Note: Please also keep an eye on our Facebook page and Twitter feed for the most instant news updates as Kate’s live shows kick off – Wednesday in particular should be hectic!
A quick roundup of the Kate Bush news before her Before the Dawn shows kick off in the Apollo tomorrow!
…BBC Essex have an interview with Brian Southall, the EMI exec who signed Kate, listen here…BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour talks about the “enduring appeal of Kate Bush” here…acclaimed writer Jeanette Winterson writes about her “hero” Kate in The Guardian here. “Kate Bush used herself as an invention – something that interested me greatly as a strategy for both life and art. The songs were like stage plays in miniature – a character, a situation, a verbal collision (oh to be in love and never get out again), a vocal polyphonics that allowed her to range through pain and doubt to resolution…she’s still here. And I’ll be there next week to see her play once more.”
HomeGround Magazine are to publish a special PDF download edition of the Kate Bush magazine in the Autumn to mark the Before the Dawn live shows. They’ll be looking for your thoughts, reviews, memories etc for the issue…a very nice blog post about The Ninth Wave has been published at the ‘ohbytheway’ blog here, we have a feeling we’ll be talking about The Ninth Wave a lot more over the coming weeks…The Guardian and Observer’s relentless coverage of all things Kate lately continues with The 10 Best Kate Bush moments here. From the article: “in Bush’s hands, even a washing machine can make you cry”…one of Patrick Lichfield’s portraits of Kate (pictured here) is “Portrait of the Week” in London’s National Portrait Gallery, more here…singer Jesse Ware‘s comments about Kate from the BBC 6Music Special last weekend are at the NME site here…speaking of which you can listen again to that special, which features John Carder Bush talking about the new edition of ‘Cathy’, and his thoughts on Before the Dawn at the BBC site here…
The Guardian looks at the recent excitement over Kate’s shows with the following headline: “Bushmania sweeps the nation before comeback gigs. Excitement over Kate Bush’s first gigs in 35 years fuels entire cottage industry in memorabilia.” The article also has a nice mention of the HomeGround Anthologies here…the Irish Independent explores “Kate Bush: the recluse who never really went away” here. Ed Power writes: “Whatever sort of production Bush brings to London, fans are assured it will be an evening to tell their grandchildren about. In an age in which it feels we know almost as much about pop stars as about our immediate family, Bush is a rarity: an enigma who fuels our fascination the further she withdraws from the limelight.”
We are reliably informed that the two special BBC4 Kate programmes produced some great viewing figures for a channel like BBC4. The documentary peaked at around 930,000 viewers in total towards the end but held a solid audience of over 1/2 million for most of the programme…Uncut Magazine have republished an article from 2012, “Kate Bush – Album by Album” here…
…The Guardian looks at Kate’s fashion in the past here. “Spandex and chiffon: Kate Bush’s most stylish moments – in pictures”…in The Guardian, Zoe Williams looks at Kate as a role model of self-expression and female creativity in an article titled The genius of Kate Bush in an age of subjugation. “Kate Bush is a one-off, a prodigy, an experiment of the species – dazzlingly successful but unreplicable.” Read it here...for Kate fans in London on Sat 6th Sept Dave Cross from HomeGround will be DJing at a gay club called Songs Of Praise, it’s cool pop music in 3 rooms and they are having a Kate room with Dave and Phil Marriott who also played at the HG party. There will be a discount offered to Kate fans, stay tuned for details. The flyer is here…
Barbara
I’m convinced that the set for Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake from the Leo Sayer show (on Kate Bush at the BBC) may have inspired the scene in I’m Alan Partridge where Alan intends to steal a traffic cone on a motorway. He gets caught on CCTV footage as Michael, the assistant at the Linton Travel Tavern, runs off. I also wish I’d been present at the night of Steve Coogan’s ‘The Man Who Thinks He’s It’ tour where KB went! GOLD showed one of his performances from that – Julia Davis and Simon Pegg were in the cast.