tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-125811472024-03-13T07:14:33.048+00:00Rod McKie Illustrations and CartoonsCartoons and illustrations for Playboy, The Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Readers Digest(USA), Prospect (UK), Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, National Lampoon, The Phoenix (Ire), Marian Heath Greeting Cards, and various publications worldwide.
rodmckie-at-lycos.comRod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.comBlogger357125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-53586105027607596422019-11-12T14:04:00.002+00:002019-11-12T15:33:48.325+00:00Mary Cigarettes is Gone, but that sweet voice lingers...Again, apologies for being away for so long, and for the lack of cartoon and comic book related posts. I will get round to it. Meanwhile, a lot has happened, a few friends have died, including my old Twitter chum and friend from our DJing nights in Edinburgh, Flash Harry, who died earlier this year. Flash was a fantastic DJ, working full-time at Tiffanys Dance Hall (where he regularly had hundreds of adults sitting on the floor in a huge conga) and the main floor at Clouds (where the youngsters would often forget to dance as they stared at the star on his stage, precariously perched atop one of the enormous speakers). His given name was Paul Lerwill, and it's how he was known when he was with the pop groups Rosetta Stone, and Perfect Crime (who toured with U2). He was also known as Gregory Gray, when he was a solo-artist in the US, and in his latter years as Mary Cigarettes, working with Fish Go Deep, and on his many solo projects. Paul/Flash/Gregory/Mary was as exciting and intriguing as his many aliases suggest. Although his health was a concern at times, his death came as an enormous shock. He is greatly missed. Tom Robinson put together a very informative, if slightly complete tribute to Mary on his radio show, which I've linked to here.. It's probably NSFW, which is exactly how Mary would have liked it :) I've added various links to his different incarnations under the photos below. Also, there's a link to his thoughts, and those are most certainly NSFW. LOL. RIP Mary Cigarettes.<br />
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<a href="https://fanningsessions.wordpress.com/2019/05/18/gregory-gray-tom-robinson-tribute/">https://fanningsessions.wordpress.com/2019/05/18/gregory-gray-tom-robinson-tribute/</a><br />
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<a href="https://fanningsessions.wordpress.com/2019/06/21/perfect-crime-1982-session/">https://fanningsessions.wordpress.com/2019/06/21/perfect-crime-1982-session/</a><br />
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<a href="https://youtu.be/Pdy0SYBYlqo">https://youtu.be/Pdy0SYBYlqo</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.paulgormanis.com/?p=22138">https://www.paulgormanis.com/?p=22138</a><br />
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<a href="https://youtu.be/hnpbp0lV33w">https://youtu.be/hnpbp0lV33w</a><br />
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<br />Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-75583281217733744602019-05-04T21:35:00.001+00:002019-05-04T21:35:31.542+00:00Bernard Cnut Jenkin MPI'm currently banned from <a href="https://twitter.com/Twitter" target="_blank">Twitter</a> for calling Bernard Jenkin MP a cnut. I'm perplexed by this because I don't see any way Twitter can prove he isn't. He's a Brexit supporting twat from the ERG party-within-a-party Tories, who have constantly attacked Theresa May on the grounds that Brexit is crap because she's a weak negotiator and a woman, not because Brexit was pie-in-the-sky promises from a bunch of rabid old misogynist has-beens and their fanatical unicorn-worshipping fans. I called him a cnut because of his most recent outburst during England's council elections he said, I paraphrase, it didn't matter if the voters had now changed their minds, they've made their bed so they can lie in it. Not a philosophy he applies to his own grey hair, which has darkened considerably on top since some ludicrous poll amongst mad Tory women - gone to his head you might say.<br />
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As my old friend GT has pointed out, he is just one cnut, amongst many others in the Commons.</div>
Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-20179225435412144512019-03-16T11:25:00.001+00:002019-03-16T11:33:33.131+00:00Staggering out of a Fog<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I do feel like that every so often, like I'm staggering out of a fog into a slowly brightening day. I'm sure it will be a familiar feeling to some of you. What's helped this time is understanding that by imagining I can do everything I've planned to do, in a rigid kind of way, that if the first part of that isn't done, then nothing gets done. And the problem is, in the work I do, 'staring into space' can be a big part of the work. However, when you let it become the main part of the work, you're basically a cat. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />So, this coming week, I'll get round to looking at this manga, 'Happiness', by Oshimi Shuuzou. It was my intention to do it some time back, so it's not a new title, but its one I enjoyed. It's a seinen title, in both senses, and a vampire tale that owns more than a little to Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist's <i><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Let_the_Right_One_In.html?id=HTphBQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">'Let the Right One In'</a>. </i>The book, if you haven't read it, is more subversive than the movie.</span><br />
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<br />Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-4423363252678238622017-12-10T20:57:00.002+00:002017-12-10T20:57:35.568+00:00Still With Us :)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Older, but no wiser.<br />
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I'm drawing some cartoons again. The really odd thing is, I've been developing a style as if I was new to the game, rather than an old fart. I think it may be because I had to relearn the cartooney style after drawing comics - kind of makes sense. The style has actually changed since I drew this cartoon. I've drawn a good few more, and will likely make a new version of this one, because I still like the gag. To be honest, I look more like one of the guys in the cartoon, than the one above, on account of being hairier now.<br />
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Some of the recent ones are pretty funny, to me at least. And they do 'look' funnier now, which is always half the battle. I think the one above is a sort of hybrid on the way to the funnier looking characters. We'll see.<br />
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<br />Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-73102308936428068102016-11-30T12:17:00.000+00:002016-11-30T12:17:11.029+00:00Creating the Writer.<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I did intend to make a post about a particular manga, and I will post that soon, it's coming along nicely, but this post is about music and textual analysis. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Let's do this in chronological order. Cast your mind back 2 years (which is easy at the moment because my severe lack of posting over recent months probably means my Before the Dawn concert piece is still on this page ) to the series of Kate Bush concerts at London's Hammersmith Odeon in 2014 (details below). I was there, as you know, thanks to the supremely talented <a href="https://kenrismacleod.com/">Kenris McLeod</a>, as you know, and it was spectacular, a feast for the eyes and the ears. Distance from the event has only solidified my belief that it was, perhaps, the greatest pop concert of all time. It certainly was, by any measure, extraordinary.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">https://youtu.be/_256xd9N27o</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Flash forward to November 25th this year, and we have the release of a live album/CD of those concerts, and it gives those who were not there, and those who were, a chance to 'hear' for the first time, or once again, how spectacular the band backing Kate Bush were. The KT Fellowship, under whose name the album is released, were simply stunning (again, details of all those taking part are below), and this album, 4 albums to be precise, gives us a chance, minus the visual wonders of the show, to listen more intently to the music itself. And to focus on Kate Bush's spectacular voice. A little lower now, but all the more powerful for that. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Gorgeous, isn't it? The LP set is just lovely and the booklet, which is a larger version of the one that comes with the CD, is excellent. There's one additional song on Before the Dawn, Never Be Mine, which just sounds incredible. It was chopped off the concert set list, but makes a welcome return here. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So, you're probably wondering where the 'textual analysis' comes in? Well, it's less to do with the album, than with Kate Bush herself, and it allows us once again to discuss the role of the author, with reference to Umberto Eco's Tanner lectures (Cambridge University 1990) on 'Interpretation and Overinterpretation: World, History, Texts' and in particular to the identity of the 'ideal reader' and the 'ideal author'. </span></span><br />
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<span data-offset-key="48uj3-0-0"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 'Interpretation and Overinterpretation' Eco talks about the 'ideal reader'. This 'ideal reader' is not the empirical reader, but a reader imagined by the author. The ideal reader is a reader who will 'get' everything the author has carefully layered into the text; every symbol, every metaphor, every metatextual reference, every nuance, of the text. In a sense, the ideal reader is the author imagining herself or himself as the reader (who better?). But, just as the author imagines an ideal reader, the reader imagines an ideal author, who is not the empirical author, but a fantasy figure constructed, in at least part, by the text itself. In a way, it is the reader imagining themselves as the writer, or at the very least, the writer as someone who 'totally gets them'. Someone who is on their wavelength.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span data-offset-key="48uj3-0-0"><br /></span><span data-offset-key="9a92c-0-0">This brings us to Kate Bush's recent interview with the Canadian magazine, Maclean's, where Bush was asked about Hillary Clinton, and spoke instead about how much she likes Britain's female Prime Minister Theresa May: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span data-offset-key="9a92c-0-0"><br /></span><span data-offset-key="b6ujs-0-0"> <b>Q: A track called “Waking the Witch”—which was released in 1985—was performed for Before The Dawn. You once said that the song was about “the fear of women’s power.” With regards to Hillary Clinton’s recent defeat, do you think that this fear is stronger than ever?</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span data-offset-key="b6ujs-0-0"><br /></span><span data-offset-key="fnbl3-0-0"><i>A: We have a female prime minister here in the UK. I actually really like her and think she’s wonderful. I think it’s the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time. She’s a very intelligent woman but I don’t see much to fear. I will say it is great to have a woman in charge of the country. She’s very sensible and I think that’s a good thing at this point in time.