Hi all, I’m still trying to find the time to get the site re-launched, getting to grips with a number of options right now, please bear with me, I’ve been posting bits of news in the Twitter feed which you’ll find above, I’d urge you to check out the Paddy Bush radio programme from BBC Radio in particular, stirring stuff. In the meantime I’ve realised it’s a busy time for your Kate Bush bookshelf so here’s some upcoming releases you may want to get your mitts on!
HomeGround, The Book – An anthology of the Best of the Kate Bush Magazine Update: Work continues apace on this huge project by Peter & Krys. Up to 800 pages, yes, you read that right, have been completed and a first draft should be ready in a month or so. The plan will be to have the book available on Amazon, and the HomeGround editors are aiming for a publication date in the second half of 2010. Judging by the anticipation I’ve been reading so far, many, many bookshelves out there are looking forward to this book. As I’ve said before, whether you’ve subscribed to HomeGround in the past or were always curious what all the fuss was about, now you can look forward to the ULTIMATE anthology of this iconic publication, and an incredible resource for anyone interested in Kate’s career. All updates will be on this site and on the HomeGround pages here.
Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory by Deborah M. Withers (HammerOn Press).Published March 15th 2010. From the Press Release: “A new book providing the first ever indepth engagement with the philosophy of Kate Bush’s music. It will be published on March 15th 2010. Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory will present Kate Bush as you have never seen her before. Here is the polymorphously perverse Kate, the witchy Kate, the queer Kate; the Kate who moves beyond the mime. Since Bush burst into the public eye in 1978, her fans and admirers have been fascinated by the endless mysteries of her music. She is a pop star whose brain and imagination have inspired, delighted and comforted millions. Former Sex Pistol John Lydon recently said that Bush ‘supplies me with all the clues and it’s up to me put the answers together.’ Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory is one personal response to these clues. Written by a queer woman in her late 20s, its answers are delivered in a unique way. Drawing on cutting edge feminist philosophy, critical theory and queer studies, Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory makes theory accessible to new audiences. Through analysis of the music, film, video and dance of Kate Bush, it breaks down boundaries between the academic and popular, showing that theory can be sordid, funny and relevant – despite what most people think.
The book has been described by Radio DJ Mark Radcliffe as “an in-depth labour of love from a genuine Bush fanatic” and acclaimed international artist and scholar Allyson Mitchell as “a weaving of theory, historical data, imagination and activism tied with astute observation and wry wit… Cultural Studies has met its match in a readable stretch of the boundaries of theory and genres”. Deborah M. Withers has been interpreting and telling stories about Kate Bush’s music for most of the noughties. She even has a PhD on the subject. Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory is her first book. As Deborah says: “Undoubtedly including “theory” in the title will immediately suggests to people that the book is a weighty tome, but I can assure you that this is not the case. It is important to remember that “adventures” is also in the title. I want readers to roam with me through Kate Bush’s music, unlocking the codes that are within them. Theory is one of the instruments I use to crack these codes. It is a tool that should be available for everyone to use.”
I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet, so I asked longtime fan Ian McLauchlan to give me his impressions after reading it. Ian writes: “My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose – J Haldane 1928.” It could be said that there is nothing more to write about with regard to Kate Bush and her music to the present date. There have been thousands of articles written, countless interviews, reviews and numerous books. And yet here is a forum where we still write about Kate, her art (in between discussion about the weather, cake and each other.) and hopefully we take a little time to listen to each other’s views, opinions with good humour. So here is yet another book about Kate. But it’s not about Kate. And it’s not another male journalist behind the pen. It’s an alternative viewpoint, opinion, and is full of humour. This is a book about the BFS. The subject of the book changes shape, gender, sound; taking on an ever shifting guise on its journey through each album and zeitgeist of each release. The cyclical nature of The Ninth Wave and A Sky of Honey are expanded throughout the story of the BFS. The birth, life, continuity, change, breakdown, death and rebirth are explored with reference to folklore and fairy tales, colonialism, nationalism, gender, oh and a little bit of Orientalism thrown in for good measure. Brave, funny, silly, informative, and probably the best book written about Kate and yet not about Kate. Utterly QUEER.” Thanks Ian. Read more about this book at the publishers website here and the book is available to order here. Perhaps most fun of all, we have a Youtube trailer for the book for you to enjoy!
