Re: Army Dreamers

[Kevin2]

Oh well, I was going to quote... something, but since I messed it up and since I pretty much agree with what you said I won't.

Yeah, I think Army Dreamers is concerned with the (at that time) present while Oh England was a look back to the past. There's a lot more to Oh England but other than for the nostalgic perspective I'm really not too sure what it says to me.

[Sven Golly]

kevan said:

Yeah, I think Army Dreamers is concerned with the (at that time) present while Oh England was a look back to the past. There's a lot more to Oh England but other than for the nostalgic perspective I'm really not too sure what it says to me.

It (OEML) is really just a subliminal Spam advert...

[tannis]

KB: "I like the idea of making the musical and subject matter at odds. Like in 'Army Dreamers' the obvious thing is to write a slow, heavy song, but if you do that it always becomes too obvious, less easy for people to accept. When it is something so heavy, if you disguise it in a light tune or something happy, it will be accepted, and then when it's actually realised it will probably hit home a lot harder."
(1980, Zigzag).
gaffa.org/cloud/music/the_infant_kiss.html

Miranda: "What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream."
~ Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).

[tannis]

KB: "I'm doing a TV show in Germany on Tuesday [the programme was RockPop, and the taping was in mid-September, 1980] and my Mum's got some clothes to lend me. I'm going to do two numbers for the show. Army Dreamers is one, and I want to dress up as a cleaning woman. My mother lends me a headscarf, an old apron, and lots of my old jumble clothes. The song is about a mother who lost her son overseas. It doesn't matter how he died, but he didn't die in action--it was an accident. I wanted the mother to be a very simple woman who's obviously got a lot of work to do. She's full of remorse, but she has to carry on, living in a dream. Most of us live in a dream..."

Kate Bush (1980)
gaffa.org/garden/flexipop.html

Our little army boy
Is coming home from B.F.P.O...
Four men in uniform
To carry home my little soldier...

B.F.P.O. is the forces abbreviation for "British Forces Posted Overseas". Its use in the song, together with "Four men in uniform To carry home my little soldier", suggest that the subject of Army Dreamers was on a tour of duty rather than on a training exercise. IMHO, Army Dreamers is another take on the "what a waste of life war is", a fairly common theme of the time or indeed of any time. The Jam had a very similar sentiment, for instance, in their 1979 track "Little Boy Soldiers"*:

Better to take your shots and drop down dead,
Then they send you home in a pine overcoat
With a letter to your mum
Saying find enclosed one son - one medal and a note -
To say he won.

Compare that to:

Tears o'er a tin box.
Oh Jesus Christ, he wasn't to know,
Like a chicken with a fox,
He cannot win the war with ego.
Give the kid the pick of pips,
And give him all your stripes and ribbons,
Now he's sitting in his hole

* thehomegroundandkatebushnewsandinfoforum.yuku.com/topic/15756/t/How-good-is-Army-Dreamers.html

[rosabelbelieve]

^Good quote.

[tannis]

Yes, I thought so too...

KB: "I'm doing a TV show in Germany on Tuesday [the programme was RockPop, and the taping was in mid-September, 1980] and my Mum's got some clothes to lend me. I'm going to do two numbers for the show. Army Dreamers is one, and I want to dress up as a cleaning woman. My mother lends me a headscarf, an old apron, and lots of my old jumble clothes. The song is about a mother who lost her son overseas. It doesn't matter how he died, but he didn't die in action--it was an accident. I wanted the mother to be a very simple woman who's obviously got a lot of work to do. She's full of remorse, but she has to carry on, living in a dream. Most of us live in a dream..."

Kate Bush (1980)
gaffa.org/garden/flexipop.html

In the Army Dreamers video KB et al are dressed up as Knights of the Territorial Army (TA; and notice the 'KT' logo on KB's left shoulder and the 'KTB' - KaTe Bush? - logo on the rifles).

