Pictures and reports on the Director’s Cut album launch party in Amsterdam here.
Category: Fans
Once again this event aims to celebrate the work of Kate Bush and James Joyce with an afternoon meet-up at the summit of Howth Head for some music, peaches and seed-cake, followed by a leisurely cliff-walk down into the village of Howth for refreshments. The evening part of the event will be held in Odessa in Dublin City Centre, where the music and craic will continue till late.
This event is an excuse for fans of Kate Bush, James Joyce or otherwise to celebrate Bloomsday with a stroll in one of Dublin’s most spectacular landscapes. It will be the fourth time it has taken place and it is inspired by the song ‘The Sensual World’ by Kate Bush in which the character of Molly Bloom from Joyce’s Ulysses is brought to life by Kate. In 2011, remarkably, Kate releases a new version of her 1989 recording, now re-named ‘Flower of the Mountain’, in which she will use the actual words from Joyce’s Ulysses for the first time – the Joyce estate have finally granted her permission. It adds a nice extra layer of significance to our day. In previous events we have featured many incredible Irish and international musicians, along with unique Joyce recitations from Kate’s brother John.
THE WALK – please join us, at the summit car-park on Howth Head at 2pm, Saturday, June 18th 2011. THE EVENING – after the cliff walk, and refreshments down in Howth village we’re heading into the centre of Dublin City to the Odessa private members club for 7.30pm, 13 Dame Court, D2 (right beside the Stags Head Pub) A night of music and Kate / Joyce / Dublin type things are promised. And beer. ALL ARE WELCOME – FEEL FREE TO PASS ON THIS INFO! Any questions please email me sean@katebushnews.com Hope to see you there!
Here’s a bit of an exclusive for you all. Dave Cross (yup, that guy who you see in the ‘About Us’ pics) has put together this nice feature on Kate and the new album for the UK gay magazine Boyz which is out tomorrow. You get to read it here first! Also find the bigger version of Paul Bowen’s accompanying illustration here.
Kate’s official Facebook Page has a note for the fans regarding her official fan club:
Dear all friends of the official Kate Bush Facebook page and members of KBC. We’re really pleased to see so many people using this page and appreciate all of your wonderful comments. Like everyone else we’re moving forward in this digital world and will therefore not be accepting physical mail to KBC any more. So with that, we’re very proud to announce that this page is now the official place to go to and leave your comments. We’ll be posting regular updates so please continue to stop by and look out for the single release of Deeper Understanding on 5th April. You can also still join us on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/katebushmusic) and follow on Twitter (http://twitter.com/katebushmusic) too!
Simon Chan in Brisbane has created a “sing-a-long” version of Under the Ivy for people attending the Brisbane Kate Bush tribute party on November 7th. It was arranged by his long time collaborator, David Lazar, and Simon describes it as “a very faithful and remarkable rendition, considering David had no idea of the song.” You can hear it here. Simon adds: “Hope you’ll all download it and sing along with us down under!” For more on this party in Brisbane see October 5th news below.
In related news, Paul Rackstraw lets us know that the UK singer Chapman recently covered ‘Under the Ivy’ in a live recording. It’s on Youtube here and his website is http://www.mrballad.com/
A new site, kbarchives.org has been put together which aims to compliment the information already available on the brilliant Gaffaweb site with newly gathered material. One resource offered are full scans of every single edition of the (now seemingly defunct) Kate Bush Club newsletter. These carefully-produced magazines were a means for Kate, Del, Paddy, John and many others close to Kate’s work to keep fans posted on what was going on. Big thanks are due to the lovely Lisa Bradley for all her hard work on running Kate’s official fan club and producing these wonderful magazines.
Another site to check out is Sozo’s Japanese translation of katebushnews.com – an incredible labour of love, he’s been quietly providing this service for Japanese-speaking fans for many years now. All the more impressive considering he has managed to mimic the new site format successfully! See it here.
