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Post by suntorytime on Sept 6, 2006 20:04:43 GMT
Lotte Lenya, huh? I'll have to investigate this further then. Thanks, Al.
I knew what the general perception of Lionheart among the fans was before I got it, and this is in fact why LH was the last Kate album I bought (along with The Sensual World, because I couldn't find it anywhere). But I was pleasantly surprised. It does sound a bit like The Kick Inside, almost like an expansion of the first album. Nevertheless, there are some real treasures in it. Coffee Homeground, for instance. And Hammer Horror -- I'm madly in love with that song. And, of course, Symphony in Blue, like you mentioned. That song is like candy to my ears.
But please, Adey, do not mention the Tour of Life. It makes me sad. It's painful to me thinking that I missed the best tour the world has seen and that there is never ever going to be anything like it again. I still resent my mother for not giving birth to me 20 years earlier.
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Post by Kevin2 on Sept 6, 2006 20:36:41 GMT
Lotte Lenya, huh? I'll have to investigate this further then. Thanks, Al. As will I - Lotte has been on "The List" for quite some time now. This is one of my favorite Kate albums... ehh well I guess that really depends on how I'm feeling... but anyway yeah it's very good - and is I believe a quite overlooked album. Yeah very similar to TKI though I consider Lionheart to be the more consistent of the two albums since TKI has a few songs on it that I consider to be OK though (comparatively) not very special. Fullhouse, ... Heartbrake, Oh England, Hammer Horror, Coffee Homeground... and all the rest too... wundervoll!
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Post by suntorytime on Sept 6, 2006 23:38:31 GMT
Lotte Lenya, huh? I'll have to investigate this further then. Thanks, Al. As will I - Lotte has been on "The List" for quite some time now. This is one of my favorite Kate albums... ehh well I guess that really depends on how I'm feeling... but anyway yeah it's very good - and is I believe a quite overlooked album. Yeah very similar to TKI though I consider Lionheart to be the more consistent of the two albums since TKI has a few songs on it that I consider to be OK though (comparatively) not very special. Fullhouse, ... Heartbrake, Oh England, Hammer Horror, Coffee Homeground... and all the rest too... wundervoll! Oh England My Lionheart! Seriously, this song is so beautiful it almost makes me cry. And I'm not even English.
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mizzshy
Reaching Out
"Oh darling, Make it go, Make it go away..."
Posts: 214
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Post by mizzshy on Jan 8, 2007 18:53:41 GMT
Does anyone else think this song sounds a bit like something from Cabaret?
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Post by Al Truest on Jan 8, 2007 18:57:32 GMT
Does anyone else think this song sounds a bit like something from Cabaret? They share a common inspiration. i.e., the European influence of Cabaret singers - in particular Lotte Lenya for CF.
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mizzshy
Reaching Out
"Oh darling, Make it go, Make it go away..."
Posts: 214
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Post by mizzshy on Jan 10, 2007 15:13:23 GMT
OK, so I'm not crazy...