The 'Aryan' (pronounced: air-re-an... Aerial?) child first appears in 'civilian dress', then in TA fancy dress (on 'carry home'), and then as a serving soldier who 'never even made it to his twenties'. The video seems very much to tell us that this army dreamer died in military uniform and in combat. This is further suggested by the falling-soldier-with-gun cut with falling-soldier-with-guitar. The choreography and special effects also suggest a military campaign operation, with troops advancing towards the line of battle only to be blown away.

Kate Bush - Army Dreamers (Laserdisc version)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Zj6L6Un_c

On the Army Dreamers single sleeve cover photograph, KB is dressed as a pouting Vera Lynn-esque "Forces Sweetheart", clearly associating the song with battalion units. The implication is again that the army dreamer was killed in official, government sponsored (i.e. 'legitimate') military action. It may have been Northern Ireland, it could have been the Falklands; it could even be Iraq...

ARMY DREAMERS
www.katebush.pl/singles.htm

Army Dreamers also taps into WWI and WWII, maybe controversial for German pop music! And British (and US) forces maintain an ongoing presence in peacetime Germany. In the German TV show, KB is dressed like a 1940s kitchen sink housewife, or an historically dislocated Hilda Ogden, a Mrs Overall, or even Andy Capp's long-suffering wife, Flo. At one point she mimes with a cigarette in her mouth, suggesting gossip over the garden fence. In this performance, the army dreamer is now clearly defined by his Working Class 'plebby' destiny. And while suggesting grief, Kate's jig and the ring dance also suggest a demented wake! (Later, this cleaning woman will scream 'Get Out Of My House!', and in another incarnation will be scrubbing the hall carpet and washing dirty clothes).

Kate Bush~Army Dreamers LIVE!!!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXt8xKA9Y_g

The chorus discovers the mother's grief, anguish and remorse in a way which suggests she is having to explain her loss to some middle class chattering accusers. (A similar sense of persecution is present in Waking The Witch.) The Working Class mother is made to feel responsible for failing to better the life choices of her child, and to realise that any career or life path is better than joining the army. Again, this all suggests that the army dreamer was killed in action. A motorcycle accident while on leave in Cyprus would not warrant such lyrical treatment or chorus-driven angst.

For the Rock Around the World performance of Army Dreamers there is just KB and her two dancers. This performance is very unlike the previously discussed pieces, allowing further interpretations on the song. But again, the performance clearly suggests that the army dreamer has been killed in action. The KT trio seem to be at the graveside of the army dreamer, giving him a mock military send-off... Despite the temple skené, this is no Antigone on her way to bury Polyneices! In some ways, this is the most clear-cut anti-war performance of the song. Dressed in combat clothes, with KB in stilettos, the trio could be 'Make Love Not War' hippies, putting their flowers in gun barrels, as peace protesters have done in the past. They sing the chorus from the same hymn sheet with Kate as leader rather than as protagonist. There is no conflict of interest here: war is waste, and here lies an Army Dreamer, a Mammy's Hero, but no Army Hero...
...No Army Hero... Could the Rock Around the World performance of Army Dreamers betray the KT stance on the Northern Ireland Question?

Kate Bush - Army Dreamers - Rock Around the World
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTJ0OCXanEU

So it seems disingenuous of Kate Bush to assert that "It doesn't matter how he died, but he didn't die in action--it was an accident." The KT visuals, the (un-Greek) chorus questioning, the mock military send-off, etc. all suggest otherwise.

[rosabelbelieve]

I never thought about that... It is rather strange, isn't it?

[tannis]

Melody Maker: "Paranoia and Passion of the Kate Inside"
by Colin Irwin, October 4, 1980

Kate re-emerges, totally unrecognized, sitting alone at the side, observing, waiting for her next party-piece. She's dressed as a haggard washer-woman in dowdy clothes and headscarf.

It's a routine she's never tried before and she's been nervous all day. The song is Army Dreamers, a track from Never For Ever and the next single, a simple but melancholy little song in which Kate appears as a weary mother reflecting on the death of her son, a soldier killed on duty.

"Should have been a rock star...But he didn't have the money for a guitar..."
Three soldiers dressed in British army camouflage uniforms appear, one carrying a mandolin, one a Tommy gun [played by Paddy Bush and Del Palmer respectively], another in the role of a sergeant barking orders.