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span data-offset-key="fnbl3-0-0"><br /></span><span data-offset-key="87l4i-0-0">Now, a superficial glance at the text has led many to believe this is Bush telling the wider world that she is a Tory voter, which has led those readers who have cast Bush as an ideal writer who shares their political point of view, either as a Left Winger or a Right Winger, to either throw their hands up in horror or to embrace her, with both castigating the other side. A closer look at the text, however, reveals a classic Bush tactic of avoiding answering this direct question about US politics, by substituting an answer on a more personal level. It is often her way of disarming the interviewer. Her suggestion that May is 'the best thing that's happened to us in a long time', can actually be seen as a criticism of the previous Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, and the man who preceded him. The qualities she emphasises in May, intelligence and sensibleness, may well reveal that she feels the recent US election has offered up a new leader in Hilary Clinton's place, who posses neither of these qualities, and that May won the Tory leadership election against men who didn't posses them either. Everything she says in response to the question is a defense of women in power, using an example she is familiar with. That Kate thinks May is 'wonderful' is neither here nor there, it seems to be a personal observation and Kate Bush tends to think ALL human beings are wonderful - it's a major part of her charm. I know someone, actually I know a few people, who think Jacob Rees Mogg is wonderful (no, I can't fathom it either), but I know that none of them would dream of voting for him, or the Tories for that matter. To be honest I have no idea which way Kate Bush votes, but of course I have created my own Kate Bush and she votes the same way I do.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #1d2129; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span data-offset-key="87l4i-0-0">A lovely PDF of Eco's Interpretation and Overinterpretation: </span></span><span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/e/Eco_91.pdf</span></span></span><br />
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-29116839035675028452016-09-26T14:02:00.000+00:002019-03-16T11:32:12.403+00:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><b>Happiness,</b></i> as is often the case with manga aimed primarily at teens, causes me one or two age and dad-related problems that I've touched on before, but it is, in the main, despite not being a terribly original idea and owing a debt to<b><i> Let the Right One In</i></b>, a pretty enjoyable experience. It's hardly surprising, I suppose, because <span style="background-color: white; color: #252525;">Tetsuya Chiba Award-winning </span>author/illustrator Oshimi Shuzo, is a terrific writer and a brilliant artist, and as many of you will know, the man behind <b><i>Drifting Classroom</i></b> tribute <i><b>Drifting Net Cafe</b></i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Debuting in <span style="background-color: white;"><b style="color: #252525;"><i>Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine</i></b><b style="color: #252525; font-style: italic;">,</b><span style="color: #252525;"> the monthly publication that also published</span><b style="color: #252525; font-style: italic;"> </b><span style="color: #252525;">the author's </span><i style="color: #252525;"><b>The Flowers of Evil</b></i><span style="color: #252525;"> and </span><b style="color: #252525;"><i>Sweet Poolside</i></b><span style="color: #252525;">, at the beginning of 2015, the series has already been released in 3 volumes, in that almost organic way that popular serialised manga does when it picks up an enthusiastic </span><span style="color: #252525;">fan-base</span><span style="color: #252525;">. It's surely only a matter of time before <i><b>Happiness</b></i> follows the tried and trusted route of most of Oshimi Shuzo's work into anime, </span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #252525;">television drama, and/or live action film. As I've said before it is a route and a </span>system I admire enormously.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Makoto Okazaki is your run of the mill high-schooler, a perfect bullying target and a closet pervert. One night he decides to return a DVD to a friend of his and ventures out into the darkness. He notices a person on a nearby rooftop. The person lunges at him before he is able to make sense of this, and bites into his neck, drinking his blood.<br />The attacker stops. At this point Makoto notices that the attacker is a beautiful girl. She asks him: "Do you want to die or become like me?" He decides to live...</i></span></div>
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-56721798752958546542016-09-05T21:41:00.001+00:002016-09-05T21:41:31.300+00:00Well, you took your time...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I forgot my password. I'm forgetting a few things, which I hope is temporary. If not, Well, what can you do? This is a taster of some of the posts I'll be putting up. I had planned to do these some time back, so I'll be playing catch-up, but I'll intersperse some older material with some new stuff. It'll be the usual eclectic mixture and now and again we'll add other media when it crosses over into comicbook land, as it so often does these days. <span style="color: blue;"><i>As usual, when there are illos (always), right click and open in a new window so you get the proper look.</i></span><br />
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<br />Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-29595435309138716992015-12-31T21:45:00.002+00:002016-01-13T14:21:44.618+00:00Appropriately; the best laid plans of mice and men... I had many plans to update the blog this past year, 2015, but things conspired to get in the way. This month, it has been my cancer, which now makes me very tired I'm afraid. With luck, I shall make my return to posting in January 2016, and if the splendid NHS team looking after me is right, I'll be making new posts for a long time to come (On No!). Allow me to thank you for your support, and your incredible patience, over the last few years, it has given me extra purpose.<br />
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Be excellent to each other.Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-53284304081717222852015-09-09T12:00:00.000+00:002019-03-16T11:32:12.525+00:00Litchi Hikari Club<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You'll have spotted several things instantly from the cover of LHC: it's a seinan manga title, it's a little diabolical looking, the logo looks vaguely like a ninja-weapon, a shade totalitarian - the entire thing looks a little blood-soaked and militarised. There's a little prestidigitation going on in the foreground, so there's an element of deception hinted at; while all around the characters' adopt the coy poses of girlie-magazine models, one even appears to be making a Hitler-moustache sign with his or her finger, so the SS-look of the uniforms is not a coincidence. The two bottom figures, left and right, a ghastly looking robot-type creature and a very traditional looking female cast as victim, have leading roles, judging by their prominent placement. It's a very well-thought out design that plays with the notion of old-style posters, steam-punk, and diabolism. </div>
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<br />Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-72289531969701966872014-10-02T17:22:00.005+00:002014-10-06T21:40:33.799+00:00Kate Bush: Somewhere in Between...<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><span style="font-size: small;">here's a place, somewhere in between being fully awake, and being asleep and dreaming, where the creative mind roams in search of ideas. It's an inner-space, like a vast landscape in some computer game, which seems to be timeless, or at least seems to exist outside time. Sometimes, when you are in that lonely inner space, if you're lucky, ideas come, and problems that seemed insoluble in the harsh light of day, are solved. There are areas of this creative landscape though, that are inaccessible to all but the very brave and/or the very dedicated. These are the dark corners of the creative landscape. They are nooks and crannies over there in the dark woods, up there high on the mountain tops or buried deep, deep, down in the undergrowth. They lie behind the many signs along the forking-paths of the creative landscape that say 'This Way Madness Lies'. Most of us avoid looking for ideas in those areas, because the risks may be too great. But some brave souls go into those places on our behalf, and they bring back the stories they find there. To my mind, <a href="http://www.katebush.com/" target="_blank">Kate Bush</a> is one of those very daring adventurers, who go into those dark corners to shine a light on what they discover there.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">So, I doubt it will come as a huge surprise to you to discover that I made my way down to London, last month, to catch Kate Bush's show,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_the_Dawn_(Kate_Bush_tour)" target="_blank"> </a></span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_the_Dawn_(Kate_Bush_tour)" target="_blank">Before the Dawn</a></span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;"> (<em>I was so tempted to leave the typo 'Down' as a tribute to the dodgy poster being sold outside the Apollo :) Thanks, Zee and Caleb</em>). A feat only made possible by the Herculean perseverance, and the Hachidan keyboard skills of the fabulously talented artist, </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><a href="http://kenrismacleod.com/" target="_blank">Kenris McLeod</a>, </span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">who never gave up, and eventually tapped the Eventim ticket-ordering page into submission.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">I haven't attempted to write anything about the event before now, for two reasons, firstly, because if I had written something immediately after the show, it would have reflected all I could really think and say at the time, and that really didn't go far beyond </span><b style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"bloody hell" </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">and </span><b style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"wow"</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">. I might have scrawled it all over the page though, so it was a bloody big </span><b style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"Wow"</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, even a huge </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;">"Wow"</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, but the response would still have been limited to that monosyllabic utterance. And secondly, because many of my friends in the Fish People Kate Bush Fan Group had not yet been to see the show, and I didn't want to spoil the surprises that lay ahead of them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Of course, I’m now in a similar position with those of you who weren't lucky enough to score tickets for the show, and are eagerly awaiting the Kate </span><b style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Bush, Live: Before the Dawn </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">DVD, so I've tried to balance telling you something about the show, without ruining the very big surprises. It’s a difficult balance, so please excuse me if I get a little over-excited and overstep those self-imposed boundaries. I'll do my best to be careful, and hopefully, I will succeed a little in whetting your appetite, without completely spoiling the incredible treat that lies in store for you. