FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz
Strange Phenomena
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I have included a few songs…
from The Kick Inside for Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts. It is an album that is known for a couple of songs. Its U.K. singles. Like so many Kate Bush albums, people gravitate towards the singles and maybe do not investigate those deeper cuts. A song I have discussed many times in other contexts is Strange Phenomena. One of my favourite songs from The Kick Inside, it is a remarkable mature, unconventional and fascinating song from a teenage artist. Discussing, among other things, coincidences and menstruation, we get one of Bush’s most hypnotic vocal performances on her debut album. One of these songs that many non-Kate Bush fans are unaware of, I think it should be played more and better known. Another great example of the peerless songwriting talent of Kate Bush. For someone so young, she was writing about such unusual and interesting subjects. So different to anything that was released in 1978. More in common with classic literature and poetry, it must have been strange for some to hear an album like The Kick Inside. Before getting to a feature about Strange Phenomena, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia have an article that collects quotes where Bush discussed one of the standout tracks from her debut album:
“Kate about ‘Strange Phenomena’
[‘Strange Phenomena’ is] all about the coincidences that happen to all of us all of the time. Like maybe you’re listening to the radio and a certain thing will come up, you go outside and it will happen again. It’s just how similar things seem to attract together, like the saying “birds of a feather flock together” and how these things do happen to us all the time. Just strange coincidences that we’re only occasionally aware of. And maybe you’ll think how strange that is, but it happens all the time. (Self Portrait, 1978)
“Strange Phenomena” is about how coincidences cluster together. We can all recall instances when we have been thinking about a particular person and then have met a mutual friend who – totally unprompted – will begin talking about that person. That’s a very basic way of explaining what I mean, but these “clusters of coincidence” occur all the time. We are surrounded by strange phenomena, but very few people are aware of it. Most take it as being part of everyday life. (Music Talk, 1978)”.
There is so much to discuss and dissect regarding Strange Phenomena. It has an interesting placement on The Kick Inside. After Moving and The Saxophone Song, then comes this gem. It is then followed by the sharper and more Reggae-tinged Kite. The first four songs really set the mood of the album. If the final four or five songs are more about love, loss and the self, then the first four or five are a little less ‘conventional’. I do especially love Strange Phenomena. It was released as a single in Brazil on 1st June, 1979. As it is forty-five very soon, it is another reason to go deep. Before rounding up, I want to bring in an article from Dreams of Orgonon. Some very insightful details and observations about one of Kate Bush’s most underrated songs:
“Strange Phenomena” famously begins with an arpeggiating (A/F) ode to menstruation, “the phase of the moon when people tune in.” In her typical fashion, Kate Bush refers to menstruation as “the punctual blues,” suggesting both a musical quality and a natural rhythm to this particular bodily function (she also refers to it as something “every girl” knows about, but in her defense trans issues were not a topic of national conversation in 1978). Throughout The Kick Inside, Bush has made a case that all functions of the body are a thing of beauty, whether those be love-making or flying. With the opening of “Strange Phenomena,” Bush has extended her invitation of bodily functions into the fold beyond the pleasurable or fanciful and to parts of life women and other menstruating individuals aren’t encouraged to discuss in everyday life. Even more intriguing is how Bush frames menstruation as an almost musical act. In addition to her quasi-musical coinage of “the punctual blues,” she calls a period the phase “where people tune in.” To be sure, menstruating a subject people discuss in private, bringing discomfort to cisgender women and often triggering severe bouts of dysphoria in transgender men. It’s an aspect of life that unites lots of people in their unease by widespread patterns and, more importantly, rhythms of nature. Bush dignifies menstruating by making it a musical process. If there’s a central idea to The Kick Inside, it’s that everything is music.
