Info for Aussie L-Hs; re _9th_W_ death; and Mailbag

[IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@mitvma.mit.edu]

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: Info for Aussie L-Hs; re _9th_W_ death; and Mailbag

     After much trying IED could not reach Simon directly, hence
this public message--just as well, since it should be of interest
to any and all antipodean Love-Hounds. Readers please excuse IED's
unfortunate lapse into the first person for what was supposed to
be a private message.

-- Andrew Marvick

 To: Simon Hackett
 From: Andrew Marvick
 Subject: _Cathy_Demos_ tape

     I'll say you're late, Simon. You missed a real zoo of a project.
Your number on the list (#135) should demonstrate that. At this point
I am only listing people, I am not arranging dubbing contacts for them.
     In your case, however, there may be a solution. I sent one master
to Gaye Godfrey and Warrick Williams, editors of the Australian Kate
Bush fanzine _Dreamtime_. My advice to you is to send a stamped
and self-addressed envelope with a blank 90-minute cassette to them,
explaining how you heard about the project through me on Love-Hounds,
and with luck they will make a copy for you and mail it out to you.
I mailed them their master about a week ago now, so they may have
it already. Their address is:

      Gaye Godfrey and Warrick Williams, editors
      _Dreamtime_
      7 Bryden Road
      Carmel 6076
      Western Australia

     Good luck, Simon.

-- Andy Marvick

135. Simon Hackett <simon@sirius.ua.oz.au>
     University Computing Services
     University of Adelaide
     GPO Box 498
     Australia

     Your fellow Australian Love-Hounds will have done the same:

127. Serge Malev <sergem@usage.csd.unsw.oz>
     University of New South Wales,
     Sydney, Australia

128. James Smith <munnari!cc.nu.oz.au!CCJS@UUNET.UU.NET>
     Computing Centre, University of Newcastle
     ACSnet: ccjs@cc.nu.oz    UUCP: uunet, mcvax!cc.nu.oz.AU!ccjs
     Phone:   +61 49 685635        ARPA:    ccjs%cc.nu.oz.AU@uunet.uu.net

           *                       *                        *

 Subject: On _The_Ninth_Wave_ death issue

     As if IED had not already provided enough proof that the
heroine of _The_Ninth_Wave_ does not die, here is an excerpt from
one of the MTV interviews Kate gave in 1985, which IED had forgotten
about until recently:
     J.J. Jackson: Now there are those who will say that the songs
are about someone drowning, but Kate says that is _not_ the case.
     Kate Bush: "I think even though a lot of people say that the side
is about someone drowning, it's much _more_ about someone who's
_not_ drowning, and how they're there for the night in the water,
being visited by their past, present and future to keep them awake,
to keep them going through until the morning, until there, uh, there's
hope."

                  *                       *                      *

     Duane Day writes:
 >Two things: first, Collins was not the only drummer on _PGIII_.  Most
 >of the songs featured Jerry Marotta on drums.  Collins, I believe, only
 >played on the song "Intruder", which featured the snare drum treated
 >with gated reverb (resulting in a very abrupt, "un-natural" decay)
 >which has come to be one of every modern producer's bag of tricks.
 >Second, regarding the statement that Collins and Padgham were as

     Thanks very much to Duane for his corrections on this point.
IED is definitely no Gabriel expert, and hastens to admit as much.
Apropos of this drum-sound issue, he should mention two things. First,
he got his (now obviously false) view of the development of the sound
from an interview he read a year or so ago with Hugh Padgham. In it
Padgham was complaining about how common the "gated reverb" drum sound
had become in recent years, and that people seemed utterly unable or
unwilling to develop new sounds instead, but just kept using the same
old ones over and over. As IED recalls (perhaps inaccurately) Padgham
seemed to assume substantial credit for the development of the sound.
He also described the way the mikes were set up to create it, and
he made it sound as though they had had the sound in mind _before_
they got it, and not that it was a sort of inspired accident (as
Gabriel apparently described it). Yet they were definitely both
talking about the same sound, because Padgham also dated its
development to the early PGIII sessions. He also said Collins was on
drums when they came up with it, so Marotta would seem less relevant.
     The other thing IED wanted to add was that he had actually already
had some doubts about his wording on this point in his letter to
Sidgwick & Jackson, and in the final version that he sent out he
put it this way (still perhaps misleading, but a little less so):

"...the two artists' drum-sounds from this period. He should therefore
also have acknowledged Phil Collins, who provided drumming on Gabriel's
third solo LP, and Hugh Padgham, an engineer who later worked with Kate.
These men were also instrumental in developing the distinctive sound
in question--a sound which is in any case not at all identical to the
drum timbres in Kate's own recordings."

     John Relph writes:
 >On Side A, following "Keeping Me Waiting", there are two excerpts from
 >two Beatles songs that we all know and love.  IED: where did these
 >excerpts come from?

     Kate sang (with preliminary overdubs) _The_Long_and_Winding_Road_
and _She's_Leaving_Home_ (in abridged versions, with a Japanese
TV studio orchestra as backing) on the Tokyo TV programme _Sound_in_'S'_,
broadcast on June 23, 1978 from the TBS 'G' television studio.

     Pete Hartman writes:
 >I must say that the flesh coloured leotard in The Man With the Child in
 >his Eyes_ was quite, um, surprising until I realized that it WAS a
 >leotard.