"Should have been a politician...But he never had a proper education..."
Kate shrivels and cringes behind the soldiers, her face crumpled and distraught. The soldiers march and prowl and stand at attention.

"Should have been a father...But he didn't even make it to his twenties..."
The song is all the more striking for the pretty tune, and the genteel structure, the innocence of the lyric. It ends with the three soldiers cowering in a heap, Kate spread-eagled protectively above them. Purely as a piece of theatre it's brilliant. RockPop has never seen anything like it, that's for sure.

Kate has an enormous number of relatives in Ireland, and she's fearful of the Irish reaction to Army Dreamers. Ireland isn't mentioned in the song, and she inserted a reference to BFPO to divert attention; but let's face it, the song's a contemporary one with its mention of rock - 'n' and there ain't too many other places a young soldier is gonna get killed in action right now.
"It's the first song I've ever written in the studio... It's not specifically about Ireland, it's just putting the case of a mother in these circumstances, how incredibly sad it is for her. How she feels she should have been able to prevent it. If she'd bought him a guitar when he asked for one."

see more:
Melody Maker, "Paranoia and Passion of the Kate Inside" (1980)
gaffa.org/reaching/i80_mm.html

-----

KB: "No, it's not personal. It's just a mother grieving and observing the waste. A boy with no O-levels, say, who might have been a pop star, politician or whatever. But he's nothing to do, no way to express himself. So he joins the army. He's trapped. So many die, often in accidents. I'm not slagging off the army, because it's good for certain people. But there are a lot of people in it who shouldn't be."
"How To Write Songs And Influence People"
gaffa.org/reaching/i80_st.html

[tannis]

tannis said:

For the Rock Around the World performance of Army Dreamers there is just KB and her two dancers. This performance is very unlike the previously discussed pieces, allowing further interpretations on the song. But again, the performance clearly suggests that the army dreamer has been killed in action. The KT trio seem to be at the graveside of the army dreamer, giving him a mock military send-off... Despite the temple skené, this is no Antigone on her way to bury Polyneices! In some ways, this is the most clear-cut anti-war performance of the song. Dressed in combat clothes, with KB in stilettos, the trio could be 'Make Love Not War' hippies, putting their flowers in gun barrels, as peace protesters have done in the past. They sing the chorus from the same hymn sheet with Kate as leader rather than as protagonist. There is no conflict of interest here: war is waste, and here lies an Army Dreamer, a Mammy's Hero, but no Army Hero...
...No Army Hero... Could the Rock Around the World performance of Army Dreamers betray the KT stance on the Northern Irish Question?

Kate Bush - Army Dreamers - Rock Around the World
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTJ0OCXanEU

In 1984, four Irish Antigones emerged from her stony tomb, and all written within months of each other: Brendan Kennelly’s Antigone, Aidan Carl Mathew’s Antigone, Tom Paulin’s The Riot Act, and Pat Murphy’s film Ann Devlin.

So maybe the Rock Around the World performance is in the tradition of Antigone. The dead British Army Dreamer is no brother to the Republican cause, no hero. KT uses the Antigone theatrical cues - the skené, the handful of dust, the burial. But these are defiantly subverted. Antigone defied the status quo to bury her brother, Polyneices. KT defies the status quo to regard British Forces in Northern Ireland as chickens, puppets, dreamers, a mammy's hero, but No Army Hero...

Kate 'Antigone' Bush... A 'mini-me' sort of Jane 'Antigone' Fonda, or Glenda 'Antigone' Jackson protesting at the height of the Vietnam war?
...though conscripted troops were never really army dreamers...
And Kate's grandfather Joe, an abattoir worker, was imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs for his conscientious objection to the Great War (Mendelssohn, 2004).

Dressed in combat clothes, with KB in stilettos...
In the RATW performance of Army Dreamers, KB also wears a 'French Resistance' black beret... A nod to the IRA?

