🚀 go-pugleaf

Love-Hounds Digest			Saturday, January 1, 1986, 13:52

Today's Topics:

			   Boston in December
		      KB article in Stereo Review
			  Robert Fripp review

[][][][][][][][][][]

Date: Sat, 14 Dec 85 18:14:59 est
From: Tim Wicinski <wicinski@nrl-css.arpa>
Subject: Boston in December


I'm going to be in New Hampshire from Dec 20 -25 and wanted to know
who will be playing down in Boston during those days, and if
anybody will be around there during that time....

I know there's a few boston-ites on this list....

tim

[][][][][][][][][][]

Date:  Sun, 15 Dec 85 15:20 MST
From: Shoo <RLLeatherwood@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA>
Subject:  KB article in Stereo Review
Reply-To:  RLLeatherwood%System-M@CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.ARPA

Subject: KB article in Stereo Review

THE NEW KATE BUSH

     Kate Bush is a spellbinding storyteller, a vocal acrobat, and an
intriguing composer and arranger.  What she hasn't been credited with until
now is a pretty voice.  In fact, Bush has always gone out of her way to make
her listeners uncomfortable.  That's changed with her new album, "Hounds of
Love." This time Kate Bush will meet you halfway.

     Although "Hounds of Love" deals with a lover's murder and death by
drowning, compared with her brilliant but difficult 1982 release, "The
Dreaming," it's positively tranquil.  The bizarre vocal tricks--roller-coaster
phrasing and digitized, reassembled voice--that characterized the earlier
album have been relegated to occasional ornamentation, and the lurching,
fits-and-starts rhythms of "The Dreaming" have given way to more conventional
rhythms rooted in African and Irish folk music.  Bush's singing here is
sensitive, almost girlish.  It may be a compromise, and it's certainly not as
daring as its predecessor, but you're far more apt to be able to sit through
it without suffering an anxiety attack.

     The new album is actually two mini-concept albums.  Side one, also titled
"Hounds of Love," is the more elusive since it is less about love than about
some of love's attendant emotions--fear, alienation, rage, and confusion.  In
the title song, for instance, the narrator compares falling in love to a fox
being chased down by hounds.  Much of the "Hounds" marches along to steady,
galloping rhythms.  Bush employs drums very much the way Peter Gabriel does,
setting the music in motion through a succession of violent climaxes and
hushed pauses.  Her vocals carry on a dialogue with, in turn, piano, drums,
and bass, and they are shadowed virtually everywhere by a Fairlight backing
vocal.

"Hounds" is far more pleasant to listen to than to contemplate, and the same
is true of side two, "The Ninth Wave," which re-creates the last moments of a
drowning victim, an eternity of recollections and hallucinations compressed
into a few final breaths.  Here the electronic effects are more
integral--whirring helicopters, bullhorns, tangled tape-loop voices, chiming
synthesized church bells, echoing snatches of conversation, and a host of
fantastic characters hurtle into and out of the victim's ebbing consciousness.
Bush's vocals, which explore a range of feelings--terror, sadness,
resignation, and, finally, euphoria--are posed against an instrumental tableau
in which sttrings, piano, and synthesizer shift in and out of the foreground.

     The growing sophistication of Kate Bush's compositions, arrangements, and
production techniques does not obscure her unique, weird point of view.  Only
she could make such macabre subjects so seductive.

Written by Mark Peel in the January 1986 Stereo Review.  Reprinted without
permission.

  -Robb Leatherwood

RLLeatherwood%System-M at CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.ARPA

[][][][][][][][][][]

Date: Mon, 16 Dec 85 07:01:29 est
From: Tim Wicinski <wicinski@nrl-css.ARPA>
Subject: Robert Fripp review


Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists
George Washington University, Dec. 14, 1985.

in One Word: Awesome

Robert Fripp is one of those people who you see in concert and you walk
away still not sure what you have witnessed.  Last nite was no
exception.  In the room where he played, there was 18 wooden chairs
situated in a semi-circle around the stage.  For the audience there was
no chairs, just one big rug, and pillows for people who could sit on
the rug.  Then the guitarists came out one by one, with Robert being
the last one.  As they stood there, they looked over the audience,
going from their left and working right.  Then with a nod from Fripp,
they say down and proceeded to play 6 pieces, all new.  The music was a
distinct cross between Discotronics and Frippertronics, with a leaning
towards his work on "Let the Power Fall."  After 5 pieces, he stood up
and started to read some of the press releases written in the various
papers.  Each article was seriously flawed in the presentation of
facts.  The article written by JD Considine, his only comment was "Too
flawed to begin to discuss." The other one that he read was from the
City Paper, and contained a quote that he harped on. The quote was
"Mr. Fripp has assembled a group of close friends, studio musicians,
and advanced students."  This was wrong in every way.  These other 17
guitarists were students from his class that have been working with him
for 12 days !!! Last sunday they traveled to Charleston WV, and did a
live broadcast for West Virgina Public Radio.  This performance was
being used to tape an album of this music for EG records, and the
students found out about the show two days before it !!!  Talk about
being hit with something.  To prove his point that these people were
not accomplished guitar players, he did an impromptu class on stage,
making them play a certain note, then play the note of the guitarist
next to them. After listening to them flail for a few minutes, Fripp
then repeated the phrase "Friends, Studio Musicians, and Advanced
Students..." a few times for effect.  They then ended up the show with
an acoustical version of Lark's Tongue in Aspic, Part II.  I didn't
recognize it at first, but after a few minutes it all came clear.

I called the music 'pieces' but now I considered them to be more like
exercises, since it is a class.  Also, Fripp described
the whole art-rock music as "wretched. I was in the middle of the whole
thing and I found it to be the most pompous and wretched thing I've
seen."  I found the performance delightful, even though it's not the
type of music you could listen to for hours, but its very good 
background/ambient music.

Note for the curious: No, I couldn't tape it, but they were (Fripp, et al).
Nor could I talk to them, since the added a second show that nite,
and I couldn't hang around because I would have missed the train. 

tim

[][][][][][][][][][]


-- 
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under.

Greg Skinner (gregbo)
{decvax!genrad, allegra, ihnp4}!mit-eddie!gds
gds@mit-eddie.mit.edu