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From: rhill@pnet01.cts.com (Ronald Hill)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gaffa
Subject: Re: Misc
Message-ID: <8617@crash.cts.com>
Date: 17 Apr 91 00:56:10 GMT
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Organization: People-Net [pnet01], El Cajon CA
Lines: 202


Well I just got my tax refund on the same day as I heard about this Japanese
Box set.  The fact the sound quality is better is almost enough to make me
jump at it.  I wonder if I can finagle him down on the price by telling him
about my "Cloudbusting" project.  One question, but is most of the lryrics and
stuff that comes with the things normaly in ENGLISH also.  And is there
something missing aside from the stickers and exclamation point.  Thanks for
any info, this is a BIG purchase and should help push my Mastercard ?qnEb     
  
arGH@!!! 

should help push my mastercard bill back up twhere it was before I started
weeding it down after the con.  : -) 
 
pD7,$:Gxr?~?~?~?~?~?~?~?~?~?lv3o~?~?~?~?~?~?~?~?~?~6;f

ARGH! 
 
here are some more raw quotes about current subjects! 

COFFEE HOMEGROUND 
-----------------

     In Coffee Homeground, you mention Crippen. Who is he?
     "He was a murderer who was arrested after he had escaped from Britain by
ship, thanks to the use of ship-to-shore radio. It was the first time that
radio was used in this way, so he has a small place in history for that
reason."  (1979, KBC 3)

     Someone once said that Coffee Homeground was about a crazy
taxi driver. Is this true?
     "Coffee Homeground was sort of based on a taxi driver that I met once,
yes, but I wouldn't like to say that he was crazy because a lot of people say
that I am!"  (1980, KBC 5)

     The sort of vignette-songs like Coffee Homeground or Houdini, are those
conceived in the first place as ideas, intellectually so to say, while there
are others which take shape while you're actually playing the piano, whereupon
you look for suitable words?
     "Well, Coffee Homeground would have been a song where the words and the
music were coming together probably at exactly the same time. Actually, that's
the only song which I wrote when I visited America about seven years ago [to
appear on Saturday Night Live]. Which is quite interesting, as it's not at all
American...
    A little bit German, maybe? Who did the arrangement?
     "Well, actually, Andrew Powell arranged the orchestra. But the
riff (Kate sings it)--that was written on the piano and--"
     Paddy: "Then translated into different instruments. As a matter of fact,
Coffee Homeground vibrantly ["violently"? The word is not clearly audible.]
mutated. When the very first demos of it were done, it had a decidedly
different flavour. The Brechtian treatment didn't appear until much later on,
that only took shape when Kate got the idea of treating the song with a
slightly German sort of flavour."
     So, with a song like that, it's Kate who actually conceives what is
possible, and then looks to the musicians or to an arranger to actualize it?
     Paddy: "Oh, yes, yes. But in the case of Coffee Homeground it did
mutate. The Brechtian feel is something that appeared only gradually,
during the actual recording, and became more definite as time went on." 
(1985, Musician)


VEGETARIANISM
-------------

     If vegetarians are against the killing of animals for food, why don't
they object to them being killed for leather?
      "I think there are a lot of vegetarians who are against animals being
killed to make leather, and they do go out of their way to wear rubber and
plastic shoes and belts, but I think that there is a practical side to it, as
well. Leather is very warm, and it's nice to look at, but it does require a
lot of effort for most of us to make a different choice from the normal, and I
find myself that I do wear quite a few leather shoes. Not that I consciously
buy them because they're made of leather, but I do have a few, and I think
it's something to do with the tradition of leather being used in clothing. But
there's no excuse for the mass production of leather, and I think it comes
down to effort and how far you really want to go. It's up to you in the long
run."
     You are a vegetarian and yet you wear fur coats. Why?
     "I don't wear fur coats. I haven't got one. I don't own one and I don't
believe in wearing them--I may have occasionally been in photos with one, but
it wouldn't have been mine. It would have been one that I'd borrowed because
it was very cold; for instance in Switzerland, when I did the Abba special.
[In fact, as far as I know, that was the only time Kate has ever been seen in
a fur.] But I don't believe in people wearing fur coats, I think it's very
extravagant and again, I think people don't tend to associate the clothes with
the animals they come from, especially the rare animals that some of the coats
are made of. You can get incredibly good imitation ones now--I've seen ones
that I thought were real fur and they weren't. they're really fantastic, and
they cost less, too."
     Do you follow vegetarian recipes from books, or do you make up your own?
     "I do follow recipes from books, but I find that normally I don't stick
to them, especially if I haven't got all the ingredients, and I tend to
substitute different vegetables. If I'm feeling really brave, occasionally I
base a meal on a recipe and make the rest up. Cooking is quite a logical
thing, really, and you soon learn the things that go together--what works and
what doesn't."
     You say in interviews that you don't eat meat because you don't believe
in eating life. But you eat plants, and they are living things. Why?
     "I do eat plants, and I know they're living, and I'm fond of them, but I
think you have to find your own level. I could live on pills, but I don't
think it's very human to do that--that is something we dream of in the space
age: food without texture or mass. I don't think plants mind being eaten,
actually. I think they'd be really sad if no-one paid that much attention to
them. I appreciate them very much for the things they give me. I'd be very sad
if there weren't any vegetables, and normally it isn't the actual plant that's
killed--it's the fruit or vegetable that's taken off. I think this is the
purpose of plants, that they grow to be eaten. The only problem is that it has
become a very mass-produced market, again, and that the really natural,
unchemicalised environment doesn't really exist. Too many chemicals are used
on plants, but while there is a demand for brightly coloured food in pretty
packets, that's how it will carry on. But you can get fresh, organically grown
vegetables. You can grow them yourselves, and if you look around and ask,
you'll find that there are a few shops and some local farms that sell
vegetables that have not been grown in chemically
fertilised ground."  (1980, KBC 5)