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Post by tannis on Apr 25, 2008 0:17:32 GMT
Interviewer: "I must admit, while of course I love the mature Kate Bush, what I do miss is that very young and enchanting, almost ecstatic sort of voice on the early albums. You don't often sing in that high register these days but rather an octave or so lower." Kate Bush: "Well, I think it's life periods you go through. Albums are really very auto-biographical, and at that time I was writing and experimenting to try to push my voice higher and into different areas, and I'm not really sure why, but I think at that time I felt my voice was strongest at that pitch. But I find that interesting 'cause when she was really young, Joni Mitchell used to sing very high, though now she's very low and jazzy." Interviewer: "Many of your songs are very intimate and extremely revealing of your own inner life. Does it ever happen that you write a song for self-satisfaction but then decide it is too intimate, too personal, too compromising perhaps, to offer to the public?" Kate: "No, that's never happened yet. The only reason a song will get dropped is that it's not good enough--you know, the tune is a bit weak, or the lyrics aren't good enough, or the concept isn't tight enough. If it was good enough it would go on." Interviewer: "The sort of vignette-songs like Coffee Homeground or Houdini, are those conceived in the first place as ideas, intellectually so to say, while there are others which take shape while you're actually playing the piano, whereupon you look for suitable words?" Kate: "Well, Coffee Homeground would have been a song where the words and the music were coming together probably at exactly the same time. Actually, that's the only song which I wrote when I visited America about seven years ago [to appear on Saturday Night Live]. Which is quite interesting, as it's not at all American..." Interviewer: "A little bit German, maybe? Who did the arrangement?" Kate: "Well, actually, Andrew Powell arranged the orchestra. But the riff (Kate sings it)--that was written on the piano and--" Paddy: "Then translated into different instruments. As a matter of fact, Coffee Homeground vibrantly ["violently"? The word is not clearly audible.] mutated. When the very first demos of it were done, it had a decidedly different flavour. The Brechtian treatment didn't appear until much later on, that only took shape when Kate got the idea of treating the song with a slightly German sort of flavour." Interviewer: "So, with a song like that, it's Kate who actually conceives what is possible, and then looks to the musicians or to an arranger to actualize it?" Paddy: "Oh, yes, yes. But in the case of Coffee Homeground it did mutate. The Brechtian feel is something that appeared only gradually, during the actual recording, and became more definite as time went on." gaffa.org/reaching/i85_swa.html
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Post by tannis on Apr 25, 2008 1:29:01 GMT
Someone once said that Coffee Homeground was about a crazy taxi driver. Is this true? KB: "Coffee Homeground was sort of based on a taxi driver that I met once, yes, but I wouldn't like to say that he was crazy because a lot of people say that I am!"gaffa.org/garden/kate6.htmlCoffee Homeground reads like The Young Poisoner's Handbook...[/i] Inspired by a journey with a taxi driver who was convinced that somebody was out to poison him, the lyrics also reference Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), where two spinster aunts take to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, cyanide and "just a pinch" of strychnine! For nearly 100 years 'Dr Crippen' has been a byword for murder most foul. Hawley Harvey Crippen was an American physician hanged in Pentonville Prison on 23 November 1910, for the murder of his wife. The prosecution accused Crippen of slipping his wife a lethally powerful sedative before killing and mutilating her. A fortnight before she vanished, Crippen had bought five grains of hyoscine, a highly toxic sedative used to calm psychiatric patients, but lethal in large doses. "Hyoscine was also commonly used in obstetrics back then. We don't know that Crippen carried out abortions, but he dabbled in all sorts, so it is quite plausible." www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=488626&in_page_id=1770Hydrogen cyanide is a colorless gas with a faint bitter almond-like odor. Poisoning by cyanide figures prominently in crime fiction, for example Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. In the Joseph Kesselring play "Arsenic and Old Lace," two old ladies mix wine with arsenic, cyanide and strychnine to use to kill old men. Arsenic became a favorite murder weapon of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, particularly among ruling classes in Italy, notably the Borgias. By the 19th C., it had acquired the nickname "inheritance powder," perhaps because impatient heirs were known or suspected to use it to ensure or accelerate their inheritances. Atropa belladonna, commonly known as belladonna or deadly nightshade, is one of the most toxic plants found in the Western hemisphere. Publications have suggested a combination of belladonna and aconite was used by witches to "fly" in the Middle Ages. Stories claim that the devil has the exclusive rights to plant and harvest this plant. In ancient Greece, hemlock ( Conium maculatum) was used to poison condemned prisoners. The most famous victim of hemlock poisoning is the philosopher Socrates. After being condemned to death in 399 BC on charges of heresy and the corruption of young minds, Socrates was given a potent solution of the hemlock plant. Plato's description of Socrates' death in the Phaedo is consistent with Conium poisoning. 'Coffee' is street slang for LSD or brown heroin; and 'Home Grown' is slang for locally grown marijuana weed. 'Coffee Homeground' is good macabre fun...
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Apr 25, 2008 2:06:27 GMT
Fascinating, Tannis. Coffee Homeground does indeed read a bit like 'The Young Poisoner's Handbook'! I've always found it a very funny song in a sinister way.
