More KateCon gossip

[barger@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Jorn Barger)]

Chris and Vickie and I flew back (separately) yesterday, after a week of
sightseeing, leaving only Larry keeping the Anne Elizabeth House warm. 
Some addenda:

The holdup for Kate's version of Rocketman is that it's for an allstar
Elton tribute album, and they're only slowly accumulating enough mega-stars
to fill the album.

We got some details on the CD-set's songlist from Peter and Dave: they
themselves had been asked to do the first draft of all possible tracks to
include, and they accidentally forgot the 7" version of Cloudbusting. (One
down.)  Kate scratched Dreamtime, The Confrontation, and one or two others
(correct me if I'm getting things slightly wrong, here.)  The duplication
of "Walk Straight Down the Middle" (Andreas, that's what I was calling the
hidden joke, for after the 2nd time the next song is "Be kind to my
Mistakes) must have been due to carelessness and/or the economy of only
making one master tape for LP's and CD's (and cassettes, which I saw in
England but hadn't heard of before).

D&P told us that the only reason the TV version of "December" was released
on the "It's Christmas" compilation was that the EMI guy who fetched it
from the vault pulled the wrong tape-- lucky for us.

The CD set is selling for $200 in the UK, but I picked up an LP set for 68
pounds, minus 15% VAT makes it about $116!  Vickie will be raving shortly
about the Virgin Megastore...

The KateCon T-shirts are dark blue with a simple KT-fem symbol in red on
the breast.  There were matching buttons for sale, and a big thick red
heart with a gold lion-profile on one side (lion-heart) which I assume is
ancient but I'd never seen it before.  I asked for one of everything at the
souvenir booth, and it came to 49 pounds 50 (= $100).  The new poster is a
drawing by Debbi (?) of Kate in the TSW-video outfit, walking among
dolphins and snow and leaves and stars and who knows what all, really very
nice,

Kate told a funny story about one of the early band's first pub-gigs, where
she danced down into the crowd (as she told the story, she did funny
hullaballoo dance-moves to illustrate) where a schoolchum greeted her, and
she realized the pretentiousness of her poses so she stopped and chatted,
and then realized it was time to sing again so boogied back up on stage...

KATEFANS MUST BE THE NICEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!!!!!  Peter and Krys and
Pammy and Dave were so thoughtful and open and generous of their time and
home, it was just too cool!!!

Yes, I won a video, and Kate signed it.  Ron Hill and Cynthia Shaefer and
Mark Semich and I were all sitting front and center (only a few yards from
Kate when she appeared), and we took turns defending our space while the
others went for drinks, etc.  I asked Ron to buy me ten raffle tickets (one
pound each) and he got five for himself, and handed me the batch that
included the winning ticket.  (Thanks again, Ron.)  I kept hoping but
didn't really think I stood a chance-- I heard later they'd raised 1300
pounds on the raffle, so my chances were one in 130, but then they gave at
least three prizes, which improved the odds still more.  Only the people
sitting near me heard me shout "That's me" when they called my number, but
I clambered up on stage-- my hands were shaking-- and yelled "Jorn from
Chicago" into Dave's mike, and shook Paddy's hand (he was grinning
insanely), and Dave apologized that I wouldn't be able to play the PAL
video on US equipment, and I said I'd treasure it anyway, and gave a
raised-fist victory-salute as I left the stage (anyone got any photos of me
on stage???).

I got to see the video the next day at Peter's: it's the TSW videos as
they're about to be released (finally-- things really move slow over there)
in England, which is prefaced by the entire VH-1 special, though my copy
has the time-stamp thruout.  Vickie convinced me to take it to Peter
afterwards to get it signed, along with a SIG radio-show flyer, and then
she called me a fool when I told her I'd just handed them to him, and
hadn't pressed my way backstage with him, which probably would have been
easy.  As it turns out, Ryan was the only person we know of who actually
met her that day-- even the quiz winners had to wait outside for their
autographed boxes to be delivered.

By the way, it appears our teams didn't even finish 2nd in the quiz, for we
missed the Roy Harper question as well as the KateCon-One
convention-location question, and there were many 19-right results.  Peter
said they were VERY relieved that that one team got all 20, because they
just didn't have time to do run-offs amoung such a big tie.

Speaking of Roy Harper, by coincidence he was playing a concert last night,
which Larry got to (C&V&I had already left)-- how was it, LH?

Kate's little reworking of Lagan Love was one of only about ten songs she's
sung in public in the last ten years.  As far as anyone could remember, it
was her only a capella public performance ever.

She was very very nervous, it seemed to me.  She told about her panic when
she has to go to the grocery story check-out-- (Kate, I'll shop for you!) 
But Dave said that she was absolutely ecstatic afterwards at the warm warm
warm warm warm reception she received.  Yay Kate! Yay us!  Yay concert
tour!  Ouch bank account!