This woman's work

A break from my Thicke-hatin' and un-Wanted Rihanna attention-paying. Let's get to some music that matters: "Wow" by Kate Bush. Released in 1979 as the second single from her underrated album, Lionheart (one of my personal favorites, however). Gorgeous. In song and symbol.

OK, so the video and the interpretive dance are a tad precious perhaps and Kate's voice may be an acquired taste. (There is a cheesy parody out there, Pamela Stephenson from Not the 9 O'Clock News, knocking on Kate's artistic foibles in "Oh, England, My Leotard." I'll let you discover that on your own.) Nonetheless, the creativity and the fortitude it took to make this work of art! To be this incredibly intelligent, colorful, iconoclastic, nonconfirmist, sexy performer, singing her own work for the world to hear! All at the tender age of 20-something! For a major label in 1979 no less! With a backing track consisting of real horns and woodwinds!

I hope Katy Perry and Lady GaGa see this video and weep every night for what they are not and for what they cannot do - although I'm sure La GaGa would just co-opt the concept and clothes and Katy Perry would rip off most of the imagery from Kate's videos and call it her own.

There are so many things to comment on about this video and this song. I love the fact that when I finally discovered the video it confirmed my speculation about the line

He'll never make the screen
He'll never make The Sweeney
Or be that movie queen
He's too busy hitting the Vaseline

Wow. Indeed. That would be a very provocative line for 2013. Imagine it in 1979. Add to it that very suggestive bum pat Kate gives to underscore the meaning, and I'm quite surprised this video wasn't banned for life from the Beeb.

Before you get offended by Kate's tantalizing reference to gay male sexual expression pre-HIV/AIDS, do keep in mind that on the same album, she also included a song called "Kashka from Baghdad," which starts off with this line--

Kashka from Baghdad
Lives in sin, they say
With another man
But no one knows who

And continues with the chorus--

At night
They're seen
Laughing
Loving
They know
The way
To be
Happy

It took me some time to get that reference to "another man," meaning one member of the couple is a man and so is the other. Despite being released in Britain in 1978 a mere nine months after her debut, The Kick Inside, was launched, I didn't find Lionheart in a local record store until 1979 or 1980, as I recall. I finally acknowledged my same-sex attraction in the fall of 1980, "came out" as it were. So imagine the import of that song, of both songs, in conveying some understanding of gay existence, at least to me, during those formative years.

Here you had a respected songwriter telling tales about "us," openly, not in euphemism, at least in the case of "Kashka."

Anyway, "Wow." And "Hammer Horror" and "Wuthering Heights" for that matter. Oh, to be in England, to live in a country where songs like these could get played on the radio, make it on to the pop charts, into the Top Twenty, even number 1.

One of life's regrets? I didn't make my first trip to Europe until 1985, and then to the former Soviet Union, Estonia, Finland, and Sweden. All cool and memorable in their own right, but the UK circa 1977-1982 was where it was at. I'm sorry I missed it. I'm sorry I didn't buy more records and listen to BBC World Service and that the internet didn't exist as we know it then. I'm sorry that I didn't have the money and the good sense to say "fuck responsibility," "screw everybody who knows me," and "death to what's expected of me" and just go, live, love, explore.

Maybe next life. However, I'd probably have been way out of my depths -  life seems such much better from far away, especially when it's so boring at home. And I'd probably be dead now. Or not. I never have done very well among the British in terms of affairs of the heart or other, Vaseline-lacquered body parts.

It's no secret that I love the music from the '70s and '80s. The '80s everyone loves, but the '70s sewed the seeds for the '80s, good and bad. The '70s got it all started with punk, disco, singer-songwriters, Philadelphia soul, glam, new wave, electronica, rap, reggae, and a whole lot more.

So yeah, after 1985 or so, maybe even after 1983 or so, it all started to turn to crap. Clever synth riffs and thundering beats, all of which seemed novel a few years before, quickly became standard and then predictable. Even I tuned out Kate Bush after 1985's Hounds of Love, practically ignoring 1989's The Sensual World until a decade or more after its release.

I'm not sure we've ever recovered from what the classes and the masses did to the world in the 1980s. I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more recent "golden age" of popular music, culture, or awareness (because there were issues too, ideas being addressed and tossed around, however casually). I certainly have enjoyed musical moments since - early '90s rave culture, late '90s drum-and-bass and Cool Britannia. There's plenty of world pop, stuff in other languages, and "pop with jagged edges" (like Annie) to have appreciated over time. Yet it doesn't feel as though there's been any groundswell of good music, great culture, or sustaining thought since then.

I'm old. Perhaps I just missed it or didn't get it (for example, grunge and hip-hop, neither of which I ever warmed up to, neither of which were aimed at me).

Nowadays, despite the technological and media advantages, I would imagine it would be tough to be a pop star. Too much capitalism. Too much conformity. When the possibilities for DIY pop should be even more spectacular and doable.

Kate Bush then for me represents a last, great era of yes-we-can popular music. I hope to convey in this and future posts how important in the pop panoply I think she is and why I just generally think she's "ooh, yeah . . . amazing."