Mailbag

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

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

 >   Last night, the VJ Mario Joyner of MTV said that they
 > would be starting to play a "new" Kate Bush video next
 > week.
 >    Of course, it could really be "The Sensual World" or
 > "This Woman's Work" -- we'll just have to wait and
 > see!

     We're waiting...We're waiting...
     So this also implies that Columbia will release a second
single in the U.S. next week, right? Ha! (Try next year...) IED's
guess is it'll be _This_Woman's_Work_, but who knows? Maybe they've
forced Kate to work up another "American-style" video a la _Love_and_
_Anger_, this time for the "next" most "American-market-oriented"
track (_Reaching_Out_?)...
     Sincere thanks to Andreas for transcribing the _Musik_Dramatik_
article on symbolism in Kate's videos. Some of Ola's observations were
very interesting, though several were unfortunately flawed by a mis-
interpretation of the English lyrics of the song. (It isn't "obvious",
for example, that the setting for the video of _The_Dreaming_ is "another
planet". In fact, that seems very unlikely. It's far more likely that
the intended setting is Australia--a weird, horrifying alter-Australia,
perhaps, but still Australia. Likewise the setting of the video of
_Hounds_of_Love_ is not a "factory", but some kind of natural science
museum, or perhaps a kind of wartime interum-museum which combines
art collections with industrial exhibits. IED disagrees with Ola's
interpretation of the entire _Hounds_of_Love_ video, in fact. No mention
is made of the fact that the man is on the run from the law (and the
attendant symbolism of the handcuffs, which are first placed on the
heroine's hand, and finally placed on the man's hand _by_ the heroine),
or of the very deliberate references to Hitchcock (talk about
symbolism!). IED's conclusion is that, as welcome as Ola's article is,
it barely scratches at the surface of Kate's symbolic video imagery. For a
"serious" article, it is disappointingly brief, superficial and haphazard.
     Having said all this, it would seem only fair that IED should
attempt to do better. He will try to post a supplement to Ola's
article about Kate's video imagery sometime in the near future.
     IED's criticism of the article should not, of course, be mistaken
for criticism of Andreas, to whom IED is very grateful. Thanks, Andreas!

 >IED: you should add the _Live_in_Bristol_ 2-LP set to your list of boots.
 >Sound quality is listenable mono, but faint. It can be improved with an
 >equalizer for cassette dubs. The nice thing about the package is just

     Woj: IED may have forgotten to mention the Bristol set in one of his
recent postings about bootlegs, but in at least one other he included
it. Here's an excerpt from a posting dating back to Christmastime:

 >   T.Atwell asks about the availability of records of the complete
 >Tour of Life. IED just posted a detailed review of all the bootlegs
 >of Kate's Tour of Life shows. There are quite a few: the _Hammersmith_
 >Odeon_ video shows twelve songs; there were also a few others shown
 >in a German/Dutch documentary ca. 1980; and still others in a Swedish
 >documentary of the same period. Of current bootlegs, the most complete
 >records of the concert are the London Palladium 3-LP set, the Bristol
 >set and the Manchester set, in that order. Other boots can be found
 >of part of the Paris show, the Bill Duffield (London) show, the Mannheim
 >and Hamburg shows, and an unidentified English show (LP called _Temple_
 >_of_Truth_). All of these bootlegs can occasionally be found at
 >record swapmeets, and some may be obtainable via mail-order services
 >which advertise in _Goldmine_, etc. Almost without exception the sound
 >quality of all of these is _abominable_, so don't expect hi-fi audio
 >or you will be sorely disappointed.

     You then write, Woj:
 >Also, just a comment on the _Bird_in_the_Hand_ boot: you rate the sound
 >as poor stereo. My copy is quite listenable and I prefer it muchly to
 >the _Live_in_Bristol_ sound. Rates a B as far as I'm concerned.

     These ratings are all relative. IED agrees with you that in
comparison with the Bristol set, _Bird_in_the_Hand_ has better sound.
But that's because _BitH_ is a dub (a pretty bad one) from an early
stereo videotape copy of the _Live_at_Hammersmith_Odeon_ film. IED's
judgement of _Bird_in_the_Hand_'s sound was based on a more relevant
comparison: to the other available audio-transfers of the _Hammersmith_
audio-track. Not only is there an excellent digital-transfer on Japanese
laser-disk of this film, but there is now a firstrate bootleg CD, as
well. Compared with these products, the _Bird_ LP is mediocre at best.

 >One last question, in _The_Garden_, you list the 12" of "The Big Sky" to
 >have "The Morning Fog" and "Not This Time" as the b-sides. On the 12"
 >that I own, the "special single mix" of "The Big Sky" replaces "The Morn-
 >ing Fog." Was this an oversight on your part, or was just the American
 >12" printed with these songs instead?
 >
 >-- woj

     The latter. As IED said at the beginning of his list, all references
are to the original UK editions unless otherwise stated. The UK 12" of
_The_Big_Sky_ has _Not_This_Time_ and _The_Morning_Fog_ on its b-side.
The U.S. _The_Big_Sky_ 12" has, as you noted, _Not_This_Time_ and _The_
_Big_Sky_(Special_Single_Mix)_.

