My First KB

[Peter Byrne Manchester <PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu>]

       About a year ago Ed Suranyi floated a question for the group, "what was 
the song that first got you interested in KB?" (I paraphrase).  Since he was 
making a chart, I sent him my account direct, later had occasion to send it to 
Vickie.  In fact, I now see, what I was really answering was the Question of 
the Week today:  how did you find your way to Kate?

       Before I attach what I wrote last year (edited for the occasion), I 
must say that as someone who has been reading the Digest since Fall '89, this 
is the most vital and encouraging thread in a long time!  Nothing else I have 
seen come along has elicited contributions from so many new voices.  Or such 
forthcoming introductions of themselves from so many old masters.  You 
novices:  JOIN IN!  Don't be shy; every single post I have made in two years 
has had errors exposed, incomplete knowledge diagnosed, or ill-considered 
attitudinizing flamed.  So?  We're only human; she's God's sister!  To be 
devoted to so high a standard, you have to take your licks!

       *      *      *       *       *       *       *       *       *

       1985 was the year of my KaTaclysm, in March, in San Francisco, when my 
old friend Charles (proprietor of Fantasy Etc, a great bookstore on Larkin at 
O'Farrell) said he had something to show me, sat me down in front of his tube 
just before midnight, and rolled the Hammersmith tape starting with "Feel It," 
to the end.  I didn't really get into it with that song particularly, but to 
this day I still recall what happened next.

       The rhythm for "Kite" set in, with the vignettes of Kate and her dance 
companions doing that steppin' along.  The reggae movement in the rhythm 
perked me up a bit, and then the video cut to the ramp through the band and 
the orafice through which Kate appears.  "Beelzubub is aching in my belly-o," 
and Kate camps her way down the ramp and into the song.

       I was totally transfixed.  I sat forward in my chair, completely 
fascinated and astonished.  What was going on?!?!?  Her slyness, silliness, 
deliberate preciousness, combined with a totally captivating dancey song, 
simply blew me away.  I could hardly stand it, the pleasure that I took from 
that first sight of her.  After a lengthy segue, "James and the Cold Gun" set 
in, this hyper-erotic exercise in intensity, but I was still back in "Kite."  
"O England, My Lionheart" came along.  I could hardly believe her range.  
"This is a MAJOR, MAJOR performer!" I exclaimed.  "How could I not have heard 
of her?"  Then "Wuthering Heights."  At that point I was too bedazzled to be 
following the song any more.  I remember only the intensity in her eyes, the 
astonishing openness of her femininity, the redemptive sensuality of her 
movement.  I had not yet gotten beyond "Kite."

       I could hardly sleep that night, wanting to see those songs again, 
lusting over the fact that there were MORE!  Charlie had all the albums, and 
showed them to me, but I brushed them aside.  I wanted to SEE HER again!  I 
have hardly ever in my life been so BLASTED into admiring attention, touched 
so deeply and inexplicably.  Charlie's tape was a copy from an original at a 
video store out on Clement, and there had been talk that the owner was 
thinking of selling it, since it wasn't doing any business.  That morning, 
before going to the airport to return here to Long Island, we went by the 
store.  Owner not in.  So I rented the tape, and just absconded with it.  
Charlie fixed it up with the owner later; I got it for cost ($45.79 or some 
such).
 
       I played it for days.  Within 24 hours of arriving home, I had found 
all four albums and had them on permanent rotation in the car, but I couldn't 
begin to get enough of the Hammersmith show.  I couldn't tell what she looked 
like!  Each new song would be a new persona; could the liquid girl of "Moving" 
be the same as the edgy neurotic of "Violin", the strutting rocker of 
"Heartbrake" the same as the Kathlick maiden of "Feel It"?  And WHO WAS THAT 
BEING in those eyes and hands and hips in "Wuthering Heights"?!?  When Kate 
becomes herself at the very end, setting down the flowers and leaping and 
waving, I could only wonder in amazement.

       It took me two years to come down from the frenzy of devotion that was 
awakened that night.  The following fall saw the release of _Hounds of Love_, 
and all the ensuing hoopla.  I was in a near-psychotic state of obsession with 
her, until at the urging of a woman friend I wrote to her, and received a 
reply.  This calmed the storm; Kate Bush became real for me, a human being in 
the same world with me, and now I have a more balanced, realistic and 
objective sense of her and her work.  But I will never renounce the special 
intensity of discovery from those days in 1985.  As I said at the close of my 
letter to her, "You confirm old friendships, you cement new ones.  You are a 
FORCE for good.  Your aspiration is a kind of prayer."  It still means a lot 
to me to know she read that letter and replied.
............................................................................
                                                            Peter Manchester
 "C'mon, we all sing!"                            pmanches@sbccmail (BITNET)
                                    pmanchester@ccmail.sunysb.edu (INTERNET)