misc, muse, Cloudbusting

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

        Does anyone have the messages for May 21 to May 25, my hard 
disk ate them before I had a chance to read them, so if someone could 
send them to me, I'd appreciate it. 

        Michael provided some info on various Kate cover versions 
(thanks) and askes if there is a list.  Well, I have compiled an 
article on the subject that was posted here last year and will one day 
be included in the "best of" the love-hounds book, Deeper Understanding 
(to be done "real soon now").  


        There have been discussions of the amount of time between 
Kate's albums, and whether or not she's been in a slump lately, etc.  I 
don't think we really know if she's actually gone through a 
"non-productive" phase in the time since her last album.  I think if 
you look at the history of Kate's career, you find that in her early 
years (1978-80) she was living a non-stop creative/productive life.  
After the tour ('79) she felt "drained", and then after Never For Ever 
she went through a "terrible introverted depression".  Before Hounds of 
Love and The Sensual World she's reported that she's consiously taken 
breaks, but that they were of a more positive nature.  I suspect that 
at some time in the last couple of years she's taken a "creative break" 
of some sort, but it sounds like from the last two albums that she 
views these as positive, happy, and healthy things.  Kate has said that 
she tends to really throw herself totally into her albums and since I 
don't think you can live your life in non-stop creative/productive 
mode, I'm glad that Kate seems to have found a way to provide more 
balance in her life. 


        Vickie asked if Kate subscribes to the idea of a "muse".  The 
only time I know of that Kate used that term was that she once called 
her mother a "muse" and she talked in '87 about getting the "muse" down 
on tape.  I've heard "muse" used by people either as a part of 
themselves that's creative or as a force greater then themselves that 
inspires them, and I don't think we really know if Kate means it in the 
second way. 

        A couple of weeks ago, Aaron suggested that "Cloudbusting" 
might "really" be about the "fear" the son in the story had.  This 
touches on something I've always felt about music.  If you look at a 
song like Cloudbusting, generally there's not a chance in hell that 
most people are going to "get" the specific story about it, unless they 
happen to have read an interview with Kate about the song, even if they 
paid close attention to the lryics.  Most songs don't really give you 
all the "setting" of the song, which makes them more "general" (in a 
way) then movies or books. When you listen to a song like that, it 
really is a kind of direct emotional connection, the author of the song 
may not even know "intellectually" what they are trying to convay.  So 
the "emotional undercurrent" of the song is in many ways much more 
important then what the song is intellectually "about".  Just after 
writing this, I happened on a quote from Kate: 

        It's so sad, and it's also a true story, and somehow even if 
people don't understand the story, they pick up on the feelings, the 
emotions - this is a very rewarding experience for me.   (1987, KBC 21)


        Someone asked a few weeks back if the Cloudbusting video was 
shot at The Veil of the White Horse, it was. 



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