Can someone link to the page on Jon with the Buffista mix playlists, please?

Awww, Buffistas are looking out for me today.

He's talking about Arthur Kane. I'm at work, so I'm not paying full attention to the interview, but the parts I've caught have been really good.

Discerning Dead fans

Hayden, if the word oxymoron didn't exist I'd be at a loss right now.

David's talking about the Shangri-Las now: "They were just perfect. The ultimate girl group."

I concur. I went out and got The Myrmidons of Melodrama after the Dolls show and really enjoyed it. Might have to go get some Ronettes on CD to make a head to head comparison. Throw in the Shirelles and I'm ready for a new mix.

eta: Now he's talking about how the Dolls would tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd at state fairs. What a concept.

Sue: [link]

Only musical in the most peripheral way, but I want one! - [link]

Thanks Jon.

Hayden, if the word oxymoron didn't exist I'd be at a loss right now.

I'm just glad no one ever half-explained "oxymoron" to Alanis Morrisette.

I'm just glad no one ever half-explained "oxymoron" to Alanis Morrisette.

Huh. Otherwise there'd be an Alanis song about military intelligence and jumbo shrimp.

Kate Bush is making a new record. I've been watching a lot of videos lately and being reminded that she's the Ultimate Arty Girl. Big Boi of Outkast is a fan too...

News comes today, from the lips of Peter Gabriel to the Toronto Sun to Zoilus to you, that Kate Bush is casually at work on her first album in 11 years - though when Mojo magazine recently asked how long it will be till it appears, Bush's business manager replied, "How long is a piece of string?"

I maintain an unshakeable adoration of Bush's 80s-era music, a near-guilty level of pleasure in how at once sensual and wigged-out it was, not-quite-prog-rock sometimes built around pop-classical piano chording and sometimes around oneiric sample collages, full of multiple-personality character transformations, literary allusions, British whimsy and sex. From The Kick Inside through Hounds of Love, and particularly on The Dreaming, Bush cultivated a feminine musical vocabulary that was second to no man in wild individualism but didn't feel the need to prove she could rock out like a guy. Sure, she can be blamed (along with 70s-style "womyn's music") for nurturing the Lilith Fair subgenre of woodnymph balladry (Tori Amos is like a decadent emo retread of Bush, Sarah McLachlan is an obvious fan), but she also deserves credit for clearing a path for Bjork, Cat Power or PJ Harvey.

And she's also been named a favourite by Outkast - and by Big Boi, not Andre! - a non-intuitive link, but when you think about it you can hear a Kate-like touch in the textures and catercorners of Outkast's music. Says Big Boi, ""She was so bugged out man! But I felt what she was talking about in the songs. ... I just found out that she was producing all that shit herself! She's so fucking dope and so underrated and off the radar."

"Kate had a son and lost her mom and I think that kept her [occupied]," Gabriel told the Sun. "I spoke to her quite recently in fact and she's just about finished on a new record. It is exciting. She's being a mom and loving it. So, if you like, music's gone from being full-time to being part-time, so that slows you down." Gabriel collaborated with Bush several times, their voices meshing luxuriantly, as on his hit Don't Give Up, a fact immortalized by The French (ex-Hefner) in 2003's maybe-single-of-the-year Gabriel In The Airport: "Don't you wish that you could stay/ Don't you wish that you could say/ You never thought of Kate Bush in a dirty way?"

There are few hints what the new album will sound like whenever it does arrive - will it have the Gurdieff-manic spark of 1980s Kate, or the over-perfumed limpness that came to mar her early-90s efforts? Bassist Mick Karn (ex-Japan) reportedly plays on a track titled How To Be Invisible, percussionist Peter Erskine (Diana Krall, Joni Mitchell, Weather Report, etc.) is on others, and the London Metropolitan Orchestra came out to party too. She began to muck about with it some five years ago.

Kind of sorry we didn't do The Dreaming in the book, now.

Speaking of the book, Amazon awaits the first reader reviews...

Plus Nice review at The Rock and Roll Report

And a good write up at Rock Critics Daily blogspot, by Ted Cogswell. (Scroll down to the bottom, 11/1/04).

Hayden, did you get the whale info I sent? (Music connections: Laurie Anderson & Stanley Crouch. Oh yeah, almost forgot: John Bonham, too.)

And on a completely non-musical note (except for that figure of speech), election recount update. For those of you who haven't been following, the Ohio vote was certified today by its Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, who in his spare time served as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign in Ohio in 2004. Or maybe he multitasked.