Salon.com did a 3 page write-up of Kate Bush a couple of days ago. Sadly (though not surprisingly), The Dreaming isn't even mentioned. Interesting that they highlight her as a cutting-edge songwriter and yet fail to feature the album that is supposedly her at her most experimental. The article does give me a decent idea of which of Kate's albums to investigate next, pretty much corroborating GEPR's entry for Kate Bush that Never For Ever and Hounds of Love (the two albums that immediately preceded and followed The Dreaming, respectively).

"With my silver Buddha,
and my silver bullet"
-- "Pull Out The Pin"

Ordered a couple of CDs today:
Species Being - Orgone Therapy
Soft Machine - Volume 2

Species Being is a new improvisational avant-rock band from San Francisco. Orgone Therapy is apparently entirely improvised, with no studio overdubs or anything of the sort. Yet, what I've heard (a track I downloaded from the band's homepage at Chaosophy Records and one I heard on Jason Ellerbee's Dreams Wide Awake radio show) has been excellent, and many that have the album rave about it (including Mr. Ellerbee).

Soft Machine was "... the springboard for the Canterbury sound" (according to Jerry Lucky's flawed-but-occasionally-useful book "20th Century Rock and Roll: Progressive Rock"). I don't own any Soft Machine CDs yet, and have only heard one MP3 of them. Some consider them extremely great, so I decided to buy Volume 2 when I saw it being sold used.

I just realized that Kate Bush's The Dreaming could not possibly exist under a different name and still be "right". Listening to this album at 11:00pm, it struck me how all of the songs fit together in an jumbled dream-like manner, where one thought/event/emotion somehow leads to something else that is totally irrelevant, yet in a trance-like dream state, it seems logical to you...

Some lad with lots of time on his hands has written a fairly detailed analysis of The Dreaming, with data on lyric meanings, time signiatures, instruments used, etc. Despite the writer's somewhat fanboy approach to the album, the writing is quite good.

Grabbed a couple of CDs today:
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Stereolab - Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements
Uz Jsme Doma - Ears

Kate Bush is... interesting. Take a female singer-songwriter that's well-known but not tainted by immense popularity. Hmm, let's say someone like Lisa Loeb. Now, make her British. Done? OK. Now fuck her up. Real bad. Give her a twisted dysfunctional childhood, maybe a temporary drug habit or two... just twist her around real good. Now you've got Kate Bush, at least on this album. This is pop music gone terribly wrong. She twists the standard pop song format around, introduces textures and weird sounds, odd percussions, and unconventional vocals aplenty (in addition to her own vocal gymnastics, she adds distorted vocals and other processed vocal effects). Her distorted scream of "I love life!" in "Pull Out The Pin" is chilling.

The album cover seems normal enough - Bush in an passionate embrace with a man. But a closer look reveals the lock and chain, the ring on Kate's tongue... but I can imagine fans of her earlier (less experimental) work picking it up and expecting a nice, beautiful album. Then, when they get home....

"Aah! What is that?!?!?"
"Mommy, Kate Bush is scaring me!"
"Turn it off!"
"I CAN'T!"

OK, while this album is miles away from being the most "out there" thing in my collection, what makes it so striking is that it disguises itself as a normal pop album. Naturally, this album was a "commercial failure". Heh heh.

My first BMG order has been confirmed and sent out for processing, so I made my second one today. Sadly, the McCoy Tyner album I listed as intending for my second order appears to have disappeared from BMG's stock. So I replaced it. Here's the list now:

Miles Davis - The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (4 CDs)
Chick Corea - Light as a Feather
Ornette Coleman - The Shape Of Jazz To Come
Charles Mingus - Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus

Hopefully BMG will confirm this order too. I'm pretty sure multiple memberships are allowed in one household, but just not by one person. Mmmmm.... soooo.... these CDs are indeed my mother's, but she will dislike them before opening them and will give them to me.

[UPDATE: From the CD Clubs FAQ: "BMG allows up to five memberships under different names per address." Woohoo!]

I've been listening to Rush's Grace Under Pressure and Signals quite a bit lately. Grace Under Pressure in particular kicks ass. Listening to (good) Rush is like re-discovering an old friend. Granted, it's only been a couple of years since I first got "into" Rush. But considering the amount of music I have acquired and listened to since then, it seems like ages. Grace is definitely re-positioning itself as one of my favorite Rush albums.

