Re: Yet Still More Kate Tribute Album

[UD137927@VM1.NoDak.EDU]

     Just for your interest, a local band around here claims their primary
influences to be Joan Jett, Roy Orbison, Metallica, and Kate Bush. Here, by
the way, is in North Dakota, about which the less said the more truthful.
     The interesting thing about these chaps is the almost pure democracy with
which they perform -- thrash metal followed up by Orbison's "Dreaming" (done
with only a little bit of electric buzz), followed by their keyboardist doing
a solo piece by C.P.E. Bach for harpsichord, followed by "Yellow Submarine,"
and then John Denver's "Country Roads."...
     Suffice to say that they don't have too many close fans (any audience
which would pack the house to hear their metal would tear out at their
patented Mega-Twang (tm) version of "Country Roads," and few Joan Jett fans
wish to hear their idea of "Roadrunner" covered by Sonic Youth), but they're
a fun group for their ecleticism, nonetheless.
     Oh, yes, their Kate Bush songs. Best off is their hard-rocking version
of "Army Dreamers" -- same tempo as the original, but done with a bit less
lightness as the first one. It's kept from being a dirge by the strong beat
they give it (BIG DRUMS), and they give the chorus three times, rearranging
the order of the "He coulda beens..." every time. The main reason for this,
they told me,was so at the end of their third chorus, where "He could have
been a rock star" goes into "But he never had the money for a guitar" which
allows them a perfect excuse for the Semi-Obligatory Blow Out Guitar Solo.
FYI, they also work in the "Night Scented Stock" as a guitar/synth theme
during the first musical bridge.
     They do a basically straight version of "Gaffa," except that they've
vamped up the opening piano chords into this endless refrain (bum Dum Dum,
bum Dum Dum) to allow them to do some stage stuff -- heard alone in
rehearsal, it's akin to a metronome gone amok. Also, they work in a guitar
solo into the middle of "Gaffa" (between verses two and three) which is
an exact duplicate, for some unknown reason, of that flute/whatever theme
from Mannheim Steamroller's first song on Fresh Aire III ("Tocatta," I
believe, but then I haven't heard it -- FAIII -- in years).
     Then they do a great parody of Kate in their tribute/condemnation
"The Cynical World." Don't have their lyric book right in front of me,
but as an example, the "Oooh, yeah!" becomes "Yeahhh, right!"
     Other things they've tossed around:  doing a musical combo of
Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Kate's "Hammer Horror" (I don't know
why, I just talk to them), doing a HARD-CORE death thrash version of
"The Infant Kiss" (just to finish up their alternative vision of NFE, side
II, I guess), and some bizarre musical experiment which, in their words,
"will recast the molten history of musical fact into that preferred world
where, for reasons too obvious to state, Kate Bush, Joan Jett, and David
Gilmour were the founding, and lasting, members of the Residents."
     Soon as I hear it (don't hold breath, it's needed for other things),
I'll let you know.


writing from a cubicle in

                            --The Orb
Real News for Real People

                "Cthulhu and Kate Bush are announcing their new collaborative
effort, "Suspended in Shoggoths," just in time for the Summer Solstice next
year."    -- off the Orb's bulletin board, 10/5/91.