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span><span style="font-size: small;">ook carefully at my Before the Dawn programme. That's it in front of Dekkie the Dalek. You see how buckled it looks - like a book that has been fished from the water and left to dry? Isn't that fantastic? I bet you've been keeping your copy as flat as a pancake. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The programme is designed to look as if it has been soaked, becoming part of the detritus of the wrecked ship, the ‘Celtic Deep’, making it not just 'about' the show</span><span style="font-size: small;">, but part of the show itself. The cover’s colours look like they have run together, and it even has a trace of inky-black oil on it - the look further enhanced with the embossed matte laminate lettering being oily-black, and darker than the rest of the cover. If you stand the book upright, and let it breathe a little, the inner-pages, some of which are made to look like they have wet stains and running colours on them, slightly buckle and puff out. They do this because about 40 of the 60 pages are French-fold, and they naturally open when not pressed flat, giving the publication that slightly puffed-out, wet-and-now-dry, look. This stylish and classy tome was designed by Darren Richards and Adam Mallett at <a href="http://therightside.com/" target="_blank">The Right Side,</a> and it might possibly be the best graphic novel I've read this year. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The entire </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">programme is just gorgeous, it even smells fantastic. I might have licked it, accidentally - doesn't really taste of anything. The cover illustration features the huge Moorish doors that descend upon the stage during the show, and the artist's </span><span style="font-size: small;">mannequin, Tesoro (which in addition to meaning 'treasure' is also an anagram of 'Roseto', which means 'Rose Bush'), along with his puppet master. It's as suitably dark and muted, and Gothic, as much of the show is, and if you look carefully at the entrance, you’ll see the oil stain at the top of the door gives the shape the look of a keyhole. </span></span><br />
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<br />The gorgeous End Papers, like the tickets provided to those who ordered using the Kate Bush mailing-list code, are printed with a specially commissioned design by Kate Bush and <a href="http://www.timorousbeasties.com/journal-post/Kate_Bush_Timorous_Beasties" target="_blank">Timorous Beastie</a>s. It's quite clearly a labour of love, and at £15 it really was a bargain.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">For Kate Bush fans, the programme makes for great reading, particularly the more intimate revelations, and reflections, about the way the </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn </span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">residency developed. I must admit, the thought of Kate Bush casually saying "Shall we do some live shows?" makes me crack one of the broadest smiles you are ever likely to witness. I'm doing it right now. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">It has some really nice touches, and the hand-written headings and signatures, lend it an unexpected level of intimacy. A level of intimacy that also lets us eavesdrop on things like the conversation between the writer <a href="http://www.davidmitchellbooks.com/" target="_blank">David Mitchell</a> and Kate, as they work out the details of the life of the 'I' of </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave</span></b><span style="font-size: small;">, and Kate's, er, at times, sea-faring language. In many ways, it feels a little like a love letter from Kate to all her fans. It's also a surprisingly meaty, at around 60-pages of anecdotes, insights, and thoughts about the show, and how it took shape. In addition to aiding the programme's sturdiness, and helping achieve the washed-ashore look, many of the French-fold pages also have delightful little Easter-eggs hidden inside them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;">One of the Easter eggs between the pages: Peek-a-boo Little Earth. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">The thing is also full of wonderful drawings and plans and models and photos, including this one of almost the entire Chorus, featuring the fantastically talented <a href="http://www.castingcallpro.com/uk/view.php?uid=510544" target="_blank">Jacqui DuBois</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jo-Servi/101070887914" target="_blank">Jo Servi</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sandramarvinofficial.uk" target="_blank">Sandra Marvin</a>, and <a href="http://www.starnow.co.uk/BobHarms" target="_blank">Bob Harms</a>. I might have accidentally licked the back cover too, again, doesn't really taste of anything. <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;">Kate Bush Live: Before the Dawn <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;"><b>W</b></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">ittgenstein's hypothesis that </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"the limits of my language mean the limits of my world" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">certainly rang true for me, on the evening of September 2nd 2014. I left the Hammersmith Apollo, London, with my eldest daughter, after watching Kate Bush and her band perform </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, and I could barely comprehend what I'd just witnessed, let alone describe it. This is why I have a certain amount of sympathy with the actress, Gemma Arterton, and singer/songwriter, Anna Calvi, both of whom the BBC's Newsnight invited into the studio to discuss the show's opening night, back on the 26th August. They were, I would imagine, on reflection, a little shell-shocked, and under the circumstances did a remarkably good job of at least trying to put what they had just seen into words. After all, what they had just seen was about as far removed from an ordinary pop concert as it is possible for a pop concert to be: part straight-up rock show, part movie, part video, part poetry recital, part performance art, part animation, part opera - it was simply impossible to neatly pigeon-hole the event into the kind of shorthand that passes for verbal communication these days. </span><br />
<br /><span style="font-size: small;">What is all the more remarkable about my own inability to process the experience is that unlike the two still-stunned Newsnight guests, I had some advance knowledge of what I might be hearing, if not seeing. And yet, even armed with this possible knowledge of roughly what to expect, I left the venue, joyous and exhilarated to be sure, but also with the feeling that I had witnessed something rather remarkable, and even a little unreal. I'm convinced that the audience, including me, at various stages, would have looked a little like the theatre-goers </span><span style="font-size: small;">in the movie version of Mel Brook's </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Producers</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, when they first caught sight of Bialystock and Bloom's play </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'Springtime for Hitler', </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">but in a good way :) </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVIV_6V37Digb0DjYo0O3hhi8b2JIlzhhY9vhUoeBk9sIyLczMfisHGh6lQBswlayD_tVkOdzzlEIx7l9fEb3rH1O9xiZ67QO4cXVebQaXnrHfhHni-r12LYAB1oyzoY9LFYc/s1600/audience01_2488.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVIV_6V37Digb0DjYo0O3hhi8b2JIlzhhY9vhUoeBk9sIyLczMfisHGh6lQBswlayD_tVkOdzzlEIx7l9fEb3rH1O9xiZ67QO4cXVebQaXnrHfhHni-r12LYAB1oyzoY9LFYc/s1600/audience01_2488.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;">The surreality of the event was not confined solely to the stage, either. Trust me, it's more than a little disconcerting when characters you usually see inhabiting Kate’s work, as two-dimensional images, suddenly start turning-up around you as fully fleshed-out human beings. It's very probably not that unusual to find yourself sitting next to Monty Python's Terry Jones on a night out in London, on other occasions, but because of his association with Kate Bush, his appearance at the show, just a couple of rows away, did have the effect of making an unreal event seem even more unreal. You see, Terry appears in Kate Bush's </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Director's Cut </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">booklet, and on the </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Director's Cut </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">album, as Professor Need, and that's why catching a glimpse of him out the corner of my eye, working his way along a row of seats in my general direction, almost completely negated the becalming effects of the dreamy pre-show music of Eberhard Weber. I felt a little like I'd entered the Twilight Zone, to be honest. A feeling compounded later, in the foyer during the interval, when long-time Kate Bush fan Big Boi, who I’d seen on TV a week or so earlier, singing along to a Kate Bush song on a mobile phone, in the BBC4 documentary </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘The Kate Bush Story: Running Up That Hill’</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">, casually walked on by this dumbfounded spectator. Yes, even when there was nothing going on, on stage, an evening full of amazing surprises continued to deliver. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">After the final encore, </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">a sing-along with Kate Bush </span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">(yes, you read that right,</span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"a sing-along with Kate Bush"</span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">); for many fans the most fantastically surreal of all the surreal moments of the evening, we left the place filled with joy, and almost to a man and woman, unable to say </span><span style="font-size: small;">anything much except the odd </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'Kin 'ell'</span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">, and </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'kin unbelievable' </span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">about the show, to one another. It really did seem, that night, to be beyond the vocabulary of almost everyone who witnessed the concert, to describe it - and a quick look at the #Katebush hashtag on Twitter will reveal that the phenomena has continued every single night since the concerts began. The tweets proclaiming </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"Wow, just wow" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">and </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"I have no words" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">appear unselfconsciously, time after time, from tweeter after tweeter. And there is a similar pattern on Facebook, as long-time Kate Bush fans try to express their feelings about the gigs. