Ben - Thanks for taking the time to coment. By the fact that you need to qualify your statement, I'm thinking that you may have misunderstood the point I was trying to make in my post. That point was, whatever infleuences either Kate Bush or Tori Amos pull from, and to whatever degree, in listening and enjoying the music of either one, I just don't care one wit about the infleuence nor the history nor the chronology! Who came first, who was most original.....neither of those facts makes either one "better" to my ears or in my experience, and neither of those facts commands more or less respect from me. Each have their infleuences, as does every artist, and whether Kate was more innovative in her time has absolutely no effect whatsoever on my ability to enjoy her music, nor the music of Tori, or anyone else strongly infleuenced by her. That shit is all just a head-trip to me. For me, I like it or I don't, I respect it or I don't, I get it, or I don't. I guess you're talking about respect on a more multi-dimensional level. As I said, history has never been my bag. But, just as you, I do respect your appreciation of it. As far as using history to judge musical talent goes, I just don't feel it is a criteria for judging musical enjoyment of one artist or another, but I realize that I'm saying that from the point of not caring about history, while others like yourself may. I can see and point out many infleuences in much of the art I enjoy, but I'd never think to judge it by it's success or failure in emulating something else. It is what it is, and I prefer to judge it on it's own merits. Understanding the infleuence, history and chronology has never seemed to give me any greater or lesser appreciation for a particular artist. But that's just me I guess.
Marco
PS I do like Hounds of Love too, second to The Dreaming. Of my favorites by Tori would have to be Boys for Pele.