Under The Ivy – The Life & Music of Kate Bush by Graeme Thomson. (Omnibus Press). Published May 4th 2010. 350 pages with 3×8 plate sections. Graeme Thomson is the author of biographies of Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello and a regular contributor to The Guardian, Observer, the New Statesman, The Word and The Herald. I spoke to Graeme in 2008 as he was setting out to write this book. A fan himself, he clearly had a good grasp of the previous biographies of Kate and what their strengths and failings were. He was not interested in exploring Kate’s personal life but rather to take a fresh look at her body of work, without following the chronological framework used so often before. He told me he wanted to write something insightful and elegant, a book which is genuinely revealing in terms of her working process. He wanted to redress his own disappointment that nothing so far had been published which did her justice (although we both agreed that the 1988 Kate Bush: A Visual Documentary book by Kevin Cann and the late Sean Mayes was the best so far published). So, I have a lot of reasons to look forward with interest to this book. Graeme tells me that the book has lots and lots of new information, a wealth of new first-hand accounts, and in-depth critical analysis of all aspects of her work.
From the Press Release: “This is the first ever in-depth study of Kate Bush’s life and career. “Under the Ivy” features over 70 unique and revealing new interviews with those who have viewed from up close both the public artist and the private woman: old school friends, early band mates, long-term studio collaborators, former managers, producers, musicians, video directors, dance instructors and record company executives. “Under the Ivy” undertakes a full analysis of Bush’s art. From her pre-teen forays into poetry, through scores of unreleased songs. Every crucial aspect of her music is discussed from her ground-breaking series of albums to her solo live tour. Her pioneering forays into dance, video, film and performance. Combining a wealth of new research with rigorous critical scrutiny, “Under the Ivy” offers a string of fresh insights and perspectives on her unusual upbringing in South London, the blossoming of her talent, her enduring influences and unique working methods, her rejection of live performance, her pioneering use of the studio, her key relationships and her gradual retreat into a semi-mythical privacy.” The book is available to pre-order from Amazon here
Kate Bush’s The Dreaming by Ann Powers. (Continuum Books). Published December 2011. Ann Powers is a veteran and highly acclaimed rock critic who has also written extensively on feminism, spirituality, and contemporary culture. From 1997-2001 she was a pop critic at the New York Times. She is currently senior critic at Blender magazine. 33⅓ (Thirty-Three and a Third) is a series of books written about music albums, featuring one author per album. The series is published by Continuum Books. They stagger the releases of this popular series and have published 70 volumes of the series with another 24 titles forthcoming. Thus, this is early word on this one, it’s released in December 2011! The books are very well done and the publisher’s blog makes for interesting reading. From the Press Release: “This book is imagistically rich and prismatically structured, interweaving the old tales of she-bears and werewolves, Donkeyskin and Coyote, with historical accounts of Houdini’s wife, bank robbers like Machine Gun Molly and warriors like the revolutionary war hero Deborah Sampson. Some of these tales directly inspired Bush’s lyrics, others illuminate them; all are part of the tapestry of truth and exaggeration that Bush took up with The Dreaming.” The book is available to pre-order from Amazon here
A very in-depth new book about Kate’s work and in particular the Hounds Of Love album has just been released by Ashgate publishing as part of their Popular and Folk Music Series. From the publishers: “The album allows the author, Ron Moy, the critical opportunity to explore a wide range of issues relating to technology, production, authorship, grain of the voice, iconography, critical and commercial impact, collaboration, gender, sexuality, narrative, and social and cultural context.” Ron Moy is a lecturer in the School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts, at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. As such this book presents a very academic text book approach to appraising Kate’s work – I haven’t yet seen a copy myself, but on reading the author’s 
A new calendar featuring photos of Kate has just been issued. While this isn’t an official calendar release and won’t be featuring any new pics of Kate there will be demand from fans. David over at the KutureShock website is offering the calendar with free postage to UK fans from this site. You just need to enter bush2008 in the coupon section at the checkout. You can order the calendar at this page 