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Post by tannis on Apr 25, 2008 2:29:57 GMT
Yes, Coffee Homeground is a funny and sinister song, and also brilliantly sung... and The Young Poisoner's Handbook (1995) is a funny and sinister film! It reminds me of Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994), starring Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet. And both films are based on true crime stories! "Heavenly Creatures" Trailerwww.youtube.com/watch?v=E-vUl-1FJ9E
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Post by tannis on Jul 13, 2008 7:25:44 GMT
Wunderbar! ... LOTTE LENYALotte Lenya - Mackie the Knifewww.youtube.com/watch?v=Swa8jEnp5e8&feature=relatedMonitor: Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill (Russell, 1962)Lenya has one of the most distinctive singing voices ever recorded. It has been reported that as a young girl, Kate Bush was given a Lotte Lenya record as a present which had a tremendous impact on her; certainly, the song Coffee Homeground is an unmistakeable tribute to her style. COFFEE HOMEGROUNDKate Bush - Coffee Homegroundwww.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp0qi80AvZMThe lyrics were inspired by a ride with a paranoid taxi driver who believed someone was out to poison him. The vocals are in homage to the singing of Lotte Lenya. The three lines of German at the close of the song are: "Noch ein Glass mein Liebchen/Liebling" ("Another glass of my favorite"); "Es schmeckt wunderbar!" ("It tastes wonderful!"); and "Dann sterb ich wohl" ("Then I will probably die"). The last of these is still not yet finally decided, since it's even difficult for native speakers of German to make out. It might be something completely different, only Kate can tell. But it seems to make elegant sense in context. I: Are there any other tracks that you could explain the meanings of to us, from the album? KB: "Yeah, well there's one called Coffee Homeground which was in fact inspired directly from a cab driver that I met who was in fact a bit nutty. And it's just a song about someone who thinks they're being poisoned by another person, they think that there's Belladonna in their tea and that whenever they offer them something to eat, it's got poison in it. And it's just a humorous aspect of paranoia really and we sort of done it in a Brechtian style, the old sort of jamming [ vibe] to try and bring across the humour side of it." Lionheart Promo Cassette, 1978gaffa.org/reaching/im78_lh.htmlI: A little bit German, maybe? Who did the arrangement? Kate: "Well, actually, Andrew Powell arranged the orchestra. But the riff (Kate sings it)--that was written on the piano and--" Paddy: "Then translated into different instruments. As a matter of fact, Coffee Homeground vibrantly ["violently"? The word is not clearly audible.] mutated. When the very first demos of it were done, it had a decidedly different flavour. The Brechtian treatment didn't appear until much later on, that only took shape when Kate got the idea of treating the song with a slightly German sort of flavour." I: So, with a song like that, it's Kate who actually conceives what is possible, and then looks to the musicians or to an arranger to actualize it? Paddy: "Oh, yes, yes. But in the case of Coffee Homeground it did mutate. The Brechtian feel is something that appeared only gradually, during the actual recording, and became more definite as time went on." Musician (unedited), by Peter Swales, Fall 1985gaffa.org/reaching/i85_swa.htmlsee more: KATE BUSH FAQ: Lionheart gaffa.org/faq/index.html THE GAFFAWEB DICTIONARYgaffa.org/diction/index.html
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Post by tannis on Sept 26, 2009 20:27:41 GMT
DOWN IN THE CELLARDown in the cellar You're getting into making poison. You slipped some on the side, Into my glass of wine, And I don't want any coffee--homeground.By the night of December 29, Pares says, all the plans had been made. A cellar in Yusupov's house had been carefully prepared: it was furnished with a bearskin rug on the floor, armchairs, a labyrinth cupboard full of mirrors on which stood a crucifix. Chocolate and almond cakes were laid out — some of them injected with cyanide of potassium — and there was also poisoned wine available. A stairway led to the room above where the conspirators were assembled, and for some reason they kept playing over and over again a record of "Yankee Doodle" on the gramophone. Toward midnight Yusupov went alone by appointment to pick up Rasputin at his apartment, and he found him "smelling of cheap soap, in a white silk blouse and black velvet trousers." ~ The Russian Revolution, Alan Moorehead, 1958, p.108.Offer me a chocolate, No thank you, spoil my diet, know your game! But tell me just how come They smell of bitter almonds? It's a no-no to your coffee homeground.Properties.