Gods and Cheese Slices, it's Spring Break!

[brownfld@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Kenneth R Brownfield)]

From: kp3x@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
> TESTING...
>hello, ernie.
>I should say at this point that the cheesecakes were very delicious.

     Was that as rediculously funny to everyone else as it was to me?
     Sorry.  :-)  On to KaTe.

     It seems that a lot of favorite Kate songs are being thrown around.  I
really doubt that someone can pick a Kate album that is just "best," all the
time.  It's like the difference between "Under the Ivy" and "Jig of Life."
UtI has a mood and JoL has a mood, and these moods are almost completely
different.  UtI is something to put on your headphones and melt to, JoL is
something that melts your friend's amp.  Each song and each album has it's own
mood that's divine for different, fairly specific times.  These songs are
exceptional for their moods.  It's impossible to have a best song, but there
can be a group of personal favorites, and I can't honestly say that JoL is my
favorite song when I'm depressed, but I could if I was in a more active mood.
     Why the fuss about "Kate Bush is God?"  I'm sure everyone who uses the
saying isn't implying that Kate is some Ethereal Being, or is _the_ "Christian
God."  What's the easiest way to say someone is a phenomenal person?  "Kate
Bush is Truly Excellent?"  "Kate Bush is As Close to The Common Version of a
God as Any Human Can Get?"  I think it excels as both an indication of
devotion, not deification, and it has a cynical side for those of us that
don't believe in the definition of an infinitely powerful "ruling" God.  Thanks
to IED for bringing up the point about sarcasm.
     God is also a human slang term for an excellent person, not an ethereal
being.  No slam intended to any sort of religion, just a point of view.  I
agree with Dan Welch to a point:  her music is much closer to a "religious"
experience than any other music.  You can't help but feel a lot different
towards Kate.  She hits you in the heart as well as the mind.  It's not happy-
go-lucky music, and it's not cynical dark music.  It's both.  It's human
emotion put in some perfect musical form, and arranged again with perfection.
That's what makes her special, what makes us buy _everything_ she's done.  She
has a great understanding that few others do.  I think that's where God comes
from:  she's the pinnacle of the music I listen to, but obviously not all of
it.  She's the best, the top.  Calling her a God may be oversimplification as
far as all the religious connections are concerned, but if you forget the
religion and deification, it's accurate in terms of the woman that writes the
music, her divine effect on her fans, and the understanding and humanity we
see in her through her music.  To me, her music can't be matched, although
other music is good as well.
     My introduction to Kate wasn't very sudden, but it was an experience.  I
first subscribed to the Love-Hounds around October? 1989.  I knew of Kate
from a snippet or two of her videos and her work with Peter Gabriel, but I
knew very little of her own work.  I wasn't really aware of the effect of
music until around then, mainly because that's when I got a CD player, and
thus when I didn't listen to music through a 10 cent tape deck.  Anyway, I
caught the "Love and Anger" video on MTV (or VH-1, I can't remember, I switch
so often.)  I thought it was very good, so I decided to get _The Sensual
World_ because I had also liked the parts of her work that I'd seen before.
     I managed to land TSW on CD for Christmas, and I knew I liked the album,
but the songs took awhile to really hit me.  My next album was _The Dreaming_.
The first time I listened to it through a cheap pair of headphones, but I knew
it would be best through speakers.  First time through speakers, I was just
dazed, with only enough energy to hit the play button again and turn the
volume _way_ up.  My parent's receiver overheated on "Get Out of My House."  I
lost a lot of hearing that day, and my brain was completely rewired for the
better.  I couldn't stop listening to TSW and TD for about a week, until
finally I got more of her albums to listen to constantly.  :-)
     Well, after that I just bought everything I could.  Kate's music outside
of TD has a different focus, but the same common denominator, and I loved
everything almost instantly.  _The Kick Inside_ and _Lionheart_ were the last
of the six albums that I bought, and were hard to get used to because they were
pretty much unlike her later work.  But they are excellent.  LH may lack in
the sense of how scholarly the songs and music are, mainly because Kate was
rushed into it, but Her art is still there, and that's really all that matters.
TKI and LH are very similar in their overall mood compared to her later work.
I think that's why her early and later works seem so "separate."
     I do wish I caught on to Kate a lot earlier, but at least I _did_.
     I'm most sentimentally attached to TD, but obviously _The Hounds of Love_
is next, especially _The Ninth Wave_.  The songs that I'm the most
sentimentally attached to are "Night Of The Swallow" and "All The Love"
together.  A neuron-frying combination, if ever I saw one.
     If I may, I'd like to plug Black Tape For A Blue Girl.  This music is
just beyond words.  Make sure you _don't_ like the music before not buying it.
Good stuff.  Thanks to everyone that suggested them.
     I'd really like to thank everyone for their opinions and their Kate
experiences.  I'm a bit of a lurker because I'm still a younger Kate fan than
anyone here (also younger, _period_) so I just take in all the great stuff,
and usually I don't quite know enough to contribute.  Besides, there's always
IED.  ;-)  Thanks to _everyone_.  I also hope the length and the time delay
don't bother too many Love-Hounds; it took me awhile to type this beast.
     She _is_.
							Ken.
						    KT@uiuc.edu