illusionofjoy | OTR: Kate Bush - The Whole Story (Reply)

A compilation of Kate Bush's work up through 1985's Hounds of Love, The Whole Story isn't, as implied by it's title, a compilation of all of Bush's singles from her first five albums. Instead, it is a non-chronologically sequenced "greatest hits" package. Only one track from the disc was completely new at the time: the creepy "Experiment IV," a song which seems oddly prophetic as modern riot policing techniques are increasingly using "sonic weaponry" as a method of crowd control.

Other than that, the only thing new to be found here are Bush's re-recorded vocals on "Wuthering Heights." And, yes, her more mature voice, lacking in the squeak of her teenaged pipes makes "Wuthering Heights [New Vocal]" the superior version of the song.

It was this record which was my first introduction to the music of Kate Bush. I was digging through the vinyl archives at WAIH, always looking for something new (in the sense that I hadn't heard it before) to play and this was one of the records I pulled out. The person who initially reviewed the record must not have been a fan. "I had thought this album would be more interesting," he or she had written on the group of blank stickers affixed to the LP sleeve before listing track numbers with intro times and outro types.

I ignored the blasphemous statement on the LP sleeve and played a song from the album anyhow. Though it would be untrue to say that now, having heard Bush's other albums, I can't agree just a little bit. Compared to her proper LPs, The Whole Story doesn't have the same cohesiveness - understandably so, as this is the Cliff's Notes version of the Kate Bush discography.

All I know is that I played the hell out of "Wuthering Heights" on my radio show. The record actually had a minor skip in the track towards the coda of the song, so that a split second was cut out. It wasn't until I finally purchased the CD years later when I no longer had WAIH's archives at my disposal that I heard the song without the skip in it.

I'm not sure why, but it makes me sad to think that future generations will never know what it's like to dig through dusty archives to find music.