This Love-Puppy is celebrating it's fifth birthday...

[mikael.jakonen@mailbox.swipnet.se (Mikael Jakonen)]

Hi there!!


It's been a while since I contributed to Love-Hounds,
but I thought it's about time...

I'm celebrating my fifth birthday as a Love-Puppy.

It all started more than five years ago, when I found
a new friend called Marcus. We were playing roleplaying-
games like Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. He was a devoted
Kate-fan. During the years he played lots of different 
bands and artists, including Kate Bush, but never really
tried to make me listen to it. But in -92 I started to 
study computer science at the university, and got an
E-mail account. I told him about Internet and how cool I 
thought it was. He responded that Kate had a fan-club there,
and showed me a magazine that had Love-Hounds and 
rec.music.gaffa listed.  I subscribed, and started to 
print out the digests on the university's matrix-printer
in order to take it with me to Marcus.
Eventually I ended up reading them too.

Back then, a huge flame-war was raging between a couple
of Love-Hounds, making up at least half of the messages, or
even more. In the introduction to the Computer-Science-course
we were told to take special care in observing the Nettiquette,
and that made me hesitate to join the fray. Besides, I was
accessing the Internet via a simple VT-100 terminal, and
composed my mail in Emacs...

By that time I started to get curious about Kate Bush.
Who was that woman, who made wiered, yet sometimes "mainstream" 
music? Marcus played albums and slowly my Kate-awareness 
came to life. 

I don't recall the first Kate song I ever heared, but I do 
remember saying to Marcus "This is cool, what is it?" and 
he'd respond "That's Kate...". I asked him several times, 
about several songs, and he'd always answer politly and 
patiently even though I now realise that I've must have
asked about the same song more than a dozen times. 
Them Heavy People, Strange Phenomena, Fullhouse, 
Hammer Horror, Delius, and Egypt were a few of the first ones
I learned to Love. I thought Coffee Homeground was wierd, 
but cool at the same time. Reminded me of some singer I 
heard in an old WW2 movie.

Marcus told me the story about the drowning woman in 
The Ninth Wave, and I was stuck. It's still the Number One
Kate Bush album, and it will always be. Then you may think
The Dreaming is my second best favourite... Not really.
I have a hard time ranking the other albums. I really 
like Lionheart, even more than The Kick inside. I took 
some time for me before I started to like Never For Ever,
but it grows steadily. I think I'll rank The Sensual World
last.

During my years as a Love-Hound I've read and learned 
great many things. I am happy to have been able to 
contribute to the list, though most of it were old
news... 
I thought the discovery of the Dreaming-Plug (tm) was 
utterly cool, but I was neither fast nor coherent enough 
in my postings to really contribute to that one. 
Big thanks to Vickie for sharing her experience that led to it.

I got a new job, and moved to a new town January -95 and
lost connection for half a year, but in June -95 I got
a modem for my PC. I've saved every Digest since then 
with only a few exeptions. 
I can now gladly announce that Love-Hounds and rec.music.gaffa 
have during the last two years produced 14 Megabytes of mail.  


My favourite Kate songs:
The Big Sky (meteorological mix)
Hammer Horror
Under Ice 
Waking the Witch


My least liked songs:
Moments of Pleasure
Houdini


Many people have written that they don't like
Why Should I Love You, but I myself like it.


Well, take care, all of you. I hope I'll
get time to write more often than before.


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Music is like vintage wine. It keeps getting better over the years, 
if those who made it knew how to make it right...

Mikael Jakonen                              
mikael.jakonen@mailbox.swipnet.se     
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