Kate Bush Bonanza: My Consolation Prize for Missing Kate Bush At the Hammersmith Apollo This Month

   Ken and I went yard saling on Friday and we were both really surprised when he spotted a video by one of my favourites, singer/songwriter Kate Bush. After showing me the video, Ken walked away and I started spazzing out because the box was full of interesting 80's music videos, including several more Kate Bush ones! Then Ken walked back over to me, carrying a Kate Bush book. By the time he had finished looking through the books he had found three more! I went back over to the books when I finally got through the videos and CDs and found an old issue of the Kate Bush fanzine 'Homeground'. This is the pile I ended up with:

Yes, those are the prices: 25 cents, 50 cents, a dollar...

I only had one of the books, and Emma was happy to have that one. I had all but one of the videos too, but I couldn't just leave them there! I thought Emma might want them anyway. (Emma grew up a Kate Bush fan. When she was around 6 or 7 she made her own remake of Kate's 1993 film "The Line, the Cross, and the Curve".) The one video I didn't already have turned out to be the only one that had MILDEW in the tape! It wasn't too bad. I took the case apart and cleaned off the tape, so it should be ok.
   There were NO Kate Bush records or CDs. Oh well. You can't have everything.
  Among the videos there was also this one:

Excuse me. Do you have Tori Amos in a box?

 Tori Amos is often compared to Kate Bush, and the Kate fan that had owned all this stuff had obviously gotten suckered into that one too.This video has songs from Tori Amos' first album, which has the same cover.It reminds me of something...

Oh yeah...

Finding Kate Bush stuff at a yard sale in Ohio was a shock, because she's not very well known over here. She's been popular in most of the rest of the world since her first record, "Wuthering Heights", in 1978. I have been a Kate Bush fan since I first saw her, on Saturday Night Live, in December of 1978, where she sang a couple of songs from her first album,The Kick Inside, released in February of that year. 

Kate Bush singing The Man With the Child in His Eyes on Saturday Night Live in 1978.

With her high pitched voice and unusual songs, (Her first single was based on the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë.), she doesn't appeal to everybody. I immediately loved her music though. My sister and her husband got me Kate's first album that Christmas, and I have bought every album since. (And the singles, and the videos...) Her music isn't the average thing you'd find on the American top ten, but she did have a minor hit in 1985 with "Running Up That Hill." (It got all the way to Number 30!) The video was even in minor rotation on MTV. (Back when "Music Television' still was...)
  To me Kate Bush was just so...special. Some people call it 'weird'. She sounded different, her songs were different. She was unique, and had a unique look too.

I want to be Kate Bush when I grow up.

  In the 80's I used to take Kate Bush album's to the hair dresser's and ask to have my hair 'done like that'...with varying degrees of success. I found out that you can't perm in a crimp. At least you couldn't then.
   Kate Bush was born in England in 1958. She started writing poetry, and eventually songs, when she was a child. In fact, amazingly, some of the songs on her first album were written when she was 13 years old. She was 'discovered' when she was 16, when a friend of her family gave a demo tape she had made to a friend, who turned out to be Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour.With Gilmour's help Kate produced a demo tape that got her a contract with EMI Records. She was only 16, and EMI gave her two years before she was required to actually produce anything. During the two years she studied dance with Lindsey Kemp, who also taught David Bowie,and mime. Both of these would be of great use to her in her performances.
  In 1978 Kate's first album was released, and the first single, "Wuthering Heights", made her the first woman ever to reach number one on the British charts singing a song she composed. The following year she performed her only series of concerts. The tour, called The Tour of Life, ran for six weeks, and introduced many ideas that are concert staples today. Kate wanted to be able to dance and move around the stage while she sang,so her sound engineers used a wire coat hanger and a radio microphone to rig up the first of what is now the standard headset for stage performances.

Kate Bush, live at the Hammersmith Odeon, in 1979.

  Kate's first few albums were released fairly close together,as most people's albums are.However, after releasing her seventh album, The Red Shoes, in 1993, it was twelve years before she produced another. Her son Bertie was born in 1998, and in 2005, after spending seven years at home raising her son, she reappeared with a double album, "Ariel". This time it only took her six more years to produce another album---in fact, two---"Director's Cut", an album of completely reworked older songs, and "50 Words for Snow", were both released in 2011. 
  In 2013 she made a rare public appearance when she was awarded a CBE, (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), by Queen Elizabeth.

She got old while I wasn't looking!

Then she stunned everybody in March of this year by announcing that she would perform a series of concerts at the same venue as her 1979 concerts, (Now renamed the Hammersmith Apollo.).

The response was so great that she added more dates before the tickets even went on sale.

It even made the news.

When they did go on sale they sold out in 15 minutes. After waiting all these years I couldn't have gotten tickets if I had the money to fly all the way over there and/or buy a concert ticket.

Oh no I don't. Stop taunting me.

The shows start the 26th of this month and end on the1st of October. (It's not enough that I already recently missed the Monty Python stage shows. Oh to be in London, now that cool shows are there...) That's ok. I don't mind. I have my cool yard sale haul. Don't worry about me...Sniff...