Tori, Kate and other natural flavors

[Suspended In Duct Tape <METH@delphi.com>]

Hi!
 
A note for the gullible and humor impaired: the Kate and Geddy
Lee thing is a JOKE.  I believe it has something to do with
a NME cartoon, but I may be wrong... in any event, it's supposed
to be funny.  See me laugh?  Ha. Ha. Ha.
 
Jason Finegan bloviates:
 
}What do you know of what has happened to Kate and what hasn't? 
 
Not as much as I would like, but I am reasonably assured in the
assumption that she has never impersonated a Guy Fawkes Day
rocket, joined up with Jesse James, committed suicide over an
incestuous relationship, nor come back to haunt Heathcliff
afterwards.
 
}To my ears there are several Kate songs that appear to be at
}least loosely based on her past experiences.  She changes them
}to make them less personal, but they're still there.  
 
Yeah- we all know she reads a lot.  That's the experience she
draws on, the books she's read and the movies she's seen.  She's
said that herself many times- you can choose whether or not to
believe her, but I, for one, do.
 
}Tori has made a big point of writing about herself.  Kate, from
}the start, has been more mature than that.  
 
Who are you to say what is mature and what isn't, especially when
it comes to the origins of someone's art?  It has nothing to do 
with "maturity" at all.  Kate writes her stories based on what's
lurking in her imagination and the products of other people's
imaginations. That's where fiction comes from.  Do you also feel
that an autobiography is any less "mature" (whatever that is)
than a work of fiction? If they're well written and serve their
purpose (i.e. to educate and/or entertain), one is no better or
worse than the other.
 
}What's so attractive about brooding about the past?  That's all
}Tori seems able to do. 
 
Do you know anything at all about Tori's background?  She's got a
lot of emotional baggage, true, but her songs are precisely how
she is working through it.  When asked why she didn't just get a 
therapist, she said she couldn't afford therapy, and her music
did a better job anyway.  She is not "brooding about the past".
She is exorcising her inner demons so she can have done with her
past and go on with the rest of her life. To use the most moving
example, she not only wrote and recorded a song about her own
experience with rape, but she sang it in front of people almost
every night for eleven months. Sounds pretty damned mature to me.
 
}Kate's "fantasies" at least show that she is thinking ahead.
 
Thinking ahead?  To what?  I don't understand what you're getting
at.
 
I can't claim to know the reasons why Kate doesn't sing about
herself in a direct, personal manner.  My own theory is that she
has lived a very sheltered, cushy life, growing up in a
reasonably well-off doctor's home in a family of artists, so if
she sang about her own experiences they'd probably be pretty
boring.  Instead she brilliantly takes things she sees in the
world around her and turns them into works of art.  (Maybe with the new album we'll see a change in this pattern, since the death
of her mother, but we can only wait and see.)
 
That's *Kate's* own style, that's the way *Kate* does things.  It
works for her.  Tori chose to come at her songs from another
angle, which works for her just as well.  Big deal.
 
}No, Robyn Hitchcock is a self-admitted Syd Barrett wannabe.  
 
Really?  woj, is that right?  (He runs the Robyn mailing list and
is one of his hugest fans, Jason, so I'm sure he can confirm or
deny this for sure...)
 
}It is quite obvious that Kate greatly influenced Tori Amos.  If
}you can't see that, there's no point in trying to explain it to
}you.
 
According to Tori, she hasn't even heard all of Kate's albums. 
She does like what of Kate she has heard, true, but her
influences are more along the lines of Zeppelin, the Stones, and
her classical training than anything else.  She's said so
herself.  (If you refuse to believe what she says on the subject
(and she should know, she was there), then there's no point in
trying to explain it to *you*.)
 
}I have no problem with Tori stealing some ideas from Kate's
}early years.  
 
What?  If you are implying that Tori "stole" her themes of sexual
oppression and religious guilt from  _The Kick Inside_, then
you'd best get your medication adjusted.
 
}I just wish Tori'd been more honest about her ideas.  
 
You can't get much more "honest" than your own life experience.  She's singing about all the shit being the gifted and rebellious
daughter of a minister threw her way, and about her own sexual
awakening and violation.  It happened.  It's real life.  What do
you want?  Tori's not going to stand up and say "Okay, I admit
it, I got out the lyric sheet for _The Kick Inside_ and went on a
paraphrasing binge", because *that* would be a lie.
 
}So many new fans of Tori Amos wow over the how original she is,
}never realizing that even her ALBUM COVER is stolen from _The }Kick Inside_.
 
Bzzzzt.  Thank you for playing.  Tori has been asked point-blank
on a number of occasions just what the deal with her album cover
is, and it is purely coincidental.  The cover was shot in the UK
by her British record people, and the British _TKI_ cover bears
no resemblance whatsoever to the Kate-in-a-box shot on the
American release of _TKI_.
 
As for originality, please send me a list of all the artists
she's exactly like- I'd love to hear them sometime.
 
Comparing Tori Amos to Kate Bush is like comparing apples and
oranges.  As woj said, they are both females who sing in the
upper registers and play and compose on the piano, but the
similarity ends there.  End of story.
 
(And Jason, if you're going to express your opinions, at least express informed ones.  Saves trouble for all involved.)
 
Meredith Tarr
meth@delphi.com
 
"As a girl, I was really into words as a form of
communication..."  Kate Bush, 1979