Kate Bush News

Huffington Post UK 13th September: “Gered Mankowitz has been photographing rock stars for 50 years, creating iconic portraits of everyone from Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones to Wham!, Kate Bush and Duran Duran. Now, the best of his work has been assembled for an exhibition in London from tomorrow, and collated in a stunning hardback book to be published in December … Kate Bush was one of Gered Mankowitz’s favourite subjects – a pleasure to work with …”

The Newcastle Chronicle today ran a feature on Kate’s personal appearance on 11th September 1980 to promote Never For Ever, with extracts from an interview she gave to the paper:

“Sometimes I see myself in the paper and it’s hard to associate with the name Kate Bush. She is this well-known person who has become like a brand name like Maxwell House coffee or something. Meanwhile, I’m just working on my music and my life.”

In his “Soundtrack of my Life” features in The Observer Sunday 1st September, Sir Elton John noted Snowed in at Wheeler Street as “The song that was difficult to Record”:

“I did a duet with Kate Bush on this track for her last album. That session with her was hard, because she doesn’t write easy songs. She’s a complex songwriter and this is a weird song, but I love it so much. I’m so proud to be on a Kate Bush record; she’s always marched to the beat of her own drum. She was groundbreaking – a bit like a female equivalent of Freddie Mercury. She does come out socially sometimes and she came to my civil partnership occasion with her husband. There were so many stars in the room, but all the musicians there were only interested in saying, “You’ve got to introduce me to Kate Bush.” I remember Boy George saying, “Oh my God, is that Kate Bush?” I said, “Yeah!””

Update: Kate has responded to all of her birthday greetings on her official site: “Thank you so much for all the lovely messages you sent for my birthday. I had a really great day. Kate”

All of us here at HomeGround and Kate Bush News send warmest birthday greetings to Kate!

Seán Krys Dave Peter

[youtube width=”640″ height=”360″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXT9cx9Vb10[/youtube]

This year’s HomeGround and katebushnews.com party takes place on Midsummer’s Night 21st June at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in Vauxhall, on the south bank Of The Thames in central London, just 10 minutes from Victoria.

We start at 9pm and go through to 3 am. The party will feature  Kate themed DJ sets from Paul Burston, Phil Marriott, Dave Cross and Paul Thomas.

The night will also feature an exclusive live performance from Kate Bush tribute band Cloudbusting fronted by long time Kate fan and HomeGround reader, Lisa Oliver. The band will be performing a special set and are asking fans to make suggestions for Kate songs they would like to hear on the night, making this a unique event mixing some of Kate’s most well-known songs with fan favourites.

This will be a great fun night, a chance to hear Kate’s amazing music played loud in a club and meet loads of fellow KB fans.

Advance tickets have now closed.

There will be a limited number of tickets available on the door on the night for £10.

The NME reports that “300 Kate Bush fans gathered in a park in Brighton over last weekend to break the record for the most lookalikes re-enacting the famous video for her 1978 single Wuthering Heights.”

This was the final rehearsal:

This was the instructional dance video:

LATER: It seems Guiness don’t think Kate is iconic enough for this to constitute a “proper” record … The video re-enactment thing catches on …

It is said by some that Kate is not known to a younger generation of music fans. It is scarcely true in a situation when a Kate cover is an inevitable part of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, or ‘The Voice’, or whatever new talent show is currently occupying the airwaves. What is more to the point, and to the Editors of HomeGround became more noticeable as time went on, was the number of new musicians, not all female, who claimed influence and inspiration from Kate, to the point where we started to chronicle these in the magazine. Of course with lazy music critics seking to easily pigeon-hole any new female artist (or energetic pluggers seeking to get publicity for a new artist), it was always too easy to label them as “the new Kate Bush”, just as in her time Kate was compared to Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro.

In this very readable new book Marta has delicately interrogated a goodly number of new and recent female artists to determine exactly what that influence was, whether direct in terms of musical composition, or indirect in terms of inspiration to do their own thing and take personal charge of their career.

As Marta says: “the unwilling ‘new Kate Bushes’ and the more willing ones, artists often compared to Kate and yet are hardly influenced by her and others who are relatively unfamiliar with her work  … atists who are heavily influenced by Kate but sound nothing like her and artist who simply like her work … but aren’t necessarily influenced by her“.

The book is cast in three main sections, with intermissions in which the interviewees discuss their favourite Kate tracks. In The Art of Comparing Marta deals with the whole question, and the value of making such comparisons, and encourages her interviewees to discuss  their own reactions. Heather Nova believes that Kate is one of the three biggest influences for female artists today, the others being Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell. Emily Bezar believes the only singer that can compare with Kate and Joni is Arethe Franklin. But just as Kate herself had claimed influence from David Bowie, Elton John, Genesis and The Tubes, this new generation of female artists also point that Kate is one of a number of inspirations, Polly Scattergood being happy to cite Leonard Cohen.

In the second main section, Art Pop Marta considers with the musicians the nature of Kate’s work in sections which deal with the voice, the lyrics, the production, and the image and performance. It is in the voice that many find a true distinctiveness, an instrument of emotion and passion, in its character and use of high register almost set against the all pervading influence of soul and R’n’B. Perhaps as Shara Worden notes, it was an inspiration to others to use their vocal telents in different ways, as they saw fit, not as the music machine would like. Terami Hirsch points to the storytelling in Kate’s songs, and her varied sources of inspiration from Cathy to a Vietcong fighter, and the need to get under the skin and express what they felt. Anja Gabarek notes the thoroughness with which Kate works, every single layer on each album placed there for a purpose.

The third section deals with The Art of Covering Kate “from power metal to dance, to folk, to … a drag act”. The artists discuss their own cover versions, and those done by others, and perhaps you will discover here versions of Kate’s of which you never heard: Sarah Daly’s Babooshka, Elver Palsdottir’s Hounds of Love, Cloudbusting by Novembre and also by Paper Crows and Charlotte Martin. This Woman’s Work by Marie Invie. Marta discusses with Jemima Price her album of Kate covers, and their performances with The Hounds of Love tribute band, and the caberet act of Niki  Romijn, and many others who have trod the fearsome path of covering Kate’s songs.

The book is wrapped up with reactions to 50 Words for Snow, and the questions these artists would themselves like to put to Kate one fine day. An excellent volume which we highly recomend with much to consider about the nature of Kate’s art and how that is received by so many creative people in many different ways. This is finally a primer of a lot of very interesting musicians of which you may not have heard. I’d suggest you remedy that as soon as possible, as I will.

More information here. You can obtain the book here.

Update: Kate’s official site has now announced that the number of discs has been increased to 4 thousand this year.  Two and a half thousand copies of these discs will be allocated to independent record stores in the UK and the rest will be distributed to independent record retailers around the world.

On Saturday April 20th, for the third year in a row, Kate is releasing a special 10″ vinyl single to coincide with Record Store Day. Following on from the Hounds of Love EP (2011) and Lake Tahoe/Among Angels (2012), this year Kate releases a 10″ vinyl picture disc of Running Up That Hill (2012 Remix) and Walk Straight Down the Middle from The Sensual World album. The lead track, with all-new vocal, was a UK number 6 hit for Kate in 2012 after it was prominently featured at the Olympics closing ceremony. No firm news yet on the number of singles being made available with this release, but we will update when we can. Zoetrope animation of the actual disc artwork courtesy of Kate’s official site. Read more at Kate’s official site here and at the Record Store Day website here.