Finding KaTe

[Elizabeth=Bonesteel%Eng%Banyan@Thing.banyan.com]

When I first found KaTe, I didn't know it.

See, way back about a million years when WBCN Boston was still a cool radio 
station, there was a Big Matress Song of the Week called "Breathing."  
Frustratingly, I kept coming in in the middle; and while I loved the song, I 
never caught the artist's name.  So the song came and went, and I, who was 
only fourteen at the time, went back to hating school.

Many years after that I was in a car with my brother, who was playing a tape a
friend had made for him that had a bunch of different stuff.  Sure enough, 
there was "Breathing."  He played it a couple of times at my request, and then
I asked him who the artist was.  "Oh," he said, "that's Kate Bush.  You 
wouldn't have heard of her."  He was right, I hadn't; and two minutes after we
left the car I'd forgotten her name.

Fast-forward to 1985, when there was a neat TV station in Boston called V66, 
which was a sort of local MTV deal.  They started playing the video for 
"Running Up That Hill", which I found wonderfully bizarre.  I had a friend who
knew of KaTe, and described most of her work as "singing very fast in a really
high voice."  (Found out later she was referring to "Wuthering Heights" - not 
the description I would have used, but I suppose I know what she meant.)   I 
went out and bought the album, and found it bizarre but not wonderful 
(although I do remember thinking, during "Waking the Witch", that I would 
eventually come to love that song).  I taped it, as I did all my records, and 
spent most of my time playing RUTH over and over and over again.

And then one day I let the tape run over into HoL, and the rest is history.  I
became hooked on the album, went out and bought TKI (at the recommendation of 
my friend), and then one day browsing through the KaTe bin plucked out "Never 
For Ever" and turned it over.  Sure enough, there it was: the Big Matress Song
of the Week!

I now own all the (legal) CDs, including This Woman's Work, which I bought 
with money that really should have been used to replace my clutch.  My 
favorites vary so much, although lately I've been listening to "Ran Tan Waltz"
a lot.  Like many others, I'm left cold by much of "Lionheart"; but I wouldn't
trade it away!