kate bush thead

long time kate bush fan. hot, kooky, and musical genius. don't get no better than that.

but for some reason i have had an extended period, out of nowhere, of waking up with kate bush songs in my head (usually this, but experiment IV occasionally as well)

all i can to is listen to lots of kate bush to release the pressure.

anyway i did the research, never knew this track was about wilhelm reich, even though i have owned a of RAW's 'wilhelm reich in hell' for a long time now.

it really was fucking crazy what they did to that man.

  Quote

Reich was investigated by the FBI when he arrived in the U.S. because he was an immigrant with a communist background. The FBI released 789 pages of its files on Reich in 2000; a State Department press release stated:

 

"This German immigrant described himself as the Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, Director of the Orgone Institute, President and research physician of the Wilhelm Reich Foundation and discoverer of biological or life energy. A 1940 security investigation was begun to determine the extent of Reich's communist commitments. A board of Alien Enemy Hearing judged that Dr. Reich was not a threat to the security of the U.S. In 1947, a security investigation concluded that neither the Orgone Project nor any of its staff were engaged in subversive activities or were in violation of any statute within the jurisdiction of the FBI."

 

On May 26, 1947, an article appeared in The New Republic entitled “The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich†by Mildred Edie Brady. The subhead was “The man who blames both neuroses and cancer on unsatisfactory sexual activities has been repudiated by only one scientific journal.â€

 

Brady wrote:

 

"Orgone, named after the sexual orgasm, is, according to Reich, a cosmic energy. It is, in fact, the cosmic energy. Reich has not only discovered it; he has seen it, demonstrated it and named a town â۠Orgonon, Maine â۠after it. Here he builds accumulators of it which are rented out to patients, who presumably derive 'orgastic potency' from it."

 

Sharaf writes that the implication was clear: the accumulators gave orgastic potency, the lack of which causes cancer. Therefore, the claim for the accumulators was that they cured cancer. Brady argued that the “growing Reich cult†had to be dealt with.

 

On July 23, Dr. J.J. Durrett, director of the Medical Advisory Division of the Federal Trade Commission, wrote to the FDA asking them to look into Reich's claims about the health benefits of orgone.[48] The FDA assigned an investigator named Wood to the case, who learned that Reich had built 250 accumulators; the FDA concluded that they were dealing with a “fraud of the first magnitudeâ€. Sharaf writes that the FDA suspected a “sexual racket†of some kind; questions were asked about the women associated with orgonomy and “what was done with themâ€.

 

“I would like to plead for my right to investigate natural phenomena without having guns pointed at me. I also ask for the right to be wrong without being hanged for it. â۠Wilhelm Reich.â€

 

In November, Reich wrote in Conspiracy. An Emotional Chain Reaction: “I would like to plead for my right to investigate natural phenomena without having guns pointed at me. I also ask for the right to be wrong without being hanged for it … I am angry because smearing can do anything and truth can do so little to prevail, as it seems at the moment.†Sharaf writes that Reich came to believe that Brady was a Stalinist acting under orders from the Communist Party, a “communist sniper“, as Reich called her.

 

On February 10, 1954, the U.S. Attorney for Maine, acting on behalf of the FDA, filed a complaint seeking a permanent injunction under Sections 301 and 302 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, to prevent interstate shipment of orgone-therapy equipment and literature. Reich refused to appear in court, apparently believing that no court was in a position to evaluate his work. In his cover letter for the response he submitted to the court, he wrote to Judge Clifford:

 

My factual position in the case as well as in the world of science of today does not permit me to enter the case against the Food and Drug Administration, since such action would, in my mind, imply admission of the authority of this special branch of the government to pass judgment on primordial, pre-atomic cosmic orgone energy. I, therefore, rest the case in full confidence in your hands.

a true scientist, even if a total acidhead.

  Quote

Because of Reich's failure to appear, Clifford granted the injunction on March 19, 1954. His ruling ordered that all written materials that mentioned “orgone energy†â۠including papers and pamphlets, and ten of Reich's books â۠were to be destroyed. It further stated that additional copies of his books, including revised editions of The Mass Psychology of Fascism, could not be published unless all references to “orgone energy†were deleted.

this... this actually fucking sickens me. i can see why kate wrote a song about it really, when i think about it.

  Quote

Imprisonment and death

 

In May 1956, Reich was arrested for violation of the injunction when an associate moved some orgone-therapy equipment across a state line. Reich was charged with contempt of court. Once again, he refused to arrange a legal defense. He was brought in chains to the courthouse in Portland, Maine. Representing himself, he admitted to having violated the injunction and arranged for the judge to be sent copies of his books. He was sentenced to two years' imprisonment.