Happy New Year folks! We’re still very much enjoying Aerial here at KBN&I and hope that you are too. A Coral Room is still knocking us out this week. We kick off 2007 with the news that Kate has written a special foreword to a MOJO Magazine Classic Special Edition on 60 Years of David Bowie (he’s the same age as my mum!). On sale 24th January in the UK and Ireland. Kate writes: “I was sitting in my bath, submerged in bubbles, when I heard David Bowie for the first time…” The magazine writes: “60 Years Of Bowie” A Mojo Classic special edition magazine is a month-by-month, year-by-year celebration of one of rock music’s greatest icons. Containing eyewitness stories, previously unpublished photgraphs, classic interviews, album reappraisals, the best Bowie songs from each era, plus a specially written forward by Kate Bush.” (can we just squeak that as huge ‘we are not worthy’ Bowie fans at KBN&I this is a dream come true!…eeep)
The next issue Q Magazine will be published with 20 different covers in celebration of the title’s 20th birthday. Each cover will feature a musical icon, including Kate. Each artist has given the magazine an exclusive photoshoot and interview, in which they recount their personal high and low points from the past two decades. The issue also includes Q’s nominations for the best 20 albums and songs released during its lifetime. Editor Paul Rees said: “The 20th anniversary of Q, the essential music guide, is a landmark moment, and therefore we were determined to mark it with a landmark publishing event. I believe we have done so. I can think of few magazines anywhere in the world who could exclusively photograph, interview and do separate covers with 20 of the biggest and most iconic stars in their world. That Q has done so is befitting for a magazine with its rich history and stature.” The 20 stars in full are: Damon Albarn, Richard Ashcroft, Beyonce, Johnny Borrell, David Bowie, Ian Brown, Kate Bush, Dido, Noel Gallagher, David Gilmore, Dave Grohl, Madonna, Paul McCartney, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Britney Spears, Michael Stipe, Pete Townshend, U2 and Paul Weller. The issue goes on sale on 30th September. Subscribers to the magazine will receive a specially produced edition that features all 20 different cover images. We will have Kate’s special cover on here as soon as it surfaces – meanwhile here’s a picture of 4 of the special editions…
On November 2nd Mojo magazine publish what seems to be one of only two Aerial interviews with Kate (BBC Radio 2 have secured the second). The Guardian have published extracts from this interview with Tom Doyle 
As mentioned in the Guardian article above, this month’s i-D Magazine (issue 252), titled “the feminine issue” has used The Kick Inside as its cover title. It contains a six-page spread of photographs of a Kate-themed installation by artist Sandrine Pelletier and a short essay by Björk about Kate. “From the catwalk to the club to the bedroom, her music and influence are suddenly here again. Here Swiss artist Sandrine Pelletier and Icelandic musician Björk present unique fan tributes to the myth, magic and mystery of Kate Bush.” Björk writes: “To me, Kate Bush will always represent the age of exploring your sexuality, when you change from a girl to a woman. All of that. There were so many records in my parent’s house, so I saw a lot of album covers. I thought they were all macho and occupied with power, things I didn’t like. I guess that’s what I found fascinating about Kate, she totally stuck out. She was so – what’s the word – so complete. The music, the lyrics and the way she looked, it all made sense. Especially for a thirteen or fourteen year old girl. It was the first time I had my own bedroom. Even though my room had just enough space for a bed and a desk I felt like it was a palace. My grandad gave me a big blue lamp with a blue light…It was like walking into an aquarium. It was then that I found a Kate Bush album and..you can imagine the rest, right? I used to close the door and didn’t want anybody to come in. My favourite songs have changed over time. I really liked the one about Peter Pan. Obviously I loved ‘Man With the Child in his Eyes’. Everybody adored Kate’s voice and a lot of people really noticed what she looked like but I think what is really underrated is the production. I think it’s really original and really feminine, but with more primitivity than women have, or what men would like to believe we have. If it had just been the voice and the look I’m not sure I would have been that into her – what’s so common, a girl that looks great and sings great. What’s very special about Kate Bush is that she didn’t do that. She created her own look and she produced her own sound. There’s a timelessness to Kate’s music, for me personally it has a nostalgic feeling. It’s not to do with ‘yes I listen to it’, it’s more to do with ‘I listened a lot to it from thirteen to fifteen’. I think that for someone like me, there hasn’t been many ladies to look up to in the pop world. Then when I was sixteen I started growing out of it, coming back to it occasionally like a box of memories…” (Thanks to Matt Denney and Michael Nurse)
