Kate Bush

I wrote about how the price of gay acceptance in Kate's work is heterosexual pleasure: https://katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/kashka-from-baghdad/

Oh. Followup: I also wrote about The Kick Inside. Next up is Wuthering Heights. https://katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/the-kick-inside/

https://pitchfork.com/news/kate-bush-announces-rarities-album-shares-rocket-man-cover-video-watch/?fbclid=IwAR234VxDYdjgIVRshsUkT3O6LcNUzb8Ud4G_K9hYwM_Gy501EGAIbYDBVYc

those are some short CDs!

That's pretty nice, we can snag the rarities if we don't want to shell out again for all the remastered albums from the box set... why does she hate Ken so much though?

why does she hate Ken so much though?

Maybe just changed her mind about him over time?

Maybe she'll include it on her upcoming disc of tracks she recorded for Fruitopia commercials

why does she hate Ken so much though?

if you mean "why isn't 'Ken' on her rarities sets," the rights are probably tangled up between Richardson and the BBC and Entertainment One and who knows who else

if you mean that she doesn't love Ken anymore, perhaps the reasons that he has been in the news the last 900,023 times are related.

her song about Boris Johnson isn't nearly as good

Wild Man?

If you like Room for the Life... well, sorry. https://katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/room-for-the-life/

Them Heavy People helped me in a soft spot. https://katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/02/28/them-heavy-people/ & http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/them-heavy-people/

Realized I haven't updated here in a while, so... https://katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/05/10/symphony-in-blue/ & http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/symphony-in-blue/

The Remastered CD Box Set Part 2 has dropped to $62 on Amazon US, that's tempting...

On "Wow." http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/wow/ and also at https://katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/06/07/wow/

(With apologies to anyone who's irritated by all the linking) Here's the Tour of Life. https://katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/06/28/the-tour-of-life/

Onto Never for Ever, starting w/ Egypt katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/07/05/egypt/ (somebody else talk about Kate. I feel like I'm spamming the thread.)

Remasters of Lionheart, Never for Ever, The Red Shoes, Aerial, and 50 Words for Snow are finally available on Spotify now (not sure about other streaming services). In some cases they replaced the originals, in others they're doubled.

No idea if The Kick Inside, The Dreaming, Hounds of Love, and The Sensual World will soon join them.

I've been listening to the re-done Red Shoes, I think I like it a bit more than the original. Or maybe I'm just coming around to the album regardless of mastering. The Aerial with whatshisname removed and replaced with someone else actually sounds worse to my ears.

whatshisname removed and replaced with someone else

Wait what?

Rolf Harris has a few voiceovers on the original Aerial but he turned out to be a pedophile so they removed his bits and replaced them with (I think) her son doing some narration instead. But it seems like the entire mix is slightly different to me... that could be my imagination though.

They replaced Rolf Harris with Kate's son live vocals from Before the Dawn (he played the part of The Painter in the performance). So it's now a studio/live mash-up.

i like bertie's voice more than Harris'.

I've been listening to the re-done Red Shoes, I think I like it a bit more than the original. Or maybe I'm just coming around to the album regardless of mastering.

i listened to both last night and i almost prefer the director's cut version, but i think i have to replace 'lily' with the original version, something is lost in the new vox. i think i also prefer the orig 'rubberband girl.' but overall the sequencing and the addition/subtraction of tracks is an improvement.

He's on The Dreaming as well, isn't he?

yeah but just playing digideroo; could be anyone.

"i listened to both last night and i almost prefer the director's cut version, but i think i have to replace 'lily' with the original version, something is lost in the new vox. i think i also prefer the orig 'rubberband girl.' but overall the sequencing and the addition/subtraction of tracks is an improvement."

confused by this. You mean the versions of the songs on Director's Cut, or the version of Red Shoes that was released along with DC? Because the only difference there is that it was remastered. the versions on actual Director's Cut: that doesn't count as a new version of the album to me.

i thought of it as a reconfiguring of the red shoes since that's the album it has the most tracks in common with, but yeah i guess there was no real reason for me to think of it that way

https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=MUSICOLOGY-ALL;e74bfbb1.1907

This Woman’s Work: A Kate Bush Symposium
Thursday 12th - Friday 13th December 2019, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh

