Re: Reminisce

[jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu (Jeffrey C. Burka)]

S'pose it's my turn now.

October of '86, I started working at a record store and fell in love
with Big Country's then-current release, _The Seer_, which we used to 
play in the store all the time.  That was the first KaTe I owned.  I
still think that the title track of that album contains KaTe's best
duet/bv.  I recently played that song for a friend of mine who's a 
minor-leage KaTefan (he's missing an album or two) and had expressed an 
interest in learning more about Big Country.  I insisted that he listen
on some good headphones, and told him to 'watch' for her whispered vocals
on the left track (or is that right?  I can never remember).  I hit 'play'
and was not disappointed in the forcefulness of his "Whoaaaaa!"  ;-)

Sometime during the next 6 months or so, my manager at the store mentioned
KaTe to me as someone worth listening to.  I wasn't really sure how to
take Nick's recommendation--he had been an art/progressive rock fiend in
the early '70s (he saw Yes 7 or 8 times during the early seventies, as well
as Genesis in the mid 70's, and plenty of other folks), but had been born-
again sometime in the mid-80's and liked a lot of really wretched 'rockers
for christ' stuff like DeGarmo & Key, Michael W. Smith, and so on and 
so forth.

Spring of '87, I was at a classmate's house to work on a school project.  
She'd just bought the new PG album and insisted that we all listen
to "Don't Give Up."  That's my first recollection of her voice as a
seperate entity.

Summer of '87, I finally bought my own copy of PG3 (as a Genesis fan, 
I'd been listening to my brother's LP for a few years) while I was in
England.  Strangely, I bought 4 CDs while I was there (hey, I was young
'n broke!), all of which were then unavailable domestically in the US.
Within 3 months of my return, all 4 albums were available here.  Grrrr.
At this point, I think

Fast forward to February of '88.  I heard part of TWS in a friend's
dorm room at school, and asked to borrow the tape.  I listened to it 
twice and loved every single song on it and decided I needed at least
one Kate Bush CD.  I wanted to go with a 'known quantity/quality' so I
narrowed the decision to either HoL or NfE, as there were 3 songs from
each album on TWS, and fewer from the other albums.  As "Army Dreamers"
was my favorite of the songs on TWS, I finally decided on NfE.  "Army 
Dreamers" remains my favorite KaTe song.  I bought the CD in March of '88
and spent the rest of the school year annoying my roommate by playing
it constantly.

I returned to school the following Septemeber to find that a friend who'd 
NfE in my room had bought TKI and HoL, which I borrowed from him.  A
month later, I bought HoL for my dad (by that time, he already had a 
copy of NfE himself).  It took me almost 8 months to buy the entire
CD catalog.  _The Sensual World_ was the first KaTe album I was able to
buy as soon as it was released (actually, I think I was a day late; I 
hadn't heard it was to be released, and I happened to walk past a 
record store the day after--and promptly spent $14 I didn't really have...;-)

Jeff



-- 
|Jeffrey C. Burka                | "Show what you are / Be strong, be true  |
|                                |  Time for you to / Be who you are."      |
|jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu            |                         --Happy Rhodes   |