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Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 16:06:50 pdt
From: seismo!nike!oliveb!oliven!prs
(Philip Stephens)
Subject: Some Questions
I'm desperate; I loved the stuff about Waking the Witch etc, so I went out and bought The Dreaming, and I'm going to go stark! raving! mad! if I don't get some answers!!!! My continued sanity is in your hands! (better wash them afterward).
[Doug answers:
(1) The song is about the quest for knowledge. One problem is how can you *know* anything when one person's truth is another's fiction, and vice versa, etc.
(2) One of the great unknown mysteries of life.
(3) Many Viet Cong would wear a little silver Buddha on a chain around their necks. When they went into battle, they would put the Buddha in their mouths so that if they died, they would die with Bhuddha on their lips.
(4) You got the lyrics wrong, but "Suspended in Gaffa" is another song about the quest for knowledge, perfection, or whatever. She uses the image of God as something that people feel they have to be worthy of before they can obtain what they want. Not until she is ready for Him, not until she has worked hard enough and is pure, can she have it all.
(5) It's actually "We let the Weirdness in". Kate thinks we should all be open to new and strange phenomena.
(6) This song is about the plight of the Aborigine in Australia. The white man pushes them from their homes and destroys their land to dig for Uranium. Devils-in-a-bottle (alcohol) destroy their traditional way of life and also pull them from the bush (their traditional home).
(7) Your lyrics aren't quite right, but "Night of the Swallow" is a duet (though Kate sings both voices) between a man and his lover. He wants to go do some smuggling to add excitement to his life, but she doesn't want him to go. "Would you break even my wings, like a swallow." "But you're not a swallow".
(8) Paul? Who's Paul? She's singing to all the people she loves.
(9) In the song he does. In real life, Houdini's wife thought he had, but then later figured out that it was a hoax.
(10) This song is about a woman who has been left by her lover. She starts visualizing her body and herself as a haunted house a la *The Shining*. --Doug]
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 86 14:45 EST
From: Mark Katsouros <KATSOURO@UMDD>
Subject: TD
I'd just like to say that I thought Nancy's friend, Kevin, had a lot of intelligent things to say regarding Kate. But Kevin, you have to understand that many of us here (perhaps especially Andy) are quite obsessed with her, and, hence, may tend to go a bit overboard at times. (Did someone say "overboard"? "Get out of the water"!)
I first heard Kate's music when a friend mailed me a copy of "Never For Ever", and I liked it upon my very first listen, having never even heard of Kate Bush, except for my friend's mention of her. It seems, though, that a lot of her followers didn't start out even slightly liking her, and I have to admit that the first time I heard "The Dreaming" (my second Kate LP), I had doubts. But I soon came to realize that it was a masterpiece. Actually, between the first time I heard TD, and realizing just how wonderful it was, I acquired "Hounds of Love", which was probably the LP that enabled me to really enter Kate's curious world for the first time. I heard things in HoL that I had not heard in any music before, things that stretched my imagination wide open, at which time, I returned to TD. I'll tell you the truth, I was initially intrigued by TD because of it's splendid album cover.
Well, I soon found myself wrapped up in the world of TD, unable to escape it's amazingly textured sound. To this day, I have found no music that can capture me like TD did. I did finally pick up "The Kick Inside", and "Lionheart", and fell in love with the "little girl" singing on both of those LP's as well. I was also amazed at how widely varied Kate's albums were. It was almost as if they'd been done by different (but all brilliant) artists, except for Kate's inescapable, lovely voice. Anyway, I'm sure you've heard enough rantings from us foam-mouthed love-hounds, so I'll shut up now.
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 87 18:06:08 WET DST
From: Paul Davison <pd%cheviot.newcastle.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>
Subject: A "review" of The Dreaming CD, HMV-mag "Beat"
I got a free magazine from the HMV shop today called "Beat", and it contains a review of "The Dreaming" on CD. I'm certain you'll all be interested in this but please note that I don't agree with this review!!
