thE Meaning of kt's reggAe; seLwyn stevens on "suspended in gaFfa"

[IED0DXM%MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU@mitvma.mit.edu]

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: thE Meaning of kt's reggAe; seLwyn stevens on "suspended in gaFfa"

   Richard Caldwell, Love-Hounds's staunch defender of the PMRC,
has expressed the opinion that Kate's "reggae" version of "Rocket
Man" fails to convey a sense of sadness and loneliness.  IED
couldn't disagree more.  But which sense of sadness and loneliness
do we refer to here: the piercing, shocking, thrilling sense
of a real emotion felt as though for the first time?  Or the
dull, safe sense of a half-remembered emotion dimly reflected
in an all-too-familiar tradition?
   IED has two points to make about "Rocket Man".  First, "sadness"
and "loneliness" need not be--and in fact seldom effectively are, at
least not in rock music--expressed in a minor key and at a slower pace.
Kate herself once said about "Army Dreamers" that she had taken care to
conceal the tragic subject matter of the song within the lilting waltz
atmosphere of its musical setting, so as to draw people into
a more receptive state of mind when they eventually noticed
what the song was about. Kate wants to evoke fresh, real emotions
in her listeners, and to do that she must and does place
traditional themes in unusual, sometimes incongruous settings.
   Wouldn't some people agree that part of the power of Elton
John's original version of "Rocket Man", back in the early '70s,
lay in its mixture of a wistful electric/electronic accompaniment with
what was otherwise a remarkably inviting and catchy rock ballad?
   Besides, does it make sense to be disappointed because Kate didn't
choose to approach Elton John's song by the most obvious musical path?
Should she have done what Hall & Oates (on "Philadelphia Freedom"), Oleta
Adams (on "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me"), The Who (on "Saturday
Night's Alright for Fighting") and The Beach Boys (on "Crocodile Rock")
did: taken a Philly soul song, a gospel rock mini-epic, a fast rocker and
a nostalgic '50s pastiche, respectively, and turned them into overblown,
unintentional parodies of--a Philly soul song, a gospel rock mini-epic, a
fast rocker and a nostalgic '50s pastiche?
   What is the use in conforming to the well-defined limitations of
tired, empty genres?  Is this what Love-Hounds came together to celebrate?
   Shouldn't we rather be rejoicing that when Kate listened to "Rocket Man"
she did _not_ any longer hear only a '70s-era Elton John rock ballad--
_not_ just another quaint nugget from our past to be reproduced in bright,
antiseptic but utterly unimaginative '90s colors?
   Shouldn't we rather be counting our lucky stars that there is still
a Kate Bush out there who listened to Elton John's "Rocket Man" and
heard instead Jamaican, Irish and Kazakh dance music (albeit dance music
that stops and starts fitfully, confounding its own principles, as in
the Kate Bush of _The_Dreaming_ and before), embellished with entirely
new, multiple countermelodies, extended phrases, and even several
basic changes to the main-vocal's melody-line?  Are there any _real_
Kate Bush fans who can be unhappy with that?
   The other point IED wanted to make was about Kate and outer-
space.  Kate's "Hello Earth" is admittedly a slow, overtly "sad" song
that follows traditions of the ballad quite closely in some respects.
In the context of "The Ninth Wave" it sounds like an inseparable part
of the "inner necessity" of the recording as a whole, and it works.
   But in the early 1970s--when Kate saw Elton John as her "hero", and
was creating within the original context of "Rocket Man" itself--she
wrote another song about the loneliness of an astronaut stranded in space.
Fans (for want of official knowledge) sometimes refer to that song as
"Keeping Me Waiting".  Strangely--and effectively--the desperation felt
by the character in that song is expressed through one of Kate's
most lightly charming, even playful, vocals.  "The air," as the
character explains, "is getting thin", and he/she is becoming
light-headed. It's a tragic song about the delirium preceding
a person's cold and miserable death on an isolated, forgotten moon.
But in parts, it sounds more like a jolly, skipping little song for
children.
   Given our previous knowledge of Kate's own early song about space,
it makes perfect sense that her interpretation--her incarnation--of
"Rocket Man"--should be communicated within a lightly dancing musical
context.  We hear Kate's rocket man, lonelier than he could ever tell
us through any hackneyed lament or dirge, withdraw instead little by
little into his own weird, private, illusory and alien plane--"high
as a kite."

   IED also wants to say how impressed he was by Selwyn's thesis
(and strong argument) about the secret meaning of "Suspended in Gaffa".
One well-remembered interpretation of the song from Love-Hounds
"discussions" past was quite different, and was in any event never
supported by anything like such plausible reasoning as Selwyn's.
This fan, for one, will never listen to "Suspended", or watch the
video, the same way again.  Selwyn, it's been eduKational--thanks.

-- Andrew Marvick