Don't Look: Grab Some Headphones And Listen (Yes: It's Old Fashioned But What's Music For?)

Even after making one startlingly dumb video after another, in this Pop world of Lady GaGa "monster" mindlessness, and empty Britney Houston crack whoredom, the return of a real female artist is some welcome news - finally, a new Kate Bush album is on it's way:

The reason why Bush remains so important today: her intelligence. In today’s X Factor-saturated music world, a song-writer who chooses to write about subjects as diverse and rarefied as Ulysses, Wuthering Heights, and the 1957 horror movie Night of the Demon (to name but a few), continues to stand out as much as she did in her 1980s heyday, if not more so. With the honourable exception of a few – Florence Welch, Laura Marling and Natasha Khan aka Bat for Lashes spring to mind, though there may of course be more - today’s crop of female singer-songwriters tend strongly towards the bland and insipid, their songs strictly limited to sex, love, or the pursuit of both.



Bush’s influence on today’s intelligent and creative female performers has already been widely noted. But it’s worth pausing to remember just what a pioneer Bush has been for women in music. In 1978, when she was just 19, her debut single Wuthering Heights made her the first woman ever to have a UK number one with a song she had written herself; two years later, she became, unbelievably, the first female British solo artist to top the UK album charts with her record Never for Ever, and the first ever to enter the album chart at number one.



She has also consistently resisted the inevitable attempts to have her undeniable good looks promoted over and above her music – something that the primped and preened female musicians of today, forever encouraged to drop their clothes for the covers of men’s magazines (stand up, Lily Allen), would do well to bear in mind. In 1982, Bush complained to NME about the fact that her record company, EMI, had chosen a picture of her in a low-cut pink top for the cover of Wuthering Heights. “The media just promoted me as a female body,” she said. “It's like I've had to prove that I'm an artist in a female body.”

No you didn't, Shug:

You had to prove they're a bunch of idiots - and you did - over and over again.

You may be flakey as a 1970s dandruff commercial, but it's yours, and in the end that's what's always counted most.

Welcome back, kid, I missed you.

Because Bringing Crazy To Kids Is So Important

"Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who trained under Sigmund Freud in Vienna. He was known for forging ahead with work for which the world wasn’t quite ready. He was labeled as a 'quack' by the FDA and deemed mentally ill. However, Wilhelm Reich was once connected to the Old Pueblo and this connection is an interesting one. It might be a bit bizarre.

Reich experimented with a biological energy he called 'orgone energy.' Reich claimed to have found a way to harness this energy. The energy was to be used for a variety of purposes from cancer treatment to weather experimentation. The weather experimentation brought him to Tucson all the way from Portland, Maine.

This concept of Orgone was derived from Freud’s concept of libido, while Carl Jung identified the libido as psychic energy. Wilhelm Reich expanded on these concepts with his theories about orgasmic energy. We will return to this idea of Orgone and delve deeper into it later. However, you get the idea. This was biological energy that Reich claimed to have harnessed for the greater good of mankind.

At about the same time in 1954, the world was fascinated with UFOs, and so was William Reich. In fact, much of what was wrong with the world, according to Wilhelm Reich, was due to repressed sexuality and UFO invaders.

Wilhelm Reich lives on in music and literature. Bob Dylan, Kate Bush, Patti Smith, and other songwriters have written and recorded songs about Wilhelm Reich. Jack Kerouac referenced Reich’s work in his book On the Road, as did William Burroughs through his own works."

-- Cherlyn Gardner Strong, detailing a madman's influence - and the influence of the occult - in contemporary society, as a Tucson Citizen.

Read the whole thing.

Tough Titties

Alright, a few days of criticizing women is getting old, so, before I get back to TMR's main focus, let's flip the script to praising women a bit (which, sadly, may be all the "daddy's little princess" types can understand) specifically Women-Fronted Rock Bands:

Heart's "Barracuda" is a Rock classic. Once it was released, there was no debating if women could play as hard (or write as cleverly) as guys - they most definitely could - and it finally made sense that guys in a Rock band were wearing those puffy shirts and shit. The mid-section of "Barracuda" achieves a fast-funk feel that's pretty undeniable (I'm surprised nobody's sampled it by now) and ain't it a trip the female artists today don't really sing with their own true voices anymore, the way Ann Wilson does, here? I mean, I'd know her voice anywhere, whereas for most of today's female artists, I couldn't pick 'em out of a police line-up. Whoops - that was more criticism, wasn't it? Sorry. Oh, fuck that, I'ma say what I want: It's my fucking blog.



This is a really silly anti-war video by Kate Bush, so just close your eyes and listen to it. The song's called "Army Dreamers". I first heard it when I was in the hospital, back in my Punk days, and was jarred by what a light touch it had, compared to everything else on college radio at the time. Like Heart, Kate Bush was another favorite of guys because, not only was she attractive, but she wrote, produced, and played on all her stuff. Any woman who says guys don't appreciate a woman in charge don't understand the important part: Competency matters. Show you've got the stuff and guys will follow you anywhere; do anything you say. Even making your crappy videos.



Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders epitomized Punk back in the day. She was the baddest of the bad: A woman who could dish it out with the same ferociousness she took it with - she wasn't asking for favors ("Stop sniveling!") or for "understanding" - and there definitely wasn't shit NewAge about her. Musically, The Pretenders arrangements, writing style, meter - everything - was uniquely their own. I really can't say enough about them: They were brilliant. This is "Tatooed Love Boys".



The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are fronted by Karen O, and while their stuff can be kind of hit-and-miss, the "hits" are always these short, powerful, stabs of Punk glory. (In some ways, sonically, they have a lot in common with my own group, Little White Radio.) "Date With The Night" was one of the first songs I heard of theirs and, if you don't know them, it's probably a good place for you to start as well.