IED:
"Babooshka"
Lip-synch/video, taped March 20, 1980, for the U.K. TV
programme The Dr. Hook Special. Also includes interview. This video was
made shortly before the programme aired. It involved some rather complicated
video effects. Kate is featured in a rather bizarre costume: on her the
right side she resembles a staid Victorian lady in mourning dress; on the
left side a glittering, liberated young woman in a silvery jumpsuit, with
bright lightning-streaks painted down her "side" of Kate's face.
Her figure is lit so that only the "repressed" side of her costume
is visible during the verses of the song, and mainly the "free"
side during the choruses. After the performance ends, Kate is seen sitting
among the members of the American pop group Dr. Hook, whose ill-spoken
members crack childish, bathroom-humor asides about and to Kate. Kate, of
course, takes everything with good grace, smiling nervously throughout.
Finally, after a stunningly ignorant and illiterate introduction by a member
of Dr. Hook, Kate's video (never commercially released) for Delius is shown.
"Delius"
(Also shown November 25, 1980 as part of a programme
about the composer Frederick Delius from the U.K. TV series The Russell
Harty Show) This video, which was never included among Kate's commercial
video packages, was made very quickly but after careful preparation (see
Paddy Bush's reminiscences about the shoot in an issue of the Newsletter).
The setting is a quiet, lazy English riverbank filled with reeds and grass.
By the bank is a wheelchair-ridden old man, his body covered by a
throw-rug, his head obscured by a large yellow disk resembling a sun. This
figure presents an image of Delius much like the one which was depicted in a
BBC television film about Delius's late years which was directed by Ken
Russell in the early 1970s and which had greatly impressed Kate as a child.
Gliding along on the river is a young swan-girl, represented by Kate in a
gossamer white gown with wings. The imagery for this performance might
nearly as well have served to illustrate Kate's cover version of Donovan's
Lord of the Reedy River, as well, so compatible is the imagery. (No video
was ever made for the Donovan song.) Also note the re-use of the sun-mask in
a scene from the Breathing video. |