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">~ </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The day after the opening of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, the show met with universal acclaim, but even seasoned music journalists and reporters seemed unsure of exactly what they'd seen. There were varying accounts of the opening number, some confusion about the running order of the songs, and in at least one case a song that wasn't played appeared on someone's set-list, whilst another number that was performed disappeared from one completely. In many quarters it went unnoticed that the song Albert McIntosh, (Kate's son), sang during </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sky of Honey, Tawny Moon, </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">wasn't originally in the suite, and was newly-written for the show. But again, I am very sympathetic with this state of affairs, because it is proof, I would argue, that those journalists went along with Kate Bush's request that everyone leave their phones and tablets behind, in order to better engage with her, and the material. It's evidence, I think, that they didn't record the concert on their phones, or make copious written notes as the show unfolded, but that they played an active part in events, and then went home and tried to remember, and to then write about the experience, as best they could. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">To my mind, writing a review of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, so quickly after the event, was an almost impossible task, and anyone who managed to do so deserves our utmost admiration. How exactly do you describe a show which morphed and transformed so spectacularly before your eyes, as it now begins to fade from your memory? How do you write about a singer who communicates her ideas with a tilt of her head, with a lighting effect, in English, French, Italian, German, Tongues, Do-Wop, Scat, Latin, backwards, and Bird Song - across different media? Not easily, that's for sure. You might get away with the odd word like fantastic or magnificent struck through with sous rature, but you can't resort to entire sentences, and paragraphs, and even entire pages, of impaled signifiers, declaring that every signifier on the page is wholly unsuitable for the concept it represents. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Language, after all, speaks mainly of comparison; it is our short-cut to meaning in this speedy age of instant and mass communication - and that presents us with a unique set of problems </span><span style="font-size: small;">when we attempt to discuss something that is unlike anything else we have experienced. And the job of imparting any information is made all the more difficult to our post-literate generation, when there is no phone or tablet or notebook screen to hold up to someone's face and simply point to a screenshot and say, loudly, </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"</span></span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">that's what I'm talking about"</span></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">. </span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">Our response to this show, </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, immediately, and before the release of the DVD, as a result of us having no film and no photographic references back to it, has illustrated, I believe, that we are often only partially experiencing some of the moments of our lives that we wrongly believe we are fully living. When we are experiencing an event performed live before us, through the intermediary of technology, we are removing ourselves from the experience in a way that does not happen when we actually engage directly in looking at, and thinking about, what is actually going on. Not for the first time then, Kate Bush has, by blowing our minds and asking us not to film her doing so, used her art to force us to think a little harder.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Of course, we can’t rule out the possibility, and I haven’t, that the event was impossible to put into words because ‘almost’ all of us watching, experienced the sublime, which is ineffable. <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;">Kate Bush Live-Before the Dawn: Act I - Part 1 </span></span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;">B</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">efore the Dawn </span></span></b></i><span style="font-size: small;">is in two parts, but also thematically in three parts. The introductory songs, (seemingly) unconnected to the two major suites, are nonetheless largely drawn from the same two hugely successful and critically acclaimed albums, </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Hounds of Love (Hounds of Love </span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">and </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Running up that Hill)</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, and </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Aerial </span></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">(Joanni </span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">and </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">King of the Mountain)</span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">, with </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">the other two songs</span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">, Lily </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">and </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Top of the City</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, both coming from the album </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Red Shoes</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, and more recently </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Director's Cut </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">(2011) where they were re-recorded and given a "warmer, fuller, sound" than Kate felt they had on the digitally-recorded </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Red Shoes</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">. </span></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">1. Lily <br />
2. Hounds of Love <br />
3. Joanni <br />
4. Top of the City <br />
5. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) <br />
6. King of the Mountain </span></span></i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave </span></span></b></span><br />
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</span></span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">1. Video Interlude - And Dream of Sheep <br />
2. Under Ice <br />
3. Waking the Witch <br />
4. Watching You Without Me <br />
5. Little Light (Performed by Backing Vocalists) <br />
6. Jig of Life <br />
7. Hello Earth <br />
8. The Morning Fog </span></span></i></b></span><br />
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</span></span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sky of Honey </span></span></b></span><br />
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</span></span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">1. Prelude <br />
2. Prologue <br />
3. An Architect's Dream <br />
4. The Painter's Link <br />
5. Sunset <br />
6. Aerial Tal <br />
7. Somewhere in Between <br />
8. Tawny Moon (performed by Albert McIntosh) <br />
9. Nocturne <br />
10. Aerial </span></span></i></b></span><br />
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</span></span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Encore </span></span></b></span><br />
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</span></span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">1. Among Angels <br />
2. Cloudbusting <br />
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</span><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></b></span><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><strong>~</strong></span> <br /><strong>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></strong>s the cheering subsides there are a few nervous, excited, giggles as a creepy, somewhat ominous sound, fills the venue. It actually sounds as if a horror movie is beginning. It's an unearthly sound. There's a swishing, like the pendulum cutting through the air of the pit in Poe's tale. It's </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Lily</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, the </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kate+bush" target="_blank">Director's Cut </a></span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">version. The late Lily Cornford's voice is heard reciting </span><span style="font-size: small;">the version of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayatri_Mantra">Gayatri Mantra</a> written by one of the founders of the original Theosophical Society, William Quan Judge (April 13, 1851 – March 21, 1896). The Gayatri mantra, one of the oldest Sanskrit mantras can, amongst other things, protect the chanter from all adverse situations:</span><br />
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</span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Oh thou, who givest sustenance to the universe, </span></span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">From whom all things proceed, </span></span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">To whom all things return, </span></span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Unveil to us, the face of the true spiritual sun, </span></span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Hidden by a disk of golden light, </span></span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">That we may know the truth, </span></span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">And do our whole duty, </span></span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">As we journey to thy sacred seat. </span></span></i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It kicks off, and the band kicks in, and the cheers go up again, and Kate is welcomed centre-stage with an enormous roar, the first of many ovations. By the time she delivers the line </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"I'll show you how with FIRE" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">some of us are on our feet again. Her voice absolutely soars. It's so much bigger now, so nuanced, so strong, so confident, so full of colour, and so very, very, big, and when she's into the </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"...veil of DARKNESS" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">some audiences members are elevated up out of their seats again by the sheer power of her delivery. If the show stopped now it would be okay, it would be enough. </span><br />
