New Kate bootleg -- a CD!

[IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]

     IED just stumbled across the first-ever KATE BUSH PICTURE-CD.
Actually, though, it's still a pretty shoddy piece of merchandise,
despite its uniqueness (so far). It's an interview-disk, a new entry
in the continuing series of cult-rocker interview CDs that have been
showing up in import CD shops during the past couple of months.
(Earlier entries include Sisters of Mercy, Cocteau Twins and Peter
Gabriel, plus perhaps five or six others.) The covers of all of these
CDs are yellow, with a photograph of the artist/artists on the front
of the "booklet". No label name is given, and it's possible that the
company is the same that put out the long series of picture-disk vinyl
interview LPs under the "BAKTABAK" label, but there's no way of really
knowing.

      [	|>oug is not sure that "bootleg" is the most appropriate term
	to use here, as interview albums are probably perfectly legal
	to market.  -- |>oug ]

     The Kate Bush CD features a candid photo of Kate from her
appearance at the laser-art press audition of the _Hounds of Love_ LP
in the fall of 1985. Another photo by the same photographer was used
by Verkerke poster company as the source for a poster which appeared
in Europe shortly afterward. Kate is seen wearing a plain off-white
silk blouse and the dragon earrings which appear on the cover of the
_Hounds of Love_ twelve-inch (and elsewhere). The same photograph is
reproduced on (and somewhat rattily inserted in) the label-side
surface of the compact disc itself.
     As for the audio content, it is comprised of two separate
interviews, the first of about twenty-three minutes' length, the other
of about nine minutes. IED cannot say for sure, because he has never
heard the "official" _HoL_ promotional interview LP, but it seems
likely to him that one or the other (or possibly both) of the
interviews on this CD come from that interview. The longer of the two
is an undoctored, legitimate conversation between Kate and an
unidentified Englishman who asks all the usual and basic questions,
receiving all the usual and basic replies, although Kate seems to take
more than her usual care in choosing her words.
     Oh, one more thing, this by way of a warning to the buyer: on the
back of the CD's jewel-box notes there is a "guarantee" that none of
the interview CDs in this yellow series is less than 40 minutes in
length. In fact, however, the Kate Bush CD is only a little more than
32 minutes long. So much for truth in advertising.

----End of news section, beginning of weird personal opinion section-----

      Hearing these very recent interviews after a long spell of
listening to some of the earlier interviews, it occurs to IED again
that Kate has become an even more articulate and eloquent speaker than
she was a decade ago. She has also radically reduced both the
expressive range of her speaking voice and the "South London" accent
which she used to assume in interview situations. For years it has
seemed to IED that the now-forsaken "popular" accent which Kate used
to sport during her public appearances was affected rather than
ingrained, because no other members of Kate's family spoke with such
an accent, and because its intensity seemed to vary depending upon the
social and topical context in which she was speaking. Her present
accent, which more closely approximates "U" diction, and which she has
used with a new consistency over the past three years or so, is very
likely another more or less calculated element in her promotional
campaign for the post-_Dreaming_ work, since it reinforces the
seriousness and sobriety of thought and feeling which Kate has tried
to communicate in her tone and choice of words since 1985, in a clear
effort to correct her undeserved image as a naive and overly effusive
flower-child.

-- Andrew Marvick