KATE BUSH Cathy Demos Volume One RED VINYL Ltd Edition #120 / 600 RARE

$

83

KATE BUSH Cathy Demos Volume One
NM/NM Used 7" Vinyl 33 RPM Record

Record Label: KB KB001
Matrix (Stampers): l-32763 KB 101-1 "She Smokes The Blackest Hash" / l-32763 X KB 101-B "Fan Fan Cecile And Jackie" "Fan, Fan Jackie & Cecile"

Rare and very collectable  7" EP by the young Kate Bush on KB Records. VERY Limited Edition is marked #120 out of 600. Red Vinyl.

Condition: Cover looks like new. Corners are sharp. There are no spindle marks on the label and vinyl looks unplayed. Near Mint.

Side One
The Kick Inside
Hammer Horror

Side Two
A Rose Growing Old
Keeping Me Waiting

From a KB Fan Site: The record is very nicely packaged in a white sleeve featuring one of the most beautiful of John Carder Bush's old Pre-Raphaelite-like close-up portrait photos of Kate, taken when she was about eight or ten years old. On the front are the words Kate Bush, The Cathy Demos, Volume One. On the back is a blow-up of Kate's eyes from the same photo, the catalogue number KB001, and the titles of four songs: on Side One, The Kick Inside and Hammer Horror, and on Side Two, A Rose Growing Old and Keeping Me Waiting. At the bottom of the back of the sleeve is the handwritten series number xxx/600. (IED's copy was number 269.) All the writing is in vaguely HoL -style black typeset.

The record itself is in a second, blank paper inner-sleeve. It is in red vinyl, and has black labels with white lettering in the same typeset. Titles are the same as on the outer sleeve. Finally, in the runout grooves there are "secret" messages which actually identify the recorders, at least by first name (this is only IED's theory). On Side One, the catalogue number (slightly different than on the sleeve) and the words: "She smokes the blackest hash". On Side Two, the words: "Fan Fan, Jackie and Cecile" and "Fan Fan, Cecile and Jackie". Since IED was told that the recorder was a woman, he assumes that one or more of these names refers to the manufacturers. He has no idea what the relevance of the "hash" remark is. Ideas, anyone?

Now to the musical content itself--in a word, amazing. It's fantastic! The first track is The Kick Inside, but the performance is an early demo version, featuring the voice of Kate accompanied only by her own piano-playing. The sound is extremely "matte", i.e. without any echo, ambience or reverb of any kind. This has the advantage of making the performance eminently clear. All four of the songs on the record have the same bare-bones sound quality, and all four are highly listenable. The transfer from the master-tapes must have been relatively well handled, because the tape-hiss-level and surface noise are quite acceptable.

In IED's opinion the four songs all come from the same demo collection. They do not come from the same collection which Peter FitzGerald-Morris discussed in an issue of Homeground last year, because the titles do not correspond with those he listed. IED believes that these recordings may date from about 1976 or '77. This is because Kate's high soprano technique is fully under her command, there is no hint of uncertainty with intonation, and a few of the little vocal embellishments of the melodies seem similar to some of those heard on the first two albums. Based on the only other pre-album recordings known to us already--the tracks Passing Through Air and Maybe, both of which stem from the first David Gilmour session--IED believes that the present four tracks probably date from a somewhat later period, because in both PTA and Maybe Kate's voice is a little timid and uncertain, and does not venture into her now-long-since-abandoned-but-historic falsetto range (which is at its prime in these demos).

However, IED is by no means certain of this dating, and indeed can readily see how another listener might make a strong case for placing the new group of recordings among the earliest collections (ca. 1971-73) which Kate made at home with very simple equipment and only piano accompaniment. Given the homey but high quality of the recorded sound and the evident care that was taken with its packaging and design, IED thinks it's likely that the reason there is no specific information about the recording dates is that the bootleggers themselves didn't really know. Anyway, suffice it to say that the recordings are early, and that they're beautiful.

Both The Kick Inside and Hammer Horror differ significantly from their later album versions. TKI veers from its album counterpart's lyrics several times, even referring explicitly to the song's characters' identification with Lizzy Wan--making it very clear that the actual story of TKI, though similar, involves quite different characters than Lizzy Wan 's. The piano arrangement--which Kate obviously plays in real time with her vocal--also differs in several places, and stands as further evidence of the subtle and unassuming, quietly sophisticated nature of her songwriting technique even at this very early stage. Naturally the performances are all highly professional.

Hammer Horror contrasts with its later album incarnation even more strikingly than The Kick Inside. This is partly because we know the song as a rocker of sorts, and in its solo-piano demo arrangement the expected visceral power of the song is, of necessity, suggested rather than hammered home (ha). On the other hand there are several marvellous structural touches, especially in the piano writing, that are absolutely brilliant, and the overall feeling of intimate confession in this demo version is, for this listener, a revelation: it completely transforms the long-familiar song into a fresh and touching new piece. The bridge section from the album version had evidently not yet been composed at the time of the demo's recording, for it is missing and the song is consequently much shorter. Also, many of the words are different than on the album version.

Then on Side Two there are two new songs. IED apologizes, but he couldn't possibly find the words to describe them to you yet.

What he can say is this: if you like Kate Bush,

Y O U M U S T G E T T H I S R E C O R D !