"In January 1973, Adams was photographed at the funeral of IRA man Francis Liggett dressed in the IRA’s black beret, marching alongside the coffin with other IRA members." and
"McGuinness (far right) in IRA uniform [incl. beret] at the funeral of fellow IRA man and close friend Colm Keenan in 1972" and
"Gerry Adams in IRA uniform [incl. beret] at the funeral of IRA man Francis Liggett"
“The Burning Bush”
www.ivanfoster.org/article.asp?date=12/3/2006&seq=4


Army Dreamers, There Goes A Tenner & the IRA?
Towards the end of the Rock Around the World performance of Army Dreamers, the KT trio swing left-to-right, like the tic-toc pendulum of a clock marking time. The pendulum/clock motif is prominent in Kate's work, eg OTBIL and WYWM; and there's a pendulum simile in The Innocents (1961), the film basis for The Infant Kiss. In the There Goes A Tenner video, KB uses a pendulum to suggest waiting for political change. So the pendulum swaying in the RATW performance becomes a prop pendulum in TGaT. If TGaT is about an 'anti-treaty IRA' bomb job, then maybe the RATW performance of Army Dreamers brings out the latent Northern Irish tensions within the song? After all, few Republican sympathisers would consider British Army Dreamers to be Army Heroes!

see more:
There Goes A Tenner and the IRA
katebush.proboards6.com/index.cgi?board=dreaming&action=display&n=1&thread=1704&page=4
Kate Bush - There Goes A Tenner
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bYXYlCbBJ0

[tannis]

Four years into the Iraq war and with no end in sight, music as social critique has never seemed so relevant. Here is a vital list of some of the best reactionary music to emerge from hardship, injustice, and war.
Playlist By Bruce Scott

4. Army Dreamers Kate Bush A potent and oddly poetic antiwar message from the perspective of a parent who has lost her child, Kate Bush is never one to fuss with overtly political slogans and sayings. She goes right for the jugular here, telling the story of a mammy’s hero being brought home from the war in a tin box. A mother grieves over the loss of her son and questions her decision on allowing him to join the army in the first place.

First published in movmnt magazine “Got Fame?” Fall 2007 issue
www.movmnt.com/playlist-power_00333.html


And here is a Hebrew interpretation of Army Dreamers.
By law, all Israeli citizens are subject to conscription to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF); and this song does not sing of Army Dreamers, but of a name in stone and where is right or wrong?
It is very impressive.

Kate Bush Army Dreamers VS Mazi Cohen Shem Baeven
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu5OCFdf8vY

This is Kate Bush's video of Army dreamers edited to fit to a remake done by Israeli singer Mazi Cohen. The song by Mazi Cohen has been renamed to Shem Baeven (Name On Stone) which means the name engraved in tombstone. The words have also been changed. Below is the translation from Hebrew to English:

From the smoke of cannons,
he comes back to me, carried forward,
I'm waiting with bouquet of flowers,
to decorate mummy's hero
you're cold, the day is warm
the mourning lies in the home-port,
four men wearing uniform,
carries you, an olive leaf

He who was won't be a rock star
still hadn't learn to play the guitar
he who was won't go too far,
a boy who just left school,
he who was won't calm down a baby
because he hadn't lived even twenty years
and now he is a name in stone

sound of tears on the coffin
he hadn't known
the sound of victory
the ground always muffles
give the child to choose
glory marks or marks of value
there in the dark pit
where is right or wrong?

[tannis]

Lotte Lenya - Mackie the Knife
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swa8jEnp5e8&feature=related
Monitor: Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill (Ken Russell, 1962)
0.47-52...

Kate Bush - Army Dreamers
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FmN-pB8ikQ
1:43-49...

It was '39, before the music started...

Of parenthetic interest is to compare the Nazi cinema projections used in the Lenya performance at 0:47-0:52 with the KTB video for Army Dreamers at 1:43-1:49. Did KaTe's inspiration for the KT Armband come from the Third Reich Nazi Swastika Armband? ...