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</span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><i><b>Lily </b></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">is the perfect opening number - what a brilliant idea to start with it. The mantra aside, the song itself is also a protection spell, or at least it's derived from one, as filtered through Dion Fortune, and the brilliantly OTT Hammer Horror version of Dennis Wheatley's story </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'The Devil Rides Out'</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">. The Archangels </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">and </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Uriel</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">, are called upon for protection, with more than a little tongue-in-cheek-humour, and a little pinch of salt. It's a fantastic rendition, drawing on Kate's stronger deeper range, and it's a quick introduction to us of the skills of<a href="http://omarhakim.com/" target="_blank"> Omar Hakim</a> on drums, <a href="http://minocinelu.com/" target="_blank">Mino Cinelu</a> on percussion, and the rest of the brilliant band; <a href="http://david-rhodes.uk/" target="_blank">David Rhodes</a> <a href="http://www.mezzoforte.com/band-fridrik.html" target="_blank">Frissi Karlsson</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Giblin" target="_blank">John Giblin,</a> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/joncarinofficial" target="_blank">Jon Carin</a>, and 1979 </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Tour of Life </span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">veteran, <a href="http://celticorbis.co.uk/kevinfofr.htm" target="_blank">Kevin McAlea</a>. The soaring harmonies of the Chorus; Albert McIntosh, Sandra Marvin, Jacqui DuBois, Bob Harms, and Jo Servi, are rich and joyous. They're a tight unit, </span><span style="font-size: small;">confident. What a truly brilliant start. This opening number would be an encore for many bands. The atmosphere is electrifying. We're one song in and I'm feeling very sorry for anyone who gave their ticket up for the reported £1500 that was there to be had - the money will be spent all too quickly, but the memory of the moment Kate Bush returned to the concert stage will stay with those of who witnessed it, forever. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Next up is the huge hit </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kate+bush" target="_blank">Hounds of Love</a></span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, the title song from the #1 selling album of the same name, from 1985. Since its release, the album has been voted one of the greatest albums of all time, in a number of music polls, and has been a fan favourite since it first hit the shelves. The following year, 1986, the album was nominated for Best Album at the Brit Awards, with Kate Bush also nominated for Best Producer and for Best Female Artist, and another single from the album </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Running up that Hill</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, was nominated for Best Single. Again, pleasingly for a Kate Bush-nerd like me, there's a connection with another British horror classic, </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Night of the Demon</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, based on the story </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Casting the Runes</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">, by the medievalist scholar and writer, M.R. James. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The band is lead into </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Hounds </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">by Omar Hakim tapping his sticks, and then he's quickly hitting the rhythm. He's brilliant to watch live, a real artist, Mino Cinelu too; both have grace, style and power, in abundance, and together, they are simply fantastic. This is another show-stopper, and again it would be an encore for many other performers. She has such a wealth of material. Her vocal is, again, near perfect, her diction flawless. But there's an unfamiliar line in there, or maybe it's always there and I haven't noticed it before - I can't remember. It's </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"tie me to the mast". </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">This is interesting, it's the instruction Ulysses gives to his crew to stop him being seduced by the song of the Sirens – of course it works in the context of the song, but is it perhaps a little wink to </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">to come? Of course any mention of Ulysses also puts us in mind of another of Kate's songs, two others in fact, filtered through James Joyce</span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">, The Sensual World</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, and </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Flower of the Mountain</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">. Oh, this a really fabulous version of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Hounds of Love</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, a song we thought we would never hear live, and it's a big, meaty, version, about a million times better because she's actually here, a few feet away, singing it. The Chorus is barked-out, literally, and it sounds fabulous. What a winning-</span><span style="font-size: small;">touch. This is some outfit; it feels like they've been together forever. We're up on our feet again. I think maybe we should just stay up on them. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Straight into drumming, percussion, such wonderful textures, the sonorous sliding sound of bells, and another ominous hum, and this time a muffled, distant, strangled, scream. Again, like the intro to </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Lily, </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">it's a little eerie. Some of the audience are unsure what this number is until Kate sings of all the waving </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"banners", </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">and the flying flags and the </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"thousands of soldiers". </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">It's </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Joanni</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, one of the highlights from side one, </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sea of Honey</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, from the album regarded by many as Kate's masterpiece, </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Aerial</span></span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">. </span></span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Joanni</span></span></b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">, </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">a song about the French heroine, martyr, and Roman Catholic saint, Joan of Arc (1412 – 30 May 1431), is not, as one reviewer suggested, a tribute to Joni Mitchell, whom ,whilst one does, with perhaps the exception of Alan Partridge, associate her with some beautiful songs, one seldom associates her with soldiers, armour, and flags, horses, and canon. </span></span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><i><b>Joanni </b></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">is much richer here, live, than it is on the album. The music map is foregrounded, the intro' stretched, and in the lower key it's even more fabulous. In fact it's spellbinding. I swear, this is going to make my heart burst through my chest. What a performance, it's exhilarating. The band is incredible. The lighting is adding so much, with the suggestion of church windows and medieval Keep Arrow-Loops that morph into fiery crosses. The sound of the Bells of Rouen playing on Joan of Arc Day (a recording of them Kevin McAlea made and plays through his keyboard) are subtle in </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Joanni, </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">more of a subtext than might have been the case had the song been created by someone else. Their song echoing through other songs over the course of the two suites that lie ahead. </span><br />
<br /><span style="font-size: small;">The image of the teenage Maid of Orleans, riding to the front of the amassed troops, thousands strong, who fall into silence and strain to catch a glimpse of the teenage girl's face - much as those of us here in row FF of the Apollo are doing with Kate, is very, very, powerful, and an excellent example of how Kate Bush's art often reflects back a celebratory image of strong, independent, and heroic, female protagonists. <br />
<br />The Chorus and the band are brilliant here, the music feels so full, the Backline of Chris Lawson, Morton 'Turbo' Thobro, and Steve Gray, must all be helping power it along. And Kate's vocal is so impressive, so emotive, so full of colour. The song is a revelation sung live like this, it's so beautiful. Parts of the harmony are simple humming, much softer than on the original where it is just Kate backing herself, and it's an amazing sound. I have something in my eye. </span></span><br />
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</span><span style="font-size: small;">The lighting, the FX, much of the imagery prefigures what's to come later with </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sky of Honey</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, as the flaming arrows turn into birds in flight. She's singing in French, calling Saints now to accompany the Arch Angels summoned earlier, St Catherine of the Wheel, and St Margaret of Antioch. There's a link with an earlier song in the set, </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Lily</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, in that the first heavenly visitation Joan claimed to have was from the Archangel Michael. One unavoidable image in the back of our minds, even deep in our subconscious, is of the martyred Saint Joan, tied to the burning post, and that too harks back to the image in </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Hounds of Love </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">of the 'I' of the song being tied to the mast. The imagery is surely deliberate, but where are we going? This is incredible; it's outrageously good by any measurable standard. This is a standout song for me from this part of the set for me - whatever follows. </span></span><br />