 

Dr. Morton Herskowitz, a fellow psychiatrist and friend of Reich's, wrote of the trial: “Because he viewed himself as a historical figure, he was making a historical point, and to make that point he had conducted the trial that way. If I had been in his shoes, I would have wanted to escape jail, I would have wanted to be free, etc. I would have conducted the trial on a strictly legal basis because the lawyers had said, 'We can win this case for you. Their case is so weak, so when you let us do our thing we can get you off.' But he wouldn't do it.â€

 

On June 5, 1956, FDA officials traveled to Orgonon, Reich's 200-acre (80-hectare) estate near Rangeley, Maine, where they destroyed the accumulators, and on June 26, burned many of his books. On August 25, 1956 and again on March 17, 1960, the remaining six tons of his books, journals and papers were burned in the 25th Street public incinerator in New York's lower east side (Gansevoort incinerator). In March 1957, he was sent to Danbury Federal Prison, where a psychiatrist examined him, recording: “Paranoia manifested by delusions of grandiosity and persecution and ideas of reference.â€

again, *vomits*. sickening.

  Quote

Reich died in his sleep of heart failure on November 3, 1957 in the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, shortly before he was due to apply for parole. Not one psychiatric or established scientific journal carried an obituary. Time Magazine noted on November 18, 1957:

 

"Died. Wilhelm Reich, 60, once-famed psychoanalyst, associate, and follower of Sigmund Freud, founder of the Wilhelm Reich Foundation, lately better known for unorthodox sex and energy theories; of a heart attack in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, Pa; where he was serving a two-year term for distributing his invention, the “orgone energy accumulator†(in violation of the Food and Drug Act), a telephone-booth-size device which supposedly gathered energy from the atmosphere, and could cure, while the patient sat inside, common colds, cancer and impotence

 

– Time magazine."

 

Reich was buried in Orgonon. Next to the grave stands a replica of Reich's invention, the “cloudbusterâ€. The Wilhelm Reich Museum now sits at the top of Orgonon, in the building which housed Reich's laboratory, teaching, and psychiatric treatment facilities.

it's a very sad and fascinating story. also the vid is amazingly literal for a KB vid. although she does play reich's ten-year-old son, from whose perspective the lyrics are written:

there is something about kate bush's stuff i literally cannot get enough of lately.

btw the device in the vid is real

DONALD SUTHERLAND

yeah, that too!

also the vid of experiment IV 'live' on tomorrows world (essentially an 80s prog about new tech on UK tv, americans) - an integral part of my childhood - is fucking wicked

TWO fairlights! but it's not to be found on internets anymore, i think legal shit may have been involved.

here's another TW vid about a considerably more esoteric fairlight instead

boc.

this song is very electronic music

also something wiki pointed out, it quotes the psycho signature phrase

hmm.. never heard that tune or seen that vid..

where is it from, the tune that is?

that is experiment IV, the only new track on the compilation 'the whole story'

ah.. makes sense

ps

kate bush makes my boner blossom. gives my boner a boner if you will. I didn't bother to read your original post the whole way through because I prefer not to know stories behind songs and make up my own meaning. but goddamn if the dreaming isn't one of the best albums ever.

Kate Bush for fucking ever <3

Fucking Kate Bush forever <3

wtf, desmond morris was briefly my shrink when i was a kid. he is actually responsible for me getting my first computer, a zx81.

kate is fucking HOT in this clip, and half of that is how articulate she is, i think.

lol, i love her.

"people like bowie or cliff richard, the real biggies..."

edit:

hahaha oh wow. kate and kenny do the two ronnies!

i think i'll listen to suspended in gaffa on repeat for a bit

what a fucking GREAT track

Good idea, i love kate bush

Dear Kate,

We will do you now.

Love,

Gary and Iain

*signs petition*

at 50, i still fucking would

  Iain C said:

i love kate bush

My obsession with wanting to bone Kate Bush is well known amongst my friends, on a trip home from London once a friend sung 'Wuthering Heights' for an hour, I also do a radioshow with a mate at university and he said on air about how often I bang on about having a soft spot for her. I'm not ashamed.

i remember reading somewhere that after a chat with peter gabriel she writes all her music to a drum machine.

don't know why i remember that

Have never listened to more than 5 minutes of her music at a stretch, but from those clips I have to say she is eminently more doable than Bjork in my book...

watching those interviews (2nd and 3rd ones) was a bit too much for me

*lies down*

suffers from terrible stage fright apparently - hence no tour for 30 years

  xxx said:

Kaini, are you serious about the Desmond Morris comment? That would be fucking epic in my book. Unless he molested you or berated you--never know with therapists.

yeah, i'm 100% serious.

nice chap, i dimly recall.

i like her backing vocals in peter gabriels 'games without frontiers'

hmmm

  lumpenprol said:

Have never listened to more than 5 minutes of her music at a stretch, but from those clips I have to say she is eminently more doable than Bjork in my book...

i'd get mad rutty with björk