Re: A Kate fix?

[Richard Bensam <rabensam@earthlink.net>]

Vickie wrote:

>Look, honest, if you want a "Kate fix" without listening
>to Kate, if you want someone who *is* influenced by Kate,
>and who freely and gladly admits it, if you want someone
>who gets absolutely *no* thunder and is totally ignored
>by just about everybody in the universe, then try Happy
>Rhodes. She's much closer to Kate in feel, sound and
>sphere than Tori, and you'll be supporting an Indie
>artist who has to take out bank loans and work day
>jobs to get albums made.
>
>Warning though: she's her own artist, with her own
>style. She's no more a "Kate wannabe" than Iggy Pop.

Well, maybe a *tiny* bit more.  ;-)  To my knowledge, Iggy Pop never
patterned a song after "Night Scented Stock" or interpolated lyrics from
"Running Up That Hill" into an acoustic tribute version.

The thing about Happy Rhodes is that rather than trying to copy anyone, she
seems to have sat down with the music she really loves -- Kate, Peter
Gabriel, David Bowie, Yes, and Xenu knows who else -- and examined it,
tried to figure out how it works, and then brought those qualities into her
own work.  Finding the Kate within herself, so to speak, rather than trying
to sound like Kate.  And this, paradoxically, makes her all the more like
Kate, who is equally passionate about the music she loves.

Something similar can be said about the late jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock
-- who liked Kate's melodies enough that his cover of "Wuthering Heights"
was a major highlight of his live shows, and the version on his album
Highlife was his favorite recording of his own playing -- and his
connection to Jimi Hendrix.  He didn't sound much like Hendrix, didn't
think at all like Hendrix, but found inspiration in Hendrix to sound more
like himself...just as Hendrix sounded like no one but himself.  To my
mind, this made Sharrock's fierce work a finer tribute to Hendrix than
Stevie Ray Vaughan or a thousand shredding guitarists could ever have hoped
to achieve.


RAB
(hoping all Americans are having a "happy" Thanksgiving; hoping everyone
else is having a happy Thursday!)

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