasonably good sound); _Live in Paris_;
Bill Duffield benefit concert (Hammersmith 5/12/79); and _Temple of
Truth_, which is definitely the worst yet. A tape also exists of the
Amsterdam concert, but IED has not heard it, and anyway Kate was sick
for that night and cut the show short, so it probably doesn't rank
high.
    Disclaimer: The above rating is very casual and highly subjective.

Mike Metlay writes (with Doug's reply):

 > ...by the way, Kate is, for all her songwriting and singing talent,
 > still little more than an amateur when it comes to using the
 > fairlight....

 >> I don't think anyone has ever claimed that Kate herself is a
 >> technical wiz with the Fairlight.  On the other hand, the
 >> members of Tangerine Dream, for instance, have answered when
 >> asked who they think is doing the most interesting things with
 >> synthesizers today, "Kate Bush". -- Doug

 > if you want to hear what it can do in the hands of a pro, check out
 > "Zoolook" by Jean-Michel Jarre....play it loud, and with headphones,

     No wish on IED's part to deny Jarre's achievements, which he
genuinely appreciates, esp. some of the things on _Zoolook_ and
_Chants(/Champs) Magnetiques_, but Mike's comment comes perilously
close to being a judgment of music in terms of its technical
presentation rather than in terms of its quality _as_music_.
     The fact that Kate uses the Fairlight, while interesting enough,
is relatively unimportant when considered within the context of her
work as a whole. She has said several times that when she first
encountered the instrument, she felt that it was the machine that she
had _always_wanted_, always imagined. To her, the Fairlight is
primarily an expedient way for her to create her music. It's probably
very likely that if the Fairlight never existed, Kate would simply
have developed some of its sounds herself, through more time-consuming
methods.
     More significant than this, though, is the mistake which Mike
makes in considering Jarre's "professional" use of the Fairlight a
sign of some (any) kind of superiority over Kate's "amateur" use of
the instrument.  In a contemporary, literal sense, this is true
enough.  Prior to the twentieth century, however, the term "amateur"
was used as a high compliment in order to describe an artist who did
not create in order to make money. The term "professional" carried a
correspondingly negative connotation, because it implied that the
artist's work was affected -- usually adversely -- by his/her
intention of making money from it. In this sense of the two terms,
then, Kate Bush, despite her worldly status as a professional, lives
and makes music like a true "amateur," creating art which frequently
defies the narrow limitations of popular music genres, and which
invariably stems from a deeply personal inner voice.
     Jean-Michel Jarre, by contrast, is an artist hopelessly doomed to
"professionalism," whose music, for all its technical flash and facile
sonic gloss, remains grossly commercial, patently superficial and
hopelessly mired in conventions of the pop genre.

-- Andrew Marvick