Kristian Fletcher sent us the following about a Kate Bush tribute party in Australia. Date: Sunday 7th November 2010. Venue: StageDoor Dinner Theatre, 4 Cintra Rd Bowen Hills, Brisbane Australia. Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of HOUNDS OF LOVE. With tribute performances, DJ, licensed bar, film clips, footage – and much more! Tickets $15.00 per person. Bookings 3216 1115 or available at the door. “25 years ago, the Hounds of Love album by Kate Bush was released to commercial and critical acclaim. Featuring the hits Running Up That Hill and Cloudbusting, Hounds of Love took the British singer from cult artist to mainstream success in 1985, and marked a return to the UK and Australian charts. This party pays tribute to this special album… the enigmatic woman… her vast music catalogue… and the fans she continues to inspire. Hot food will be available for purchase. More info under Music events here: http://www.kristianfletcher.com/
An event worth noting for UK Kate fans. Karl writes on the guestbook:”We will be holding a tribute concert honouring the great lady. The main performer of Kate’s work will be Lisa Redford. The venue is the Music Room of the Assembly House, Theatre Street, Norwich, Norfolk on the 26th April 7.30pm tickets £7.50 from Norwich Arts Centre 01603 660352 (50p booking fee) alsohere. Enquiries to Karl at 01603 452850. As well as Lisa Redford, who has performed in the same venue at a sold-out Nick Drake tribute concert, the gig will feature guests Alias Grace, Tim Bowness ‘No Man’, Lord Dieve Montague and Brett Anderson (Suede) if recording commitments allow, also more to be confirmed.” As Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze says: “brilliant! Lisa has a great voice” (thanks Karl)
HomeGround Glastonbury 2001!! The 2001 gathering takes place the day before Kate’s birthday, 3pm, Sunday 29th July, Glastonbury Tor. No formal events, just come along and meet other fans. Afterwards at a local pub (probably the Rifleman’s Arms). Read more at the HomeGround Pages!
The Summer 2001 edition of HomeGround, the Kate fanzine has now been mailed to subscribers. Main news points to note include “Kate continues to work on new material” and Dave Cross is quoted as saying that the delayed reissues have “taken much longer to pull together than we had hoped, but we are moving forward and it is likely that all the CD reissues will see the light of day this year. All the albums will have extra tracks and improved booklets”. HomeGround as usual offers great articles, artwork, readers letters and more. For more info on this issue be sure to check out the HomeGround Pages for details..it’s another good one for the collection.
Colin Dowd from Belfast writes: “On Tuesday 13th February, Channel 4’s (UK) soap opera “Brookside” featured a character, named Adele, and you could clearly see a collection of Kate Bush posters on her bedroom wall. The only surprising thing is that Adele is only supposed to be about 18 yrs old, so it is debatable if she would really have known much about Kate. The actress seen in the photos plays her mother, Diane. I reckon the TV programme’s Props Department must have been asked to supply some posters for a teenager’s bedroom and could only find ones that had been lying around for about 20 years!!!” (Seán says: “Adele” has a more (ahem!) recent Rubberband Girl poster too…so she’s obviously just a really big fan!…many thanks to Colin for his report and the pictures.)
Happy New Year! Thought I’d kick off what should be an interesting year for Kate fans with some newsbits:…as well as The Whole Story being released Simply Vinyl are also reissuing their 180g deluxe vinyl pressing of Hounds Of Love, read more here…Dale Sherman let me know that he has written a new book entitled 20th Century Rock & Roll: Women In Rock (ISBN 1-896522-29-7), the book, out on the 10th January, features a well-researched essay on Kate’s career among over 90 other entries…Michael Leitz has unearthed a previously unknown version of James And The Cold Gun by a Japanese band called Pageant. Apparently, it’s an old track from the 80’s, but the album it’s on has been re-released, read more here (Gaffaweb is a great resource for looking up versions of Kate’s songs by other artists)…
DVD Express are still listing an unconfirmed imminent release of The Line, The Cross & The Curve on the format…VH1 (UK) will be screening the little-seen video of The Man I Love (Kate & Larry Adler) on Sunday 28th Jan @ 17.00 GMT…Danny Diess got a great reaction to his performance of Get Out Of My House (see below and current HomeGround), Danny is seeking sponsorship to help him to put on his 75 minute show “The Song Of Solomon” based around 13 of Kate’s songs, using costume, dance and mime and very simple sets, email him here…(newsbit thanks to Michael Leitz, Danny Diess, Dale Sherman, Collin Kelley and John Harper)
Meredith Tarr has sent in her review of a show she attended in Fairfield, Connecticut USA a few weeks ago by Kat Devlin, “Kat Devlin Sings The Songs Of Kate Bush”. You can read it here. (thanks to Meredith).
