Kate Bush (once again)

Seemingly like everyone else on the planet, I've been undergoing a renewed interest in Kate Bush. This started a few months ago whilst listening to 'Before the dawn', the multiple-cd set of recordings from her performances in 2015 that sold out within 15 minutes. This can roughly be divided into three parts: unconnected songs, the 'ninth wave' suite from 'The hounds of love', and the 'Sky of honey' suite from 'Aerial'. As it happens, originally I wasn't too enamoured with the ninth wave and sky of honey suites when I first heard them.

Somehow, these live versions seemed much more palatable than the original versions; after listening to the live versions, I decided to go back to the original studio versions, which now do find favour in these quarters.

During the month of June 2022, Kate's star has risen once again, with one of her songs being featured in a Netflix series. Now all sorts of Youtube videos are rising to the top; today I came across a most fascinating document - a collection of appearances on BBC TV, recorded in the day. The first few appearances feature performances that are not the well-known recorded versions, although these are not live! One can hear Kate harmonising with herself here and there, tending to imply that no one is playing live. I saw on one song ('This woman's work') a miscue in the miming, not that this is too important. 'Wuthering Heights' - where it all started - is a completely new version: new arrangement (although very close to the original) and possibly live vocal. I notice that Kate's hand movements during the chorus must have been fixed at an early stage as these are consistent over all the performances that I have seen. I have never seen any of these performances before, primarily because I emigrated in 1978 when Kate's career was taking off, and no one in Israel had heard of her then (we also didn't really have television station(s) either, then).

Kate is almost exactly two years younger than me (her birthday is four days before mine) so I know automatically how old she is in every video. It's interesting to see how she has aged: initially, she looks much older than she really was (I remember looking at the photo on her first album and thinking 'oh, this is what she looks like, maybe in her mid-20s' - she was 19!), but later on she takes on a more mature appearance. Unfortunately the most recent pictures of her show a great deal of middle age spread, a feature normally reserved for males who drink.

I am including Kate's version of 'My lagan love' in my folk songs talk - her version has the same immaculate song sung unaccompanied, but with new lyrics by her brother. I will wear my Sandy Denny t-shirt.