** If you haven’t seen the Netflix retro 80s series Stranger Things this won’t make much sense **
Reading Alan’s Tradgardland blog this morning http://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2022/07/kate-bush.html#comment-form
I wondered whether Kate Bush’s music – most obviously in the track Hounds Of Love 1985 album (which featured her Running Up That Hill song used in Series IV volume 1 – had an unconscious influence on Stranger Things?
What about her Experiment IV song and her 1986 video (from her 1986 Greatest Hits album The Whole Story?)
Did this make it big enough Stateside for the Duffer brothers to have seen or heard this?
Every Reference? Experiment IV or Cloudbusting clearly wasn’t mentioned in this Wired channel Youtube interview with Stranger Things creators The Duffer brothers 🙂
I do not own copyright to these images – copyright Kate Bush- All screenshots for discussion / research purposes only.
A very 1981 Raiders of The Lost Ark ending angel or demon summoned by Experiment IV?
The good old Stranger Things nosebleed motif in Experiment IV ?
The unmarked white Government transit van …
Unlikely but Experiment IV and Stranger Things are both clearly the product of the nuclear 80s Cold War, as is her track and video for Cloudbusting.
Isn’t that device being pushed up the hill by Kate Bush and Professor Donald Sutherland a little like DustinHenderson’s amazing ham radio antenna in Stranger Things Series 3 Episode 1 “Suzie, do you copy?” and the Never Ending Story theme song duet (funny bit) of Series 3 Episode 8: Battle Of StarCourt Mall?
Cloudbusting video still: Donald Sutherland and Kate Bush
As I don’t have the tech skills to film and cut one Kate Bush video to the tune of another song (the Stranger Things soundtrack), instead you can get the effect by watching the official Kate Bush music video of Experiment IV or Cloud Busting with the sound down and the Stranger Things theme music playing from another device.
Richard Vernon, Dawn French, Hugh Laurie – in the British Experiment IV Hawkins Lab?
IMDB reference https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9207512/
Lyrics etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment_IV
Insert cameos of famous 80s actors in both Stranger Things or Experiment IV and Cloudbusting. Light the blue touch paper and retire. Do not return …
Peter Vaughan cameo as General with Kate Bush
Somebody has already done 4 his in reverse, cut some Hawkins Lab Stranger Things series 4 scenes (Beware Spoilers! Beware fake blood and gore! etc.) to this Kate Bush music track of Experiment IV – https://youtu.be/NDhdaCFRfGc
*
So when speculating as I have done recently why Stranger Things or The X Files couldn’t have been set in Britain or deepest darkest South West, or what its 70s 80s based British TV equivalent would be –
Grange Hill with Monsters meets the troubling and disturbing Rentaghost and Pipkins –
I can now add to this mix Kate Bush Experiment IV and Cloudbusting video along with the earth based Pertwee 1970s Doctor Who Series.
How this mistrust of government (mis)”guided by the science” and other pulp themes will influence my gaming, who knows?
My previous posts on gaming scenarios and Stranger Things:
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/tag/stranger-things/
My previous post on The Two Ronnies and The Worm That Turned as an alternative VBCW gaming scenario:
Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN 31 July 2022
Man of Tin blog 