Kat Devlin sings the songs of Kate Bush – a review by Meredith Tarr
Friday, October 2, 1998 was a real Kate Bush evening: first I heard 45 minutes of uninterrupted Kate music on WPKN-FM in Bridgeport, then I saw cabaret singer Kat Devlin gave a wonderful performance of her show “Kat Devlin Sings The Songs Of Kate Bush” at Fairfield University’s Quick Center For The Arts in Fairfield, Connecticut. There were two performances that evening, and we attended the 9 o’clock show.
I had seen this show before, a couple summers ago at a club called 88’s in New York City. Then, Devlin was only accompanied by arranger Ross Patterson on piano and cheesy keyboard, but this time she was accompanied by Rex Benincasa on drums and Phil Palombi on upright bass, in addition to Patterson again on piano. The rearrangements/reconstructions of the songs in a jazzy style for the most part worked really well, definitely better than when I saw the show before. Devlin’s definitely got the vocal chops to handle everything from “Wuthering Heights” to “Night Of The Swallow” without much apparent effort. She even looks like Kate! She’s a bit taller, but she’s got the hair and the facial structure, and in each song she acts out the character portrayed within with only a bit too much over-the-top melodrama (which in itself is quite Kate-like).
The songs performed were:
Moments of Pleasure
Wuthering Heights
This Woman’s Work
Symphony In Blue
Experiment IV
Feel It
The Man With The Child In His Eyes
Houdini
Cloudbusting
Coffee Homeground
Mother Stands For Comfort
In Search of Peter Pan
The Infant Kiss
Babooshka
Moving
Running Up That Hill
Under The Ivy
Night of the Swallow (encore)
The rearrangements that worked the best for me were “Symphony In Blue”, “Feel It”, “Houdini”, “Moving”, and “Night Of The Swallow”. The songs from The Kick Inside and Lionheart lend themselves naturally to more swinging jazz arrangements. “Running Up That Hill” was done way too fast, and I think something went wrong with “Wuthering Heights”, because it seemed to end in a train wreck. My favorite performance was “Coffee Homeground”, in which Devlin played up the element of paranoia for all it was worth, and the result was a funny, dead-on portrayal of what the song is about. And “Under The Ivy” slew me … but that song could do that no matter the setting. (Note: Mila Drumke’s acoustic guitar version is killer, too – I’m still not sure which I like better.)
Kat Devlin is a true fan, who has obviously let Kate’s music into her soul. She understands every nuance of every song, and if this is as close as I’m going to get to seeing a Kate Bush concert in my lifetime, I’ll gladly take it. I hope she gets a chance to take her show on the road – I think the Katefans across the country would appreciate it as much as I did.
BBC Radio 4 last week broadcast a short comic radio play entitled “A Fast Forward Through The Life Of Greg, A Kate Bush Fan”, seemingly about a fan writing letters to Kate. It’s a fictional account, but that didn’t stop one Press Association reporter contacting the editors of Homeground magazine to locate “Greg”!
HomeGround’s 1998 Kate Birthday Bash will take place on Glastonbury Tor, England on Sunday 2nd August. All Kate fans are invited to come along. No formal events, just to meet and chat and celebrate Kate’s birthday in the 20th year of her career. Meet on Glastonbury Tor at 2.00 pm, and afterward in a local pub!