The Red Shoes FAQ

[jorn@chinet.com (Jorn Barger)]

[additions and corrections requested]

Title of forthcoming Kate Bush album "The Red Shoes" (TRS or tRS)
Release date:  September 13 (?), 1993 (simultaneous UK and US?)
Featuring: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Prince (aka O{+> ), Lenny Henry and the 
Trio Bulgarka.

An extended video/film that Kate is making now should include some 6 or 7 
of the songs.

===== "Moments of Pleasure"  (MoP) =======================================
First listen: "Moments of Pleasure" performed on "Aspel & Co" 20th June 
1993.  Duration 5:16, lip-sync'ed

Lyrics (transcribed by Mike Quinn, with amendations):

Some moments that I've had
Some moments of pleasure
I think about us lying
Lying on a beach somewhere
I think about us diving
Diving off a rock into another moment

The case [outjoys] the wine      [of judgement?  endures?]
Oh God I can't stop laughing
This sense of humour of mine
It isn't funny at all
But we sit up all night
Talkin' about it

Just being alive
It can really hurt
These moments given
Are a gift from Time

On a balcony in New York
It's just started to snow
He meets us at the lift
Like Douglas Fairbanks
Waving his walking stick
But he isn't well at all
The buildings of New York
Look just like mountains through the snow

Just being alive
It can really hurt
These moments given
Are a gift from Time

Just let us try
To give these moments back
To those we love
To those who will survive

And I can hear my mother saying         [Hannah Bush died Feb 14 1992]
Every old sock meets an old shoe
Ain't that a great saying?
Every old sock meets an old shoe
Here come the hills of time

Hey there mother [morning?]
Hey there brother
Dancing down the aisle of a plane
'S Murph playing his guitar refrain      [Alan Murphy, Kate's longtime 
Hey there Teddy                      guitarist, who died several years ago]
Spinning in a chair at Abbey Road
Hey there Michael                   [Michael Powell?  see below, interview]
Do you really love me?
Hey there Bill                         [Bill Duffield, who died at 
D'you turn the lights up?               the beginning of Kate's only tour]


Comparisons: This Woman's Work, Reaching Out, The Fog, Under the Ivy, Warm 
and Soothing, Tori Amos (Winter, Mother?)
Homeground sez: This will *not* be the first single.

==== Aspel interview quotes ===============================================
Transcribed by Flump (D.M.Woodhead)

Q:   What do you do, sit at a keyboard, or what?
KB:  Yeah, a keyboard.  And we tend to put stuff straight onto tape so
     I'm actually working onto tape and then I'll play the tape back, and,
     you know, work to the stuff that's on there, so...

Q:   What about lyrics?  Yours are very passionate and provocative, do you 
     get inspiration anywhere?
KB:  I think it is illusive stuff, but I think really the biggest
     inspiration is people, people are just so inspiring, they're
     fascinating and wonderful and, I think that nearly every
     idea that a person has had, has probably at some point come from
     another person.

[Question about the title "Red Shoes"]
KB:  Well, it is very much connected with the film.  I was lucky enough to
     meet Michael Powell, the director of The Red Shoes before he died and
     he was such a sweet man, he was really sweet, I thought one of
     Britain's best directors and he had a very strong effect on me, he
     was a very sweet man and he seems to have popped up in two or three
     of the songs that are on the album.


=== "Red Shoes" artistic sources =========================================

"The Red Shoes" was a 1947 Technicolor classic by Michael Powell and Emeric 
Pressburger.  The title refers to the title of a ballet within-the-film, 
based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale about a girl punished for her 
vanity (in wearing red shoes to church) by being unable to stop dancing 
until she cuts her feet off, and dies.  In the film, this was made a 
metaphor for sacrificing one's life to art.

Martin Scorsese counts it one of his favorite films, for one example.  
The ballet is beautifully danced and daringly filmed (ambitious-for-
the-time special effects).  Definitely recommended for serious Katewonks!

=== FTP-ing Aspel samples ================================================
Scott Telford, Jerome Chan, Eric France, and others (names?) have come thru 
splendidly, making screenshots and audio digitizations of MoP available.  
The sound samples range in size from 1.4Mb to 5Mb, which is pretty big 
unless you can ftp it, so proceed with caution.

UK:
ftp.epcc.ed.ac.uk in pub/local/audio/kate  [only after 6pm BST, please]

US:
ftp.uu.net in /tmp 

Sun/NeXT-format 8kHz 8-bit mono u-law files: 
"moments3.au"  1.4Mb (to fit on an HD floppy) comprising the first 3 mins
"moments5.au"  2.5Mb and has the full 5m20s song
[These can be converted to Macintosh format with a 64k freeware utility 
called Ulaw 1.1.  This conversion is *very* slow-- figure 30-60 minutes on 
a 68030 machine.]

Macintosh sfil format (US site only?):
"moments5.hqx"  about 4.5 Megs

Microsquish wave format (.wav):
"moments5.wav"
[If you have multimedia sound on your Windows box, this file can be played 
with the MediaPlayer applet which is bundled with MS-Windows 3.1.  It can 
also be played with any number of Windows waveplayer utils available in the 
public domain such as DROPWAVE or PLAYNOW.]

Five scanned Jpegs of the show are there, too, but I've lost their 
descriptions.

A videotape tree is forming, hopefully to include Aspel *and* both 
Rocketmans.

If you can't FTP, you might try this ftpmail server (no promises, these are 
pretty huge.

Send the following message to BITFTP@pucc.Princeton.EDU [capitalization
of preceeding address is not important]

ftp ftp.uu.net uuencode
cd  /tmp
ls -l  [so you can see if you named it wrong]
get [whichever version you want, some may be too large for this service]
quit

You will be faced with reassembling 50 to 100 separate messages into one 
file to be uudecoded or unbinhexed.  (Good luck.... gulp!  Ask your site 
admin first, please.)

==== Kate and Prince controversy =========================================

Andrea: "I think it would be the ultimate mark of a good producer to be 
able to add one's talent without adding one's personal style to someone 
else's work. ...Prince's footprint on Kate's album will only be exactly 
where she wanted it."