Podcasts

  • With... Bethany Turner-Pemberton - Sassy and Sam chat to researcher and curator Bethany Turner-Pemberton. Bethany is PhD candidate in Textiles and Museum Studies at Manchester Metropolitan...
    1 day ago

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Wednesday, August 27, 2014 11:30 am by M. in , , ,    No comments
Kate Bush's first comeback concert is, of course, all over the news. Regrettably she didn't included Wuthering Heights on her setlist:
Certainly, her voice still sounds terrific – although she no longer includes Wuthering Heights, her first and biggest hit, on her set list. (Jan Moir in Daily Mail)
It is not difficult to realise why Kate Bush made such a startling impression when, in 1978, at the age of 19, she burst upon the scene with Wuthering Heights, cartwheeling in her weird dance moves to No 1 in the charts – the first woman to reach the top with a song she had written. Everything about it was rich and strange: the swooping soprano, the musical progression and the words! Even in the hippy Seventies lyrics based on Emily Brontë’s mad fantasy seemed far-fetched: “Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy, I’ve come home. I’m so cold!” Then there were her looks: unusual but stunning. (The Telegraph)
The singer shares a birthday, July 30, with novelist Emily Brontë. Kate's birthday is known as Katemas and it is celebrated by devoted fans all over the world.
Kate's debut single, Wuthering Heights, is based on Emily Brontë’s novel of the same name but the singer hadn't actually read the book at the time. (Emma Pietras in The Mirror)
 In 1978, a 19-year-old doctor’s daughter from Kent mimed her way through Wuthering Heights on Top Of The Pops. Scary yet sexy, romantic and other-worldly, Kate Bush’s wild-eyed rendition of a song she wrote after catching the last ten minutes of a BBC adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel (she didn’t read the novel until later) was a life-changing, generation-defining moment in pop culture. (Will Hodgkinson in The TImes)
The aftershocks of punk and new wave were still rolling across the cultural landscape, disco was in its pomp,Jeff Wayne had just unleashed his musical version of HG Wells’ “War Of The Worlds”, and then suddenly there’s this girl singing a song about an old Emily Brontë  novel in a strange, witchy voice. (Fraser McAlpine on BBC America)
Yelena Akhtiorskaya remembers why she disliked English class in New Republic:
Imagine my shock then, when we began reading novels and taking apart the characters and events as if they were real, trudging laboriously through Steinbeck and Brontë, answering the equivalent of who, what, where, how, and why. My literary identity fractured; I loathed the assigned books and dreaded analyzing them, but loved my secret books, which I’d never defile by deconstructing (or thinking about too hard).
SBS on Spring fashion(s):
After a 150 year hiatus, Victorian era skirts are back, and shorter than ever! More titillating than their 150 year old predecessors, these skirts reveal an entire ankle (so racy), and make a great costume should you ever choose to attend a party dressed as ‘Sexy Charlotte Brontë’ or ‘Sexy Emily Dickinson’. Long and flowing, these skirts are also great for sneaking people and things in and out of places. (Nina Oyama)
New York Daily News makes a list of great books to bring along this Labor Day:
"Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys.
Rhys takes the done-to-death story of "Jane Eyre," flips it and reverses it. By exploring that "crazy woman in the attic," she opens up a story about love, identity and destiny. Could a woman who is told she is crazy over and over again learn to believe it? Heartbreaking and sad, this book taught me in college about how the ability to express vulnerability gives us strength.
North Devon Gazette presents the Wuthering Heights performances at the Tapeley Park Gardens by the ChapterHouse Theatre Company; Quite as Mouse reviews Jane Eyre; Tony Walker uploads some recent pictures of Top Withins.

0 comments:

Post a Comment