 >What the heck is "Sat In Your Lap" about?
 >
 >-- Doug MacGowan

     The song is about "the search for knowledge". Kate has also
said it's about "really the lack of knowledge". And she has also
said that it deals with laziness, the wish that one could acquire
knowledge without going through the effort of learning. You're
right, though, that she has never written about the song's meaning
in any of her own published articles; all we know about the song
comes from her comments in interviews. With one exception: she did
say this about the line, "Just when I think I'm King":
     "I saw this vocal being sung from high on a hill on a windy
day. The fool on the hill, the king of the castle...'I must admit,
just when I think I'm king.'"
     As to whether there is a _specific_, narrative context for _Sat_
_In_Your_Lap_, IED doesn't believe there is. Kate has remarked on the
difficulty she had coming up with suitable video imagery for the song,
because _SIYL_ didn't have an actual storyline. As a result, it didn't
lend itself to the kind of linear, cinematic approach Kate obviously
favours for videos. Instead, she just "threw together lots of images of
knowledge, or the lack of knowledge," and decided to make the video
"silly" and "just fun, really."
     This factor has been, IED believes, an important and consistent
determining factor in all of Kate's videos to date. The songs which have
featured a straighforward narrative adaptable for film (_There_Goes_
_a_Tenner_, _Cloudbusting_, _Experiment_IV_, _Breathing_, _This_Woman's_
_Work_) have generally turned out to be her darkest and most overtly "serious"
videos, whereas (again only generally) songs which dealt with general themes
rather than multiple-scene narrative stories have been lighter in tone
(_The_Big_Sky_, _Sat_In_Your_Lap_, _Love_and_Anger_, _The_Sensual_World_,
_Them_Heavy_People_, etc.) It's not true all the time, of course (IED thinks
_Suspended_in_Gaffa_ is one of Kate's most serious videos, though it
hardly tells a linear story, and the same is true of _Running_Up_That_
_Hill_), but in general it seems to hold true.

 >Wait -- I just thought of a way that some videos from _TWS_ might be on
 >the new video cassette.  _The Whole Story_ was released in America
 >under the Sony label.  (I'm not sure how this came about.)  Sony
 >now owns Columbia.  So if Sony actually had the rights to the videos
 >on _TWS_, and didn't license the rights from Capitol/EMI specifically
 >for that video cassette, then it's possible.  Or perhaps Sony could
 >license them again from Capitol/EMI.  I just don't know.  Frankly,
 >I doubt it.
 >
 >-- Ed

     Well, who knows, really? IED was making the assumption that
the videos are now under Sony's ownership, not only because of the
US Sony-label _TWS_, but because all of Kate's Japanese laser-disks
were put out under the Japanese side of Picture Music International,
which IED was under the impression belonged to Sony. Anyway, we'll
soon see!!

 > From: csccat!larry@texbell.swbt.com (Larry Spence)
 > I've gotten some email from folks in the UK who have just picked this up.
 > Has anyone in the US seen it yet?  I've been looking for it to no avail.
 > I was warned that the price was nearly $80 US!  If IED has any info on
 > where I can locate a copy, I would be grateful.

     The price at Tower Sunset (West Hollywood, CA) was
$64.98 (this week only--they're having a storewide sale through
Friday). It's a high price even so, but in IED's opinion well worth
it. They had only two boxes, and IED bought one (with his last pennies).

 > If you listen to stuff like the Orchestra Arcana albums, you'll notice
 > that the Echo Observatory's abilities have been up to snuff for a few
 > years now.

     Yes, but in some respects these new tracks are even more
current-sounding. Also, though the Orch. Arc. albums were done at Echo,
he presumably took more time on their final sound than he did on these
new tracks', so one could expect the Orch. Arc. sound to be a bit more
polished.
     Jorn Barger writes:
 >Back in November, someone in gaffa conducted a survey of how we all ranked
 >TSW relative to all Kate's other albums.  I don't remember where TSW finally

     How we _all_ "ranked" it? Speak for yourself, Jorn. IED never partici-
pated in that silly sonic beauty contest, and he suspects quite a few others
in this group demurred, as well.

 >So I finally sat down this weekend with all 6 CD's in the changer
 >set to "Random", on the theory that the unfamiliar play-order would help
 >bring some objectivity to the investigation...
 >What I ended up doing, flame if you must, was rating every song to see how
 >each album fared.  The results:

     Quite apart from the falsity of your premise (why would the mere
act of changing the playing order of music you already know very well
lend any significant new quantity of objectivity to your judging?),
IED is at a loss to understand this obsession some Love-Hounds have
to be always comparing _new_ Kate Bush music to _old_ Kate Bush music.
Of all the artists in the world working today, Kate is probably the
artist for whom such comparisons of relative "quality" afford the
_least_ insight to the listener making the comparison.

-- Andrew Marvick
   "Ooh, the thrill and the hurting..."