Re: The Sensual World: maturing or icing?

[jeffy@lewhoosh.umd.edu (Jeffrey C. Burka)]

>Turn this around.  Anyone over the age of 16 can relate to a song like
>"Between A Man And A Woman", whereas few will be able to relate to 
>a song about a story by Wilhelm Reich unless they've read it.  

Hunh?  I liked "Cloudbusting," lyricall and musically a hell of a lot more 
when I first heard it than I liked "Between a Man and a Woman."  You don't
need to have read _Book of Dreams_ to understand the *emotion* in the song,
or even the story line.  Boy loves father, father gets taken away.  Plain and
simple.  You don't need to know that Peter Reich had a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo
that his father forced him to give up due to it's "dangerous" (I'm unclear
as to whether the yo-yo *was* dangerous from a radation standpoint, or if
Reich thought it was giving out deadly anti-orgone rays) quality to understand
the symbolism of the yo-yo in the song--and to understand the relationship of
the lines "So I bury it -- and forget" and "I hid my yo-yo in the garden/I
can't hide you from the government/Oh God, Daddy -- I won't forget."

This song speaks to me very clearly, in a way that "Between a Man and a Woman"
doesn't quite work (along with "Reaching Out," this is one of two songs on
TSW that I'm not crazy about).

It does help to know about Wilhelm and Peter Reich to understand "Cloud-
busting."  Without that knowledge, you'd probably spend an awful lot of time
trying to figure out what the hell Organon is.  But it's certainly not 
necessary to get the emotion of the song.


>If Bush
>wants to write literary commentary, fine, but I (and I expect most people) 
>buy an album to enjoy the music.

Where has she written a song that contains any sort of "literary commentary"?
Are you saying that she should use no allusions in her lyrics?  Or only 
allusions that *you* are educated enough to understand?

[wrt The Ninth Wave]
>A group of song fragments, loosely linked by an uninteresting concept and 
>no coherent musical theme, and the listener is supposed to accept it as 
>High Art?  

a) song fragments?  What the hell is this supposed to mean?  What do you say to
all of the people who enjoy many of the songs on TNW without realizing that
there's a theme tying them together?  "That's not a song you like; that's just
a song fragment.  It's not valid for you to enjoy that song because it isn't
one."

b) okay, you find the concept uninteresting.  I happen to think it's
fascinating.  

c) why shouldn't we accept it as "High Art"?  Opera is accepted as such, 
yet the themes running through them tend toward exhaustion through overuse.

>This kind of pretention went out of style in the 70's.

Um, it did?  

"Smallcreep's Day"	Mike Rutherford
"Pros and Cons of Hitchiking"	Roger Waters
"The Final Cut"		Pink Floyd
"Radio KAOS"	Waters
"Operation:  Mindcrime"		Queensryche
"The Ninth Wave"	Kate Bush
"Misplaced Childhood"	Marillion
"New York"	Lou Reed
"Skylarking"	XTC
"White City:  A Novel"		Pete Townshend

Gee, it wasn't so hard for me to name 10 concept albums released in
the 80's, and I know there are a lot more out there.  (such as the 
Husker Du concept album, whose name I can't think, but I know about)

The point is that concept albums/rock operas did not go out with the 70s.
And it's pretentious to claim that they're all worthless as "Art."  Who
died and made you Critic from Hell?

>Sure, her fans will eat this stuff up, but it won't help to expand
>her audience.  I would never have believed it if someone told me
>that Bush could turn me off after The Dreaming, but this did it.

I hate to point this out, but "Running Up That Hill" certainly expanded
Kate's audience more than any single from _The Dreaming_.  Not every
song on an album will make a good single.  There's room for something like
"Waking the Witch" the sound-effects and noise of which fit perfectly within
the framework of TNW.  


>The Dreaming worked because Bush added all the detail to songs
>that were strong to begin with.  On The Ninth Wave all we got
>was detail. 

Okay, we'll take away the sonar pings from "Under Ice" and see if it's still
a great song.  What do you know?!  It is!


>Remember, Bush's
>earlier work was usually written before she entered the studio.  Now
>she composes in the studio.  Very different process, and I think the
>reason I don't relate to her recent work.

Yes, but _The Dreaming_ was composed in the studio, and the songs did not start
out as simple, piano-based compositions.  "The Dreaming" itself started life
as a drum machine pattern.

>Does Bush really expect us to go out and read a book just so we can 
>appreciate her song?

No.

>I don't expect
>to pick up every reference, but when a whole song is based on one
>specific piece of generally unknown fiction, I don't buy it.  A
>reference to "Wuthering Heights" will be more generally recognized.

For what seems to be the billionth time, you don't need to know everything
about an obscure piece of fiction (or semi-non-fiction like "Book of Dreams")
to "understand" and enjoy these songs.  

"Wuthering Heights" was one of my favorite songs by Kate for roughly a year
before I read the book.  I knew *nothing* about the plot of the book, merely
that there were characters named Heathcliff and Cathy.  From one point of
view, the song was a giant mystery allusion that I couldn't understand because
I hadn't read that one piece of fiction that would explain the entire thing.
Reading the book made me appreciate aspects of the song that I simply glossed
over in my earlier enjoyment of the song.

How about "Them Heavy People"?  I'd never heard of Gurdjieff before, and I
still know relatively little about him and his philosophy.  This doesn't
stop THP from being a neat, fun song. 


Oh well.  I should have gone to bed ages ago.  G'night.  

Jeff
-- 
|Jeffrey C. Burka                | "At night they're seen                 |
|                                |  Laughing, loving, 	                  |
|jeffy@lewhoosh.umd.edu          |  They know the way to be happy" --KaTe |