Bloc Party did an AMAZING cover of “Hounds of Love.”
Yes, it was not a bad cover. They even got the barking right.
And while I love me some Pat Benatar, she SO did not get Wuthering Heights. Still, not really a valid criticism; gonna hafta claim subjectivity on that one.
You must be joking. Even if you meant the last century, I doubt she’s even in the top 100. Maybe if you restrict your domain of interest to avant-garde, artsy rock music.
No, I originally wrote “2 or 3 most important.” But then I realized I meant “avant-garde, artsy rock music.” I expanded it to 15 or 20 to make my statement more accurate.
For whatever it’s worth, I actually believe this; I’m not making some kind of hyperbolic outlandish claim out of perversity or whatever. As a lifelong music geek, I actually literally and honestly believe this to be true.
Needless, YMMV.
I also will not name any copy-cats … Tori 
.
As for the OP, I will also highly recommend “The Whole Story”. It’s essentially a smaple bag so if you are every going to like her style you should find something on there. I haven’t herad her latest album, but "Sensual World’ seemed terribly forced and pretentious to me. All teh stuff I have heard prior to that I’ve liked.
Putting her on a list of the 15 or 20 most important musical figures of the last century, or at least popular/rock music, wouldn’t be entirely unjustified. She’s one of those arists who’s direct influence was very limited so it’s hard to ‘prove’ how big an influnce she has had. Unlike ‘the first’ acts in mainstream genres there haven’t been too many direct copycats, though there have been a few. But there certainlyseem to be a lot of artists where I can hear distinct overtones of her work.
Actually a list of the top 20 most important musical figures of the last century would be a kinda neat thread. Has it been done?
Yeah well, I believe that the universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and I believe that if I try hard enough I can fly to the moon just by flapping my arms…
And I know that believing doesn’t change reality.
Listening to Kate Bush is like listening to harpies screech while they claw a blackboard, with a drum machine playing in the background.
So . . . your personal opinion is “reality,” but anyone who disagrees with you might as well believe they can fly to the moon.
Got it.
Almost forgot… no, she didn’t.
Different types of headsets and microphones have been around for about 50 years now. Heck, in WW2 they had headphones with microphones attached to them. Beyerdynamic, Shure, AKG, and many other microphone/audio manufacturing companies have been around since the early part of the 20th century, and lavalier microphones have been around since the 1950s.
Wireless microphones have been around since at least 1953 cite, and in fact one was first used in movie-making in 1961 during filming of “Mutiny on the Bounty” with Marlon Brando cite.
The story, which has become garbled by Kate Bush fans, is presented here.
Kate Bush did not invent anything having to do with wireless microphones or microphone headset technology. And what was fashioned for her was not so much an “invention” as it was a fabrication.
Gee I would think she rates genius pretty easily. She has recorded at least 5 very good to great albims - The Kick Inside, The Dreaming, Hounds of Love, , The Sensual World and Aerial. She produced all her own stuff from The Dreaming onwards, from her home studio with the next album. And lissener is right The Dreaming was the peak of her anger, just have a listen to Hounds of Love through a decent set of headphones - it is a different mood and you can appreciate that her musical ideas are pretty damn clever.
I should confess that, as a former sound engineer, I like some things for technical qualities that other listeners wouldn’t care about.
She must be just about the least seen multi-million seller ever. The only live work I know that she did was the one tour that produced Kate Bush Live at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1979. The show was so expensive to stage she lost money touring.
No, you don’t “get it”.
I’m saying that because you believe something doesn’t make it true.
If that isn’t clear enough, I’m saying that Kate Bush is not an influential artist. Her music and her style are not widely copied, much beloved, or even admired from afar. That you like her music is indisputable, and I’m glad for you that you find something redeeming in her banshee-with-a-Casio style.
But she isn’t even close to the same league as the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Steely Dan, Janis Joplin, Eric Clapton, or dozens more artists who are mimicked stylistically by other artists, no matter how much you “believe” it. She has and will continue to have no lasting effect on popular music… as can be noted by the long-standing lack of demand for screeching female caterwauling accompanied by synthesizers in today’s musical marketplace.
