So Kate Bush came out on Saturday Night Live one evening. I was 15 or 16, she was just a couple of years older. She was touring her first album, the Kick Inside, and she sat on top of the piano with her knees tucked under her chin (I couldn't find clips of this on youtube, so I might be remembering the specifics of her posture wrong, but that's how I picture it, at any rate) and did two songs, Man With the Child in His Eyes and Them Heavy People. Some have called her an acquired taste, but not for me. I immediately went out to get that first album which was, as I recall, not that easy to find in Orange County...
Man With the Child in His Eyes...
IBL:mm
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Kate Bush is another weird case of someone I have always known is brilliant, and yet I never became a fan. But the beauty, subtlety and intelligence in her work is obvious in this clip you chose.
ReplyDeleteMy version of this kind of never look back relationship with a singer came with Rickie Lee Jones. I saw her for the first time on Saturday Night Live. She did Chuck Es in Love and I thought very hip and very exact but a little too pop for me. Then she did Coolsville and my musical world changed. I ran out and got the record and spent weeks trying to get my friends to listen past Chack E but they were elsewhere for the most part. Then her second record Pirates came out and confirmed everything. It is amazing to have a record whisper in your ear all day long. I saw her at a low point in Berkeley after Pirates when she was drunk on stage and even then her performances were graceful. Later came lots of good music, never the heights of that second album and the short Girl at Her Volcano again for me. But on every album there was a gem. My favorite song sung by Rickie Lee Jone is actually written by Tom Waits, and is called Rainbow Sleeves. But for this, especially after what you wrote about Ian Hunter, I wanted to include Rickie Lee Jones as a mature and sensitive artist. This is called Bonfires:
http://youtu.be/Qip5oXYcZcY
Going to listen to this in a moment, George. I've always liked Rickie; we spent some time listening to those first two records at Santa Cruz, as I recall. And I was also watching that night she first appeared on Saturday Night Live.
ReplyDeleteI think I remember that night too, because I believe she may have been wearing some sort of gold catsuit and I may have passed out.
ReplyDeleteI like her a lot more now than I ever did when I was younger - of course I've *also* enjoyed both a Lady Gaga and a Katy Perry song in the past 12 months, so this could be indicative of a tumor.
Paulie - indicative of a tumor: HUGELY funny...
ReplyDeleteIn re: Rickie Lee
ReplyDeleteI heard her with more sympathy after seeing her nodding out in a corner booth next to Tom Waits at a birthday party for Bette Midler one night at the fabulous Cathay De Grande. Chuck E. was there too, sitting in on harp with house band Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs for a few numbers.
As did John Doe, Exene, Billy Zoom, Ray Manzarek, most of the Blasters, Tito Larriva of The Plugz, Cesar Rojas from Los Lobos, Phranc (everbody's favorite Jewish lesbian folksinger nee' avant punk rocker), Jeffrey Lee Pierce from Gun Club, Brian Setzer from Stray Cats...as wild a night as I've ever had in a club. This would have been in 1981, I think. I literally picked Exene up off a barroom floor that night.
RLJ seemed....uhh...'sleepy'.