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</span><span style="font-size: small;">Up to </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Top of the City</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, is the answer to the question "where are we going"? </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Top of the City</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, like </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Lily</span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">, is from Kate's album </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Red Shoes</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, and also </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Director's Cut</span></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">. </span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">The angel in this song is real, or at least more solid than one usually imagines angels to be. This one has pigeons on it, and is a vantage point from which to watch the hell of the city below, with people going about their everyday business, in an omniscient fashion. It's an escape up there toward Heaven, and it has always connoted the Wim Wenders movie </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Wings of Desire</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">, for me - where invisible, immortal, angels wonder through Berlin gazing down on the city and listening to the thoughts of the human inhabitants. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;">The song here, in the hands of this band, sounds hugely impressive, it's vast, filling the place, and it could easily be a gospel classic, it's so big and all-encompassing. They are a very versatile and accomplished outfit. Again, Kate's voice is massive, soaring, and so very impressive. People are spontaneously clapping all over the place here. Our heads are now filled with images of Heaven and Hell, of statues of angels, of angels atop angel's shoulders, of archangels and saints, of martyred women. The show is rich with imagery, and the surround sound and the lighting are all combining to create an immersive experience, and we're only four songs into a set, with relatively few frills, that may well be about three hours long. I begin to fear for Kate's voice, and for my little heart, because the song is yet another knock-out, and yet another show-stopper, and yet another song that could have been a show-finishing encore. </span></span><br />
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</span><span style="font-size: small;">The beginning of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Running Up That Hill </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">is now very familiar, and it's met with a huge roar and another ovation, and some continued clapping to the beat, which respectfully falls away, thank goodness, as Kate begins to sing. Again, Kate's vocal is outstanding. Like many here this has long been a favourite of mine, and it's a brilliant version, and hearing it live makes it even more special - but this isn't testing her the way some of her other songs have thus far. I think it's because there's less room to play with a song as well-known as this. What it does though, is show Omar Hakem and Mino Cinelu applying their art, and laying into the beat, and that's truly a fabulous sight and sound. Again, as in </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Top of the City</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, Heaven is invoked, as the </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"Deal with God</span></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">" </span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">is repeated throughout the song. More than ever, in this set, alongside these other numbers, the original name Kate gave the song seems more appropriate </span><span style="font-size: small;">than the record company's preferred title </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'Running up that Hill'</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">. I think from now on I may well call it </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"Deal with God</span></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"</span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">. One thing I did notice is that the dissonance that usually sets in at the end of the song, where the music seems to try to work against Kate's vocal, doesn't happen here - it plays out in a straight-forward fashion and gets everyone up on their feet for yet another standing ovation. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Guitar intro for the first time, and it disguises, momentarily, the beginning </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">of King of the Mountain</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, also taken from </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Aerial's 'A Sea of Honey'</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">. It's a good choice because the many Kate Bush fans who have made the journey over from the US, solely to see her perform, love it, plus the vocal is really testing her range. Another revelation live, it's absolutely fantastic. Suddenly everyone on stage is more animated, and Kate's clearly really enjoying herself out there. She's even playing with the sound she's making of the word 'wind'. The chorus is getting right up there, this is sheer joy. Kate seemed to be in a sort of Janice Joplin or Stevie Nick's mode, black-tassels swinging as she spins - but no, wait, there's something else going on here. Kate is whipping up a storm, she's invoking the wind. And now somehow, she seems more like that blackbird in the water, unable to fly, spinning in circles. She's winding up the elements. This is going through the roof. All sorts of images are conjured up now, she's Prospero, initiating the tempest, creating the storm, and inviting the crashing thunder. Omar Hakim is knocking it out the park. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It suddenly strikes me that this is the third song in a row where we are climbing up, up a hill, up to the top of the City, up to the top of the mountain, and now the music, the wind, and the storm, are building up, up, too, to impossible heights. It's getting very wild and surreal. Suddenly, Mino Cinelu, has stridden out to the front of the stage, as Kate takes a back seat. He is tall and imposing, and looks more so in the eerie lighting. He's turned his back to the audience, his legs look impossibly long in the strange light, and his long-braided hair is swinging as he swings a bullroarer, an ancient instrument, sacred in Ancient Greece, where it played a role in the ceremonies of the cult of Cybele. Kate used one on </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Dreaming </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">album. It all looks fantastic, and it's wonderfully disconcerting, unheimliche, as it roars </span><span style="font-size: small;">unsettlingly and thunder peels, and waves crash. Somewhere, in the darkness, a ship is creaking and breaking up. There are crashing noises, and what appear to be canon fire as slips of paper shoot into the air and then fall to the ground. They contain a quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><em>The Coming of Arthur ( I didn't get any confetti on the night, but thanks to the very generous Kate Bush superfan <a href="https://www.facebook.com/stephen.somebody?fref=nf">Stephen Schweckendieck</a> I, and some other unfortunate souls, now have some):</em><em> </em></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><i><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Wave after wave, </span></span></b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">and all the wave was in a flame.</span></span></b></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">It's an incredible moment. Kate has used the storm in </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">King of the Mountain </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">not just to blow through Elvis's deserted house, in the song, but to launch us into </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">: her conceptual suite about a woman lost at sea, adrift, lonely, cold and scared, with only her imagination for company as she tries desperately not to fall asleep, and drift off on the wild white horses that are the froth-topped waves of a storm-hit sea. It's as if the venue itself has taken a massive intake of breath. I've lost count of the amount of ovations. </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave </span></span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">has begun</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">. </span><br />
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<b><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;">Kate Bush Live-Before the Dawn-Act I - Part 2 </span></span></b></span></div>
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The Ninth Wave <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;"><b>T</b></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">here are two aspects to the sublime, awe in the beautiful forms of nature, and also terror. In his poem </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey'</span></span></i><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">, </span></span></b><span style="font-size: small;">William Wordsworth expresses his joy in the </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'blessed mood' </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">of the sublime, but also his understanding that transcendence from "</span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">the heavy and weary weight Of all this unintelligible world" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">is but a moment, transient. That moment will pass, and in the passing of the moment he will have aged, and the world will again be just as unintelligible as it was before that moment, and the mood, overtook him. For Wordsworth, the ultimate goal is to find Enlightenment within that moment, and to express that moment in words and images to the reader, or the listener. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">When Eugene Delacroix wrote in his journal, in 1857, that </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"The terrible is like the sublime: it is not to be abused.", </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">he was simply reasserting Edmund Burke's hypothesis that the </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"...passion caused by the great and sublime in nature . . . is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror..." </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">(</span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">On the Sublime, 1756</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">). The Sublime has never been limited simply to the beautiful; it can be experienced in anything that creates an emotional understanding that transcends rational thought. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Act I of Kate Bush's show, </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn, The Ninth Wave</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, is seldom referred to as sublime in reviews, though Act II, </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sky of Honey, </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">often is, perhaps because of its associations with sunshine and light and colour, </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">it's 'Songs of Innocence' </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">qualities, if you will, as opposed to the </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'Songs of Experience'</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">-like qualities of the work that deals with shipwrecks, unconsciousness, witch trials, and drowning. And yet, from the very beginning, the philosophical debate around the sublime has centred around the sea, shipwrecks, and fear, as much as a preoccupation with the beautiful. In </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'Philosophical Enquiry into Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">Burke's concept of terror in the sublime, is symbolised by the ocean, and he goes on to say that it is terror that is </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"...the ruling principle of the sublime", </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">and that the waters must </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"...be troubled before they can exert their virtues..."</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">. The belief that the sublime can actually only be experienced looking at art that involves the duality of beauty and terror, troubled waters, a degree of fear, then, is as old as the philosophical debate about the sublime itself. In her essay </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'Shipwreck, Self-preservation and the Sublime', </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">Christine Riding talks of how the "...</span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">primary preoccupation of artists and poets in presenting shipwreck subjects is the attempt to immerse or transport the viewer out of their own time and space and into the description or composition." </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">Something Kate Bush manages to great effect in </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, as evidenced by the sheer number of viewers/listeners who are moved to tears during the performance.</span></span><br />
