Hammersmith, Cloudbusting background

[watmath!alberta!paullu@uunet.UU.NET (Paul Lu)]

Many thanks to IED for the timely information on Kate's new album!

As for the Hammersmith Odeon live video, my favourites are Moving
(I think the post-production underwater footage adds a grest deal--
a fantastic opening number), Oh England... and Wuthering Heights.
I should point out that I think Kate is often a better live performer
than she is a studio "performer." 

I like the live versions of Oh England... and L'Amour Looks Something
Like You (from "On Stage") more than the studio versions.  Perhaps
the fact that she did not produce the studio versions of those songs
has something to do with this?  Or the inherent risk/advantages of
performing live without the ability to re-record, overdub, etc. ? 

Back to the Odeon video itself, while (as pointed out by others) her
dance steps are exaggerated, the performance as a whole is stunning.
It seems that we, looking at Odeon ten years later, prefer the more graceful
dance steps of the Running Up That Hill video (an *excellent* dance piece).
Kate has said that when she started out, she wanted to experiment with
the higher octaves of her voice, thus the criticism that she "screeches"
(other people's words, not mine!) instead of sings.  This no longer true
as she works comfortably in a lower octave now.  Perhaps her dancing
is analogous?  She has said that she wanted the RUTH video to be a serious
piece of dance, as opposed to the experiments with dance previously.

As for Peter Reich's _A_Book_of_Dreams_, which inspired Cloudbusting, I come
to my first true criticism of Kate.  I have a copy of it, and I could not
finish reading it because I found it offensive and wholly un-inspiring.  Kate
has called it the saddest book she has ever read, and the relationship between
the child Peter and his father, Wilhelm (sp?  The book is at home) Reich,
very special.  Yes, Peter and his father are very close, and they do share
a special relationship, but their twisted ideas on sexual relationships make
it very difficult to be sympathetic to their fate.  This is *not* to say that
it was right for the government to imprison Wilhelm Reich for his unusual
ideas on UFO's and cosmic-ether.

However, Cloudbusting remains one of my favourite Kate songs.  As is always
the case, she so internalizes and personalizes her songs, that no matter the
inspiration, Cloudbusting becomes a poignant observation of how mankind
fears things and people that they don't understand, or agree with.
"I hid my yo-yo in the garden.  What made it special, made it dangerous.  So
I bury it, and forget."  In this sense, Cloudbusting shares a theme with
Albert Camus' _L'Entranger_, where the protagonist is condemned more for his
non-conformist attitudes than for the murder he is guilty of.  Despite the
unsavoury nature of Camus' character, scholars find redeeming values in the work.
IMHO, _A_Book_of_Dreams_ has almost no redeeming value, and I could point out
books that portray child-parent relationships with more beauty and inspiration.
Please remember that this is more a criticism of Reich's book than of Kate,
although I don't see what moved Kate to hold the story in such high regard.

          ...Paul

(paullu@alberta.uucp via almost any Canadian site)