Re: Del Interview/Some Hammersmith Questions

[chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)]

Fiona asks:
>Thanks to Peter M. for posting that interview with Del. My question is, 
>if he (Del) knows all this technical stuff, why have all of Kate's
>recent records sounded so flat and empty? I still think she needs an
>outside producer to help her.

    ...talk about the proverbial "can of worms."

>I was watching the Live at Hammersmith video last night (a great
>accompaniment to indoor rowing!) and a few questions that come to mind
>that I'm hoping some obsessives out there can answer :)
>
>First, what is the *real* order in which the songs were played at these
>shows? It is quite apparent from the different costumes that the order of
>songs on this tape is not the order that the songs were actually played in.

   Here is the track list from one of the bootlegs of the concert
(Live In Europe '79 & '80):

Saxophone Song
Room For The Life
L'Amour Looks Something Like You
Moving
Them Heavy Poeple
Violin
Strange Phenomena
Hammer Horror
Don't Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake
Wow
The Kick Inside
In The Warm Room
Feel It
Kite
James And The Cold Gun
Oh England My Lionheart
Wuthering Heights

   So it appears that only the songs are in the order they were played.
Remember that several of the songs had really long intros to enable
Kate to change her outfit, swab off sweat, etc. There were also other
preformers (a magician, etc.) to cover.

>Second, did Kate use any taped vocals in these shows (i.e. mouthing the
>words to a prerecorded vocal track)? She talks in The Sensual World video
>interview about how her mike headset was the first of its kind. True
>enough, but in some songs, with the motions of dancing, that mike wobbles
>quite dramatically and there is no "wobble" in the vocals. (Or were the
>vocals rerecorded later for the video?)

   _Hammer Horror_ was mimed, but as far as we know, all the rest were
live. The mike would have had to move quite a bit more to produce a 
distinct "wobble" in the sound.

>I also wondered about this because there is some fairly energetic dancing
>in some of the songs and a live vocal mike would surely pick up some
>panting and deep breathing, not to mention "whooshing" through the air as
>the dancer moves. (Look at some of Madonna's "live" concert videos, for
>example - there is simply no way that someone could dance that hard and
>sing that clearly at the same time.)

   If they had been willing to re-record the vocals, we would have had
a much longer Hammersmith videotape. The actual microphone used, a Sony
ECM-50 (as far as I can tell) was much smaller than it appears in the
video. The rest of the bulk is a foam windscreen. As Kate has very good
breath control and rarely needs to use windscreens to avoid breath
noises, the screen is there to control noise from being moved through
the air. Madonna is also dancing quite a bit more and harder than Kate
was. A lot of Kate's dancing is being tossed around by her two dancers.


                          Chris Williams of
                             Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                               chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (his)
                                 vickie@njin.rutgers.edu      (hers)