“Out in the garden there’s half of a heaven and we’re only bluffing,

we’re not ones for busting through walls.

But they’ve told us unless we can prove that we’re doing it, we can’t have it all.”

Kate Bush

Suspended in Gaffa” from The Dreaming

1982

 

 

It is said that the best place to start is the beginning. At first, I believed that meant March of this year. But the more I thought about it, I realized I would have to reach much further into my past…

 

I was 15 years old and engaged in a bit of night swimming with my friends and my beau of the time. As the moonlight did a Monet jig across the lake’s surface, I heard it. That voice! The composition! What was this heretofore unknown sound that was glimmering across the water to change me forever?

 

Once we’d all returned to shore and were drying off at the house, I asked my young beau about the music I’d heard. Just before our swim, he had lined up several albums on the turntable, under the weight of the automatic arm and then aimed the stereo speakers at the open doors, toward the lake. Now that I had asked, he had to look through the vinyl to locate just what I was after. Once he’d found it, he handed the LP’s cover to me for inspection: Kate Bush – The Dreaming.

 

I didn’t rush out to buy it, but I did file away the memory of that mesmerizing, unique music. When I did purchase my very own copy, I coveted it. And each time a new Kate Bush record was released, I sought it out to add to my collection.

 

Around 5 years later I was working at Streetside Records in St. Louis and would regularly socialize with my awesome coworkers. One night we were at Ron’s house. He had a video of Kate Bush’s “Live at Hammersmith Odeon” from her 1979 tour. That was the only tour she’d ever done, so fans were crazy for it. I don’t know where Ron had gotten his VHS copy, but it was about the coolest thing in town. While we all watched and talked and generally had a good time, Ron told me he’d replaced all his early Kate Bush LPs with CD versions and offered his vinyl to me. Of course I accepted. From then on, Ron and I shared our love of Kate. He was a really good guy.

 

Cut to March 2014. As a member of the Kate Bush fan club (yes, that’s right), I’d received an email alerting fans to the fact that Kate Bush was going to do some shows at the old Hammersmith Odeon, now known as the Eventim Apollo. My head just about exploded! She hadn’t played live shows since the ’79 gigs. The woman just doesn’t tour. Once I stopped hyperventilating, I read the remainder of the email and saw that I could – as a fan club member – take part in a pre-sale of tickets. Well, I started thinking it through. London in September. Money. Mister’s and my anniversary. Money. Travel arrangements. Money. And just when I was about to give in to the frugal part of me, I had this thought: Kate Bush live is a bucket list item. I don’t have a bucket list, friends. It’s never occurred to me to make one. But once I’d thought of Kate Bush’s concert as a bucket list item, I knew I had to try. I talked it over with Mister and he was game. There were no guarantees we’d be able to score seats, as the gigs were sure to be hot tickets. But it was worth a shot.

 

That is how I found myself hunched over my computer in the middle of an L.A. night, back in March of this year. That is why I clicked “purchase” when I got through the process of selecting seats and entering all required information on the vendor’s website. That is how Mister and I found ourselves with tickets to a Kate Bush concert in London.

 

22 shows sold out in 15 minutes. I was part of that. Now all I had to do was wait until September…

 

To be continued…

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