Mailbag

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

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: Mailbag

 >Songs I would like to know more about:
 >
 >   "Night of the Swallow"
 >   "Oh To Be in Love"
 >   "Moving" / "Saxophone Song"
 >
 >Thank you.
 >
 >-- Brian

     Let's take them in order of their creation: _Saxophone_Song_ is
one of Kate's earliest compositions. She made the final recording,
exactly as it was released, in 1975, when she was 16 or 17, and
there were no later changes. Its subject is pretty self-explanatory,
though perhaps it should be said for the record that Kate had never
been to Berlin, so far as anyone is aware! She probably wrote the
song about the same time as _The_Man_With_the_Child_in_His_Eyes_,
which is to say when she was about 14.
     _Oh_To_Be_in_Love_ would seem to have a pretty self-evident
subject; perhaps that's why Kate has had very little to say about it.
(More likely it's because interviewers have rarely had the sense to
ask her about it.) It is now known (to some fans) through an earlier
demo version which presents the song in a slower, more contemplative
and more introvert setting for Kate's voice and solo piano; it has
a very different atmosphere than on _The_Kick_Inside_. Thematically, the
song seems to IED to be very similar to _Hounds_of_Love_, in that both
seem to be about having fears of or misgivings about love.
     _Moving_ is a tribute to Lindsay Kemp, the dance and mime
performer whose highly influential show, _Flowers_ (based on texts of
Jean Genet), Kate attended when she was 15 or 16. Kemp's use of gesture  >
without sound--what Kate calls "expressive" mime, as opposed to the
Marcel Marceau-tradition's "mime of illusion"--made a profound impression
on her, and within another few months she had begun studying under Kemp.
After Kemp left for Australia Kate went on to work with several other
dance instructors at the Dance Centre in Covent Garden, but she has
always referred to Kemp as the first and foremost influence on her
use of movement as an expressive vehicle in her musical performances.
     In 1981 an erstwhile classmate from the Kemp classes, the little-
known (but reasonably talented) recording artist Zaine Griff recorded
his own tribute song to Kemp, called _Flowers_, and Kate sang back-up
vocals on the track.
     _Night_of_the_Swallow_ is, of course, a much later piece of work,
and we are lucky that Kate has had a few things to say about it. Here
is her paragraph on the song, from an old article she wrote for the
_Kate_Bush_Club_Newsletter_ in 1982:

     Ever since I heard my first Irish pipe music it has been under my
skin, and every time I hear the pipes, it's like someone tossing
a stone in my emotional well, sending ripples down my spine.
     I've wanted to work with Irish music for years, but my writing has
never really given me the opportunity of doing so until now. As
soon as the song was written, I felt that a _ceilidh_ band would
be perfect for the choruses. The verses are about a lady who's trying to
keep her man from accepting what seems to be an illegal job. He is
a pilot and has been hired to fly some people into another country.
No questions are to be asked, and she gets a bad feeling from the
situation. But for him, the challenge is almost more exciting than
the job itself, and he wants to fly away.
     As the fiddles, pipes and whistles start up in the choruses, he is
explaining how it will be all right. He'll hide the plane high up
in the clouds on a night with no moon, and he'll swoop over the
water like a swallow.
     Bill Whelan is the keyboard player with Planxty, and ever since
Jay <Kate's eldest brother John Carder Bush> played me an album
of theirs I have been a fan. I rang Bill and he tuned into the idea
of the arrangement straight away.
     We sent him a cassette, and a few days later he phoned the studio
and said, "Would you like to hear the arrangement I've written?"
     I said I'd love to, but how?
     "Well, Liam is with me now, and we could play it over
the phone."
     I thought how wonderful he was, and I heard him put down the phone
and walk away. The cassette player started up. As the chorus began,
so did this beautiful music--through the wonder of telephones it
was coming live from Ireland, and it was very moving.
     We arranged that I would travel to Ireland with Jay and the multi-track
tape, and that we would record in Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin.
As the choruses began to grow, the evening drew on and the glasses of
Guiness, slowly dropping in level, became like sand glasses to tell
the passing of time. We missed our plane and worked through the night.
      By eight o'clock the next morning we were driving to the airport to
return to London. I had a very precious tape tucked under my arm,
and just as we were stepping onto the plane, I looked up into the sky
and there were three swallows diving and chasing the flies.

