Comments on: I’m Secretly A Huge Bush Fan

By: Arun

Arun — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 22:11:54 +0000

Nobody spilled any coffee…..

By: Lubos Motl

Lubos Motl — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 22:04:42 +0000

I have never heard of Kate Bush before, but at any rate, I am also a Bush fan.

By: SteveM

SteveM — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 03:48:44 +0000

Clifford, if you were an electronic music hobbyist, I highly recommend this site if you don’t already know of it

http://www.steveroach.com

This guy creates the most incredible electronic soundscapes or soundworlds, what might be called “atmospheric space music”. He has a very long
list of ground-breaking recordings.
The link

http://www.steveroach.com/Audio/Audio.html

gives some radio shows that are a good intro, especially the one-hour show “Music from the hearts of space”. Don’t let the new-age feel of of his site out you off, this guy is brilliant, but it makes sense for him to tap into that market. Play his cd “The Magnificent Void” (one of his more haunting and cosmic works) through headphones at night if you really want to capture a sense of just how vast and scary the universe is. I have been playing it all week. Recommended to all cosmologists:)
There is a discography section on the page with clips too.

By: Amy

Amy — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:00:24 +0000

I’m with you Fabien. I cannot believe it’s been 12 years since Red Shoes – eeghads, I feel old. I LOVE Kate Bush. In the old days of cassette, I particularly loved the second side of Hounds of Love – it felt like one long story in a series of song.

I am happy to hear about the new album and can’t wait to give it a listen. I have an iPod and was bummed at the staggering lack of Kate in their store. Maybe a whole new generation of listeners will get into her work and then they’ll do a better job.

Thanks for the good news!!

By: Fabien Besnard

Fabien Besnard — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 16:45:53 +0000

Amazing ! I would never have thought to learn that Kate Bush made a new album from a physics blog ! I’m a big fan also (although I don’t listen to her as often as before). However, her last album was not great (to say the least), so I’m a bit afraid of what can come next… Maybe it’s better to stop things when they are at the top (as KB is concerned, and in my opinion, that would be after the dreaming and the second part of Honds of love).

Please, Clifford, write a review when you’ve heard the album.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 06:20:11 +0000

SteveM,

No, I don’t believe in that sort of thing at all, overall. I think there is always this prevailing mood of how terribly “modern” we’ve become, that feeling of “we’ve never been here before”, and more and more I realize that is seldom true, where it really matters. I think the journey of discovery in physics and other areas of science is probably quite young -we’ve got tremendous amounts of astonishing stuff to see. Same with music. Picking a random point, it must have seemed to people (in Western music) that Beethoven was the pinnacle of what was possible in music, having assimilated and extended everything from before, and completely opened up several news areas and avenues. But no. I hope people realize that’s just wrong. Just as wrong as it was when people thought it about Bach. Just listen to the explosion of musics of various sorts that happened in the 20th century. I think that this is true in any genre.

Cheers,

-cvj

By: SteveM

SteveM — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 06:09:38 +0000

Clifford, I was only pulling your leg about originality of your posting:). I recall my brother was “in love” with Kate Bush for a while and a guy in my halls of residence back then had a room that was essentially a Kate Bush shrine. I admit I seem to have reached that age when I’m getting pretty nostalgic for 70s/80s music and 70s/80s tv. Sure, I still find there is good or interesting music still coming out, but with a lot of it there is a sense of having heard it before. Eventually, just about every mathematical permutation and combination of notes and rythyms, harmonies and melodies gets used up. Everything starts to sound recycled, similar or derivative or manufactured and disposable, at least to me. I think it is fair to say that it is more difficult now to really stand out and be distinctive in the music world. One thing about Kate Bush was/is her very distinctive voice and style which others have tried to emulate as you pointed out, but she was the original.

Even with some bands I have followed for 10-15 years or more there is a sense they have run out of ideas and that they have done their best work. I recall some people like John Horgan in his book “The End of Science” makes a similar argument for the sciences in that the best and most important stuff has already been done and discovered. Not so sure about that though.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 04:18:22 +0000

Hi SteveM. Thanks. Where does it say that I promise to post only only observations that are original? That would rather bust my hope that people can relate to me even though I’m one of those “whacky scientists”, right? On the contrary, it’s good to hear when I’m not alone on these things.

By the way, it is also not original to observe that your observation that “music now is bad and what we thought was bad before from our youth is now good” is probably little to do with the music and more to do with nostalgia. I suspect that it is at least as good, if not better, on average. Also, several of the songwriters who wrote in those days also write for lots of the Britney’s, etc, now. It’s just that the production values change. Strip that away, and you find that the songs are not that different, by and large. But yes, I’d like to pretend that it was better back then too.

Cheers,

-cvj

By: SteveM

SteveM — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 22:58:03 +0000

I see someone else here is also posting as ‘Steve’. OK, I will use ‘SteveM’. Anyway, Clifford, having a teenage thing about Kate Bush and her music is hardly original!:) I mean, who did’nt?:) Looking back now we see that many 80s bands and artists were really excellent even though we paid little attention to them at the time. Music is so bad now (mostly) that we now realise and appreciate how good a lot of that stuff was. As bad as it is for a hardened metalhead like myself to admit it, I now find myself listening to Duran Duran, Ultravox and Culture Club through my earphones, and lots of other wonderfully cheesy 80s stuff (as Mark put it). Well, it was fun decade for the most part.

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 18:45:49 +0000

For some reason the first link I gave does not work (in Internet Explorer, at least). But if you do Copy Shortcut and paste into the Address field then it does work. Curious!