KonvenTion News

[nrc@cbema.att.com (Neal R Caldwell, Ii)]

Many thanks to the Love-Hounds who have posted the wonderful news of
KonvenTion goings on!  Special thanks to Pablo Iglesias who was kind
enough to email me his KonvenTion impressions directly when they
failed to show up on Love-Hounds.  His comments follow.


"Don't drive too slowly."                 Richard Caldwell
                                          AT&T Network Systems
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                                          nrc@cbnews.att.com

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 >From pi Sun Nov 18 16:15:22 1990
 From: Pablo Iglesias <pi>
 Date: Sun, 18 Nov 90 16:15:19 GMT
 To: Love-Hounds-request%gaffa.mit.edu@earn-relay
 Subject: KonvenTion News
 Cc: pi


Well folks, I see that no one else has posted yet about the KonvenTion
so I thought that I'd be the first;  am I the only UK lovehound that
bothers to show up to the office on a sunday?

Anyway the convention got started at around 12:20 in the Hammersmith
Palais.  This is a rather large and pretty cool looking dance place in
London.  ALl in all there were 1208 tickets sold and I can only guess
that most people showed up.  There were three main parts to the
KonvenTion.  I won't try to give a complete account of what happened.
ALl in all we had the following:

LIVE PERFORMANCES:

No not by kate.  The performances were by local artists who had
written in to KaTe saying that they were performers etc.  Most of them
were pretty good but nothing too special.  We must have had about 5 of
these groups:  one 4 piece band; 3 female soloists and one dance group
who have an interpretation of "This Woman's Work".  These were
interspersed in the three parts of the konvention.

DOOR GIVEAWAYS; A RAFFLE and AN AUCTION

All tickets were numbered (mine was 1156) and these numbers were used
to pick winners for small prizes.  Typically either an autographed
copy of TSW album or TSW poster.  All the winners had to answer pretty
basic KT trivia questions (eg.  when is KaTemas) and although the
questions go harder towards the end when the people stumbled the
audience shouted out the correct answers so that they all got the
prizes.  

For the raffle they were selling tickets for 1.00 pound.  There were 4
prizes:  the main one was of one of KaTe's outfits with an autographed
picture of Kate wearing the outfit.  SOme English guy won this which
made me curious as to what the heck this guy was going to do with this
:-) Two of the lesser prizes (videos) were won by LoveHounds!  Neil
Calton got one of them (I forget who got the second)

The auction was conducted by Del Palmer.  He brought out two of his
passes from the Tour of Life.  They fetched something like 80 pounds
for his passes and 60 pounds for another pass.  This as well as all
the other money was to be donated to an Aids research charity.

QUIZ

There was the quiz competition of 20 hard KaTe faKTs.  Well, I'm a
recent convert to  Kateness so I found them hard.  The winning group
of four got all 20 questions correctly so I guessed that they weren't
that hard.  The winners eached received a specially autographed copy
of the record Box Set.

VIDEO

We had a long video history of KaTe's carreer.  THis was divided into
three parts.  Again, I can't judge as to how rare the material was.
It was all very interesting however.

DEL PALMER, PADDY BUSH and ..... KATE!!

Del Palmer came out early an auctioned the passes above; he was also
around the people signing autographs.  Paddy did the raffle drawing
but otherwise didn't say anything or sign autographs.  

Kate came out at 5:00.  During the first part of the convention there
had been a box on the stage where people could leave pieces of papers
with questions for here to answer.  When se came on stage they
arranged a couch so she could sit an answer the questions.  She would
read the person's name and then the person was given an opportunity to
ask the question to KaTe directly.  These was all very well done.
Kate seemed quite willing to answer all questions.  I wish that I'd
have a tape recorder or even a piece of paper to remind myself what
the questions were.  

The one question she left out and didn't answer until the end
concerned the possibility that she might tour again.  Well folks,
according to KaTe herself she would like to tour towards the end of
next year.  More importantly she said that if things worked out right
there would be an official announcement in January about it!!!!!
No word on where she'd tour, but judging from her words and the tone
it does sound like there is a good possiblity that it will go ahead.

Then KaTe thanked everyone for coming.  She asked everyone to have a
moment of silence for Gary Hurst and Alan Murphy. When she did this
she took out a piece of paper with some words and she sang a small
poem saying "thank you"  She was then given a platinum record for
sales of TSW at which point she left the stage.

Anyway, that is my short recollection of what happened at the
convention.  For more details you probably need a real Kate expert
which I'm not.  It was sure nice to see her.  She seemed really down
to earth;  it was also nice to meet some love-hounds and to place a
name beside the id's :-)

Pablo