D. Neff's can 'o' worms '_'

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

Although several others may have beaten me to the (first) punch in
responding to Dave Neff's assessment of the Whole Story videos, I feel
compelled (& Kim in Seattle-town can vouch for this '_~) nevertheless
to make a few comments of me own. So i shall. Quotha.

Mr. Neff's estimation of Running Up That Hill just about knocked me
over--the sort of comment that could haunt a person for life, if ya
know what i mean :) ;) -- RUTH "was just some dancing and people in
masks." Yes, and _King Lear_ is just an old ex-king tramping about
complaining how no one will help him out.  ahem. :) Come, come,
Dave--there can be great power in apparently simple structures, if
well-conceived and executed. The RUTH video seems to me to capture
exquisitely the particular emotional dilemma of the song, and in
subtle ways (not in the usual MTV hammer-over-the-head style, that
is '_'). This particular song being PERFECT :) certainly helps Kate
out here, but only in elevating the degree of quality, not the kind.
The dancing--and i admit i'm not a trained eye--seems very well done,
from its choreography (all or mostly Kate, i believe) to its
performance; the continual intertwining of the 2 dancer's bodies, the
approaches and releases (and oh! that one move of kate sliding down
and around her partner, head-first--is to die for! '_'), are very
evocative of that perceptual and emotional exchange (or lack thereof)
that is the subject of this song. What is so wonderful and refreshing
and bold about this video is precisely this, its expression by pure visual
gesture of an emotional state. To put it another way, it is KaTe's
obliquity and apparent simplicity that makes this video so good--it
reinforces the content of the lyrics in a way that respects the
intelligence of the audience and encourages & rewards repeated
watchings. Plus there are so many great moves! :)  ...like the
archery-mimicry at the end; the one of Kate twirling up to the camera
and holding; etc etc.  Boy, now i'm longing to watch the video here!
So dave, try this vid again, and give it a little time to grow on
ya--i think it will.

I'll try to be brief with my remaining 'stuff'. ;) ...but not
systematic. :)  and i guarantee nothing. :)

'The Big Sky' vid: when Kim and i first saw this, many a moon ago,
during our first exposure to the phenomenon of KaTe in action (had
only heard her music til then, and only some of that--like HOL and
TWS, maybe The Dreaming [the GREATEST album, btw ;)] too...), our
first comment was something like 'now that was a FUN video!'--kate
scampering about, wearing goofy clothes and striking goofy (or as
someone recently said, 'endearingly dippy' [what!!]) poses, and in general
just appearing to have (& undoubtedly actually having) a great time of
it--which i suppose is what the song is about, if anything--this sort
of 'dive right in & splash about' feeling.  And so we think to this day....

'HOL' vid: for a long time, this one had us stumped--though i don't
know that we'd've called it a 'muddled mess' .... :) :)   We were
struck by the richness of the photography, the sets and dress, all the
visual stuff--looked cool. And also the actions, and movement from
scene to scene--seemed to have some purpose (that is, not arbitrary),
in addition to being interesting. & of course, KaTe looked stunning.
Not then knowing the Hitchcock angle and trying to find some direct
correlation of lyric to action, we were however always reduced to
shaking our heads after watching it, wishing we knew what in the HECK it
MEANT. so i can understand your reaction a bit, dave. Knowing what we
know now and being less tied to finding that direct correlation, the
vid seems a real success, a neat little job of storytelling. Takes a
little more effort and time to untangle, but that in itself is no
criticism or reason to dismiss.

'Wow': we thought this pastiche-vid like the sort of thing you might
have seen on Entertainment Tonight if KaTe [& i say this in a
horrified whisper] had died then (at that point in her career)--that
is, a visual eulogy. well, but that's a grim thought... we also
thought (or perhaps it was just me) that it would've been better if
KaTe had made a "proper" vid for that song--but that was at least an
early opinion, and i don't know that it necessarily holds today. One
other thing about that vid: it includes amongst its clips, i believe,
the bit from the hammersmith vid [which btw just BLEW us both away
upon first watching it--we was BUSH-WHACKED!!! :) ] from the song
'Don't Put Your Foot....'  which has the KILLER look from Kate--she's
moving slowly and seductively along by the chain-link fence there on
stage when she turns slightly to the audience and makes this
expression, that--ach, i canna describe it, words fail me!!  Everytime
we saw that part, for months and months afterward, we'd both just
(literally) fall over in delight, stabbed to the quick. truly a look
to die for!!!! :) :) :)   (anybody else have that type of reaction, hm]