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<br /><br /><span style="color: #741b47;"><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">In case anyone assumes I have suddenly developed a photographic memory, let me assure you this is not the case (although my memory is sometimes freakishly good). The marvellous </span></span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/willomailley?fref=ts">Will O'Mailley</a> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">started a thread in our little Fish People Kate Bush fan group, to discuss the ghosts of other songs that haunted </span></span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn</span></span></b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">, and that we might have spotted on the various nights on which we attended the show. I have, therefore, </span></span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Will O'Malley, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/stephanieforster?fref=ts">Stephanie Foster</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/heavenlyhandmade?fref=ts">Paula Mackay</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/michelle.shine.10?fref=ts">Michelle Shine</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/eddy.ophelius?fref=ts">Eddy Ophelius</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CAJLane?fref=ts">Caleb Lane</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zee.zetteke?fref=ts">Zee Zetteke</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/psioen?fref=ts">Peter Sioen</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/amanda.g.harrold?fref=ts">Amanda Greenway Harrold</a>, and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tomasz.grotnik?fref=ts">Tomasz Grotnik</a> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">to thank for noting some of the intertextual delights of some songs in the show. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: large;"><b>S</b></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">uddenly the stage is now a film screen. The detritus from the wrecked ship, the confetti with the quote from Tennyson’s poem on it, is scattered all around. The screen comes to life, an astronomer, played by Kevin Doyle, out watching the Perseids meteor shower, has heard a distress signal from the captain of the ship, the Celtic Deep, and he is attempting to alert the coastguard. The only co-ordinates he can make out are 7 and 9, '79'. A reference, perhaps to </span><span style="font-size: small;">the year 1979, the year Kate Bush disappeared from live concerts? The static at the end of his call isn't just "staticy" (to use a Kate-Bushism) it is gremlin-filled and slightly diabolical, in a </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Waking the Witch </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">sort of way, clearly signalling that there will be difficulties ahead before the piece reaches its joyful resolution. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Then whoosh, in another strange and uncanny moment, Kate Bush, the triumphantly returned pop star singing her songs live on stage in the time-honoured traditional fashion after 35 years, is now transformed into Kate Bush, the pop star, playing the part of her protagonist, the marine biologist from the Ninth Wave narrative, on a giant screen. A beacon sends out its steady pulse, and counts in the achingly beautiful notes of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">And Dream Of Sheep</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, which in turn usher in the words we Kate Bush fans have longed to hear live on stage since 1986, the words we thought for a very long time we would never, ever, hear live, </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'little light, shining...'</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">. There is sudden applause, knowledgeable applause, because it ends quickly in order to savour every further note. It is an extraordinary rendition of this incredibly moving song. She has actually suffered to bring this song to us. She's up there, larger than life, lost, cast-adrift, Ophelia-like, she floats, her hair spread around her, her teeth chattering, the cold water making her voice, recorded live in the water when the piece was filmed, hauntingly human and falteringly beautiful. People are literally on the edge of their seats, as between phrases she catches her breath, and all around me I can hear sobbing. It's very moving.</span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><i><b>Under Ice </b></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">begins slowly, steadily, like a skater building momentum, side-to-side, skating over a frozen surface. This is a like an amazing journey through the creative landscape Kate navigated for us as she created the work. It's a startling insight into what she saw while she was working on the piece. Whilst Kate's protagonist drifts helpless, bobbing in and out of a realm somewhere in between waking and dream, between life and death, fantasy and reality, drifting in and out of consciousness and her body, the imagination she is afraid of being left alone with, fights against her. Kate herself is back on stage again, but not as Kate Bush the singer, singing her hits, or Kate Bush the actor performing the character from </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">on screen, but as Kate Bush the stage performer, singing live, as the protagonist </span><span style="font-size: small;">from </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave. </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">If I wasn’t afraid of being made to stand in </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Private Eye’s Pseud’s Corner </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">for doing so, I’d describe Kate Bush’s </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, as the most Brechtian experience I've had since I watched </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">I Bertolt Brecht </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">in a small room, with a member of Brecht's family watching from the wings. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The Chorus is wonderful here, they are so versatile, the sound is very operatic, the music repetitive and hypnotic. Somewhere between life and death, between dream and reality, the 'I' of the piece is following her would-be rescuers, who are tracking something, a person, trapped beneath the frozen ice. Out of her body, she sees that it's her trapped under the ice, whisked past at speed, toboggan-style, by undersea currents - </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"it's ME!", </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">she sings </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"it's Me!". </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">It's such a dark song, so Gothic. In a quite spectacular way she is freed only to be whisked away by the skeletal Fish People.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The song </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Waking the Witch</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, which sees the protagonist's trial at the hands of Jo Servi's brilliant and terrifying Witchfinder, is truly the stuff of nightmares. The set looks like a wrecked hollowed out ship, skeletal, or even the ribs of a whale, and it casts beautiful and eerie shadows. Meanwhile somewhere, out there in the darkness Bush's character drifts in and out of consciousness, and in and out of reality and dream, and all the while, over here, in the dreamtime, she is forced to plead her case as memories of old sea shanties, nursery rhymes, and old Latin school lessons, become mangled in the memories of the past, the present, and the future. She becomes a drowning blackbird, condemned as a witch by the assembled spirits, as reality intercedes in the form of the coastguard's announcements, and the noise and lights of the searching helicopters. By now we have learned that everyone else from the floundered Celtic Deep has been rescued by the coastguard, voiced by Paddy Bush, incorporating a fantastically innovative helicopter effect designed by Mark Henderson. This is a triumph of music and movement, of staging and lighting, and technology and song-craft. It's a potent brew. </span></span><br />
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</span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><i><b>Watching You Without Me</b></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">, begins not with the song, but with a dreamlike domestic set-up, complete with a TV gliding side-to-side in a slow hypnotic wave-like motion. Although it’s much more fantastical a set than he might have used, there is something a little Beckett-like about the shenanigans, and sausagey-ruminations (a playful reference to 'strumento di porco'?), of the protagonist’s husband and son, played by Albert McIntosh and Bob Harms. The piece is both funny and absurd, and also poignant, as the woman’s son and husband also represent the friendly-voiced, silly conversations, she would have tuned into on her radio, if she'd had it for company. There's even an extra nod here to those fanatical fans who obsessively analyse every song lyric (Who they? Ed.) with the description of the missing folder as "big and pink", a line that also appeared in the song </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Pull out the Pin</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">. (Jungians only in the comments section, please, all Freudians are banned ;) )</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">There is spontaneous applause when Kate magically appears on the set, as the ghost in the house, to deliver the song, which opens with very seductive bongo-playing, and harmonies. Yet again, the woman becomes aware of her own other-worldness, just as she did in </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Under Ice</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, only this time it’s her absence she notices. An SOS runs through the song in parts, as do the sound of seagulls, and the backward lyric of </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"Don't ignore, don't ignore me. Let me in, and don't be long." </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">as once again reality interrupts the fog of dream. This is a pivotal moment, these people are the reason she will draw on all her reserves in her attempt to fight off sleep, and her sometimes destructive memories and imagination, and remain alive. Her imploring ghostly vocal, the poignant lyrics, the moment when she tries unsuccessfully to touch her son, all combine to see her stiffen her resolve, to demand that she be allowed to live. Seeing the drama played out in this fashion, with these amazing sets, the fantastic cast, </span><span style="font-size: small;">Kate's voice, the wonderful Chorus, the lasers, the lighting, the SFX, this doesn’t just breathe new life into these songs, it expands them, giving them an added dimension, making Kate's original vision clearer to us.</span><br />