Call for Papers

Over forty years into her career, Kate Bush continues to make significant contributions to various fields of culture. In recent months, her back catalogue has been re-released in remastered form, and a book of collected lyrics, How To Be Invisible, was published by Faber in 2018. The University of Edinburgh is pleased to announce that it will host a two-day symposium on Bush’s achievements. This event will mark and celebrate four decades of diverse productivity and offers a space for reflection on and discussion of this woman’s work. Despite her prolific creativity since the 1970s – covering the fields of music, film and video, literature, and performance – comparatively little scholarly work has been produced on Kate Bush. This symposium aims to start rectifying this omission: the organisers intend to produce an edited anthology collection developed from symposium proceedings.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers, as well as pre-constituted panels of 2 or 3 papers, on any aspect of the career of Kate Bush. We also welcome more creative contributions in alternative presentation formats to the symposium.

Oops that link got garbled. Try this one.

confused by this. You mean the versions of the songs on Director's Cut, or the version of Red Shoes that was released along with DC? Because the only difference there is that it was remastered.

I think they used a backup analog master from the original recording sessions... so something more than remastered but not remixed either? It's for certain less compressed, which could be enough to explain the difference I'm hearing.

oh yeah... the version of Red Shoes released along with Director's Cut is what I'm talking about it, which is likely the same version included on the new box sets.

Relieved Bush has taken Rolf Harris' voice off her albums. That alone justifies the remasters, although they're a welcome addition to her canon. Glad she doesn't have to do the same with Roy Harper as he's not on her albums.

Speaking of the bastard, https://katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/07/26/another-day/

(OK apparently Harper does backing vocals on Breathing. Never mind.)

before the dawn currently sits at 84 on metacritic and this causes me mild outrage.

Such an irritatingly sanctimonious review on that Kate Bush blog above. Fortunately the kind Genesis blogger’s comment saves the day, only to be given the cold shoulder by the bitter moralist blog owner, whose further perspectives on Kate Bush music I won’t be in any rush to secure, that’s for sure.

I’m not relieved that Rolf Harris is erased from the newly remastered albums’ etiolated history because I liked his voice and the new versions are shit and the changes are done in a piss-poor manner. Also, I’m not relieved to know apparently Ballard was a sanctimonious moralist himself.

I'm unsure what's sanctimonious about saying that child rape is bad. This seems like an uncontroversial view outside of Roy Harper and Jimmy Page fandoms.

It's also unclear what exactly themusicalfoxblog (who's not even a Genesis blogger - have you even looked at their site, which is devoid of blog posts?) salvaged when all they trotted out was a blustering and unconvincing case for Harper's innocence, the corollary of which is that guilty people are always convicted in court, and a frankly abominable claim that the safety of those accused of sexual assault is more paramount to justice than that of the victims. Try to find better touters for your argument, which consists of little more than "shhh, let people enjoy things."

It's also fucking hilarious of you to say you won't read the blog anymore after directly causing a spike in its traffic for the day. So thanks for the support. It's gained me readers. :)

before the dawn is very good?

very good indeed. much better than an 84.

(shrug)

i was just wanting to revive this to big up before the dawn.

wow I just discovered Christine's blog because of this post. Looking forward to digging into it more, I like all the posts I just read.

Well, good for you Christine. I wish I cared for my superpower of spiking up your traffic as much as you do.

Moving on, I wish I liked Before the Dawn. The arrangements that sound like a 1986-87 Peter Gabriel tour, the boomy bass-heavy mastering she favours these days... I'll continue trying to like it from time to time, but I'm afraid the Kate I love stops at The Red Shoes (very much included!) with just some songs off Aerial, plus the entire 50 Words for Snow.

continuing to enjoy the Bush blog, ballardiangorse

with just some songs off Aerial, plus the entire 50 Words for Snow

this is a backwards opinion

they are both great

i'm not a massive fan of the mix on BTD either but it's not bad

A Sky of Honey is the best thing she's ever done and the extended version on Before the Dawn is pretty great.

apart from "tawny moon" being a bit inessential and the mix being not as great, the extended live versions really add a lot to it, especially "prologue" and "aerial"

New blog post on Bush's second contribution to a Peter Gabriel song: https://katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/11/04/no-self-control/

And incidentally, here's the previous entry: https://katebushsongs.wordpress.com/2019/10/07/games-without-frontiers/

I'd never heard that demo before and sort of fell down a rabbit hole of "Melt" demos, cool shit