66 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More like the Best Story, not the Whole Story, December 19, 2003
This review is from: The Whole Story (Audio CD)
With five albums under her belt from EMI Records, it was time for Kate to put out a greatest hits. She'd made it big with Hounds Of Love, which spawned four hit singles, and The Whole Story brings her EMI songs to closure. And it was this album that introduced me to Kate Bush, and the rest is history. Key, []=original studio album.
The version of "Wuthering Heights" features a newer vocal, which is more developed than the girlish vocals of the Kick Inside days and helps the piano and drums of this song. Yes, she does sing about the longing about Kathy towards Heathcliff. Much better than the original.
"Cloudbusting" is my favorite single from here, especially with its martial rhythm set by the strings and synthesizers. The song and the video are related, as it's sung from the POV of the daughter of an inventor who creates a rainmaking machine that gets the government after the inventor, considered a threat to the men in power. [Hounds Of Love]
"Breathing" is one of Kate's most serious pieces, about the effects that radioactive fallout has on a baby still in the womb, and it's sung from the perspective of the infant. The addition of a cold official sounding voice reporting the results of fallout from a nuclear test and the crescendo that rises with the "What are we going to do, we are all going to die refrain" shows that Kate is an artist with political conscience. [Never For Ever]
One of Kate's best realized pieces is the piano ballad "The Man With The Child In His Eyes" on a man who is most surely her Prince Charming, [The Kick Inside]
The dreamy "Wow" about the travails of fame and show business [Lionheart] is followed by two songs from Hounds Of Love, the frantic title track, and "Running Up That Hill", where she is ready to make a deal with God and trade places. There's some weird background vocals towards the end.
The sombre guitar ballad "Army Dreamers" tells the story of a serviceman in the B.F.P.O. who's been killed and the opportunities he never had, such as a proper education, the ability to play a guitar, or getting married and having a child. "What a waste, army dreamers" Kate laments.
The upbeat weirdness of "Sat In Your Lap" tells the story of someone who wants to be an intellectual, scholar, full of knowledge, but can't be bothered to learn and just wants it set in her lap, i.e. "just gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme."
"Experiment IV" the new song, is about some people asked by the military to create a "sound that could kill someone from a distance," instead of "music made for pleasure, music made to flow." And the regrets of the inventors for making such a weapon is felt in the lyrics. The sound neatly fits in the Hounds Of Love era.
"The Dreaming" featuring a didgeridoo, and Kate's slight Australian twang, tells how the aborigines and the natural habitat are being exploited by the mining companies, with the aborigines being driven to drink and even kangaroos being hit by vehicles. [The Dreaming]
Finally, "Babooshka" is about a woman who tests her husband's fidelity by writing him anonymous letters, disguising herself as a younger version of herself, and seeing if he'll go through with an adulterous affair with his own wife. The piano is struck forcefully during the verses, before the electric guitar riffs kick in the prechorus and chorus. [Never For Ever]
Kate's greatest hits does not tell the "whole story", as she had two more albums and a record deal with Sony, but it tells the best stories of the recording chapters of her career, as they were the most experimentally creative and lyrically enriching.
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Kate sure made some interesting videos!, December 21, 2001
Question: What is better than listening to Kate Bush's The Whole Story? Answer: Watching the Whole Story-The Videos. Kate Bush is as imaginative in her videos as she is in her songs.
"Wuthering Heights" and "The Man With The Child In His Eyes" are mere performance clips. The former is the original vocal version from The Kick Inside, not the new vocal version on the Whole Story album. The latter makes great effect of Kate's lovely face, framed between her leonine brown hair. "Wow" has her singing over a mixture of concert footage taken from her Live At Hammersmith video.
"Cloudbusting" is a story video which has her the daughter of a scientist who has made a rainmaking machine. I could be mistaken but it looks like Donald Sutherland playing her father. Someone let me know. I don't know if Kate is supposed to be playing a little girl, her mannerisms are akin to a seven to nine year old. Memo to Kate: you look better with long hair.
"Breathing" is probably the best and most bizarre video in the collection. Kate, wrapped up in a mounds of transparent plastic, portrays an unborn baby, complete with umbilical cord, and sings the horrors of nuclear war. The song takes on a more disturbing meaning, when she sings of breathing in her mother's nicotine, especially when the part of the song with the authoritative voice on the effects of an atomic explosion comes in. Kate is shown violently thrown around her mother's womb.
"Running Up That Hill" features a ballet duo, Kate is the female, whose routines take on a wrestling and even sexual nature. The bizarre imagery in that one is the shot of many people walking towards us, wearing xeroxed faces first of the male, then of Kate.
"Army Dreamers", shot on video camera and in a studio setting, effectively captures the anti-war sentiment of the song. Her closing eyes are in rhythm click-clack sound. The two scenes of import are of Kate, who upon seeing a young boy in camouflage, drops her gun and rushes toward him, mother instinct in full throttle. The second is of Kate, charging with a "kowabunga" expression of her face, only to be thrown backwards into the bushes by an exploding shell.
"Experiment IV" is a story of the song, with the deadly sound personified by a ghoul resembling the vengeful spirit in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, who ends up killing everyone in the top secret bunker. There is a twist at the end. Who is seen getting into a van, giving us a conspiratory wink?
"The Big Sky" shows her fun side, as a gathering of characters, including British pilots, Superman, and Soviet soldiers come together on the rooftop where she is stargazing and transform it into a stage.
Bush's videos and the ideas that spring from her head may not always be comprehensible but like characters in Fellini's movies, leave an undelible impression, and is leagues better than today's MTV fodder.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great music but horrible audio fidelity, July 24, 2005
This review is from: The Whole Story (Audio CD)
I first bought this album on vinyl, later again on cassette, and finally on CD - It was my introduction to this artist's very distinctive music, and the selection of tracks, given the original LP format and time frame of covered work, is a worthy assortment - There's not much I will attempt to add to what others have written here about her music and these songs, EXCEPT:
The sound on this CD is among the worst analog-to-digital mastering jobs I've ever heard, definitely the worst I've heard on a major label release - The cassette sounded better on my Walkman than this CD does on my home stereo - It's straight LP master tape to digital transfers like this that gave CDs such a bad rap when they were first introduced onto the market - Any amateur home recordist knows that audio needs to be very expressly mastered, in terms of EQ & dynamics/compression especially, for the medium on which it is to be listened to (excuse my clumsy syntax) - The art and science of remastering has dramatically improved in the past 15+ years since CDs became the predominant medium and the subsequent reissue of thousands of classic recordings - It is long overdue for this album to be rereleased in an expanded and remastered edition, along with Kate's other albums for that matter - With an artist of Kate Bush's reputation and broad appeal, I can't think of what they're waiting for - If Capitol Records did such a phenomenal job with remastering all those classic 50s/60s lounge records for the Ultra-Lounge series (which I highly recommend), then they ought to be able to do as good or better with this music - It certainly deserves better than what we're getting here...
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