Music Week, the UK’s definitive music industry news service has a front page article this week about Kate’s KBC album announcement: “One of the longest waits for a follow-up will finally be over next year, when the first Kate Bush album in more than a decade appears. The EMI artist last week confirmed that she is set to deliver her first new studio set since 1993’s The Red Shoes in 2005, having been working on new material over the past few years. Bush announced that the long wait was nearly over in a letter last week to members of her fan club. EMI has since confirmed to Music Week a new album is definitely on its way. Besides collaborating with the late Michael Kamen, Bush has also been working with bassist Mick Karn, drummer Stuart Elliott and percussionist Peter Erskine. Although she has largely been out of the limelight as she concentrated on bringing up her son Bertie, Bush was at the Ivor Novello Awards in 2002 to collect the outstanding contribution to British music award. (With thanks to Monty and Ben on the site’s forum). Read more about Music Week at its site 
A new book on Kate by music journalist John Mendelssohn, entitled “Waiting for Kate Bush” is now already listed (pre-publication) on the UK, German, Canadian and Japanese Amazon websites. It will contain 240 pages and will be published on 15 November 2004. The blurb reads: “When Kate Bush came out of nowhere in 1978 with her jaw-droppingly eccentric debut single ‘Wuthering Heights’, screeching like a banshee, flapping her arms as though trying to take wing, pulling alarming faces, people either adored or loathed her. One of the former was an American underwear model, Lesley Herskovits, who, in spite of his remarkable good looks, reserved his loathing for himself. By the time Kate had taken to keeping her fans waiting literally ages between albums, he’d found himself a boarding house near Kate’s birthplace that accommodated only fervent Kate fans. Only his disinclination to miss her eighth album, after waiting more than a decade for it, kept him from leaping off a multi-storey tower block. In Waiting for Kate Bush – an unusual hybrid of satirical novel and music biography – the reader will not only laugh aloud at Herskovits’ attempt to make sense of his life in an alien culture, but also learn in detail what Kate Bush – known alternately as “the barmiest bird in pop”, “the Pre-Raphaelite nymph with Minnie Mouse’s soprano” and “the greatest artist of the last 30 years” – has been up to in the silent decade-plus since the release of her last and best alb [sic]” An anonymous review on the Amazon site says “Having read the proof and viewed fans comments via the web, this book beats all expectations and is a worthy addition to any Kate Bush fan while waiting for the new album. The information is fresh and well written and explains above all why KB fans are some of the best and most patient in the world. Beautiful pictures inside. A worthy buy when released.” It will be interesting to see initial reactions to what sounds like one of the most unusual books yet written about Kate. (thanks to Henrik and Kyla).
I’ve been getting mostly a very positive reception from fans to the new February edition of Mojo Magazine which features Kate on the cover and includes a nine page retrospective feature by Phil Sutcliffe entitled “Season Of The Witch”. The Mojo website outline the article as follows: “Eccentric, elusive, English. It’s almost 25 years since Wuthering Heights made Kate Bush a star, and a decade since she quietly slipped from view. Phil Sutcliffe traces the path of a stubbornly individual and charmingly enigmatic songwriting genius.” The article includes contributions from some of Kate’s closest colleagues;Haydn Bendall (“I’m amazed she isn’t a megastar, that more people aren’t just thrilled that she’s around”), Stuart Elliott (“She comes into the studio and smiles and it’s all airy and sunshine. She really does care about people”), Jon Kelly (“We made Never For Ever a real home record, the studio was filled with flowers, plants, people”), David Gilmour (On the early demos she was “lively and quick, aching to know how everything worked”), David Paton (“You knew she was driven, it was the path she had to take”). Also quotes from David Munns, currently looking after her in EMI: (“Basically you don’t fuck with her. She ebbs and flows. You stay with her for life. She’s precious. I want her to be the way she is”). Kate didn’t give an interview to Mojo. Her business manager told them that she “wouldn’t be talking untill the album was out.” When Mojo asked when that might be, the reply was “how long is a piece of string?” The article also claims that Kate recently turned down a “life-time” Brit award “because the organisers insisted she had to perform or she couldn’t have it”.
chainmail bikini, thighs, wind-machine ebony hair, thighs, leather boots, thighs, and check out that knife! That’s gotta be bondage. Babooshka made a bona fide sex object of Kate and vies with Olivia Newton John’s Physical as the most reliable 3-minute arouser of its day. Sadly, Kate then went and built a studio in her house, and she’s barely emerged since.” See FHM website 
illiant vocal performances. If you look at all the great songs that can make you cry, it was usually male singers. Having said that, Kate Bush could be really interesting.” Read the whole interview 