This exercise of defining musicality as a unifying force isn’t confined to physical planes in “Strange Phenomena.” Bush described the song as being “about the coincidences that happen to all of us all of the time. We can all recall instances when we have been thinking about a particular person and then have met a friend who — totally unprompted — will begin talking about that person.” She more or less paraphrases this in the song, referring to “a day of coincidence with the radio.” Texts are a source of coincidence as well, such as when “you pick up a paper/you read a name/you go out/it turns up again and again.” There’s a sense Bush is being haunted by text, that the spoken word will accompany her wherever she goes. This is where Bush differs most radically from, say, Burroughs or Foucault, in that this constant presence of language and strangeness is a comfort to her, something to tip her hat to.
There’s a philosophical dimension to this as well: Bush once referred to Synchronicity while discussing “Strange Phenomena” in an interview. In short, Synchronicity is psychoanalyst Karl Jung’s concept of the interconnectivity of coincidences. Coincidences bearing similarity but no common cause are termed “meaningful.” This is a pretty easy way to argue for paranormality, and Jung did so (this is not the last time a psychoanalyst will influence Kate Bush. If you’ve read this blog’s title, you already know how). Bush picks up on this, heartily saluting the spectres and weirdness of everyday life.
“Strange Phenomena” is textured with little mysteries and details. Without the Internet at one’s disposal, listeners would go years not understanding some of the song’s allusions. There’s the obscure line “G arrives/funny, had a feeling he was on his way,” which seems inexplicable in context (apparently G was a person Bush knew, while my initial guesses were that G was the Almighty Herself, John Berger’s character G, or David Gilmour himself, most plausibly) yet brings a social instinct to the song, suggesting that people can be just as mysterious as events. The presence of people is mystical to Bush — the living can be ghosts as well. In many ways, “Strange Phenomena” is about clustering: when people gather and events happen close together, magic occurs. “We raise our hats to the hand a-moulding us,” sings Bush, nodding to spiritual forces beyond human understanding.
Sheer abstraction isn’t the only sort of mysticism that surfaces in “Strange Phenomena,” as Kate Bush will often decorate her lyrics with obscure cultural references. The chorus’ emphatic declaration of “soul birds of a feather flock together” is a sweet mystical touch. The most delightfully off-kilter part of the song is the end of the chorus, which has Bush repeatedly singing “om mani padme hum.” This is a Sanskrit mantra, hardly the sort of language you’d hear in a 1978 pop song. Apparently it means “the jewel in the lotus,” but Bush was unaware of this. When pressed on the meaning of the phrase, she admitted up front she had no idea what it meant (although she later published its definition when a fan sent it in). There’s a certain Caucasian ignorance to this, yet the charm of including Sanskrit on a popular album is nonetheless high.
Such is The Kick Inside as a whole. What it lacks in presentation, it more than amply makes up for it in ambition. If you have a song like “Strange Phenomena” on your album, you’re in good shape. If you have that, “Wuthering Heights,” “The Man with the Child in His Eyes,” and “The Kick Inside,” you’re more than set for a career of strong music. The Kick Inside is one of the strongest debut albums of its era, and I’m looking forward to seeing where we go from here.
Recorded 1977 at London AIR Studios. Performed on the Tour of Life in 1979. Personnel: Kate Bush — vocals, piano. Stuart Elliott — drums. David Paton — bass. Ian Bairnson — guitars. Duncan Mackay — synthesizers. Morris Pert — percussion. Andrew Powell — electric piano, production”.
This is a song that I would love to have seen Kate Bush perform live in 1979. Maybe a hard song to appropriately or powerfully stage, it does seem like the Tour of Life version and mounting was pretty impressive. I hardly see this song played on the radio. It is a shame, as it is one of her minor masterpieces. On an album with so many sophisticated, bold, unconventional and unique songs, this is among the best. I would love to see more written about this song. Like other songs from The Kick Inside, it gives us an insight into Kate Bush in her earliest stages. This blossoming and hugely promising songwriter whose work would evolve and develop very quick. I really admire her debut album because it is so unlike anything the industry would have expected. As you can hear from the remarkable Strange Phenomena, Kate Bush could make any subject sound…
SIMPLY magical and essential.