The KT Armband
www.apollopony.net/images/kate_bush.jpg

On Never For Ever, the track Delius (Song of Summer) was inspired by Ken Russell's Song of Summer (1968). So could KaTe's Army Dreamers armband have been inspired by another Ken Russell film, Monitor: Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill (1962)?

And is the 'Aryan' (pronounced: air-re-an) child at the beginning of the video used to heighten the tension and association?

Some say that heaven is hell
Some say that hell is heaven...

KB: "Hitler is the closest personification of evil and I mention him not to glorify but to point out he was a man who fooled a tremendous amount of intelligent people and there's no way you could blame anyone for being fooled by that man..."
"Love, Trust and Hitler" (1989)
gaffa.org/reaching/i89_tr.html

Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1992 06:58:25 -0800
Subject: KT and the British National Party
Kate has some unpleasant neighbours....
We got several general election leaflets delivered yesterday, including one from the British National Party (a fascist neo-nazi political party). Apparently the BNP HQ is in "Upper Wickham Lane, Welling, Kent". Doesn't sound a million miles away from East Wickham Farm, does it? And their PO Box seems to be at the same post office as the KBC's.....
GAFFA: Kate Tidbits/Gossip Pt. 2
gaffa.org/dreaming/E1_tid2.html

"Speaking out of total ignorance, of course, IED seems to remember very vaguely the title "Experiment IV" before, perhaps in connection with some ghoulish Nazi era practices. Can anyone set him straight about this?"
The Whole Story: "Experiment IV"
gaffa.org/dreaming/tws_exiv.html

see more:
experimenT-4: operation T-4
katebush.proboards6.com/index.cgi?board=tww2&action=display&thread=1819&page=2

[tannis]

This was but a beginning: to date, she has brought out four albums of her songs and the words of these songs become more and more poetically aware. Now she is not so much a singer who uses words but a poet who uses music. Her album Never For Ever is her best so far as her poetry goes. She writes with pathos, power, and a deliberate consciousness of what the words do apart from the music. One of the best songs to come from Kate Bush is printed below in complete form and, from this, one can see the expertise of the poet at work behind the magic of the music:

[ARMY DREAMERS....]

The techniques of poetry - ambiguity, emotion, metre and rhyme, 'message', accessible diction but undertones of meaning and drive - are all here. The song stands as words.

The success of this type of music does not lie in the listener's ability to get up and hop with it, nor does it lie in the abilities of the audience to sing along with it. Few ordinary mortals can even approach Kate Bush's vocal range. The success lies in the words. This is music that means something and the message, though not shallow, is easily grasped because it is not hidden in the mud of pretension.

from British Poetry 1964 to 1984, Martin Booth (1985; pp.245-246)

[tannis]

Our little army boy
Is coming home from B.F.P.O.
I've a bunch of purple flowers
To decorate a mammy's hero.

I: In a track which I'd like to play, which I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, Army Dreamers is going to be the next single, isn't it?
K: Yes, it is. Yes, indeed.
I: It's got a sort of waltz feel to it - Three, four, quick, quick, slow, slow - isn't it?
K: Yes, it is a waltz. It was based very much on traditional music, the stuff that I was brought up on as a kid. So it's deliberately like that, it's very acoustic.
Never For Ever Debut, Peter Powell, Radio 1, Oct 11, 1980
gaffa.org/reaching/ir80_r1.html

"What could he do?
Should have been a rock star."
But he didn't have the money for a guitar.
"What could he do?
Should have been a politician."
But he never had a proper education.
"What could he do?
Should have been a father."
But he never even made it to his twenties.
What a waste --
Army dreamers.
Ooh, what a waste of
Army dreamers.

"Army Dreamers", based on a traditional waltz, brings to mind another anti-war song, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", a folk song of the 1960s written by Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson. Seeger found inspiration for the song while on his way to a concert. Leafing through his notebook he saw the passage, "Where are the flowers, the girls have plucked them. Where are the girls, they've all taken husbands. Where are the men, they're all in the army." These lines were from a Ukrainian folk song referenced in the Mikhail Sholokhov novel And Quiet Flows the Don (1934). Seeger adapted it to a tune, a lumberjack version of "Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill". It was first performed by Marlene Dietrich in French (as "Qui peut dire où vont les fleurs?") in 1962 at a UNICEF concert. (wiki)

Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Kate Bush - Army Dreamers
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v993bHKGH6s

Where have all the flowers gone - M. Dietrich
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqlPrVPKt0E

[stufarq]

Jul 8, 2006 15:29:23 GMT Al Truest said:

kevan said:

hrm... I had heard somewhere that it's British Forces Posted Overseas... is this incorrect?

