turn to the right

[suneast!agent99!hsu@Sun.COM (David Hsu - Sun ECD Software Consultant)]

Baltimore loses a native son(?).  Divine, RIP 1988.  And now for
something completely different.

Thought I'd drop y'all another long line, after nearly 2 months of
silence.  Inveterate CD collector that I am, I finally picked up a
copy of Birdsongs' _Sonic Geology_ (on Ryko) at Newbury Comics.  In
71:40 you get:

    1) Shiny Golden Snakes		 2) Ptoccata
    3) Waterwheel			 4) Pulse Piece
    5) The Rite of Spring (excerpts)	 6) The Orange Ocean
    7) The Tyger			 8) Scenes from A...
    9) The Beat of The Mesozoic		10) International Tours
   11) Drift				12) Final Motif
   13) Theme from Rocky and Bullwinkle	14) The Fundamental
   15) Sound Valentine			16) The Common Sparrow
   17) Lost in The B-Zone		18) Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous

with the footnote "[4] and [16] have never seen the light of day
before now."  My copy, however, becomes difficult for the Sony D-5 to
track reliably after track 10 or so, although the number of mistracks
decreases substantially when I cover the see-through portion of the
player's cover.  I attribute this behavior to an unusually thin layer
of plating (you can almost see through the disc); does anyone else
have this problem?

If you thought that J-M Jarre's synthesizer work was overbearing,
excessively commercialized and pop-cliche'd, Michael Stearns
_Chronos_, the soundtrack to the film of the same name, could be
accused of being overbearing, excessively ponderous, and art-cliche'd.
I'll keep it anyway, but Stearns' in-cre-di-bly de-li-be-ra-ted
paaaaace hasn't got the precise tonal artistry to play the Eno game,
and the edgeless sounds he squeezes out of his ancient analog
equipment (no offense intended) just fill me with ennui.

Before I proceed further, just a friendly little reminder.  Kate Bush
IS God.

Okay, so it took a while, but at last I found a copy of the soundtrack
to She's Having A Baby.  Ripped the package apart, loaded the disc,
seeked straight to track 8.  Sure enough, those drawn out "oh"'s that
first appeared at the end of some of the TV pre-opening ads were
Kate's.  Wait, I thought, something...something is wrong with this
song.  At first, I suspected that it might be the simplicity of the
music, but no, she had been venturing farther and farther into this
region over the course of her career, the wild vocal gymnastics of the
first few albums no longer required by the later Kate's more
efficient, expressive style of delivery.  Well, I'll admit, I found
those split descending octaves in the second half a little too "pop".
Next, I thought, maybe it was in the lyrics.  So as best I could, I
transcribed them (reproduced later here) and noticed their extreme
simplicity, but little else of note.  _Watching You Without Me_ wasn't
particularly more complicated either (well, the obscured portion
aside) and was similarly impressionist as opposed to narrative, so
that wasn't quite it either.

If there wasn't any real structural substance to this song, then why
was I still intently listening to it?  When I finally wondered about
the lack of special effects and started paying close attention to the
vocals themselves, insight caught up with a vengeance.  If it was a
snake, it would've bit me.

For the first time since _Wuthering Heights_ Kate Bush has sung a song
from anything OTHER than a position of strength.  Missing is the
defiance that characterizes virtually all of Kate's more soulful,
sorrowful songs; instead, _TWW_ contains pure, unadulterated longing.
The lyrics may contain a few imperatives here and there
(make...give...give...give...) but the delivery clearly contains no
demands, only begs for help.

Opinions, mes amis?  Oh yes, before I forget, I promised you lyrics.
The parenthesized passages with question marks are cloudy to me, and
I'd appreciate your ideas on what they might otherwise be.

	oh, oh, oh
	(no chance to make the same mistakes?)
	pray God you can cope
	I'll stand outside
	this woman's work
	this woman's work
	ooh it's hard on the man
	now his part is over
	no (style, it's the craft?) of the father

	I know you have a little life in you yet
	I know you have a lot of strength left
	I know you have a little life in you yet
	I know you have a lot of strength left
	I should be crying but I just can't let it show
	I should be hoping but I can't stop thinking
	all the things I should have said but I never said
	all the things we should have done but we never did
	all the things I should have given but I didn't
	oh, darling, make it go
	make it go away

	give me these moments back
	give them back to me
	give me that little kiss
	give me your hand

	I know you have a little life in you yet
	I know you have a lot of strength left
	I know you have a little life in you yet
	I know you have a lot of strength left
	I should be crying but I just can't let it show
	I should be hoping but I can't stop thinking
	and all the things (we?) should have said but I never said
	all the things we should have done but we never did
	all the things that you needed from me
	all the things that you wanted for me
	all the things that I should have given but I didn't
	oh, darling, make it go away
	just make it go away now

> Date:    Thu, 10 Mar 88 15:20 PST
> From: IED0DXM@OAC.UCLA.EDU

>-- Andrew Marvick, who still remembers (vaguely) what it was like to
>   be under the sad delusion that there were other living musicians
>   worth paying attention to besides Kate Bush.

Don't be uncharitable, Andrew; Gilels may be dead, but Arrau is still with us.

-dave
=====
David Hsu		On loan to but not an employee of Sun Microsystems
suneast!hsu@sun.com	hsu@eneevax.umd.edu	seismo!mimsy!eneevax!hsu

"My motto is -- do it MY way, or watch your butt."  - Nathan Arizona, Sr.