Kate Bush and Bobby Sherman

[Doug Alan <nessus>]

> From: Laura Frank Clifford <lcliffor@bbnccm.ARPA>

> I've got several cousins in England.  The last time I mentioned Kate to
> one of them (about 2-3 years ago), I got the impression that being a Kate
> Bush fanatic was about as cool as being a Bobby Sherman fan.

Sigh!  Old images die hard.  It probably has something to do with the
record company marketing Kate as a sex kitten during her early career.
I bet your cousins never heard "The Dreaming"!

I guess the NME was right when they said

	But among a younger generation, the school of thought seems to
	be that liking Kate Bush is about as hip as owning a set of
	Melanie albums or else that she is... *wonderful*.

> My 70-year old uncle who lives in Glasgow had even heard her and
> dismissed her as a wailing pop star that he heard on the radio far too
> often... (My Scottish mother loves her, however, as she does Barbra
> Streisand.)

Like Barbara Streisand, huh?  What does she think of "The Dreaming"?

I have a xerox of an article that appeared in some U.S. music magazine.
It says of Kate:

	Occupation: English singer/songwriter, former romantic pop
	thrush now a highly original progressive-rock stylist.

Well, I'll be the first to declare that "The Dreaming" is much much
better than Kate's earlier albums, but "former romantic pop thrush"???
Maybe if they had said "highly original progressive romantic pop
thrush"....

I recently talked via telephone to a record collector who specializes in
(among others) Kate Bush.  Every now and then, he goes to England to
search through record stores.  He said that in all the time he's been
doing this, he's never met a Kate Bush fan working in a record store.
He said that sometimes people even get quite antagonistic when he
mentions Kate Bush.

He feels that this has something to do with the more stratified class
structure that exists in England.  Someone who works in a record store
is probably of the working class, and Kate Bush was born into a rich
landed family.  This and the fact that she was basically *handed* a
record contract when she was sixteen with the help of Pink Floyd's David
Gilmour and that she was immediately incredibly successful (her first
single went to number one and stayed there for four weeks) without
having to struggle at all, cause many to see her as someone who has
never had to work a day in her life.

Of course, in reality, she works very hard.

			"Some say that knowledge is ho ho ho"

			 Doug