KATE BUSH The Dreaming (EMI)
From 1982, Kate's least commercial album. The Dreaming strained the patience of her public with some eccentric attempts to convey the mystic wisdom of primitive cultures (the title track), a shrieking panic attack of a single (Sat In Your Lap) and an overall lapse from her customarily exquisite sense of melody. Three years later came Hounds Of Love, and all was forgiven.
The other reviews are generally unfavourable too, which seems strange in a magazine produced by a record shop which presumably wants people to buy it's products!
Paul.
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 87 18:20 PDT
From:
IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu
Subject: HG 28 theory about proto
Ninth Wave
IED has a tiny bit more concrete information to give you all as a guideline for this topic, through the courtesy of the new issue (#28) of Homeground, "The International Kate Bush Fanzine".
...
There's also an interesting new article by Peter Fitzgerald-Morris arguing that there is a mini-suite, so to speak -- a kind of proto- The Ninth Wave -- in The Dreaming, which is comprised of "Night of the Swallow", "All the Love" and "Houdini". The link is thematic, not musical. (In fact Peter almost never seems to consider the music in his otherwise frequently fascinating theoretical analyses.)
This article is based on a very intriguing (though in IED's opinion far-fetched) thesis, to the effect that TD is actually extremely auto-biographical, and is in fact an album about a traumatic break-up of a romantic relationship, which is "mended" in "Houdini". Peter makes the clear implication that Kate had a big break-up with Del in '80, and then apparently they made up later. And that consequently Kate used this experience as the foundation for the songs on TD. He says this interpretation is clear if you "listen with an open heart"! But he may also have some inside information which he chooses to keep from us. IED is dubious, frankly. What do you folks think?
-- Andrew Marvick
From: jsd@gaffa.mit.edu (Jon Drukman)
Date: 11 Aug 89 12:51:16 GMT
Subject: Re: john drukman and god
Marginal Kate Reference: I bought a new set of Bose speakers and blasted The Dreaming through them and managed to permanently alter my eye color. It's a trip, gang...
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 90 11:35 PDT
From:
IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@mitvma.mit.edu
Subject: The Cover
Carl Hansen writes:
> Also, regarding the cover of that record--doesn't the key in Kate's mouth resemble the pin of a hand grenade? That's been long noted I suppose, but I've had the record for years & just thought of it.
Yeah, of course. It looks exactly like a grenade pin. And come to think of it, it also looks exactly like a little silver bullet, a small silver Buddha, and a piece of seedcake, too!
-- Andrew Marvick
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 91 16:26:59 EST
From: Andrew B Marvick <abm4@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu>
Subject: The Cover
Kate was once asked (through the KBC Newsletter) the identity of the man in the photo on the cover of "The Dreaming". Her reply was, "Why, Houdini, of course."
IED's guess is that the man is Anthony Van Laast, Kate's one-time dance instructor and collaborator on the choreography for some of her early videos and the Tour of Life.
-- Andrew Marvick
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 16:37:21 EDT
From: Andrew B Marvick <abm4@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu>
Subject: Well done J.B. 1st Dan
Run-out-groove "secret" messages [Sat In Your Lap]:
The most interesting of the three run-out-groove messages you asked about (at least in IED's opinion), Jimmy, is: "Well done J.B. 1st Dan". This, IED discovered (and confirmed later through an an independent source) is a message to Kate's brother John Carder Bush, who had attained a "first dan" in Karate (or possibly another of the Oriental martial arts) shortly before the cutting of the record in question.
-- Andrew Marvick
[No. It's John Barrett, he is mentioned on the single-cover. Kate revealed this in an interview! --WIE]
From: rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 92 17:41:26
PST
Subject: MELODY MAKER/September 11th 1982 by Colin Irwin
by Colin Irwin
Under the premise that the Great British Public instinctively turns its nose up at anything that's a little unexpected, or which doesn't meet its carefully coiffured preconceptions, then this album will be an overwhelming flop.