"I just couldn't stand the idea of eating meat--and I really do think that it
has made me calmer."  (1982, Company)


     People probably eat so much pre-packaged food because it's always so easy
to get in shops, and they don't connect it with live animals. If they actually
had to kill the animal themselves, they would probably have great difficulty
in doing it. People who live and work with animals can be aware of what they
are doing when they kill an animal. They realise that they're going to be
eating it, rather than it being sent off to be sold in supermarkets. On some
levels this seems to be all right, because it's on a one-to-one basis: you
feed and look after the animal for a certain length of time and then it repays
you by becoming your food. But it's the mass-production of living creatures
just to be eaten, and the fact that people aren't really aware of what they're
eating, that I don't like.
      These days it seems more and more probable that fish are likely to
contain pollution--which can't do you any good--as they have no choice but to
eat all the muck that's in the water. But hopefully people's general awareness
is getting much better, even down to buying a pint of milk: the fact that the
calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn't go to them but to us can't
really be right, and if you've seen a cow in a state of extreme distress
because it can't understand why its calf isn't by it, it can make you think a
lot.
     Working in London, I often have to go past meat markets, and when I see
all those people working in there with blood all over them, and dead animals
strung up from meat-hooks, just waiting to be devoured, it's like something
out of a horror film. When I realised that, I didn't want to eat meat any
more. I became more conscious about the things that I did eat. I think this
helped me to learn more about food, because I had to start thinking what the
nutritional value of something was, and I'm still learning about things I
didn't think I could eat, which is really good. Just the discipline of not
eating meat is a very good thing. It's like giving up anything you like--it
hurts at first, but then you feel much better for it. I don't know whether it
was just me, but when I first became a vegetarian I was really hungry a lot of
the time, but I'm not now, and I wonder if that's because my stomach has
adjusted. When you eat meat, you do ten to eat more than you need, and the
body has to work a lot to break it all down.
     It's interesting how the traveling that I've done reveals things about
people's diets. In many European countries it's very hard to get something
that hasn't got meat in it. There was one instance in Germany where I asked
for a bowl of tomato soup and, having been assured that it contained just
tomatoes, I tucked into it. But about halfway through the soup I could see all
these lumps floating around at the bottom, and of course they were all
meatballs. They just naturally do things like putting bacon and meatballs into
vegetable soup, without even thinking about it. So many shops are
meat-oriented: it's all sausages and pies, and the only other things you can
really get are just potatoes and salads, when there is such an enormous
variety of non-animal foods that can be eaten. Looking forward to a breakfast
of toast and marmalade, and then getting a couple of slabs of cold meat and
white bread pushed
under your nose, isn't the way I like to start my day.
     Japan seemed to be more vegetable-oriented. They take great pride in
their vegetables, although they're greatly into fish, and this is causing them
and the dolphins a lot of problems. I found Australia very meat-oriented, too,
and this might have something to do with it being such a young country, and
it's true that meat does give you a lot of energy. I suppose there was a time
when a slab of bacon fat for breakfast might have been necessary for somebody
working in a heavy manual job. But I've found that if I keep an eye on the
sort of vegetarian food that I eat, I don't have any problems about dancing
and singing on it.
      It all comes down to looking more closely at the sort of food you are
just used to having and saying to yourself, Do I really need to eat this, or
is there something that will be better for me? The more people who get into
good vegetarian food, the easier it will be for us. If I go into a restaurant
with friends, and they settle down to a feast of meat and sauces and so on, I
usually end up with salad and chips--which is OK, but that's about as far as
most restaurants can go in the direction of vegetarian food.  (1980, KBC 5)


SMOKING
-------
     You obviously believe in keeping yourself as healthy as you can
through exercise and eating the correct foods, etc. But it puzzles
me and others as to why you continue to smoke.
     "I can understand why it should surprise you, but unfortunately
I am only human."   (1984, KBC 16)

I think that people smoking is one of those tiny things that says a lot about
human beings. I mean, I smoke and I enjoy it, but we smoke and we know it's
dangerous. Maybe there's some kind of strange subconscious desire to damage
ourselves. It would seem so if you looked back through history, wouldn't it?" 
 (1985, Keyboard)


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