the early vids: one, i think, needs to distinguish between
'amateurish' and 'primitive' when discussing objects like these vids.
i would certainly call those early ones, even as late as those from
The Dreaming (but more on those anon), 'primitive' in their technical
and even at times conceptual aspects. This is because, as others have
pointed out, they were done before videos were the popular institution
they've become now, and hence laboured under the constraints of low
budgets, low demand (from the public and hence record company), cheap
equipment, little or nothing to work off of (in the way of previous
efforts, previous videos), and so on. It is misleading to denote these
aspects of the early vids as 'amateurish' when that term rightly means
to denote 'less than professional, less than competently done by the
standards of the time.' It also connotes meanings of clumsiness and
slip-shodness (a word, he asks). Now the term 'primitive' lacks such
connotations, and more accurately describes the early nature of those
vids. There seems to me a goodly amount of professionalism in vids
like 'Wuthering Heights' and 'The Man with the Child in his Eyes' in
terms of their linkage of visual & gesture (action) to music &
lyric--they evince a professional, intelligent and sensitive regard
for the limits of their work, and, more precisely, to what was then
the bald, harsh eye of the camera in relation to songs so much the
other way. That they SEEM clumsy or rough TODAY i will grant without
much argument (i confess they aren't my FAVOURITE vids)--that they ARE
clumsy &-or rough i will dispute (see above verbiage '_'). So there! :)

The 2 vids in TWS from The Dreaming (och, what an album!) i don't
think need any defending from the poor likes of me--but why should
that stop me [oo i wish i had a question-mark key!]. 'Sat in Your Lap'
is a riot, what with all the weird characters and get-ups in it--i
mean, KaTe in a tuttu roller-skating (question-mark) -- with Minotaurs
(bull-headed men--i'm sure you all got that visual pun. that Kate,
what a joker! '_'), jesters and assorted odd-balls. Seems all pretty
fitting for a song about knowledge etc., without getting dour & mopy
about it all. it's a lark, of a sort. i -- we -- like it a lot. & btw,
don't kate look pretty dang strong-in-the-arms in this vid
(question-mark)--oo, the muscular KaTe! :) :)   'The Dreaming' vid is
pretty intense (like that whole album), but captures very well the
quiddities of place & idea that the song deals with. Lots of classic
Kate moves in this vid, too--the 'digging' part; the stuff with laser;
the part early in the song when the other dancers break out of their
trunks and start 'movin' to the beat' with KaTe; KaTe as FTD florist :)
(when she's hopping up the cliff--ok, not very serious or respectful a
comment, but hey, it's what came to our funny little minds '_' --and
look at her then next time you see the vid & tell me if she doesn't
look that way to you too) ; and so on. And btw, does anybody know what
the poor guy at the end of the vid is saying through the sand sifting
into his mouth (question-mark) (actually i s'pose this is a question
for the song itself, but what the hey.... '_')  

'Cloudbusting'-- again, an excellent venture in visual narrative by
Our KaTe, and some very good acting. but do i really need to enumerate
the particular virtues of this little piece of brilliance (question-mark)
Most of what i've said above applies here. (a leetle anecdote
though--the first time we saw this vid, we noticed, early on,
little-boy KaTe pull something out of father-figure Donald S's coat
pocket. so next time we played it (the same night), when that point in
the vid approached, we crawled up next to the TV screen to get a
better look at what it was. saw then it were a book, but couldn't make
out the title. watched it again & thought we saw the words "Rock of
Ireland." for some reason satisfied with that (or unable to get a
sharper look at it) & quite ignorant of the actual meaning of the
lyrics, what lay behind them, what they were based on, we went gaily
on our way, trading several ingenious theories on what the song is
about ('but what is Organon') between ourselves (and some were quite
good, if i do say so meself) and occasionally looking for this book "A
(or The) Rock of Ireland"--with no luck of course. at long last,
months later, we read Mr. Juby's (error-filled) bio of KaTe and
discovered there 'the rest of the story'. watching the vid again, and
now knowing the title of the book on which the song is based, we peer
at the screen and see--'A Book of Dreams'  Peter Reich.  so obvious
now... sigh....................)

Well, i'm hardly being brief, it seems--prolix is more like it. Almost
done though....

Lastly, as an observation on the quirks of personal taste or response,
i offer this. Dave Neff sez:

"First, some background. I am a moderate Kate fan, but certainly not a
rabid fan. I have all her albums on CD, and "The Sensual World"
videos on laserdisc. I liked "The Sensual World" videos fairly well.
Overall, the videos on "The Whole Story" did not impress me."

We, too, were "moderate" kaTe fans when we first saw TWS vids--and the
Hammersmith vid too. What's interesting here is that our response was
WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW
UNBELIEVABLE UNBELIEVABLE UNBELIEVABLE UNBELIEVABLE UNBELIEVABLE OH WOW!!
Bush-whacked, as i mentioned above. Completely floored. And in large
part due to the videos that so unimpressed you. Though in even larger
part due to the live vid from the Hammersmith--which, Dave, you really
must see. So from kate neophytes we were, in the short span of one
evening (about 4 hours), launched into rabid-dom.:) And it's quite fine.
i hope some day you can join us. :) :) :) :)

Thus endeth the epistle.  :)
____________________________________________________________________________

david gravender (& silent DREAMING partner Kim)  <gravende@epas.utoronto.ca>   
_____________________________________________________________________________

"'Running Up That Hill' is The Perfect Song."  --kim 'n' david