The people'll be guided in their dismissive diagnosis, of course, by the all-wise radio producers who will flick quickly through it for the new "Man With The Child In His Eyes", fail to find it, assume Kate's gone off her trolley, and make a grab for the safety of Haircut One Hundred.
Reputedly two years in the making, the first album produced by Kate herself, no expense or musical craving spared...the result is mind- boggling. Even by the mannered, eccentric standards she's set herself, this is still an odd one; you may have thought "Babooshka" and "The Wedding List" on NEVER FOR EVER a little weird, then "Get Out Of My House" and "Houdini" here are positively manic.
Always an artist of extremes, Bush has allowed her highly theatrical imagination to run riot, indulging all her musical fantasies, following her rampant instincts, and layering this album with an astonishing array of shrieks and shudders.
Initially it is bewildering and not a little preposterous, but try to hang on through the twisted overkill and the historic fits and there's much reward, if only in the sense of danger she constantly courts.
Consider the options for a glamourous girl singer with an acute sense of melody; consider that she's taken the riskiest, most uncommercial route; and consider whether this album should be regarded with patience and admiration, even when it occasionally slips right over the top.
Two of it's ingredients, "Sat In Your Lap" and "The Dreaming", have already been issued as singles and sunk without a trace, which is not only significant but tragic. "The Dreaming" is the perfect example of the passion for percussive torrents that's overtaken her (and the influence of African music?) yet it's one of her more restrained vocal performances on the album where her dynamic singing is one of the prime features ("Get Out Of My House" has her roaring and ranting like a caged lion, "Leave It Open" has her yelling like a demented mynah bird.) Elsewhere, on "Houdini" and "All The Love", she'll break us in gently, even tenderly, before the fuse runs out and we reel in awe and amazement at the sheer power of her rage.
There's only one even vaguely conventional track, the lively "Suspended In Gaffa", though there's something strangely disconcerting even about that and the only light track is "There Goes A Tenner", which is even mildly funny as Kate relates a tale of skullduggery with an exaggerated cockney swagger.
The lyrics, naturally, are another thing altogether. An analyst would surely come up with an interesting conclusion for her obsession with lurid drama, so vivid and colourful it could be traditional balladry.
"There Goes A Tenner" is about crime; "Pull Out The Pin" is a graphic account of terrorism and war; "All The Love" and "Houdini" blaze in one different aspect of death, the latter in a particularly complex but clever way. Personally I reckon the girl watches too many B-movies.
The epic track, though, the cornerstone of the album is "Night Of The Swallow", which shows both her growing maturity as a writer and her arrival as an outstanding producer. Another complicated song (surprise, surprise) it moves gracefully through many changing moods and patterns; it's a work of both beauty and anguish, poignancy and eeriness. These twists of mood are enhanced by the use of sublime Irish music (Liam O'Flynn and Donal Lunny of Planxty, Sean Keane of the Chieftans) interspected with the rugged main action.
Like most of the other tracks, I'm still not entirely sure what the hell's going on or what it's all about, but the puzzle's intriguing enough to entice you back until you unravel it. It's the sort of album that makes me want to kidnap the artist and demand the explanation and inspiration behind each track.
If you're out there, Kate, do me a favour and give me a bell, huh?
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 93 04:09 CDT
From: chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu
(chris williams)
Subject: Orch 5
Bob Kovitz writes: I just listened to the box set from start to finish, and came up with a group of questions:
>10. What is the "Orch 5" sound? (mentioned in reference to the Dreaming album) My guess is that it is some kind of orchestral sound produced on the Fairlight.
Yep. A factory-supplied orchestra "sting" lifted from Stravinsky's "Firebird." Kate was the first to use it on a record, but for a while there it seemed that *every* pop tune had it, to Kate's dismay. This is discussed in the "Keyboard" interview.
written by Love-Hounds
compiled and edited
by
Wieland
Willker
Sept 1995 June 1996