A San Jose Katemas

[ed@wente.llnl.gov (Ed Suranyi)]

A few weeks ago I became acquainted with Karen Newcombe, who is a
huge Katefan, but who thought she was the only one in the Bay Area.
(Note that this is NOT the person I met at that radio station survey
I went to a while ago.)  I was determined to show her that this was
not the case.  She lives in San Francisco, but has no car, so I offered
to pick her up at a BART station and drive her to Larry's place in
San Jose, so she could experience her first Katemas.

I had promised Larry that I would help set up, so I arrived about
10:30 am with lots of posters, records, magazines, etc.  Andy Marvick
(IED) had just arrived with his laserdisc player and his own enormous
collection of stuff.  A little later Larry Yaeger arrived with a couple
more VCRs -- in the end there were five hooked up, as well as the disc
player, so we had every combination of player and recorder.

People started showing up in large numbers around 1:00 pm.  Nearly 
everyone, upon entering Larry's condo, reacted to the posters that
covered nearly all the wall space.  And we didn't even have room
for most of Andy's posters!  Another thing that drew the attention
of people was Larry's KTISGOD license plate, now autographed by Kate!
She wrote, on both sides of the plate, 'To Larry with love, Kate Bush."

Jon Drukman and John Relph showed up with a whole music store:
a synthesiser, a drum machine, and a mandolin.  They called 
themselves "They Might Be Midgets."  We had to wait until
Tracy Roberts arrived so she could be the lead vocalist.  The
first thing they did was "Jig of Life", with Tracy as Kate,
Andy Marvick as Jon Carder Bush (reading the poem at the end),
Jon on the keyboards and drum machine, and John on the mandolin,
which sounded great as a substitute for the Irish strings.  It
sounded fantastic  -- a lot better than I had expected.  At the
end they got a big round of applause.  We wanted them
to try something else, so Jon started playing around on the
drum machine with the rhythm of "Running Up That Hill".

"How about that?" someone asked.

"Nah," said Jon.  "I can't play the synthesiser and the drum machine
at the same time."  (In JoL, Jon played the synth during Kate's vocal,
and the drum machine during the instrumental section.)  "But I do
have the drum track for 'Hounds Of Love' already programmed."  So
they did that song, with a trio of women as the vocalist, and the
whole crowd (which numbered about 25 then) joining in for the barks
and the chorus.  I sure wish we had a tape recorder going because
was an amazing event -- we were all SO into the song!

We called up the Boston party and tried to get them to listen, but
each time something went wrong.  For JoL the phone was not in a
good place, so they couldn't here it.  For HoL we had the phone right
up to the speaker, but for some reason the line was dead when the song
was over.

Jon then played a cassette of some stuff he recorded in years past.
For Katemas two years ago he made a very bizarre version of RUTH, in
which he used a device to "push his voice into the Minnie Mouse range,"
as someone put it at the time.  He played Jenn Turney singing
"The Sensual World" with the reconstructed original Joyce lyrics,
and then Jenn singing (very nicely, I might add) "Under The Ivy."

Andy and I had a lot of door prizes to give away.  They included
such things as the "Love And Anger" US cassette single, Kate Convention
programs, magazines with Kate interviews, and spare singles that Andy
had lying around.  In the end nearly everyone won something, so Andy
felt sorry for the few people who hadn't.  He scrounged around in his
collection and eventually found stuff to give those people.  What a guy!

Peter and Charlie Manchester had to leave in the afternoon, but Peter
promised that he would be back later that evening to play show-and-tell.

Of course, all day we played lots and lots of videos, ranging from the
ridiculous American interviews on VHS to the sublime music videos on
laserdisc.  We debated what the thing Kate wears on her arm in "Suspended
in Gaffa" is -- we thought it might have to do with either archery or
falconry.  We held a mirror up to the TV screen in order to read some
backward writing in "Cloudbusting."   (We were wondering what Wilhelm
Reich writes in his notebook.  You can't see it well while he's writing,
but a few seconds later he holds the paper up to the light and if you
have a good freeze-frame you can see the backward writing through the
paper.  We think it says, "My final paper" or My last paper."  By stepping
very slowly through "The Big Sky" we found the bright flashes during
the scene when Kate is in a bright circle surrounded by points of light.
These flashes take up only about one frame, so Andy said, "They can't
serve any purpose except to be discovered by fans diligent enough
to go through her videos frame by frame!"

Karen Newcombe made a contribution to Kate lore by making a good stab
at explaining the last part of "There Goes A Tenner."  She thinks the
criminals are looking back at earlier times when they did simpler crimes.
Remember, Kate has said that this song is about some crooks on their
first major job.  Karen supposes that they used to be pickpockets.
Hence "pockets floating in the breeze" -- there were pockets everywhere,
so it was an easy life.  "When you would carry me" refers to the
practice of pickpockets to help each other -- one would distract the
mark while the other would perform the actual theft.  "There goes
a tenner" refers to the small amounts they'd take in these thefts.
What do people think?

After dark Peter Manchester came back.  He told us this fascinating
story of how he came to write a letter to Kate back in 86 or so.
He had set up his living room with piles of electronic gear and
cables everywhere in order to pick up Kate videos from a channel
he couldn't normally get; he called the room his "Kate Bush
observatory".  Someone asked him at the time, "Is there anyone
else whom you love as much as you love Kate Bush?"  "No," said
Peter, apparently surprised that anyone would even bother to
ask such a question.  He says he's not quite as far gone nowadays.
"Why don't you write to her," suggested the other person.

So he did.  He told us all about how he decided what to say, how
he put in a several paragraph hook at the beginning to draw Kate's
attention, ("She undoubtedly gets dozens of these letters, and I wanted
to put something in to grab her attention."), how he got the actual
address where Kate was living at the time (to me this is REALLY
amazing), and how he used Tibetan mysticism to "channel"
the letter straight to her.

Only three weeks later he got an envelope in the mail from England.
It felt stiff, so Peter thought it might contain an autographed photo.
He opened it and inside was a card folded in two -- like you can
buy at a Hallmark shop.  He opened it and bang!  The inside was
covered with Kate's writing!  Top to bottom, no margins!  He showed
it to us (this was the show-and-tell he referred to earlier).
Kate thanked him for his ideas and was generally really nice, considering
Peter had made an egregious error in his transcription of some of
Kate's lyrics, something he now admits.

After that, Katemas started winding down, and around 1:00 am the last
of us left.

Ed
ed@wente.llnl.gov