dulce et decorum est--a happy confection

[gravende@epas.utoronto.ca (David Gravender)]

Having attempted and apparently failed to post here on Monday, I shall
endeavor once more to do, although item the first must needs be
abridged, as reconstituted from a less than verbatim memory.

Observed in the Canadian paper Globe & Mail's weekly TV supplement
_Broadcast Week_ (for 11-17 May) under the new video release column
was a review of a film entitled _The Chocolate War_. The film concerns
the "clandestine hazing" and other sundry such low and immoral acts
carried on or around a young male teen at a Catholic prep school. It
boasts, as the reviewer puts it, a "driving score" that includes
contributions from peter gabriel, KATE BUSH and joan armatrading.

This do be news to me. Might any of you out there have any further
intelligence about this particular piece of cinema, such as, for
instance, which song(s) of KaTe's was employed? Given the setting &
plot (such as I could remember), Waking the Witch suggests itself
strongly to me as a possibility. At any rate, judging by its title alone,
the film seems an appropriate one for kate to be involved with,
n'est-ce pas,given that particular predilection of hers that manifests
itself so during her recording incarnations. A chocolate war indeed!

And since I am here, allow me also to add my voice, off-key as it may
be, to the present and continuing choric chime of praise for Happy
Rhodes which is resonating through this network. Having just this Monday
past received the CD _Warpaint_ and having had it in my ears the bulk
of my waking hours since, might I say how much I have enjoyed it? I
might. Her voice is quite a thing to behold--such range, and such
facility in it. It is uncanny (as many others have observed) how her
voice resembles kaTe's in the upper registers, both in timbre and
inflection. The difference between this and the voice that comes out
in the lower registers (which, I might add parenthetically, reminds of
Annie Lennox) is so startling as to make one imagine there are two
singers and not just the one--quite often, it is no difficulty to
imagine that what is being heard is Happy with kate on BV's, or even
Kate with Ms. Lennox. The music itself has its own peculiar
enchantments, not the least of which are its elaborate vocal
configurations and the idosyncratic tunefulness of them. It is
regrettable (and not a little astounding) that Ms. Happy is yet
without a recording contract. Should this oversight be rectified soon
and this album subsequently become her first major release, however,
might I suggest as a first single the opening track, Waking Up? I
might. It seems an almost perfect choice for at least US radio (which,
by the by, I have a feeling would've "gone for" Kate's Be Kind To My
Mistakes, had anyone had the particular foresight to have released it as
such and not relegate it to B-side status)--has the right "pop",
methinks. At any rate, I am quite pleased to have made her
acquaintance via Warpaint, and do thank Vickie Mapes, for bringing her
to the attention of this net, and my friend Kim for urging us so to
co-invest (the tape's on the way). As Elvis Costello might advise you
all, "Get Happy!!"

"napoleon dynamite" <gravende@epas.utoronto.ca>

'Now there's newsprint all over your face
 Maybe that's why I can read you like a book'