a philocanine prayer

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

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: a philocanine prayer

 >   So, I'm sitting here, with my CD player cranking away and the new
 >single in it.  "This Woman's Work (Single Mix)" has just finished, and
 >I'm damned if I can tell the difference between it and the album
 >version, making the "hey, let's sell more records" type inscription on
 >the inside card particularly odious: "Original version of of 'This
 >Woman's Work' available on the album 'The Sensual World.'" I'm sure
 >IED will jump all over me and call me a crass slob for not realizing
 >the brilliance of this ploy, but it smacks of a rotten marketing ploy
 >and it's pretty dishonest too.  Actually, IED will say that Kate had
 >nothing to do with it an it's all EMI's fault, blah blah blah, but
 >thank you very much Mr. D, I am quite capable of realizing that.

     Actually, Drukman, you have as usual failed utterly to
realize anything at all! IED is not surprised, but the fact is
quite plain (as Ed Suranyi has already noted eloquently) that
the single mix of _This_Woman's_Work_ is _very_audibly_ different
from the album version! The strings are much more prominent. Furthermore,
the lead vocal has been given a slightly more "matte" sound than on
the LP. These are not illusions, they are perfectly apparent to anyone
who has any ear for musical nuance at all--or to anyone who actually
takes the trouble to _listen_ to music before passing judgement on it.
     Said differences to the recording having been made for the single release,
it would have been "dishonest" of Kate _not_ to have made the plain and
factual comment that the single mix differs from that on the album.
The idea that Kate is attempting thereby to increase sales is patently
absurd. She has several times made it clear that she is extremely
sensitive to the changes in audio that radio broadcast of her records
can produce in them. As a result, she has made similarly subtle but
nonetheless very real changes to several of her earlier recordings
prior to their release as singles, and as in all those prior instances,
the changes were the product of _aesthetic_ decisions.
     It becomes clear that we cannot realistically expect Drukman
to cease his postings on the subject of the new album, for he has--despite
himself--been undeniably affected by its greatness. What saddens IED more,
however, is that hope must be abandoned, as well, that Drukman will make even
the feeblest sort of effort to listen and to think _before_ he posts.
Drukman's recent screeds on the subject of _TSW_ have been even more heavily
laden with factual errors than their predecessors, despite IED's and
others' repeated demonstrations of Drukman's apalling propensity for
intellectual and musicological carelessness. At this point, we have no
choice but to leave Drukman in the dark, grim morass of slovenly thinking
and tawdry subconnoisseurship to which he stubbornly insists on
consigning himself. Therefore let us pray to Kate for the departed,
once tolerable (if never actually respected) Soul of Drukman, and
let us all take heart in the knowledge that he will surely remain
ignorant of the tragedy of his own fall from grace. May the scales never
fall from Drukman's eyes, lest he recognize his ilk for the poor,
benighted, fickle, cynical, Philistine, fad-conscious wretches
they are.

-- Andrew Marvick, an unsympathetic, sometimes even unsavory, but
   always _true_ Kate Bush fan