And you can prove that she isn’t in the same league to beobjetcive relaity how exactly?
I know nothing about Kate Bush. I’ve never heard any of her music, as far as I know.
But I’m pretty sure myspace music is legal. You can listen to streaming samples of all kinds of bands there. http://www.myspace.com - click on “music” and the rest is pretty easy to figure out.
Also, http://www.pandora.com is an interesting site. You give it an artist or a song and it plays similar music. It usually plays a song by the artist first, though. It’s kind of hit-and-miss if you’re looking for something specific, but it is interesting nonetheless.
In reply to the OP - well, I don’t know from genius, but she’s certainly an extremely talented songrwriter and singer, although her style is not for everyone. I agree that The Whole Story and Hounds of Love are great places to start - significantly, there’s a bit of overlap there.
The Whole Story has a good selection of her hits, including “Wuthering Heights”, while Hounds of Love shows off both her production talents and her songwriting skills - the album sounds amazing, and there are some cracking good tunes on there. There’s also a taste of her more esoteric side with the second half of the album, a connected song cycle called “The Ninth Wave”. The only other album of hers that I own is her latest, Aerial, which is not as immediately accessible but well worth staying with - especially the seond disc, another connected song cycle which is quite moving.
As to covers - Placebo actually do a fairly good version of “Running Up That Hill” (although, as others have said, it’s probably one of her more conventional tracks). The cover of “Hounds of Love” that others have attributed to Bloc Party was actually done by The Futureheads.
I probably would have characterised Kate Bush as one of the most admired female artists of all time. And certainly beloved - apart form her huge and rabid fan base, you can always see the room perk up when something like “Babooshka” comes on the jukebox. Down at my local pub, I have actually (and often!) seen people doing the dance she does in the video for “Wuthering Heights” when it starts playing. Or at least make a drunken attempt to. (Maybe this is a US versus UK/Australia thing - I don’t think she’s had as much commercial success or as high a profile in the US). There was quite a lot of excitement when Aerial, was due to be released, and lots of media attention.
Well, I’d say that most of her influence is not in people copying her style or sound, it’s more in the place she occupied and to some extent created in rock for female performers. Kate Bush was one of the first, and for a long time most successful, female artist to write and produce her own material (and marry it to her self-choreographed performances), with complete control over her image, sound and production, and all from a very unique and feminine persepctive, rather than just trying to emulate the boys (e.g. Janis Joplin). There are a lot of artists who occupy this space now - Tori Amos, Alanis Morisette, PJ Harvey, Bjork, even Madonna, and I think they all owe a lot to Kate Bush. Its in this sense that I think she’s been hugely influental, not in terms of there being lots of Kate Bush clones running around sounding the same.
Alanis Morisette had one of the world’s biggest selling albums ever, and many people would classify it as screeching female caterwaling. She primarily used guitars, but then again Kate Bush’s musical palette is hardly limited to the synthesiser. I’d say there’s a huge demand for it.
Geez, I started out with a couple of paragraphs and it just kept getting longer and longer. It’s been sitting in a Preview window since last night. I added a couple of things and I guess I’ll go ahead and send it. Anyone who feels like getting on my back because it’s so long and choppy, I deserve it. I just don’t want to trash the post. All this, and I’m still the last person who should be defending Kate. I’m not articulate enough.
I have no idea what you heard, but I can’t even begin to imagine why she would be compared to Yoko Ono. I respect Ono, though I’m not into her music, so I don’t want to say anything derogatory, but the biggest difference is that Kate writes so many beautiful melodies (yes, with notable exceptions).
I could no more convince you that Kate is a genius than I could convince someone else that Picasso is a genius, especially if they’ve only glanced at one or two pictures of his. To some people, Kate is an aquired taste. To others, her music and voice grabs them immediately (that’s what happened to me). To others still, they’ll never get what other people see in her. Either she grabs you at the right time, with the right song, or she doesn’t.
