Kate v. the True Squids on the Block and other miscellany

[rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (R. L. McMillin)]

What a lot of heat (and so very little light) this has generated!  Ronald
Hill writes...

> On the question of Kate Bush VS. New Kids On The Block, where IED says
> he suspects Kate fans are on "the correct path" and that NKOTB fans
> aren't, I suspect the "correctness" of the path is less interesting
> than the LENGTH of the path.  I don't know, but I seriously doubt most
> New Kids fans will have any interest in them five or ten years from
> now.  As a matter of fact, I suspect most of them will see it as an
> embarrasement.  This is the real difference, for me.  'Cause I think
> most Kate fans, whether they stick with Kate or not, won't end up
> feeling about her music that way.  As a matter a fact, even if they end
> up leaving her music, they could very well see her as part of the
> "path" that led them to other musics (ie. classical) wheras the New
> Kids are a "dead end" path.  This is of course presuming that the New
> Kids don't end up showing the kind of growth Kate and other people like
> the Beatles did.

NKOTB is shallow, all right.  They are hardly unique that way, unfortunately.

On another note, in this same post, you post an interview from "Good
Rockin' Tonight", which I assume is a radio or television show in
1985.  It seems the interviewer was an unreformed FORTRAN programmer,
for he always speaks in UPPER CASE... :-)

Dances With Voles (do you limit yourself to voles, or do you also let
other insectivores on your card?) reminds us not to think too much:

> >What we have all responded to then in our first encounter(s) with Kate
> >and her music, if i am right, is, beneath the CONSIDERABLE stylistic
> >felicities of her art--her voice, the instrumentation, etc--the
> >presence of True Art, the awareness of Beauty in something approaching
> >its timeless aspect. It is a music that while as entertaining in tune
> >or beat as anyone's has yet something more, the certain HEFT or weight
> >of something that will last by virtue of exceptional craft and
> >spirit--it creates its own world which can & does to some degree
> >transform our own.
> 
> I think you're making this stuff up.  Kate's stuff doesn't do it in and of
> itself, obviously, or the entire world would be knocking down her door
> looking for the Cathy Demos.  Most of the music that really pumps my nads
> "creates its own world."  The best stuff operates on a totally subliminal
> level.  Cocteau Twins' gibberish-punctuated soundscapes convey worlds of
> emotion.  I don't know what she's SAYING, but I sure as hell know what she
> MEANS.  Ditto Kate.  When I was but a naive innocent, Suspended In Gaffa was
> greek to me, but it still made me want to weep.  The best music talks to you
> in a totally different way.  Sure, you like the words.  Yeah, you can hum
> the melody.  But there's plenty of dumb songs that I like just as much as
> anything Kate's ever done.  The appeal of music is timeless, unquantifiable
> and bizarrely unique from person to person.  Stop trying to generalize, and
> stop trying to "prove" the unprovable.

I'm with Pooh on this one -- trying remember how to spell Twosday makes
me woozy.

---

A brief Kate happenstance in a public place:  I had dinner last night
at California Pizza Kitchen, a place where they are as liable to put
chutney on your pizza as duck sausage or bamboo shoots.  At last count,
I understand they had expanded into the wilds of Atlanta and Chicago,
neither of which deserved to be californicated.  The background tape
actually played "Wuthering Heights"... surprise!