Kate Bush

 

Kate Bush, 16 November 2001

Someone unique

Britain has so much to offer, among all this breathtaking landscape, vibrant cities, fine art and design and great music of all kinds, be it the music of the British Composers of the 19th and 20th century, light orchestral music, folk music, or the various strands of Pop Music.

A very special gift is the music of Kate Bush.

And in a very special way I discovered it.

During my first stay in Brighton in August 1985 I liked to go to a pub on Market Place in the Lanes, called the 'Druid's Head'. They had a music box there playing the latest hits. So, while I was having my first drink, maybe a lager or maybe a bitter, the music box played a song that instantly impressed me. It was Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill . I remember ordering it again and again whenever I went to that pub and shortly before leaving Brighton I bought me the 7" .

I was looking forward to hear more of Kate Bush's music after returning to Cologne, but the end of 1985 and the whole of 1986 was a very turbulent (party-)time and in 1987 I found myself too busy preparing for my examn in Political Science. Only after having passed it I had my next encounter with Kate Bush.

When I visited a friend, he played a cassette to me that he had recorded for himself. I did not like the music that much, except for three songs: Wuthering Heights , Cloudbusting , and Babooshka . Just some days later I went to a record shop and bought me all of Kate Bush's albums, The Kick Inside , Lionheart , Never For Ever , The Dreaming , Hounds Of Love and the compilation The Whole Story.

There were so many great tracks on these albums, rockier ones like Violin , The Big Sky , Leave It Open , Get Out Of My House , James And The Cold Gun , or Experiment IV , finely crafted songs like All We Ever Look For , In Search Of Peter Pan , Fullhouse , Oh England My Lionheart , Them Heavy People , Oh To Be In Love , and L'amour Looks Something Like You , slow burners like Feel It , Under Ice , or especially Hello Earth (with choral interludes), India-tinged gems like Watching You Without Me , and great songs with folk elements like Jig Of Life . With Delius(Song Of Summer) there was even an hommage to Frederick Delius, one of the finest British Composers.

After having played these records numerous times I recorded me two cassettes for my walkman and listened to them again and again through autumn and winter 1988/89 on my way into the city, on my way home with the last bus or - after disco - with the first tram in the morning. Between the tram's stop and where I live there is a nice park with a small pond in it, which is full of water lillies in the summer, a place I know, a place I love since I moved to Cologne from the countryside. I remember walking though the snowed up park to the frozen pond and dancing around it, almost completely taken away by the music. Many many moons ago people at magic rituals may have felt somewhat alike.

Kate Bush's music affected me deeply, touching almost everything within me, the soft and the rough, the dreamy and the realistic, the romantic and the passionate, the calm and the ecstatic, the naive and the knowing, the thoughtful and the exuberant. Her songs thrilled me, moved me, covered me, transformed me. It seemed as if deep inside of me ancient streams were beginning to resurface after laying dormant for a long period of time. I sometimes almost felt like beeing somewhere else, in another world. I was late in discovering her music, but now I was ready to give in to it.

In late 1989 she released The Sensual World , with great songs on it like the title track, Love And Anger and especially Never Be Mine . Four years later her next album The Red Shoes came out, with fine tracks like Lily , Big Stripey Lie and again the title track, who's Dance Mix, called Shoedance, is simply fantastic.

But my favourite song from this album and also my favourite Kate Bush song at all is Moments Of Pleasure , a song whose sheer beauty and wisdom inspired and motivated me to create this website.

Kate Bush is very happy with her son Bertie now. I wish her and her baby-boy all the very best and I would like to take this oppportunity to say to her today:

Thank you, Kate !

And when I will go to Stonehenge for the third time I will do what I haven't done yet, and that is listening to all of my favourite Kate Bush songs, before I will ask Malcolm Sargent to conduct the Tallis Fantasia for me once more.

I promise.

xxx
Georg
February 2001

p.s.

And there are other thrilling news: Kate is working on a new album to be released 2002 the earliest. So when it will come out I already know what I will do: I'll get me a copy, go home, close the door, hide the phone, put the CD on and listen.


And when it gets cold at the end of the year I will again open my box set This Woman's Work and play December Will Be Magic Again.

 

for more pictures of Kate Bush please see next page

 

Selected Discography

Albums

The Kick Inside (78)
Lionheart (78)
Never For Ever (80)
The Dreaming (82)
Hounds Of Love (85)
The Whole Story (86)
The Sensual World (89)
This Woman's Work. Anthology 1978-1990 (90)
The Red Shoes (93)

Singles / Tracks

Wuthering Heights (78)
Man With The Child In His Eyes (78)
Hammer Horror (78)
Wow (79)
Breathing (80)
Babooshka (80)
Army Dreamers (80)
December Will Be Magic Again (80)
Sat In Your Lap (81)
The Dreaming (82)
Running Up That Hill (85)
Cloudbusting (85)
Hounds Od Love (86)
The Big Sky (86)
Experiment IV (86)
The Sensual World (89)
This Woman's Work (89)
Love And Anger (90)
Rubberband Girl (93)
Moments Of Pleasure (93)
Eat The Music / Shoedance (93)
The Red Shoes (94)
And So Is Love (94)

 

for more pictures of Kate Bush please see next page