*** Monthly FAQ for totally ignorant Kate beginners PART I ******

[rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)]

NEWSGROUPS

Rec.music.gaffa is a 7-year-old newsgroup dedicated to the sublime, 
peerless artistic genius of Kate Bush, her fans, and other artists.  
"Gaffa" comes from her song "Suspended in Gaffa" (on _The_Dreaming_), 
and (according to Kate) refers to gaffer's tape, or duct tape, used to 
keep people from tripping over electrical cabling, and metaphorically, 
apparently, to a frustrating sort of limbo-dimension ("the idea of 
seeing something incredibly beautiful, having a religious experience... 
but not being able to get back there"): 
 
"Suddenly my feet are feet of mud/ It all goes slo-mo 
I don't know why I'm crying/ Am I suspended In Gaffa?" 
 
Submissions to Rec.music.gaffa are forwarded to an extensive mailing 
list of people without netnews access.  This means that anyone with the 
ability to send and receive mail can take part.  The mailing list was 
r.m.g's original format, when started by |>oug /\lan so many years ago. 
 Together, the mailing list and r.m.g. form an informal fan club called 
"Love-Hounds."  You can mail submissions, without fear of censorship, 
to: 
 
love-hounds@uunet.UU.NET 
 
Especially rabid Hounds subscribe to the list as well as reading 
r.m.g.,  because glitches can cause you to miss messages [hopefully 
fixed with the new system]. To subscribe to the mailing list, send a 
friendly message to the
"moderator", Bill Wisner (who's actually in California), via: 
 
love-hounds-request@uunet.UU.NET 
 
It is possible to subscribe via various other email services: 
Compuserve, MCI-Mail, FidoNet, SprintMail, Peacenet, Bix, Envoy-100, 
Connect, and others.  For example, Compuserve users can use the above 
addresses with ">INTERNET:" in front of them.  Right now, GEnie, 
Prodigy, and America OnLine are NOT possible gateways to Usenet.  
Love-Hound Richard Caldwell offers access for the price of your 
long-distance call via the Big Sky BBS, 24 hours a day at 614-864-1198 
(1200 or 2400 baud). 

An entirely separate group called WarmRoom has been formed, as both 
mailing list and digest, though lately it has been very slow.  The 
people who formed this group felt that the flaming on Love-Hounds had 
grown so bad that it was stiffling Kate discussion, so they formed a 
group of their own, with the simple rule that no flames were allowed.  
To subscribe send a message to: warmroom-request@ils.nwu.edu.

There is also "Kate-talk", a process that allows fans to talk to each 
other in real time.  For more info contact Jessica at 
jessica@cs.rutgers.edu, who provides the following information: You 
need a unix machine or a vms machine, connected directly to the 
internet. It compiles fairly easily on most unix machines. If you have 
trouble with yours, I'm willing to help get it running. Client programs 
can be ftped from hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/icb-client.tar.Z for 
the unix client and in the pub/icb directory for the vms client.  I 
know nothing about vms, and do not have a vms account, so I can't help 
much for vms people, and I don't have a clue what to do with the files 
that are there. I'd appreciate someone on a vms system trying it out 
for me :) 
 
Topics of interest to Love-Hounds include other alternative female 
artists, and Kate-related others like Peter Gabriel and Roy Harper, 
and, for that matter, anything sproingy, or not-so-sproingy.  Many new 
discoveries have been brought to our attention by Vickie Mapes (of 
Vickie'n'Chris), whose definitively sproingy radio show "Suspended in 
Gaffa" focuses on alternative female artists, airing Wednesdays from 7 
to 8pm on WZRD in Chicago (88.3 FM), and Saturdays from 10 to 12pm on 
KKFI (90.1 FM) in Kansas City.  Vickie is especially big on Jane 
Siberry, the soon-to-be-superstar from Albany Happy Tyler Rhodes, and 
Victoria Williams. 
 
A less-frequent visitor these days is the numinous curmudgeon "IED", 
Andy Marvick's self-parody as the ultimate "true believer" Katefan.  
IED used to act as the flame-wielding bouncer of the group, but seems 
to have mellowed of late into the more natural role of encyclopedic 
demigod.  Come back soon, IED!
 
Katefans are generally the nicest people you could hope to meet, but 
r.m.g. does erupt fairly regularly into classic Usenet flamewar- 
behavior.  **We're les concierges, chez-nous, honey, and we let the 
weirdness in.**  This tender agreement sometimes gets abused, and we 
try to do the best we can to uphold our ideals in the face of mindless 
astral violence, as Kate would surely want.  (If you consider that what 
you write here may one day be read by her... be kind to everybody's 
mistakes, huh?)  Newcomers can rest assured that you are welcome to 
participate, and if you feel ignored or incinerated you can be pretty 
sure it's nothing personal, and persist until you feel accepted... for 
if your interest is genuine, you certainly will be.  The best way to 
deal with rude and/or uninteresting posts is to ignore then and post 
something positive and interesting.

(One flamewar centered on the question of whether Katenews was being 
unfairly swamped by discussion of Happy Rhodes, whose CD "Warpaint" has 
spawned a #1 hit on Philadelphia's NPR station.  HR traffic has been 
moved to a mailing-list that grows more and more active and now 
includes many other female artists, shadowing the gaffa-flow.  You can 
send a request to subscribe to Jessica via: 
ecto-request@cs.ns1.rutgers.edu, to post a message 
ecto@cs.ns1.rutgers.edu.  Ordering info for Happy's tapes: Aural 
Gratification, POB 8658 Academy Station, Albany NY 12208. Tapes are 
$9.99 plus $2.00 s&h ($0.35 each add'l tape or CD): Vol 1, Vol 2, 
Rearmament, Ecto, and Warpaint.  CDs are $13.99 and $2 shipping. UK: 
#8/tape, #11/CD, incl. s&h.) 

Still another spin-off is the Tori Amos mailing list: 
Really-Deep-Thoughts.
The address to subscribe to the mailing list is: 
rdt-request@gradient.cis.upenn.edu.
The address to post to the mailing list is:
rdt@gradient.cis.upenn.edu.
The purpose of the list is to discuss and disseminate information
about Tori Amos and her music, and anything else that seems relevant.
  
There is also a Roy Harper mailing list. The subscription address is 
stormcock-request@dcs.qmw.ac.uk. Stormcock is the name of his "classic" 
album. 

Abbreviations commonly used on Love-Hounds include sideways faces, such 
as :-), IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), ROFL (Rolling on the floor) and 
the initials of Kate's songs, such as RUTH for Running Up That Hill.
 
Love-Hounds celebrate Kate's birthday (Katemas) each year around July 
30, with parties all over the world.  1991 saw parties in Boston, 
Washington DC, Cleveland, San Jose, Seattle, Austin, Dallas, Iowa City, 
Chapel Hill, Chicago, Ipswich UK, Sweden, and two sites in Australia.  
1992 saw parties in Boston, San Fransisco, Chicago, Australia, Israel, 
and San Diego.


---
rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)
NetRunner's Paradise BBS, San Diego CA