The longest currently-running thread at rec.music.progressive is regarding Led Zeppelin. It's not an argument about whether Zep is prog or not (that discussion tends to end in "not really, but occasionally"), but simply a discussion about Zeppelin's best work - though the discussion has gone off on a few tangents. Anyway, I dug through the thread and made a running tally of what everyone seemed to indicate was their choice for Zep's best album (not every "vote" was clearly expressed, so I had to take some reading-between-the-lines liberties here).

Anyway, here's the tally:
Physical Graffiti: 3 votes
Houses of the Holy: 3 votes
Untitled ("IV"): 2 votes
Led Zeppelin ("I"): 2 votes
Led Zeppelin III: 2 votes
Led Zeppelin II: 1 vote
Presence: 1 vote

Some of the people that "voted" for Physical Graffiti or Houses of the Holy expressed their displeasure with IV's overexposure on FM radio over the years. This is no doubt a valid complaint, as "Stairway to Heaven", among others, have been played to death. Most of the people that felt this way were older gentlemen (i.e. they were around in 1971). Having not been born until 1981, I have avoided much of that overexposure. Sure, I've heard "Stairway to Heaven", "Black Dog", and "Rock and Roll" a lot of FM classic rock stations, but not disproportionately more than your typical Bad Company hit song.

The piano and violin melodies from the song "V" on Labradford's Mi Media Naranja are echoing through my room. Sweet mournful melancholy bliss.

"The world weighs on my shoulders, but what am I to do?" -- "Distant Early Warning" by Rush

That little quote pretty much sums up my thoughts right about now. I'll feel a lot better if I get accepted by CalPoly Pomona. I should be hearing from them shortly. I will most likely get accepted by Fresno State, but since plans to share an apartment with my best friend have all but fallen through, I really don't plan on going there. San Jose State is my final possibility, but I'd probably choose Fresno over San Jose just because it would be impossible to get an apartment in San Jose.

I'm going to go nuts buying music this week. I have a Kranky order planned, a Constellation order planned, a Cuneiform order planned, one more BMG club order planned, and I'm going to hit the used vinyl store for another stack of black frisbees. I'm also upgrading my computer (video card, silent power supply). I need to entertain myself for the remainder of my stay in this sorry town.

Heheh, here's a quote from a CD retailer, Eventyr Records, in reply to my email asking if they had Kultivator in stock (an inquiry that I sent before Wayside revealed their incoming stash):

"No, it's sold out at the moment."

Here's what Steve from Cuneiform/Wayside posted at rec.music.progressive about Kultivator (cutely referring to himself in the 3rd person):

"Steve is getting what would seem to be the last 12 copies in existence in stock in about 2 weeks.

Steve isn't blowing smoke when he says "seem to be the last 12 copies in existence". I wonder if I should email Eventyr in a few weeks and ask if they ever got copies in. The "...at the moment" phrase implies that they will be getting copies, but I think it's just a ruse to get me to sign up for their mailing list (a proposition that immediately followed the "sold out" line in the email I received).

Not that it really matters. I've already reserved my copy with Steve. $20 + shipping isn't steep when considering the rarity of the CD. Hell, I spent $25 to get a copy of Kenso's Ken-Son-Gu-Su, and that's proven to be less elusive than Kultivator (in fact, Steve has managed to get some copies of Ken-Son-Gu-Su in stock and is selling them for $21).

Now if someone could just dig up a stash of copies of Area's Crac!...

Apparently being a little depressed over a girl wasn't enough. Deciding that I needed to be kicked while already down, CalPoly San Luis Obispo just sent me a wonderful little rejection letter. *sigh*... as I said to someone today, "what's it like for someone to say 'yes' to you? I've forgotten."

On a better note, Steve from Wayside posted a message at rec.music.progressive stating that he would be receiving 12 copies of Kultivator's Barndomens Stigar soon. I quickly emailed him and reserved a copy. The CD that I thought might take forever to get (see Tuesday, March 8th's log entry) has now fallen into my lap.

A small victory, though. This week could have gone a lot better.