I can’t be objective when it comes to Kate. Practically everything in my life I owe to her*. I love her voice, all her many many voices. I love her music, because I think it’s highly original and interesting. I love her lyrics because they almost all tell stories and are endlessly fascinating. Practically every song takes on a character (several of them male), be it a Viet Cong soldier (“Pull Out The Pin” which was inspired by a documentary she saw), to Houdini’s wife (“Houdini”), to a muderer who knows that his mother will hide him (“Mother Stands For Comfort”), to a woman who’s trying to talk her husband out of flying contraband from Malta to England (“Night Of The Swallow”), to a scientist who’s developed a machine that can kill by sound (“Experiment IV”), to a bank robber whose heist has gone horribly wrong (“There Goes A Tenner”), to Heathcliffe’s Cathy (“Wuthering Heights”), to a worn-out old prostitute (“In The Warm Room”), to a downed fighter pilot during WWII (“Oh England, My Lionheart”), to a baby inside a womb during a nuclear war (“Breathing”), to a male murderer who prefers poison (“Coffee Homeground”), to a mother who’s lost her son in the war (“Army Dreamers”), to a woman who’s lost at sea (the whole of The Ninth Wave), to an eccentric scientist’s young son (“Cloudbusting”), to a woman who realizes that she danced with Hitler the night before (“Heads We’re Dancing”), to a kid who’s built a rocket pack and tries it by jumping off the Waterloo Bridge (“Rocket’s Tail”), to a little boy who worships Peter Pan (“In Search Of Peter Pan”), to a woman in love with a man who’s obsessed with Pi (“Pi”) and tons of others.
She writes songs based on and inspired by books, such as “Cloudbusting” (based on the memoirs of Wilhelm Reich’s son Peter, A Book of Dreams), and “Get Out Of My House” (inspired by Stephen King’s book The Shining…it’s SUPPOSED to sound like a bizarre nightmare).
She writes a lot of songs based on and inspired by movies, such as “The Red Shoes” (inspired by the movie of the same name), and “The Infant Kiss” (based on The Innocents which in turn was based on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James).
She writes about people (Aborigines: “The Dreaming,” “Houdini,” the composer “Delius,” Joan of Arc: “Joanni”), and places (“Top of the City,” “Egypt,” “The Big Sky”). She writes about things (computers: “Deeper Understanding,” violins: “Violin”), and states of mind (“Sat In Your Lap,” “Suspended In Gaffa,” “Leave It Open,” “Frightened Eyes,” “Rubberband Girl,” “Not This Time,” “All We Ever Look For”).
In other words, her songs are interesting beyond the voice and the music. You have to dig long and hard to find a love or loss song, and when you do find them they have more to say than oooh baby I love you, you hurt me so bad. I like that about her because heaven knows the world doesn’t need any more straight-ahead gushy love or hurting heart songs.
It is my opinion that The Dreaming is not only Kate’s best album, but one of the best albums ever recorded. But even I didn’t grasp that immediately. It took me several listens to even begin to try and figure out what she was up to. Every song is so multi-layered that I still hear new things every time I listen, especially if I listen on headphones. Many lyrics are so cinematic, you close your eyes and there’s a mini-movie playing in your head. The ones that aren’t cinematic are thought-provoking, exploring topics rarely heard in modern music (such as wanting knowledge but being too lazy to pursue it, or realizing that the more you know about a subject, the more there is to know). It was called “over-produced” by some at the time, but I don’t think so. I think it’s just right. Every note is where it’s supposed to be. Every vocal inflection is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. Every sound effect is exactly where it’s supposed to be. Every instrument is used exactly the way it’s supposed to be used. Every lyric says what it’s supposed to say. It was recorded 25 years ago and doesn’t sound dated in the least. It could have been released yesterday. It is, to me, a perfect album.
If you’re interested in hearing from others who are much better and more articulate writers than I am, here are a couple of links. Even if you never come to like the album, these will give you a glimpse into her head space.
