KT News and Love-Hounds Mailbag

[IED0DXM@OAC.UCLA.EDU]

KT News:
 ~~~~
     Nothing big, but it should be put on the record. Peter Gabriel's
first compilation video, appropriately titled _CV_, includes _two_
versions of "Don't Give Up". Version 1 is the well-known video which
MTV televised, featuring one unchanging camera angle of Kate and
Gabriel embracing, and lip-synching the song in front of an eclipsing
sun. Version 2, however, is a kind of impressionistic montage of
narrative film which shows scenes of unemployment lines, driver's-seat
shots of long, winding roads in the rain, and decaying factory-towns.
In this version both Gabriel and Kate appear only sporadically,
lip-synching with faces toward the viewer in super-imposed head-shots
which fade in and out in one or another corner of the screen. The film
is in color, but very drab and washed out to near-gray, and some of
the imagery is slightly "solarized". The VHS Hi-fi sound is extremely
good.
     Second KT News item: KATE BUSH IS GOD.

 Love-Hounds Mailbag:
 ~~~~~~~~~~
 Doug and Tim raise related questions, as follows:

 >>    It is I who says that Kate is unlikely to tour again. That's
 >>   just my opinion, however.  I wonder what makes IED think she
 >>   is likely to tour in the near future? -- Doug

 >      Anyone seen Kate Bush recently?  I saw her in the film "The Secret
 >  Policeman's Ball 3" a short while ago.. she seems to have put on a
 >  *lot* of weight, which is not doing her singing any good either.
 >     Anyone got any better info?

 > -- Tim

 >>     Kate always blimps out between albums. I have a picture of
 >> her going to see *Brazil* before *Hounds of Love* came out
 >> where the wonderful newspaper notes her transformation from a
 >> "slender sparrow" to a "plump little robin".  She always loses
 >> the weight when her album comes out, though.  Maybe that's why
 >> it always takes so long....  I fail to hear the difference a
 >> few pounds makes on her voice, however. -- Doug

     IED agrees completely with Doug's observation, and it's this very
fact about Kate that is one of the reasons a tour seems likely to this fan.
(Poor Kate, she's so tiny that if she gains even a couple of pounds, it
shows.) Doug, have you seen the photo of Kate on the front cover
of the latest _Newsletter_? It's of course possible that the
photo in question is not new, but that seems very unlikely, since
it would have to date from at least as late as 1985, and she didn't
look quite this lean during any part of the '85-'87 period, as far as IED
ever saw. Furthermore the new photo does not bear any visible signs of
touching up (unlike most of the publicity and record-cover photos ca.
'85-'87). Notice too that she's back in a dance leotard, covered
with chalk, and that the makeup she's wearing is a totally unique
style, and that she has utterly shed any little-girlish appearance
she once had. Based on these impressions, IED thinks the photo must be
very recent, probably from about October or November of 1987.

      [	|>oug thinks that the logical inferences made here are a bit
	tenuous...  If the photo is recent, what is she doing in a
	dance leotard?  Kate said that the "Running Up That Hill"
	video was her farewell tribute to dance -- one last attempt to
	get some classy dance in a pop video, before giving up dance
	for good.  -- |>oug ]

     Also, per a comment which was made by a certain highly spaced-out
but very serious and intelligent fan who will go nameless here (but
who lives in St. Louis), the very reticence of Kate's answers in the
"interview" of the new issue, coming as it did after a _ten-month_ gap
between _Newsletters_, may almost be a message in itself. At the very
least, her extreme vagueness in the new issue is very intriguing.
     Finally, Doug's doubt that there will ever be another tour -- a
quite understandable opinion, given the massive expense, training and
planning which a tour would require, and the fact that Kate has
fielded and half-promised a tour ever since the first one ended,
without ever delivering -- can be viewed as further reason for
assuming that there _will_ be one soon. This is because every time
Kate puts out a new album, the size of her artistic palette, so to
speak, grows exponentially; as a result the logistics and difficulties
inherent in creating a programme of such complexity grow in
proportion.
     This boils down to the likelihood that if Kate doesn't tour
within, say, six or seven months following the release of KBVI, she
probably really _couldn't_ tour again. Already there are going to be
four full albums to "cover" in the concerts, three of which will
probably demand incredibly complicated presentations to satisfy their
creator.
   In short: if she doesn't tour now, she never will.  Ergo, she
_will_ tour now! Simple, isn't it?

-- Andrew Marvick

	[ Why Kate won't tour again: Currently it takes Kate three
	  years to do an album.  (This probably breaks down into a
	  year to record the album, a year to make the videos, do
	  promotion, and record B-sides, and a year to rest.)  If she
	  were to do a concert tour, she'd probably end up spending a
	  year preparing and a year touring.  This would result in
	  five years between albums, which wouldn't be a wise move.
	  With Kate's currently expanding interests in entering the
	  film production world, recording new songs for every B-side,
	  and making her videos as elaborate as her albums, the time
	  between albums can only get longer, even if she didn't do a
	  concert tour.  -- |>oug ]