Music Jar – week 4

Each week, I take a piece of paper from a pickle jar. On that pickle jar is the name of a musical artist. This week, I got to enjoy Kate Bush.

This, of course, was not the first time I had heard of KB. You’d have to have been living under a rock for the last forty years plus to have managed that. From what I can recall, there are two Kate Bush-y memories that I have from my formative years.
The first was when I went to see Placebo play at Brixton Academy in 2004 and there was a lot of talk about them doing Running Up That Hill – a song that much later I found out was by Kate Bush.

The second is slightly more puerile but totally Schiernecker at the same time. As a child, my dad used to say to me – “one in the hand is worth two in Kate’s bush”. As with a lot of his wisdom, it went over my head for a number of years but I’m laughing to myself as I think of it. It was around the same time that we had to walk home after a birthday meal out and he regaled me with the history of his sexual exploits.
“Anyway, 3, 2, 1, you’re back in the room…” as he would say in a nod to Little Britain, a show he’s never been able to free himself from the catchphrases of.
Kate Bush.

I knew a lot more Kate Bush songs than I would have figured. If it had come up on Pointless, I’m not sure I could get a Pointless answer (even after a week of listening) but there is a lot to be said for the way that Babushka, Running Up That Hill, Hounds of Love and Wuthering Heights entered my life like they’d always been there.
Just had an awful memory reemerge. Remember the height of lockdown when everyone was doing quizzes… Well, one of my friends started running Friday night home discos where she would play out requests over Zoom and we’d all get drunk in our lockdown quarters and dance like idiots. One night, after maybe a bottle of wine, she played Wuthering Heights and I threw a blanket around me and danced like I was possessed for four minutes and twenty eight seconds.

She’s an overlooked artists. She definitely has her fans, of which I know my friend Drew is a huge one, but I don’t think it’s possible to give Kate Bush the flowers she deserves for being a true original.

What a woman.

My Spotify playlist of artists for 2022 will be built up here.