—Cyanide of potassium forms a snow-white crystalline powder, is odourless (but acquires in moist air the smell of bitter almonds), and of a pungent alkaline taste, with that of bitter almonds. It is deliquescent in the air, and in this state decomposes, giving off prussic acid, and becoming at last entirely carbonate of potash ~ Practical Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Georg Christian Wittstein, 1853, p.386.Pictures of Crippin Lipstick-smeared. Torn wallpaper. Have the walls got ears here?Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen was born in America and moved to England in 1900 with his wife Cora. He set up a homeopathic medical practice in London and his wife pursued her musical career. Born Kunigunde Mackamotski, Cora Crippen preferred to be known by her stage name, Belle Elmore. According to a Crippen family genealogy website, Belle Elmore had a mean streak and a disagreeable temperament. Although a woman of a robust build her singing talent was of a lesser size. She openly entertained gentleman callers when her husband was at work, and Dr. Crippen, in turn, sought comfort in the arms of his lover Edith Le Neve. After a house party on January 31, 1910, Cora disappeared. Her husband said she had returned to the United States, but suspicions were raised when Edith Le Neve moved in with Crippen. The police interviewed Hawley Crippen and searched his house and left, apparently satisfied that no crime had been committed. However, Crippen and Le Neve were so unnerved by the visit that they took flight, boarding the SS Montrose, which was bound for Canada. This set off a great hue and cry. The captain of the Montrose recognized the doctor from newspapers and became suspicious of Le Neve, who had disguised herself as a boy. He famously used the newly-invented wireless telegraph to alert the British police. Crippen was arrested and brought back to England. A mutilated body had been found under the cellar of Dr. Crippen’s home. On October 10, 1910, Dr. Crippen’s trial opened in London’s Old Bailey Central Criminal Court. There was a heavy weight of evidence against him; he had bought poison in January 1910, he had pawned some of his wife’s jewelry, expert witnesses said the body had been professionally dissected, and the doctor had run away. Interestingly though, the pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury was unable to say whether the corpse was that of a male or a female. Hawley Crippen maintained his innocence throughout the five-day trial, but it took the jury only 27 minutes to find him guilty of murder. He was sentenced to be executed by hanging and met his fate a month later in Pentonville Prison. On June 7, 2009, The Observer reported that, “The case of one of the most notorious murderers in British history, Hawley Crippen, is to be referred to the Court of Appeal, where the infamous doctor may secure a posthumous pardon 99 years after he was hanged.” An examination of tissue from the body found in Crippen’s cellar has been compared with the DNA of Belle Elmore’s relatives. The samples don’t match.Well, you won't get me with your Belladonna--in the coffee, And you won't get me with your arsenic--in the pot of tea, And you won't put me in a six-foot plot--with your hemlock On the rocks...After a while, I couldn’t take it any more, so I gravitated into the kitchen to pour myself a drink. For a moment I considered Hemlock on the rocks or Arsenic and tonic with a twist, but finally decided on a milder concoction. I found a sour mash made in one of the states that went for Goldwater and poured myself a healthy one. I am not a drinking man, by and large, but that night it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. I was so numb that I doubt if even the Hemlock on the rocks would have affected me. ~ Slightly to the Right, H. L. Richardson, 1965, p.13
The singer had headed into "I Was Born About a Thousand Years Ago," and he had the crowd with him--Duke and his fighting bass, too. Then, when they ran out of words, Duke took over and sang modern additions: I was sitting there with Socrates one day When that ship from Delos came on down the bay. I said, "What's to drink Old Socks?" He said "Hemlock on the rocks." So we clinked our jugs and sang out Happy Day. ~ A Smuggler's Bible, Joseph McElroy, 1966, p.200.He probably wouldn't have got her with his Belladonna--in the coffee...Antidotes for Poisons: Belladonna, or Deadly Nightshade Symptoms: Dryness of the mouth and throat, great thirst, difficulty of swallowing, nausea, dimness, confusion or loss of vision, great enlargement of the pupils, dizziness, delirium, and coma. Treatment: There is no known antidote. Give a prompt emetic and then reliance must be placed on continual stimulation with brandy, whisky, etc., and to necessary artificial respiration. Opium and its preparations, as morphia, laudanum, etc., are thought by some to counteract the effect of belladonna, and may be given in small and repeated doses, as also strong black coffee and green tea. ~ Henley's Twentieth Century Formulas, Recipes And Processes, Norman W. Henley, 1916.
