A little history...

[aurs01!aurxc3!whitcomb@mcnc.org (Jonathan Whitcomb)]

rodent@netcom.com (Ben Discoe) writes:
>1. Is this group JUST for Kate?  It appears to be totally obsessed with her.

Actually when this group was founded 72 years ago in Sri Lanka it was 
originally intended for afficianados of hunting dogs and other canines
pressed into manual labor.  The orignal name of the group was "Amos
Canis Woofis", and was written on dried leaves and spread from town
to town by passing merchants.  Occasionally, some of the written 
passages were so controversial that readers would burn the leaves in
anger, leading to the modern term "flaming".  Many found that inhaling
the smoke of the burning leaves caused a hallucanatory effect, and thus
smoking leaves became more popular than reading them in some areas.

Traffic on the group was light, but started to pick up in the 60's when
some of the free love fringe mistook the title (by then "Hound-Lovers")
to imply more intimate relationships between man and his best friend.
The name was then changed to "Love-Hounds" to avoid any further 
confusion.

By 1986, the group was an entirely electronic media, and the release of
Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" album brought so much traffic to discuss
this album and the artist that the original hard core group of hunting
dog fans split off to form another group, the well known and highly read
rec.pooches.kill.bad.deer.yeah.  Since that time the Kate Bush crowd has
dominated the group, although lately it seems that a religious cult based
around holy relics created, used, or discarded by the recording artist is
gaining favor.

>2. Where did the group creators get the word "gaffa" and what does it mean?

"Gaffa" (as has been explained ad nauseum in this forum) is another
Sri Lankan word referring to the mental state achieved by those smoking
too many of the leaves this group was originally printed on.

>3. I'm more into the Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance etc.  Is this the place
>   for me or should I get lost?

As long as you make the occasional kowtow to the Bush crowd and say
the appropriate holy words and use lots of initials to refer to albums
and song titles, welcome.  You may find after a few days reading this
group that getting lost was the safer option, however.  Of course, we
try to be open to new thoughts and ideas, so if you do indeed *want*
to get lost, don't feel anyone here is pressuring you to do otherwise.
It's just that we don't want everyone to get lost together, because then
invariably someone will know where they are and the whole excersize
would be pointless.  But do what you want.

>4. Is Kate on the 4AD label?  Just what IS the 4AD label anyway, and who
>   is on it beside the above two groups?

Kate is not on the 4AD label.  The 4AD label originally started many years
before 4 A.D., and was responsible for such works as the Rosetta Stone 
and the Shroud of Turyn.  They continue publishing artifacts by little
known or dead societies for the amusement of archeologists and necrophiliacs.
Other well known acts include "Thrown Mooses", "Clone of Xerox" and
"The Picked Seeds".

>Thanks for any answers!

We are here to inform and entertain (as well as occasionally inflame and
irritate).

>------------------
>Ben Discoe, radical ecologist, computer scientist, geometer, amigoid

Jonathan Whitcomb, racial egotist, commuter psychic, geometry, ohmygod