Kate Bush... Almost a Bollywood Star

Last weekend, I spent a good part of my day at Bookman's used bookstore.

I had a bunch of books I wanted to get rid of (read: not pay to ship to DC) and thought I'd see if I could pawn them off elsewhere. The good news is that they took several of them, and I ended up with a $12 book credit or a $6 multimedia credit. Not bad for some of the crapbag books I brought in (i.e.: James Frey's phony memoir, courtesy actually of Paola, and which I initially enjoyed until I found out it was all fake).

I decided against getting more books, as I was trying to get rid of too many in the first place (I know, I know, you can never have too many books... right, Greg?... but they're heavy) so I decided to check out the "multimedia" section.

First, I found Seasons One and Two of Arrested Development, but together they cost about $50, and let's face it, I'm a part-time babysitter, and money doesn't grow on trees.

So instead I dug around the CD area, where I found a hidden gem... Kate Bush's The Dreaming album from 1982...



Lately I've been on a big Kate Bush kick so I was really excited to find it. It has two of my favorite KB songs too... "There Goes a Tenner" and "Suspended in Gaffa."

I have to credit my friend Vicky H. (from high school) for introducing me to Kate Bush... because she was another artist we used to sit around listening to, along with the Les Miserables soundtrack, which I forgot to mention last week.

Anyway, I love love love the new CD. And I love Kate Bush's voice. Which really was the main point of this blog post...

And --- when I looked up some KB videos on You Tube, I discovered what freak show productions she used to make. Although one might already surmise from her music that she is slightly off-center, her videos prove that she has very little self-restraint and appears to bask in the overdramatic. Which is, of course, why I love her.

This is my favorite bizarro video...

...made even better by the fact that the song is called "Wuthering Heights" and features lyrics all about the characters in the book... which fits the theme of my summer Victorian reading spree.

Moreover, I also decided that Kate Bush is the British equivalent of all those Bollywood Indian women singers who belt out tunes about five octaves above the pitch of the highest soprano.

Personally, I've always liked the sound of those female Indian singers (although I do find it slightly bizarre that one country can produce that many women with voices that sound like they've been created with helium... but then again, India has like a gazillion people, right?) even though many of my fellow Americans loathe that piercing sound (take my friend, Aspen, for instance, who actually walked out of a theater in Mumbai -- dragging me with her -- before intermission because she couldn't handle the women's glass shattering voices. I'm guessing she probably hates Kate Bush too).

As a case in point, I found this clip from the Indian movie, Arpan...

... whose red-robed lady singer not only sounds a lot like Kate Bush, but she looks almost the same as her in the "Wuthering Heights" video too (minus the creepy, touchy stalker with feathered hair, of course).

Maybe it's an acquired taste. The music, that is. Not the creepy, touchy stalker.