The Zig Zag Dreaming interview (by Kris Needs)
Electronics and Music Maker Dreaming interview
I would certainly love to help you, but it would have to be done off the board. If you feel like it, e-mail me.
On Preview…
It is, though some fan sites have been streaming Kate’s music. Since Kate’s American record company also has an official MySpace page, and they haven’t shut down the fan sites, I’m assuming they’re tolerating the sites just to help spread the word.
Here are a couple of Kate Bush MySpace sites:
http://www.myspace.com/thekatebush (I’d especially recommend “Under The Ivy”)
A goodly chunk of the writings about her regarding the release of her most recent album go into why she’s considered important and influential, but I don’t know them well enough to be able to know which says what. Plus, some of the best pieces, such as a 16-page article in Mojo, isn’t online.
Here’s where the bulk are:
Gaffaweb - Reaching Out - Reviews: Aerial
Gaffaweb - Reaching Out - Articles/Interviews: Aerial
This is one of my favorites:
Shrill? Screech? You two must have only heard her early albums. I could play you dozens of songs that aren’t shrill or screechy in the slightest. She hasn’t been “shrill” or “screechy” since 1982. The Dreaming isn’t shrill, and is only “screechy” on a couple of songs. Hounds of Love isn’t shrill or screechy. The Sensual World isn’t shrill or screechy. The Red Shoes isn’t shrill or screechy. Aerial most definitely isn’t shrill or screechy. How sad that her entire catalogue and her worth as an influential artist is being dismissed on the basis of the singing style of her first 3 albums.
She doesn’t write songs for other artists, though other artists have covered her songs.
It’s I Wanna Be Kate and my mileage most definitely does vary. I think several of the covers are worthwhile. Syd’s is my least favorite though. There are about 3 or 4 I don’t care for or that do nothing for me, but the rest I quite like, and several I love. Susan Voelz’s ethereal cover of “The Sensual World,” The J Davis Trio’s funky rap take on “There Goes A Tenner,” and My Scarlet Life’s strange view of “Suspended In Gaffa” are my favorites.
You’re the one who doesn’t get it. Kate IS much beloved and admired, and by very diverse artists. Just ask Tricky, Chris Martin and Coldplay, Outkast (Big Boi is a huge fan), Bjork, Tori Amos, KT Tunstall, Imogen Heap, Sarah McLachlan, Dido, Kanye West, David Gilmour, Peter Gabriel, Siouxsie Sioux, Happy Rhodes, Jane Birkin, Charlotte Church, Richie Blackmore, Stevie Nicks, Marillion, Dusty Springfield, Toyah Wilcox, Gorillaz, Maxwell, Terry Gilliam, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand, Rolf Harris, Katie Melua, Madonna, Tim Burgess of The Charlatans, Cyndi Lauper, Richard Barbieri of (the group) Japan, David Sylvian, Al Stewart, Noe Venable, Antony from Antony & the Johnsons, Jewel, Japanese star Utada Hikaru, PJ Harvey, Goldfrapp, Charlotte Martin, Neil Gaiman, John Cale from Velvet Underground, Elton John, Trio Bulgarka, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, Milla Jovovich, Jane Siberry, Annie Lennox, Sinead O’Connor, Pat Benetar, and that’s just scratching the surface.
You’re embarrassing yourself and you don’t realize it. Kate has ALREADY had an effect on popular music, but because the women who’ve been influenced by her aren’t played on the classic rock stations you obviously listen to, you don’t know it. Kate absolutely belongs among those names, even if hers isn’t as well-known.
Tori Amos (who is NOT a copycat, but was influenced by Kate), Sarah McLachlan, Jewel and Sinead O’Connor are 4 “names” who’ve stylistically mimicked Kate in one way or another, and have been played on the radio.
“screeching female caterwauling”? I’m beginning to think that you haven’t even heard Kate, at least not anything that’s been released since 1980.