HYOSCIAMUS AS AN ANTIDOTE OF BELLADONNA. By Dr. Schlosser. In an article on the physiological effects of Belladonna, Stramonium, and Hyosciamus, the author relates a number of experiments performed upon himself, to show the power of Hyosciamus as an antidote to Belladonna. He arrived at the following conclusions: 1. Hyosciamus neutralizes the paralytic and excitant affection of the dilated pupil which is caused by Belladonna. 2. Hyosciamus has this effect when given in doses equal to the amount of Belladonna which has been used, and also when given in smaller doses, which do not correspond to the quantity of Belladonna or Atropine administered. 3. Coffee stands in the first rank as an antidote of Belladonna. But he found that, after taking it, the size of the pupil was not diminished, but rather increased. He thinks that the vegetable poisons exert a peculiar local specific action, and that Hyosciamus acts as an antidote on account of its relation to the ciliary nervous system. It is possible that Coffee would act as an antidote to Belladonna-poisoning, if there was increased activity of all the sensitive nerves and the organs of special sense. ~ The North American journal of homeopathy, Volume 7, American Medical Union, 1859But mixing white arsenic with wine, mixing white arsenic in chocolate, or mixing arsenic in a pot of tea would have been fatal... see more: Precedents of Indictments and Pleas, Francis Wharton, 1849, pp.63-65.
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Post by tannis on Oct 25, 2009 20:27:13 GMT
Camp, theatre and engaging with artifice
The theatrical ambience of Lionheart often means that Kate Bush ventures into the realm of camp performance as a means of accentuation. Her use of camp involves an interesting twist of vocal and subjective transvestism: she can be a woman performing as a man who in turn is adopting, parodying and inhabiting female characteristics. The evocative camp performance on the album resonates with a certain type of male homosexual culture and to this day, Bush has been heralded as a higher class of camp gay (male) icon for the twenty first Century. Nathan Evans has commented in an article published in The Pink Paper 2005: ‘mainstream gay culture has Kylie or Madonna. But Kate’s fantastically camp. She’s a one off eccentric. I really don’t think her image was constructed in an ironic way. She was just being herself.’ Evans suggests that the alternative, fantastic and genuinely eccentric aspect of Bush’s persona place her apart from the plasticity of mainstream gay culture. Kate Bush’s appeal to a queer audience is not simply her histrionic performances and lavish costumes but the fact the she has, at certain times in her career, presented herself as authentically camp. The idea, however, of a non-ironic and authentic type of camp performance/ identity is at odds with how camp has been defined and used within culture in the first instance.
Like many things, there has been some contention over the definition and meaning of ‘camp.’ It is worth making clear what definitions and ideas I am referring to and using as a framework in order to read Bush’s campest moments on Lionheart. Most consistently camp has been associated with ‘a mode of performance that exposes as artifice what passes as natural.’ It therefore easy to see why camp, as a political tool, was historically and contemporarily of use to gay people, who could use camp to query the naturalisation of heterosexuality within culture and exposing its artificiality. I enjoy Richard Dyer’s definition of camp:
Camp can make us see that what art and the media give us are not the Truth or Reality but fabrications, particular ways of talking about the world, particular understandings and feelings of the way that life is. Art and the media don’t give us life as it really is – how could they ever? – but only life as artists and producers think it is. Camp, by drawing attention to the artifices employed by artists, can constantly remind us that what we are seeing is a only view of life. This doesn’t stop us enjoying it, but it does stop us believing what we are shown too readily.
