Paul from Super Deluxe is a bit of a petulant manchild. He seems to feel he was entitled to interview her for the reissue series and has been grinding an axe ever since. He was over the moon to discover a typo on the spine of Kick Inside and had it as his Twitter wallpaper for ages. Slightly pathetic for someone his age.
He does seem to like to slag off the remasters whenever he gets the chance. I bet if one of Kate's people contacted him saying he could interview her on the condition that some subjects were off limits he'd jump at the chance!
The remasters were definitely a missed opportunity, which I’m sure has been thoroughly discussed in the forum, with the missing non-album tracks, the recycled imagery and lack of additional liner notes. Some of the individual album reissues are fine. I went out and bought a vinyl This Woman’s Work box. The extra tracks are sequenced beautifully on that set.
It's funny Kate said an interview years ago that 60 Words For Snow was the start of a new era. However since then there has been no talk of new material and the box sets suggested that it was all done with. But most "legacy" artists are like this. They are too busy enjoying life to make new music and just now and again give soundbites about "working on stuff". Also I don't think Kate particularly enjoys live shows. There are some artists who can't live without being on the road/on the stage and tour at every opportunity. Maybe Kate might get inspiration from the ABBA hologram show....
It is what it is. They weren't super deluxe sets, in fact one was around £30 at one point. I would say it's similar to The Police boxsets, repacking of a back catalogue without many extras.
I think her music has transformed herself as much as anything. She’s moved forward in her life. Most pop musicians don’t. They love the process. I think she sees the process, painstaking as she approaches it, as a means to an end. That’s one of the things that makes her a real artist. She’s done stuff and moved on. Having a son was clearly transforming for her. Maybe she’s said all she had to say. That would be fine. Artists aren’t endless wells of product for punters to consume.
I think the remasters came out because they needed to be done. There were plans to release remastered albums in 2000 but they never emerged. I think they were going to be 2CD sets with the original album plus a CD of extras. EDIT: An article from Dec 2000 on the Kate Bush News site about the aborted remasters https://www.katebushnews.com/2000/12/08/homeground-66-new-album-and-re-masters-updates-plus-new-article-from-paddy-bush/
I honestly think she loved doing shows, but she's just such a perfectionist that she wanted to do something that pushed the envelope. She did that with her tour, and she also did with the residency. She traveled all over the world to find the musicians for Before The Dawn and rehearsed them for more than a month - and these were world-class players who would be as good as anyone in a week. I was there on September 2nd, 2014, and it really was unlike any show I'd ever seen. It was not a concert with theatrical elements, it was a concert plus a Broadway/West End show - which was acknowledged by receiving a special Editor's Award from the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. I'm aware we were all incredibly keyed up, seeing something that we had thought would never happen, but it really was an exceptional show. The day after the first show, the Times, the Daily Mail, the Guardian all raved. I'm pretty sure the last thing those three papers agreed upon was "Hitler is bad."
opinions on the two voices of Kate... I love them both, but I may love her early voice best...Wuthering Heights is a perfect example...
$275. Complete and in good shape except for some split seams on the covers that probably happened 32 years ago in transit.
An interesting point. Given the difficulty in getting new material from Kate, she clearly took the time to make Director's Cut. Does anyone know what prompted her to spend time on it? I'd of guessed, of all artists, she'd rather not redo her older songs in favor of new material, but obviously that wasn't the case. Anyone know?
I honestly believe that Director’s Cut started as a way of reworking old songs in preparation for Before The Dawn.
My 10p on the remasters... I have all the original CDs and probably would have bought the boxset(s) just as a keepsake really. I thought the packaging was awful. The Fishhead artwork, label is downright ugly IMO. Shame.
To defend Paul, he is a great interviewer and asks the questions the fans would ask and a few the fans wouldn't have thought of. He loves McCartney too, but he does frequentingly call out Macca for refusing to do genuine revealing interviews in a similar way to this article, so he's never likely to be invited to an interview with either artist. The fact he is honest at his own expense makes me respect him more. His interview with David Rhodes about the Before the Dawn shows is the best article I've read on the subject. Similarly his interviews with the many producers who worked with McCartney in the 80s are way more revealing than the 1,000s of column inches that other journalists get from the man himself.
That's my thought to, similar to the new vocal on Running Up That Hill for the Olympic ceremony - no need to do it, unless she was preparing to sing it live further down the line.
What's so bizarre about Director's Cut is that term usually applies when a film is released that and been modified to match the needs of the film studio, and the director didn't have final cut. But that has nothing to do with this situation. Ever since Hounds of Love, Kate has had complete control - nothing was released that wasn't her "cut". In this case, it was nothing more than "I changed my mind."
he's happiest when listening to old T'Pau LPs on repeat. His website provides a good service, just don't read any of his views.
To be fair to Paul his website is all about deluxe editions, hence the website title. He cares deeply about the packaging as many of us do, and the packaging for the Kate remastered box set was shockingly bad. The second box had a whole variety of different types of CD packaging in the box. The remastering of Kate’s sublime back catalogue, one that she has complete control over, was presumably a one off event. Was that really the best that they could come up with? No essays or liner notes, no rare pictures etc For an artist of Kate’s stature and a known control freak to release a shoddy package like that was really poor.. I am not talking about the music only the packaging. Paul did right to call her out on it.
The music was changed too, and none of it for the better in musical terms. The remaster campaign was a fail for me, even though as a dutiful KB fan I bought it. When you're screwing with an album like Hounds of Love, alarm bells should be going off!
As far as stage performance goes, “Running Up That Hill” wasn’t any different in the clip you posted from when she performed it in 1987. She just stood there that time, too. Seems like a song that would lend itself to choreography, but besides the video where she just dances to it, it’s just been “stand there and sing” for that one.