 >IED,
 >    For those of us with only a CD player, will the single be coming
 >out in 3" CD?  Or will we have to wait until Oct. 9th for the album to
 >be released?
 >
 >-- andy

     IED just called CBS to find out, but was told that although
they might decide to make a CD-single, there were no plans yet
to make one. The woman there told IED that all such "gimmicks"
were made "sort of as we go along", and that included limited-edition
color-vinyl records, too. Altogether a very depressing conversation.
Sorry to have to be so imprecise. However, the lack of a plan for
a _commercial_ CD-single release does _not_ mean that some _promo_
CD-singles won't be made, so keep an eye out for them.

 >Anyway, has anybody noticed similarities in one of themes of ``Kashka
 >from Bagdad'' and ``All the Love'' ?  I can't pinpoint it exactly, but
 >there's something about the chord sequences or descending intervals or
 >the arrangement that are similar -- I'm not talking about the
 >main verse/chorus parts...

     IED doesn't know what parts you are referring to--neither the
verses _nor_ the choruses? Confusing. At any rate, _Kashka_ is
based mainly on a modern, or "tonic", minor-key scalebased melody,
with (in the choruses) a reference to the middle-eastern "enharmonic"
scale, and (in the verses) a typically minimal hint of the "blues"
scale. By contrast, _All_the_Love_, like the new song _The_Sensual_
_World_, is notable for its foundation in an essentially "modal"
scale-form for its melody. It's basically a pentatonic sequence of
notes, using the perfect fifth as its "center". This is one of the
most ancient kinds of scales, and Kate probably absorbed it from her
earliest years, when listening to Irish and English traditional music
in her home. Ancestors of the Irish/English modal melodies include
Ambrosian and Gregorian chant. In fact, nearly all ancient liturgical
music, especially in the British Isles, is modally based. Kate has
also demonstrated a sophisticated awareness of the revivication of
these scales as the bases of melody in the works of Vaughn Williams
and (to a degree) Delius. A favourite piece of hers is Delius's
song for a cappella choir, _Song_to_be_Sung_of_a_Summer's_Night_on_the_
_Water_, which, though harmonically very complex, is
founded on English modal scales. And the violin solo she wrote for
Nigel Kennedy at the beginning of the twelve-inch re-mix of _Experiment_
_IV_ is extremely similar to Vaughn Williams's solo-violin part in
_The_Lark_Ascending_; both are modally-based melodies.
     Interestingly, not only is the melody of _The_Sensual_World_
(especially the pipes', whistles' and fiddles' melodic parts) modal
rather than ordinarily tonal, but so is that of the b-side, _Walk_
_Straight_Down_the_Middle_ (yes, IED was fortunate enough to have been
given a chance to hear the new twelve-inch, but unfortunately he is
unable to make copies for people, so please don't ask, it'll be out in
three days anyway).

 >  Any reasonable answers as to what Gaffa is?
 >
 >-- Jim 'the Wyrd One' Atkinson

     Don't worry, !>oug, IED will _not_ rise to the bait this time.

     Sincere thanks to Neil Calton for his latest update about Kate
in _Q_, and IED would also like to express his appreciation for all
the efforts Ed Suranyi has been making in Kate's behalf recently.

 >>     Next thing I know, I saw a video for some sort of environmental group
 >>doing a Live - Aid type song, and Kate was in it.  I only got a glimpse
 >>
 >>-- Danny

 >   I am not positive of all the details, but I am quite sure that the song
 >in question was by an organization called Ferry Aid, which was put
 >
 >--Heather

    Wait! Heather, you're right that Kate sang on the Ferry Aid _Let_It_
_Be_ single, but that's not what Danny saw. He saw Kate's one-line
contribution to the _Spirit_of_the_Forest_ single, by Gentlemen Without
Weapons, for which an even greater number of famous people (not all
musicians) were collected as guest singers. All the instrumental sounds
were sampled from the rain forests of South America, in the aid of
which the single (and the video and the TV special) was made. The single
is still available, though IED believes only as a twelve-inch. It was,
unfortunately, pretty much of a flop commercially--bad timing coming
out the same week as the Greenpeace _Rainbow_Warriors_, which snagged
VH-1 playlist space. IED guesses there just wasn't enough market-share
for two charity popsong/videos at once.

 >PS, and don't flame me for this.  This is about the song 'And dream of
 >sheep" (spelling is off I know that)
 >To me that little section in the middle where a voice comes in sounds like
 >a radio anouncer and he is giving a radio forcast.
 >Yes, Yes?, No, No?  Which is it.
 >
 >-- Again, Danny

     Who would flame you for that observation? IED agrees with
you, anyway. In fact, IED wrote out the words he hears (with help
from a couple of English Love-Hounds), as follows: "Attention:
Shipping information in sea areas...Bell Rock, Tiree, Cromaty,
gale east. Malin, Sellafield..."

-- Andrew Marvick