Camp, in Dyer’s definition, is a strategy, a mode of perception and a critical tool that allows us, as readers, consumers and listeners, to not accept all that is presented before us as the only truth and way of seeing the world. Importantly Dyer stresses that this does not curtail the enjoyment of what is being experienced, even as it offers a space for the reader of a cultural text to resist it. Camp has then, the potential to be radically sceptical of any totality, exposing what is invisibly accepted as the norm and ‘authentically’ natural. Its stress is upon engaging with artifice as a device in order to reveal what we pretend is not artificial is in actual fact, artificial. It is a ‘style that favours “exaggeration,” artifice and extremity…[it] exists in tension with popular culture, commercial culture or consumerist culture.’ Camp could fragment and denaturalise heteronormative narratives of appropriate cultural behaviour – the sanctity of the family, marriage, monogamy, religion and so forth. On the other hand, camp is equally welcomed by a culture steeped in capitalist values because capitalism cares little whether something pretends to be real or not – it markets it, makes it seem irresistible and desirable to everyone, making the authentic artificial.
Isherwood’s definition of ‘high camp’ is perhaps most appropriate for what Bush does on Lionheart, as it emphasises a certain quality of decadence and seriousness to the ploy of camping about: ‘You camp about something you don’t take seriously. You’re not making fun of it, you’re making fun out of it. You’re expressing what’s basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance.’ This definition of camp seems particularly suitable for the camper moments that exist on Lionheart which are certainly executed within this type of framework...
There are many instances when the album utilises the outrageous tone of histrionic male campness and theatricality that creates, I would argue, the album’s enduring tone and feeling. As Bush commented, referring to the inspiration for ‘Wow’, ‘there are an awful lot of homosexuals in the business. But that is just an observation, not a criticism.’ Camp communication to the listener is best exemplified in the two songs that close the album, ‘Coffee Homeground’ and ‘Hammer Horror.’ These songs both display for me all the fun that can be gained from engaging with elegance and artifice. ‘Coffee Homeground’ opens with swaggering and swooping tones that envelop the listener like overbearing feather plumes. The music evokes entering a cellar or a boardroom as we are drawn into the mood of the song, which is about a man who poisons his guests by putting belladonna in their food and drink. Bush described it as ‘a humorous aspect of paranoia really and we sort of done it [sic] in a Brechtian style, the old sort of German [ Vibe sic] to try and bring across the humour side of it.’ The song certainly conjures the decadent aspects of 1920’s Berlin with its lurching, polka movements and with an isolated symbol clash that delivers the punch line in-between the stop-start of the music.
Despite the appearance of the music being created with a large orchestra, the sound of the horns and ethereal flutes are in fact made by a synthesizer, which is the ultimate artificial instrument. The use of synthesizers is another instance of how artifice creeps its way into the album’s body, thus making it more elaborate than it necessarily appears to be. Synthesizers feature on the campest songs on the album – ‘Wow,’ ‘Coffee’ and ‘Hammer’ – while the other songs use more traditional instruments. This is no easy coincidence when considering how the atmosphere is created; for what we think of as ‘natural’ instruments are in fact programmed and simulated sounds.
‘Coffee Homeground’ could also be read aloud as a script, written and performed with a spanking and flick of the wrist:
Offer me a chocolate, No thankyou, spoil my diet, know your game! But tell me just how come They smell of bitter almonds? It’s a no-no to your coffee homeground.
The song is importantly humorous which is all the more surprising given that it is about murder. It is in keeping with Isherwood’s definition of high camp that makes fun ‘out’ of something as opposed to ‘of’ something. In this song we gain the full sense of theatricality and entertainment, as the song itself becomes a kind of play, with the use of instruments and extra voices functioning as characters.
from: Debi Withers (2006), 'Kate Bush: Performing and Creating Queer Subjectivities on Lionheart.'www.iiav.nl/ezines//web/Nebula/2009/No1/nobleworld/Withers.pdf
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