Kate-echism XXII.7.ix: on further absurdities from Tim Maroney

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

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: Kate-echism XXII.7.ix: on more absurdity from Tim Maroney

     Tim's latest holier-than-thou pontifications have annoyed IED enough
to respond. It is hard to believe that Tim could ever seriously
have thought that the _Hammersmith_ CD was anything but a bootleg. Anyone
with eyes and a brain--and _especially_ someone like Tim, who makes such
a big deal about whether the stuff he buys is "legitimate" or not--could
have smelled a rat after noting the _conspicuous_ absence of copyrights,
reproduction rights acknowledgements, "courtesy of"'s, etc., in regard
to the fifteen tracks on that CD--particularly _This_Woman's_Work_, the
track from the IRS label's soundtrack album from the _She's_Having_a_Baby_
film. The idea that Tim simply _assumed_ that this was an official release
is almost too ridiculous to believe. Especially since IED and at least
one other Love-Hound had already described this CD in considerable detail in
Love-Hounds in the quite recent past, at a time when Tim was
receiving the Digest. In IED's original descriptions of the CD he
explicitly described it as a bootleg, and gave many
reasons for his judgement.
     Despite all this IED was ready to give Tim the benefit of the doubt about
his purchase, and was even preparing to apologize for being so skeptical in the
first place. But now Tim has posted another obnoxiously self-righteous note
on the subject. To IED's amazement, he read in Tim's notice these words:

 > Now, I've got to figure out what to do about the guy who offered me a
 > cassette of KT's B-sides.  Does anyone know if this is a legitimate
 > release?  It has a white paper insert with hand-lettered track
 > identifications.  :-)

     Just exactly what planet is Tim living on? Since when did "legitimate"
releases come out with hand-lettered track-listings? Has Tim _ever_
seen any announcements in Love-Hounds or anywhere else about the official
release of a collection of Kate's b-sides? No! Once again, it seems to IED
that either Tim is the most naive consumer in modern history, or he's
being disingenuous--trying to justify acquiring bootleg KT products while
simultaneously claiming ignorance, meanwhile scolding others for their own
far more honest policy of admitting their helpless attraction to such products.

 >Clearly so. This seems to be a new thing, bootlegs which try to look
 >as much as possible like authentic releases to fool ethical buyers.

     How ethical Tim is! First, of course, this is _by_no_means_
a "new thing". Bootleggers have done this kind of knock-off job
off and on since the beginning of bootlegging. It just depends on
the bootlegger. As for this particular kind of bootleg CD art,
bootleg CD packages of comparable or better quality have been around for
at least two years. Second, the main reason they imitate official
releases' layouts is not so as to fool the buyers, but to mislead any
import inspectors who should happen to show up at record meets, etc.

 >>Any official release will be widely announced, there is no way that an
 >>artist like KT could possibly release an album, even re-issue an album
 >>especially one with "bonus tracks" without publicity.
 >
 >That's not necessarily true. There could be overseas releases that
 >escaped publicity in the States, as frequently happens with other
 >artists.

     The point is, there would _certainly_ be publicity _somewhere_.
Whether it made the front page of the _New_York_Times_ is beside the point!
If the _Hammersmith_Odeon_ soundtrack were ever released officially
on CD, you can be certain that we would have heard about it
in the English music weeklies, and a good many other places
as well, including several U.S. publications which many Love-Hounds
routinely scour for just such information.
     Finally, since Tim has seen fit to give everyone the benefit
of his aesthetic judgement regarding Kate's performance in the
_Hammersmith_ film once again, IED has no choice but to respond.

 >...I thought it was
 >dreadful -- KT can't dance, can't act, and certainly can't choreograph.
 >But we've been over this before here...