     Well, it's _sort-of_ flesh colored. More a kind of pinkish gold
color, with a sparkly, glittery texture. There's no confusion at
all when you see it on laser-disk.

 >Two questions about the _Breathing_ video:  is the backing spoken vocal
 >the description of a nuclear blast (that's what it sounds like)?

     Kate has said that the song was partly inspired by a British
television documentary film. Presumably she obtained a copy of the
film (or happened to have taped it already) and used the text
verbatim. The words on the recording are almost certainly not spoken
by the original speaker, however, but were probably re-done in the
studio. Here are the complete words:

               "In point of fact it is possible to tell the
          difference between a small nuclear explosion and
          a large one by a very simple method. The calling
          card of a nuclear bomb is the blinding flash that
          is far more dazzling than any light on earth--brighter
          even than the sun itself--and it is by the duration
          of this flash that we are able to determine the size
          of the weapon. After the flash a fireball can be
          seen to rise, sucking up under it the debris, dust
          and living things around the area of the explosion,
          and as this ascends, it soon becomes recognisable
          as the familiar 'mushroom cloud'. As a demonstration
          of the flash duration test let's try and count the
          number of seconds for the flash emitted by a very
          small bomb; then a more substantial, medium-sized
          bomb; and finally, one of our very powerful,
          'high-yield' bombs."

 >Are those Kate's brothers (or some of them, and the rest of the band)
 >in the lake with her?

     One is. Paddy, one of her two brothers, is in the lake scene
(and the scenes after that). Her other brother John, does not
appear in the video. Also in those final scenes are Brian Bath
and Stewart Avon-Arnold; and there are three other men in the video.
IED doesn't know them off-hand by face, but presumably they were
among the musicians who played on the track. One of them looks a
little like Roy Harper to IED. Harper sang backing vocals on the
track. But IED could easily be wrong about that ID.

 >Are the fragments of live performance in the _Wow_ video from the Tour
 >of Life?  Is this a slightly different version of the song?  I liked
 >it better.....really!

     Yes, the clips are all from the _Hammersmith_ film. Kate chose
them and helped to edit them together for _The_Whole_Story_ video
when she realized it was silly to include no record of the Tour
of Life in a compilation called "The Whole Story". There was no
change of any kind in the audio mix of the song, however, Pete.
Kate said in the Laurie Brown interview that she would have liked
to have done something to that mix, but that there was no time to
touch it.

 >Is there any "valid" compilation of videos that has the "moors" version
 >of Wuthering Heights and the "Wogan" version of _Running up that Hill_?

     No. Neither of those clips has ever been "officially" released.

 > The "symbol" she uses seemed to evolve from _Army Dreamers_:
 >       ___
 >        |/
 >        |
 > to _The Big Sky_:
 >       ___
 >       |/
 >       /|
 >
     That's because what you see in _The_Big_Sky_ is a flag with
the insignia on both sides. When it waves in the air you can see
through it and a double-image results. The insignia is the
same, however, in all of Kate's uses of it.

 >Besides the Cover of _The Dreaming_ are there any other instances of
 >the appearance of this thing in various incarnations?

     Yes, many other instances. Kate has "hidden" a "KT" symbol somewhere
in each of her albums (including _The_Whole_Story_, although not in the
same way). Seek and ye shall find. Also, the symbol is used very often
by _The_Kate_Bush_Club_, since it is their official insignia. Also,
it appears in the uniforms of the soldiers of _Army_Dreamers_ both in
the video and in Kate's TV lip-synch performances of the song. There
are probably some other uses of the symbol that IED has overlooked here.

 >While I noticed that Kate was quite dramatic with her expressions in
 >several of the videos, I thought the bug-eyed stance in Sat In Your Lap
 >rather ridiculous looking, to say the least.Probably the only bad thing
 >I found in all of them...

     Bad? Unless you consider the _reason_ for Kate's _blank_, _empty_
stare throughout _Sat_In_Your_Lap_. She obviously did that very
deliberately--she has never used quite that kind of vapid expression
in any other performance, just _Sat_In_Your_Lap_. Could it have
anything to do with the theme of the song?

 >...Did anyone else notice the "See no Evil, Say
 >no Evil, Hear no Evil" relationship between Kate and the two jesters on
 >either side of her during the latter sections of _SIYL_?

     Yes, indeed. And there are several other related symbols in the
video.

 >Is the huge building that houses the studio in _Experiment IV_ actually
 >her studio, or one she's worked at?

     Neither. _Experiment_IV_ was shot entirely on location at an
old, abandoned military hospital in East London. "Before" and "after"
photos of the place have shown how hard Kate's crew worked to transform
the dirty, rat-infested old building into the pristeen science-center
of the final video. The "Music For Pleasure" shop which is the center's
front was also created out of practically nothing, and was so
convincing in its final form that people were coming in off the street
during the shoot, to browse through the merchandise!

 >I did find one other thing I didn't like in the videos..is there some
 >significance to her jerky, clockwork motions in _Babooshka_?  I really
 >didn't care for them.

     Yes. There is purpose in everything Kate Bush does! IED thinks in
_Babooshka's_ case Kate is alluding to thematically related subjects.
You'd have to be more specific, though, about which movements you mean.

-- Andrew Marvick