snakes&ladders
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Re: Kate Bush
Hammer Horror is pretty cool
The Kick Inside
Released February 17th 1978
(We've already touched on this album earlier in the thread - please see page 2)Track List:
01 - Moving
02 - Saxophone Song
03 - Strange Phenomena
04 - Kite
05 - Man With The Child In His Eyes
06 - Wuthering Heights
07 - James And The Cold Gun
08 - Feel It
09 - Oh To Be In Love
10 - L'amour Looks Something Like You
11 - Them Heavy People
12 - Room For The Life
13 - Kick Inside
Highest UK Chart Position: 3
For the next few months Kate's life continued to be a flurry of interviews and tv appearances, including numerous promotional trips overseas. In June 1978, Kate travelled to Japan to take part in the 7th Tokyo Song Festival. She sang Moving, later released as the first single off The Kick Inside in Japan. She made a massive impression and the single reached No.1! It was whilst in Japan she made her one and only advert for a commercial product - for Seiko watches. (The ad is on YouTube if anybody is interested, but very poor quality).
On returning to the UK from Japan, Kate started work on a few demos for her next album at her new home studio at East Wickham Farm (designed by brother, Paddy, and paid for with the royalties from Wuthering Heights). The last few months had been a super busy time for her with promotions and now EMI were wanting new songs, Kate was a little daunted but nevertheless rose to the challenge. In July Kate and crew flew to a studio suggested by Dave Gilmour, located in the south of France, to start work on the next album, Lionheart.
It was during this time that The Kick Inside LP was re-released in the US on the new EMI-America label, along with the release of the single Wuthering Heights. However it failed to make much of an impact - Kate just seemed too weird for the US market!
September saw Kate having to hit the promotional trail again, including tours of Australia and New Zealand. She really didn't like having to spend so much time with promoting, but realised it is an essential part of the job. This is what she once said on the matter: "I learnt very quickly after the first single that if I wasn't careful I could spend twice as much time promoting than actually doing the thing that I was promoting, which was the album or whatever. Promotion is very important but if you're not careful it leaves you shell-shocked and takes you further away from the creative processes. It's just that much harder to get back. Ideally I'd just like to work creatively because that's so time-consuming in itself that I still don't think I'd get everything I wanted done."
It was whilst in Australia that Kate first performed her soon-to-be new single, Hammer Horror (inspired by the horror film studio) . The following month she returned to Britain to prepare herself for the release of Lionheart.
Hammer Horror
Lionheart
Released 13th November, 1978
Track List:
01 - Symphony in Blue
02 - In Search of Peter Pan
03 - Wow
04 - Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake
05 - Oh England My Lionheart
06 - Fullhouse
07 - In the Warm Room
08 - Kashka From Baghdad
09 - Coffee Homeground
10 - Hammer Horror
Highest UK chart position: 6
Lionheart consists of songs written during Kate's time in France, songs written in the previous months and ones from before The Kick Inside which had been left off the debut album because of lack of space. The first single from the new album, Hammer Horror, failed to make much of an impact in the UK, and, unlike the first two singles which had both been top ten hits here, it only managed to climb to No. 44 (although in Ireland it reached No 10). The second single, Wow, did much better, reaching No. 14. (I have fond memories of first hearing this single. As a nine year old I remember running round the garden, arms wafting around windmill-style (trying to emulate Kate in the video), singing - or more like shrieking - WowWowWowWowWow. What the neighbours thought I don't know, for anybody who didn't see me - just heard the god-awful racket - I guess the Henson's cat got the blame.)
Wow
Another personal favourite from this album, Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbreak:
It is an album full of fears - of dying, failure, growing up, love, guilt... but Kate is in fighting spirit, she'll not let these fears beat her and faces them with her lionheart (she is a Leo).
I'll end this part of the thread with what Harry Doherty of music magazine Melody Maker wrote about Kate to promote Lionheart: "Kate Bush scares me for a combination of reasons. The first is the diplomatic pleasantness and awesome logic she displays in interviews when the initial impact is paired with the multifarious intensity of her music. I start to quiver. The songwriting, singing, the arrangements, the production have the mark of a singular personality. Kate Bush's music is more like a confrontation." Indeed
Hammer Horror is pretty cool
