Kate Bush
Imagine any seventeen year old pop star writing and performing lyrics like this these days…
They open doorways that I thought were shut for good
They read me Gurdjieff and Jesu
They build up my body
Break me emotionally, it’s nearly killing me
But what a lovely feeling.-Kate Bush,
Them Heavy People
My mum grew up a big Kate Bush fan.
Of the cassettes, and later, CDs that were played in the car during long interstate trips around Christmas, Kate’s releases featured heavily.
A 16 hour hour trip to Ballina on the north-coast of NSW would be punctuated by little ditties such as Wuthering Heights, and Oh, To Be In Love.
As a result I have a surprisingly vast knowledge of Kate’s back-catalogue.
I’m still not sure if I like Kate because of the sense of nostalgia her music brings me, or if it’s an indication of the quality of her music, and how talented a songwriter she was…
Wait a minute… those long, cramped car trips with my parents and three sibs were fucking shithouse!
Of course it’s because she’s awesome! That and she’s bat-shit crazy… how can you not dig the Bush???
With so many mass manufactured, fresh off of the assembly-line popsters aimed at the lucrative tween market these days, an artist of Kate Bush’s caliber would be decidedly refreshing.
A talented singer song-writer, (Kate wrote all of her own songs, some of her best-known before she was 18 years old) who’s songs are actually… well… good, is just what we need.
A shining light in the dark, dismal abyss of mediocrity that is the modern music industry.
And, yes, I know, apparently we can expect big things from Gabriella Cilmi and the like, but so many people say that about every new artist, until they burnout and are never heard from again.
They wimper away into irrelevence simply because they are boring! And if there is one thing Kate Bush wasn’t, it is boring.
But even quality artists have to lose favour with the public eventually, and even though Kate’s still selling albums, they are squarely aimed at her old-school fans (Mum) and are all very mellow and refelective (about her children and stuff).
Anyway, this is the film clip for Kate Bush’s single Babooshka… it’s so completely insane I want to hoon into the filmclip in a Dodge Viper dressed as Aragorn and say “Jump in Kate, we’re gonna go to Middle Earth and make sweet love in the middle of the Hobbits’ little cul-de-sac! We’ll show Bilbo Baggins how it’s done, baby!”
This is Modern 
oh, kate! she really is batshit crazy and that’s why I adore her. as a little kid my specialty was doing an imitation of her wuthering heights interpretive dance in the backyard.
meanwhile do you know what’s peverse? when she actually did have that kind of renaissance and all the surry hills indie kids were listening to runnin up that hill, I hated it even more.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT I THINK ANYMORE.
ps why is your family so cool? on our car trips we just listened to the traveling wilburys and jimmy barnes ‘soul deep’.
Oh man, for every good album my parents have, they possess an equally horrible one… so for every Kick Inside, we had to endure Men at Works Business as Usual… for every Billy Joel best-of, there was Neil Diamond best-of to follow… (btw I know I should hate Neil Diamond but we listened to it so much it’s kinda rubbed off on me.)
billy joel? ok jimmy you are officially fabulous.
(ps I may also love me a bit of cracklin rosie, but don’t tell anyone pls).