You were closer. I just looked it up. (and edited) I guess that's where the bodies were returned to the families.

No, as your correction states, it's British Forces Post Office and it's just that - a postal service for British armed forces. He's not coming home to BFPO but from it. In a letter saying he's dead.

Oh, and that's KT8 on the rifles, not KTB.

It's not a war song - Kate is quoted above as saying he didn't die in battle. The fact that his death was accidental makes it all the more a waste - he didn't even die for a cause. The song isn't about the rights and wrongs of war, it's about people wasting their potential by being sucked into dehumanising and often fatal military service. Kate's issue seems to be not with war but with the military machine itself.

But it's also significant that one of the other quotes says that the mother is filled with remorse. Remorse is specifically regret for something that you've done wrong. So the mother sees it as partly her fault, suggesting that the song - particularly the chorus - is as much about her wondering if she could have done anything to prevent her son's death such as buying him that guitar or ensuring that he did have a proper education.

[tannis]

To a woman not to show more weakness than is natural to her sex is a great glory, and not to be talked about for good or for evil among men.
Thucydides: The Funeral Oration of Pericles

Four men in uniform
To carry home my little soldier...
Give the kid the pick of pips,
And give him all your stripes and ribbons.

The "pips" refer to the emblem worn on the shoulder by junior officers in the British Army, indicating their rank; and we are told that four men in uniform accompany the coffin at the aerodrome. This clearly suggests the deceased's commitment to Queen And Country.

However, you are right to point out Kate's comment that the Army Dreamer was killed in an accident, such as a training accident, helicopter crash, or road traffic accident. (NFE also features the track For Bill [Duffield], who was killed in an accident. So maybe KT was full of remorse, but had to carry on, living in a dream. Hence the mother's remorse in Army Dreamers?)

So maybe the Army Dreamers video is of a training course, during which the soldier is accidentally (and negligently) killed? And maybe Kate is saying that his death would have been more just (and less upsetting for the mother) had he fallen on the field of battle? [And in POTP, KT plays army dreamer - dreaming of tracking down an American GI.]

KB: Army Dreamers is about a grieving mother who, through the death of her soldier boy, questions her motherhood.
Kate's KBC article, Issue 7 (Sept 1980), "Them Bats and Doves"
www.gaffa.org/garden/kate8.html

And, of course, the song reflects the assumed mother's position. She is obviously in shock, waltzing dazed and confused. Maybe later she'll celebrate his short life, like the father of Marine Hutton...

Royal Marine killed in training remembered by family
The deaths of military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are always widely reported, and quite rightly, but it is worth remembering that the risks soldiers, marines, airmen and seaman take outside combat zones are not insubstantial too.
Jamie Hutton of 42 Commando Royal Marines was killed last Tuesday (15 July) in a Land Rover accident during training at Lulworth in Dorset. Other forces men to be killed during training recently include fellow marine Phil Smith who was crushed between two lorries in a freak accident in Cornwall and Major Alex Blake of the Royal Logistic Corps who died during a paragliding exercise in Spain.
Marine Hutton’s father, Jim, paid a moving tribute to his son, saying: “Our lovely lad, full of the joys of life, irrepressibly vibrant, kindness personified and friend to all, has gone - but he will never be forgotten.
“That he packed so much into his short life is a lesson to us all. He lived at full throttle, always on the move, dreaming up his next plan.”
Marine Hutton, only 23, had previously seen action in Afghanistan on two deployments. An investigation into his death has been launched.
lastingtribute.blogspot.com/2008/07/royal-marine-killed-in-training.html