1979 TELEVISION SPECIAL

To the question who is my all-time favourite of female musicians, the answer is KATE BUSH without any hesitation. I have enjoyed her music since my teens. But like it is the case with all of my long-time favourites (GENESIS of the 70's being the most important), I have never felt I should like everything - or, for God's sake, to have every available music - by those favourites. This fact was brought to my mind with this DVD release. The 1979 Christmastime television special starts with 'Violin', a wild, actually punkish song from the then upcoming third album Never For Ever. I simply can't stand it! I have forced myself to listen to it less than five times in my entire life, and having it now served with an artistic visual performance didn't make it any better musically. If I had been originally introduced to her music with this song, I would have needed to win a deep prejudice first before letting her to become my favourite.

Sorry for that long introduction not quite up to the point. On the other hand this speculation about the liking or disliking of one's favourites gets very poignant with this DVD. You see, first I thought: "Wow, this is Kate Bush! This is rare! This is something special indeed!" And then, after viewing it, I thought "well, naturally it was interesting to see, but I won't miss it at all after I have returned the DVD to a friend." In one word, the television performance (it's not a live concert in the truest sense) is terribly UNEVEN. Enjoyable at its best, an embarassing nuisance at its worst.

After Kate has danced in bat-like clothes and screamed all the horrible high notes of 'Violin', she gets a spare moment to change costumes while two faceless men dressed up like gigantic violins - or cellos or whatever - move slowly to Erik Satie's tiny and pretty piece 'Gymnopédie No. 1'. Next Kate sings and plays piano on 'Symphony in Blue', a fine and too forgotten track from Lionheart. In the end, I prefer this kind of honest live performance of a good song over the arty-farty coreographics for silly songs. I know, 'Them Heavy People' enjoyed success at the time and was a live favourite in her tour of '79. Kate and two men in large trench coats keep pushing each other as if they were rubberballs. It gets slightly irritating before the naive ear-worm song is over.

A choir-like introduction of "angel Gabriel" is amusing. PETER GABRIEL plays his 'Here Comes the Flood' all by himself on keyboards. We remember how he prefers that ripped-down version (also heard on the ROBERT FRIPP album Exposure, 1979) over the heavily overproduced 1977 album version. Kate's non-album track 'Ran Tan Waltz' is among her poorest songs, and the amateurish coreography (for three again) featuring Kate dressed as a man is equally silly and annoying. 'December Will Be Magic Again' appeared as a single almost a year later; here its live performance, Kate back on piano, is among highlights.

'The Wedding List' and 'Egypt' are also tracks to be released in 1980's album Never For Ever. Here the television performances are totally made up; the former song features acted scenes of the bloody wedding and the female rage with a gun, while the latter sees Kate miming the song with a veil covering her nose and her round eyes almost popping out, against various Egyptian sceneries. This kind of a cheap and half-baked music video stands time much worse than a real concert. (And when you're listening to an album, you can direct your own inner videos!) Then comes a sad ballad 'Another Day' written by Roy Harper, performed with Peter Gabriel, though probably just miming instead of real live. They sit apathically looking very tired (of each other), visualizing a dead relationship. Gabe has short hair like in the covers of his 3rd "peter gabriel" album. This song is the most valuable rarity on the whole DVD. The 45-minute set ends with 'Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake', in my opinion one of the weakest Lionheart songs. I can't say I much enjoy the semi- dance performance (again accompanied by two men); the whole thing looks somehow very gayish, a bad slice of phoney cabaret.

All in all the song selection is interestingly very unexpectable, and that certainly has its pros and cons. I would have rather chosen other songs from The Kick Inside and Lionheart. A minus comes also from the shaky end credits, totally missing the band?! Still, to give only two stars would feel too heartless. I don't recommend you to buy this DVD but it's worth seeing once. At least parts of it can be found on YouTube.