Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!EDDIE.MIT.EDU!Love-Hounds-request From: Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU.UUCP Newsgroups: mod.music.gaffa Subject: (none) Message-ID: <4136.8612091723@vd.rl.ac.uk> Date: Tue, 9-Dec-86 12:23:22 EST Article-I.D.: vd.4136.8612091723 Posted: Tue Dec 9 12:23:22 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 10-Dec-86 05:35:47 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Love-Hounds@EDDIE.MIT.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 151 Approved: love-hounds@eddie.mit.edu Really-From: Neil CaltonHere are a couple more English reviews of 'The Whole Story'. The reviewers (those below and in my earlier posting) are remarkably consistent in their verdicts - which seem to be that (1) Kate Bush is a major artist, (2) the record is a good summary of her career to date, and (3) the early songs now appear (to them) as twee or whimsical in comparison to her latest compositions. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Times Saturday Nov. 22nd - Times Newspapers Ltd. ... Kate Bush ... whose album 'The Whole Story' neatly encapsulates her 12 best single releases, including the current hit "Experiment IV". When "Wuthering Heights" soared with such ease to No. 1 in the spring of 1978, many observers either imagined or hoped that the success of the pouting 19 year-old girl with the caterwauling vocal style and preposterous dance routines would be a short- lived novelty. But despite some of her more offputting mannerisms - the babyish gurgling in "Army Dreamers" and the strident screeching in "Sat in your Lap" - she has developed as a writer and performer of some depth. Despite the big production job, "Wow" demonstrated a pleasing sense of irony while "Cloudbusting" and "Running Up That Hill" revealed an increasingly sophisticated sense of rhythm, melody and narrative awareness. David Sinclair _________________________________________________________________ New Musical Express 22nd Nov. - Holborn Publishing Group. It was Mark Smith of top pop group (sic) The Fall who, in a typical broadcast of dedicated antitrendiness, announced that vegetarianism helped one leave the trolley of normality behind. Something to do with vital enzymes only being available from the flesh of murdered livestock. Kate Bush is a vegetarian. And if Mark's MESsy (sic) theory is true, then it might account for the large quotient of strangeness coiled inside the songs and sounds that make up 'The Whole Story'. Of course, being signed to EMI from the age of 14 and getting career guidance from zonked-out ex-Pink Floyd guitarists can't have helped. Listen to the early string-sugared meanderings of 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Wow' (the latter now sounds like a Spitting Image parody) and hear how despite the MORish musical arrangers and the synthetic touch of session musicians, Kate sounds like she'd been talking to the same ghosts as Ian Curtis. The marketing executives still saw her as a Carole King for the Brothers In Arms, an Elkie Brooks who'd soon sort herself out. But Kate just got curiouser and curiouser. Rejecting the saccharin sheen of pet poodle producers, she took total control, coming up with a whiplashed meditation on fame ("Succeed and heaven is hell/Succeed and hell is heaven") called 'Sat in Your Lap'. 'The Whole Story' really stems from there, the early inclusions being just a way of making this a Christmas-targetted hits collection. From this point on, Kate Bush began to build on the fact that she belonged nowhere. She smiled at Terry Wogan while shifting buckets full of compact discs to the Strait generation. She dispensed with the walking-stick guitar solo and the comfortably melodious fretless basses and began using odd combinations of samples, sirens, bodhrans and banjos. Listen to last year's 'Hounds of Love' LP. There are three tracks from it here. Kate Bush was and is a law unto herself. And the voice just gets bigger and darker, climbing from the floor to the ceiling in the space of a line. 'Wuthering Heights' has a re-recorded vocal which is almost evil in its intensity. The single 'Experiment IV' is also included, proving that Kate is still missing the vital enzymes which help make you as sane as Mark Smith. 'The Whole Story' is big, black subversive pop, more useful and more enjoyable than the constipated jangling of a hundred and one little lads with big mouths and even bigger clothes allowances. Such people are not worth a carrot. Meat or no meat, Kate Bush is streets ahead. John McCready ******************************************************************* From an established English star to a new American one:- Suzanne Vega Suzanne Vega finished her British tour at the Oxford Apollo Theatre on sunday 30th November and played an excellent set of nearly 90 minutes. I was rather surprised to find the (largish) theatre packed since Suzanne Vega has not had huge success in England - one top 40 single, and a couple of TV appearances. However, the audience appeared to be c. 95% students which suggests there are an awful lot of Suzanne Vega albums lying around flats and bedsits in Oxford. She is obviously the Dylan/Cohen/Mitchell of the post- punk generation, and judging by the way the tour posters were being snapped up outside the theatre there will be many a young yuppie with a picture of Suzanne over their bed. Support act were a duo called Cry No Tears who, judging by their age, and confidence on stage, were probably ex-session or backing musicians. They suceeded in winning over the audience and putting them in a good frame of mind for the main attraction of the evening. I hardly saw anyone sneak off to the bar. Suzanne Vega arrived on stage to an ecstatic welcome and the audience appreciation grew throughout the set. This was despite the fact that her vocals were inaudible on the first song and although the sound mix improved after that, there were times when her voice got lost in the overall sound. Her backing band consisted of guitar, bass, drums and synthesisers, and there were some amongst my friends who felt that too often the band tried to dominate Suzanne's songs - the guitarist was even given some short solos: which seemed inappropriate. Suzanne played all the songs of her debut album plus some newer material - 'Marlene on the Wall' getting the strongest ovation. She seemed rather nervous on stage but perhaps she is used to playing smaller halls. Certainly, she seemed almost surprised at the enthusiasm of the audience, being rather nonplussed by shouts of 'we love you' from the balcony! However, she grew in confidence as the set progressed and began to relate some of the songs' histories; remarking at one stage that Leonard Cohen's songs were marginally more cheerful then her own! The audience exploded into appluase and foot-stomping at the end of the set and Suzanne returned without the band to do two numbers, the first of which was performed without accompaniment and the second with her guitar. The audience still were not satiated and called her back for a second encore for which the band also appeared. She announced the song they played as being 'really bad' suggesting she was running out of material. Anyway it was actually quite good - certainly good enough for the crowd who called for and got a third encore. This time Suzanne played with just the synthesiser player and performed a new song (perhaps the rest of the band had not learnt it yet). Despite the problems with the sound mix it was an excellent show. Listening to the album afterwards I felt less satisfied with it than at any earlier hearing; I found myself longing for the excitement of the live performance. Well, there is always the next tour - I am sure she will be back many times in the future (unless the American audiences demand her constant attention).