Quotulatiousness

August 27, 2014

35 years later, Kate Bush returns to live performances

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:24

BBC News reports on the first live performance by Kate Bush since 1979:

Kate Bush has made her stage comeback to an ecstatic response from fans at her first live concert for 35 years.

Bush received a standing ovation as she closed the show with Cloudbusting, from her 1985 hit album The Hounds of Love.

The 56-year-old British star was appearing at London’s Hammersmith Apollo — the scene of her last live show in 1979.

Tuesday’s three-hour set kicked off a run of 22 shows, titled Before the Dawn, which sold out in minutes.

Afterwards, she thanked fans for their “warm and positive response”.

Backed by seven musicians, Bush opened the show with Lily, from the 1993 album Red Shoes.

There was a huge roar from the crowd as Bush appeared on stage — barefoot and dressed in black — leading her five backing singers.

“It’s so good to be here — thank you so much,” she told the cheering crowd.

She later introduced one of the backing chorus as her teenage son Bertie who, the star said, had given her the “courage” to return to the stage.

The first half of the show included the 1985 single Running Up That Hill and, from the same Hounds of Love album, the song suite The Ninth Wave — which combined video, theatre and dance to tell the story of a woman lost at sea.

After an interval, the second act was dominated by songs from Bush’s 2005 album Aerial.

Kate Bush BBC ad

August 13, 2014

“Cloudbusting” by Kate Bush

Filed under: Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:38

Bernadette McNulty:

I first fell under Bush’s spell in the autumn of 1985, the year she released her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love. The record had already gone straight to number one when on an October Saturday, mum took me on one of our cinema trips. The film I think we went to see was Brewster’s Millions but I can recall nothing about it. All that has stayed with me is the vivid memory of the trailer that showed first, a premiere of Kate Bush’s new video for the second single from the album, “Cloudbusting”.

For nearly seven minutes I was mesmerised. There was Bush, dressed like a boy from the Fifties, with a short red Dennis the Menace wig, Fair Isle cardigan and dungarees struggling up a vertiginous hill, behind a giant machine pulled on ropes by her father, played by the Hollywood actor Donald Sutherland. There weren’t many hills that steep in Birmingham and I had never seen such a vast horizon as the Vale of the White Horse in Oxfordshire where the action was set.

Into that seemingly endless blue sky, Bush and Sutherland pivot around the giant silver pipes of their machine. When nothing happens, Bush clutches Sutherland and she looks almost comically tiny, barely reaching his waist. The scene cuts to Sutherland in a laboratory and then back to sinister men in black hats and coats who appear and bundle Sutherland into the back of a car, chased by Bush. From the back window, he gestures her back to the hill where in the finale, she manages to wrestle the machine into producing a giant rain cloud, heavy drops falling down onto the car as it disappears over the horizon.

Belated H/T to Elizabeth for the link.

March 21, 2014

Kate Bush announces series of concerts in London

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 14:23

The Daily Mail describes it as a residency at the Hammersmith Apollo in London:

Kate Bush is to return to the stage in London — 35 years after she retired from touring after just six weeks on the road.

She will play a 15-date residency at the Hammersmith Apollo which was the venue for a celebrated concert film she made in 1979.

The 55-year-old made a surprise announcement about the shows — to be called Before The Dawn — on Friday morning, with the first taking place on August 26.

Bush talked about a desire to return to playing live in an interview three years ago, saying she would love to play again before she became ‘too ancient’.

She was just 20 when she completed The Tour Of Life after topping the charts with Wuthering Heights the previous year.

Over the years, theories about her absence from the stage have included her perfectionism, a fear of flying and the death of one of the tour crew, lighting director Bill Duffield, during a show.

But in a rare interview with Mojo magazine in 2011 to mark her comeback, she explained that her years of silence on the touring circuit were simply down to the sheer exertion of the ordeal.

‘It was enormously enjoyable. But physically it was absolutely exhausting,’ she said.


LONDON – 12th MAY: English singer Kate Bush performs live on stage at Hammersmith Odeon in London on the penultimate date of her European tour on 12th May 1979. (Photo by Peter Still/Redferns)

September 13, 2011

New Kate Bush album to be released November 21

Filed under: Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:22

By way of a Twitter update from Stephen Fry, the news of a new Kate Bush album later this year:

We are extremely pleased to announce that Kate will be releasing a brand new album: “50 Words For Snow” on 21 November 2011

The album will be the second release from Kate’s own label Fish People and comprises all new material that was recorded during the same period that Kate worked on her album “Director’s Cut”.

[. . .]

“50 Words For Snow” will feature seven brand new tracks set against a background of falling snow. The total running time is 65 minutes and the track listing is:

SNOWFLAKE
LAKE TAHOE
MISTY
WILDMAN
SNOWED IN AT WHEELER STREET
50 WORDS FOR SNOW
AMONG ANGELS

January 18, 2011

A new Kate Bush release this year?

Filed under: Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:10

The Guardian is reporting that we may see some new music from the incomparable Kate Bush sometime in 2011:

After more than five years since her last album, Kate Bush will “likely” release new music in 2011. Following a rumour last week that the singer is finishing the follow-up to 2005’s Aerial, her spokesperson confirmed a release — but not necessarily an album — is expected later this year.

Thirteen exclamation points opened the post by London blog Wotyougot, declaring that Bush “will be releasing a new album in 2011” through label EMI. Although bloggers declined to reveal who told them this, they said this week that it came from “phone conversation(s) [with] reliable source(s)”. Wotyougot apparently see themselves as the Wikileaks of pop.

September 6, 2010

Fifteen albums/fifteen minutes

Filed under: Media, Randomness — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:58

I got tagged with this Facebook meme by David Stamper a little while ago, but I’m only now just getting around to addressing it. Here’s the description I was sent:

The rules: Do this if it’s fun. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you’ve heard that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what albums you choose.

So, because I’m too lazy to do it in Facebook, I’m doing it here (eventually, through the magic of Twitter, the link’ll appear in Facebook anyway). Roughly in chronological order:

  • Rush, A Farewell to Kings
  • Al Stewart, Past, Present & Future
  • Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV
  • The Alan Parsons Project, Tales of Mystery and Imagination
  • Dire Straits, Dire Straits
  • Kate Bush, Hounds of Love
  • Neil Young, Live Rust
  • Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
  • King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King
  • Kitaro, Silk Road
  • Stan Rogers, Northwest Passage
  • Dead Can Dance, The Serpent’s Egg
  • The Pogues, If I Should Fall From Grace With God
  • John Coltrane, A Love Supreme
  • Charles Mingus, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady

I had to take it in chronological order to limit it to only fifteen, so no really recent stuff . . . but perhaps that’s fair as it’ll take time to show if more recent stuff will hold up to long-term listening. Not quite making it onto the list was Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis & Gil Evans.

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