Re: This Woman's Work

[chrisw@wwa.com (Chris Williams)]

>Ron wrote:
>>Actually, I've always tended to assume that most of the lackluster
>>quality of the sound on Kate's albums was in the original tapes, even
>>prior to mixing, *and* that it resulted from conscious decisions 
>>(style
>>of production) rather than technical sloppiness <snip>
>
>I've never felt this way about Kate's *recorded* work, but I do just
>about every time I watch her early videos.  
>
>The lighting, direction and effects in some of them ("Army Dreamers" in
>particular) are so amateur-looking, I've always believed they were shot
>that way on purpose -- for artistic reasons I apparently just cannot
>appreciate.

   Huh? I suggest you take a moment and check out some of the *other*
videos from that time period...VH-1's "The Big 80s" or "8-Track Flashback".
Compared to most of the competition, her early videos were actually very
sophisticated. I have a report from that time from ABC's "20-20" that 
uses the Keef "Wuthering Heights" as an example of the (then) 
state-of-the-art in music video. John Stossol said: "...from the 
simplistic band in a box  look of this Tom Petty video, to the 
sophisticated computer graphics of this video by Kate Bush."

>(If that's not the case, then I guess I'll just have to accept the fact
>that they really  *are* pretty lame...)

   Context. Until Michael Jackson the money really didn't start pouring
in to music videos. Her early videos look amazingly rich for something 
shot in one day for $20,000. If she had several days to make them, if 
she had the budget to shoot on film, hire more people, etc she could 
have produced something that would compare more favorably with *current* 
music videos. But when I look at my old music video collection tapes 
assembled at the time, the rest of the videos look much lamer. Even 
the groundbreaking videos of that era, like "Video Killed The Radio 
Star" by the Buggles or Todd Rundgren's "Time Heals" (the first and
second music videos played on eMpTyVee) look rough.

   Bob Giraldi and Godley & Creme raised the standard of music video
production to motion pictures and the average price to $500,000.
Kate spent a reported 1,000,000 pounds on "The Line, The Cross &
The Curve".


Chris Williams of
   Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
      chrisw@wwa.com
"How perfectly goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" - C. Crumb