There are plenty of female artists, hundreds of them, out there in “today’s musical marketplace” who have been inspired and influenced by Kate (while remaining true to themselves). Just because your “musical marketplace” is narrowly-defined doesn’t make it any less true.
Also, inspired and influenced doesn’t always have to do with vocals and music. Kate has been an enormous inspiration to women in other ways, such as writing her own music; producing her own albums; keeping control of her music; starting out being manipulated by the record company, then turning around, putting her foot down and having a say in her own career; and various other things. Few artists can emulate Kate. She was lucky enough to have a supportive record company, a huge support system, and a first hit single and hit album. Still, she’s a musician’s artist, the kind of artist that many would love to emulate.
I don’t mean to imply that there aren’t other very influential female artists, ranging from Melanie to Janis Joplin to Joni Mitchell to Joan Baez and Janis Ian, but to deny Kate’s place in musical history is ignorant (that’s not meant in a derogatory way, it just means “not being aware of”).
Thank you for your post. I’d love to hear some tidbits that you care about. I’m fascinated by Kate’s technical work. Not that I’m a technical expert, but it’s still interesting to me.
*My husband and I met because we were both Kate fans, and have been happily-in-love partners for 23 years.
Kate Bush’s influence or lack of aside, an artist doesn’t have to be popular or widely copied in order to be influential.
90% of Clapton’s fans have probably never heard of Robert Johnson, who was hugely influential to Clapton and a host of other ‘guitar gods’.
Leonard Cohen is often cited as one of the great modern influential songwriters.
Joni Mitchell is no longer popular nor widely copied, but her influence is undeniable.
It’s like a family tree. If a guitarist is influenced by Clapton, that guitarist is also influenced, although indirectly, by Robert Johnson. If you’re a big Stones fan, you’re hearing a distillations of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Elmore James, et al.
A special thank you to Monkey Chews and really to Equipoise – that was much of what I was looking for. See, I find Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos, Suzanne Vega, Leonard Cohen among other artists to be important (Cohen in particular I find a genius in terms of lyrics and style, if not always execution – check out “I’m Your Fan” and “Tower of Song” to see his influence).
Equipoise, you have made an excellent case for her influence and “genius” even if only other musicians get her (Schoenberg proved that genius doesn’t always follow listenability and Ives faced enormous opposition to his incredible work). I expect on actual listening, I will eventually become a fan, because my love of songs begins with lyrics. It is then up to the artist to marry that to a musical fabric that elevates the experience of the lyrics. I’m putting the cover CD on my list, because I personally love to hear other artists cover songs by people who they admire or have influenced them.
I realize that sometimes music is more about the listening than it is about the hearing.
Thank you all for your thoughts.
Lissener is a perfect example of a Kate Bush fan. Very dedicated and and totally convinced that she is the goddess of music.
Now those may be his opinions but that is what they are. Opinions. I don’t think the average American has any idea who Kate Bush is, nor would they like her ‘hits’.
The thing is, if you like her stuff, that’s fine. Don’t listen to her, just because someone told you she is the best thing ever. listen, form your own opinion and go with it.
Who is she married to again?
Then you are up for a treat. Kate’s lyrics are her strongest point, as are her vocals, instrumentals, mixing, and everything else she does 
People are handwaving on this point … but it actually has some merit.
I can understand if 90% of a musician’s body of work is non-commercial (e.g. Pink Floyd, pre-80s Yes). But when an artist never dips their toe into the mainstream … I don’t know. It can be a pretty substantial barrier to appreciating an artist’s output.
It’s very weird for folks to say that Kate Bush is some towering figure in music, when I’ve never once heard any of her songs anywhere. Ever. She just seems to me to be something of a “niche” musician, who accomodates a small niche of fans … and nothing she does mixes into even the outer boundaries of the mainstream (and in turn, she may well reflexively spurn the mainstream, as well).
I’m not saying she stinks. I like her intro to “Games Without Frontiers” … think it’s a cool addition to the song. I guess I really just wonder what all the hubbub’s about, and feel far removed from it. If Kate’s music were speaking to me, I should have heard from her by now.