     Tim says "she can't act." The only insight to be gleaned from
this remarkably foolish generalization is that Tim apparently watched
the _Hammersmith_ film with the same abysmal lack of thought and
attention that characterized his inspection of the _Hammersmith_
bootleg CD. To judge the _Hammersmith_ film as "dreadful" because
"Kate can't act" is like panning a silent film because "the actors
can't speak". Not only is it technically false, but the criterion
by which the work is being judged is almost completely inappropriate.
Kate _can_indeed_ act, as she has shown in several of her recent
videos. That she _doesn't_ "act", in the sense Tim evidently has
in mind, in the _Hammersmith_ film, is not surprising, since "acting"
would have been completely unhelpful to such a performance. Even
though Tim has been told this before, it clearly made no impression
on his consciousness the first time, so it bears pointing out again
that Kate was performing _theatrical_ numbers on a _large_ stage
while leading a rock band at very high volume before an
audience of _thousands_ of people, in an era when there
were no huge TV screens to amplify the view of the stage
performers. Kate's exaggerated expressions are therefore _perfectly_
appropriate in the context of the original performance. Think of the
     Think of the difference between Olivier's Hamlet as he
performed the role on stage and Olivier's Hamlet as he performed it in
the film. All of his stage movements and facial expressions, not to
mention his vocal delivery and dynamic range, were greatly
exaggerated in the live stage performance. And in that instance the
audience was _considerably_ smaller, the theatre more intimate and the
surrounding noise infinitely less competitive than in the case of
Kate's Tour of Life performances.
     Furthermore, of course, the difference between _singing_
a story and reciting it in prose necessitates an entirely different
kind of facial expression. Perhaps a more comparable example
would be seeing Anna Moffo perform Madama Butterfly live on stage
and seeing her sing "Un bel' di" in a solo recital with
piano accompaniment. In the first case her "acting"--highly praised
for its extraordinary eloquence at the time--was _far_ more
exaggerated than in the second, where the context called for
a more restrained and subtle delivery. Such differences are
     This sort of difference in facial and body expression is
exaggerated a dozen times over in the case of Kate's live performances.
The style of her "acting" in _Experiment_IV_, _Hounds_of_Love_, _Cloud-
_busting_ -- even in the earlier videos _Army_Dreamers_, _Suspended_in_Gaffa_
and _There_Goes_a_Tenner_ -- is completely different than that in the
_Hammersmith_ show, because the _context_--in this case the live stage--
requires a different style. It is not difficult to understand
this obvious distinction, yet Tim has evidently failed again to do so.
     The fact that Kate's exaggerated expressions seem a bit strong in
the _Hammersmith_ _film_ has _nothing_ to do with their appropriateness
in their original context on stage. Many fans have complained about
the director (Keef MacMillan)'s unfortunate choice of camera shots
throughout the video--his great reluctance to show the entire
stage onscreen, and his deplorable addiction to double-image shots
featuring extreme close-ups of Kate's face opposite views of her
figure in motion from a middle distance. But criticizing the
director of the EMI film is quite different from saying something
as patently false and silly as "Kate can't act."
     But Tim also says "Kate can't dance", and "she certainly can't
choreograph." Both of these statements are not only false, they
demonstrate a profound ignorance both of dance and--far more
important--of Kate's artistic aims. IED doesn't care _what_ Tim's
"experience" may be when it comes to judging dance. To say that
Kate "can't dance" is simply to demonstrate a colossal ignorance of
dance. Whether she dances like Fonteyn is another question entirely,
but that she can dance--and, for her purposes, and for the purposes
of her musical and theatrical conception, dance _quite_well_--cannot
and would not be doubted by anyone even remotely familiar with
the medium. Tim's assertion otherwise is simply an admission of his
own incompetence to judge.
     As for Kate's choreography in the Tour of Life--first, one
should remember that it was designed by Kate in collaboration with
one of the major figures in England's contemporary dance scene, Antony
Van Laast. Moreover (and as Van Laast himself explained in a
BBC interview), Kate's technical ability was far greater than
the final choreography revealed. The fact that Kate would have to
sing almost constantly _while_dancing_ made it impossible for her
to realize many of the choreographic conceptions she had originally
had in mind for the performances. Given this almost unique handicap,
IED (along with a good many other critics of dance, many far more
qualified than he) would say that the choreography was very good.
But one should also keep in mind that Kate's concept of "choreography"
was at that time quite different even from that shared by most
modern dance choreographers. Her immediate and most potent source
of inspiration was not, strictly speaking, a dancer at all, but
the theatrical mime artist Lindsay Kemp. Consequently, Kate's
decisions about the design of her movements were nearly always
made on the basis of the specific narrative and expressive demands
of the songs, rather than with regard to those movements' visual
beauty or eloquence. Kate and Van Laast's choreography, therefore,
was conceived as a kind of physical echo of the narrative and
emotional heart of the music, and _not_ as a work of dance, per se.
Given this fact, and the limitations which her simultaneous singing
placed upon her and Van Laast in designing the stage movements,
the Tour of Life's choreography was an absolute success. By
concluding otherwise, Tim merely demonstrates once again his
fundamental inability to understand Kate's art.

-- Andrew Marvick