Newsbits roundup….

So much going on! We can barely keep up. Here’s a quick round-up.

The Big Issue magazine in the UK features Kate on it’s current cover. “Tickets for Kate Bush’s long awaited live return went in a nanosecond. Ahead of this much anticipated to-do we hear from, amongst others, Gered Mankowitz, the celebrated snapper who caught her at Wuthering Heights; Mark Radcliffe, the journalist she talks to most; Jo Brand, a superfan; Sarah Hadland, the actress who introduced a new generation to Bush through a Horrible Histories routine; and the great poet Paul Muldoon, on her writing. A piece to savour.” Read more about The Big Issue and who they support here….Simon Reynolds in The Guardian examines Kate’s critical appeal throughout her career here…Stephen Fry has tweeted to remind fans to watch the BBC4 documentary on Kate on Friday 22nd at 9.10pm…if you’re in the UK, you can see clips from the documentary on the BBC iPlayer here…

Kate was placed at number 8 in the NME‘s 100 most influential artists currently working today. “Kate Bush pretty much created the archetype for mysterious singer-songwriters everywhere. Turn on the radio these days and you’ll hear echoes of her in the overblown production of Wild Beasts, the electro-celt inventions of Björk and PJ Harvey, the expansive wafts of Zola Jesus and in the dolphin-lunged vocals of Florence + The Machine or London Grammar.” More here …singer Toyah Willcox is on Kate’s concert guestlist, she tweeted: “Yipeeeeee @KateBushMusic has put me on her guest list. Best pressie ever! Lots of love 2 kate xxx”…the London Evening Standard ran a piece entitled “Why we love Kate Bush” featuring some of her fanmous fans,  ioncluding, Boy George, Anna Calvi, Holly Johnson and Rumer.  Says Boy George: “Kate Bush has always been a typewriter in a renaissance. She appeared out of nowhere at the tail end of punk and sort of embodied the punk spirit by just being completely herself. I know Johnny Rotten loved her. She blew things apart with things like Running Up That Hill because it defied the classic logic of pop. Kate is unique and a bit of a Greta Garbo, which makes her even more interesting. Most importantly, she’s from south-east London, like me.” Read the article here… Gail Walker reflects on what Kate means to her in the Belfast Telegraph here…The Telegraph ran a nice appreciation of Kate’s 1985 Cloudbusting video: “Kate Bush, Donald Sutherland, and weird science combined beautifully in the film for her song Cloudbusting. Is this the perfect music video? asks Bernadette McNulty” See it here…Bradley Brady continues his wonderful 50-article countdown to Kate’s shows at his “Divas: the power of the female voice” blog here. We think you should start at 50 and enjoy counting down with him, some great memories here…iTunes have revamped Kate’s online store and her albums are on special offer in the UK to celebrate her live shows…

…the London Evening Standard also rounds up the alternative Kate Bush events taking place in London for those who didn’t get tickets here…The Independent speculates about Kate’s shows here…The Independent also ran an article about the Harari/Mankowitz photography exhibition and on her stage return in a magazine cover feature, see scans at the excellent kbarchives site here….also in The Independent on Sunday Magazine, a long feature on Kate: “One of the great enigmas of British music is about to perform live for the first time since 1979 – and who knows what will happen? Four writers try to distill the elusive essence of Kate Bush” read it here…The Telegraph featured an article by Graeme Thomson on Kate’s first ever round of gigs with the KT Bush Band back in 1977 here…more about the Snap Galleries photo exhibition in London (and some nice shots from it) in the Independent here…the Radio Times featured a nice appreciation of Kate by Stuart Maconie, read a scan at kbarchives here…Marie Claire ran a Kate feature in their August edition, more on that here… Another review of the “Cutting Off Kate Bush” fringe festival show is here…Helen Brown wonders what we might expect from Kate’s stage shows in The Telegraph: “The poster for Kate Bush’s first series of concerts in 35 years finds her adrift in a dark and choppy sea. Her long, wavy hair swirls over a bright orange life jacket and her arms are stretched wide as she stares, hard, up at the camera. Here she is: part vulnerable human survivor, part mermaid. A 56-year-old artist who has both fought against, and floated with, the currents of popular music for almost forty years, making wonderfully strange music on her own terms and refusing to play the celebrity game.” Read the full article here…The Artifice blog examines “The Storytelling Quality of Kate Bush’s Music” here…the Artbeat show on Dublin City FM celebrated Kate’s return with a special show on Wednesday 20th…the Evening Herald on those elusive tickets here…in the iPad edition of the Radio Times, three unseen photos of Kate, taken by photographer Don Smith, performing Wuthering Heights at the BBC were published (see below). We’d like to know if this performance ever aired? Hmmm…