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</span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><i><b>Jig of life</b></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">, with its live Uilleann piping by Kevin McAlea, offers a tension between the tune, which is joyful (although the sinister overtones of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Red Shoes </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">are never far from our thoughts) and sees the audience clapping along, and the supernatural element of the lyrics, where the 'I' of the song, as an old woman, is haunting herself. All the while, there's the beeping of the beacon in the background, a reminder that out there, in the darkness, the woman is still in limbo. Just then, as the jig becomes a fading lament and the beacon-sound becomes stronger, there’s a perversely joyful and unsettling moment as the head of <a href="http://www.johncarderbush.com/" target="_blank">John Carder Bush</a> makes a disembodied video appearance on the askew TV, to pick up the line </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">'Over here' </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">and, rather spectacularly deliver his poem: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Over here! <br />
Over here! <br />
<br />Can't you see where memories are kept bright? <br />
Tripping on the water like a laughing girl. <br />
Time in her eyes is spawning past life, <br />
One with the ocean and the woman unfurled, <br />
Holding all the love that waits for you here... <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">There follows a truly haunting version of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Hello Earth</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, which sees the 'I' of the song clinging for life to a buoy, and then eventually elevated figuratively above the ocean, and literally above the audience. The band, and the drumming in particular, is just marvellous here, and the Chorus is absolutely outstanding. This is high-drama, and unforgettable theatre, from the song itself, to the dreamlike climax when the ‘I’ is carried off in a death procession, as Gabi Zangerl whispers, in German, </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"deeper, deeper, somewhere in the depth there is a light.". </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">When the woman reappears minutes later, reborn, as Kate heads back toward the stage, the audience is again ecstatic and clapping wildly, as almost imperceptibly the beat of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Morning Fog</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, the climax to </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, has already begun.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><i><b>The Morning Fog</b></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">, the finale to </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave</span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, opens with the lyric </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"The light/Begin to bleed/Begin to Breathe/Begin to speak…"</span></i><span style="font-size: small;">, as the character is reborn into </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘the sweet morning fog’</span></i><span style="font-size: small;">. The song is her reaffirmation of her love and devotion to her family, and friends, and this is made all the more moving because the singer's own beloved son is right there on stage with her. Many of the people around me have tears running down their faces, as Kate, with somewhere around 20 of the fellowship out there on stage with her, sings the line, "</span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">I love you better now". </span></i><span style="font-size: small;">This acoustic number, with its warm accordion, has even the once terrifying Fish People, their headpieces to the side, joining Kate and the Chorus and cast, in their slow, deliberate, dance of celebration, in front of the stage and the skeletal ship set, in a truly joyous finale. </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave </span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">has been a long time coming, but by god it was worth the wait.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;">Kate Bush Live-Before the Dawn - Act 2<br />Aerial: A Sky of Honey </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I </span><span style="font-size: small;">love </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Aerial, </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">it’s a fantastic album. On its release at the end of 2005 it entered the UK Albums Chart at number three, selling more than 90,000 copies in its first week of release. The following year, Kate was nominated for two Brit Awards for Best British Female Solo Artist, and Best British Album. Worldwide the album has sold well in excess of 1,000,000 copies. And I especially love </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sky of Honey</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, which takes up the entire B-side of the album. It’s an extraordinary work, from an album regarded by many, rightly I think, as Bush’s masterpiece. The impressionistic piece follows the progression of light and shadow during a single day, through which the birds play, and a painter attempts to capture one particular moment in time - perhaps to the exclusion of those around him, personified in </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, by Tesoro, the artist’s mannequin. A fan of James Joyce’s novel </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Ulysses</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, which also takes place over a single day in Bloom’s life, Bush surely has, with </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sky of Honey</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, come very close to creating a work of art as stimulating and awe-inspiring, as that remarkable book. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: x-large;"><b>A</b></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">fter the interval, the curtain retreats in surprising fashion, and a cheer goes up. As the clapping subsides, two huge Moorish doors, those seen on the cover of the </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">programme, creak open, to the sound, somewhat unexpectedly, of the intro of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">50 Words for Snow*</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, from the album of the same name - an artist’s wooden mannequin, the size of a child, walks through them, controlled by a puppeteer who follows him </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">(Personally, I’ve always wondered about a possible link between the album’s name, and the character Ariel, the sprite from Shakespeare's The Tempest, but it was always no more than a passing fancy. Until I saw Tesoro, a wooden boy, that is. In The Tempest, the magician Prospero rescued Ariel from a tree he was imprisoned in. It might be, at another time, worth thinking about.) . </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">Slowly, the sound of birds singing wins the day, and </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">50 Words </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">dissipates as </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sky of Honey </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">begins, with </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Prelude </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">- Kate’s solo piano mimics the sound of the birds, who appear to be singing something like "</span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Don’t Grow Old Bertie" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">and Bush’s son says, "</span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Mummy, Daddy, the day is full of birds…sounds like they’re saying words"</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">. A shadow is cast though, perhaps by a </span><span style="font-size: small;">cloud covering the sun and it is reflected in the melody; an early reminder, perhaps, that such perfect moments pass all too quickly. </span></span><br />
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<em><span style="color: purple;">*The 50 Words for Snow intro' appearing here, is a nice reminder of the presence of one of Kate's 'Snowmen', the incredibly talented <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_W_Tayler">Stephen W Tayler</a> of </span></em><a href="http://www.chimera-arts.com/homepage.html"><em><span style="color: purple;">Chimera Arts,</span></em></a><em><span style="color: purple;"> Kate Bush's 'Vocal Navigator' during <strong>Before the Dawn</strong>, and the man who mixed the <a href="http://www.katebush.com/videos/50-words-snow">'50 Words for Snow'</a> album (and 'worked on <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Directors-Cut-Kate-Bush/dp/B004S6RIF2">'Director's Cut</a>' tracks and the 2012 remix of Running Up That Hill.) His discography of work is truly eye-popping.</span></em> </div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Experienced live, </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Prologue </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">is even more beautiful than you can ever imagine. It is beauty beyond words. Kate’s live vocal, along with individual instruments playing the part of different bird-songs, that haunting melody, and the animations and accompanying films, almost produce a sensory overload. We do hear </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"the lark ascending", </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">and now, our minds-eye a little more open, we can perhaps even see a little more of what Vaughan Williams imagined when George Meredith’s Eucharistic poem inspired his "pastoral romance for orchestra": </span></span></div>
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</span><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">He rises and begins to round, <br />
He drops the silver chain of sound, <br />
Of many links without a break, <br />
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake. <br />
For singing till his heaven fills, <br />
‘Tis love of earth that he instils, <br />
And ever winging up and up, <br />
Our valley is his golden cup <br />
And he the wine which overflows <br />
to lift us with him as he goes. <br />
Till lost on his aerial rings <br />
In light, and then the fancy sings. </span></span></i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><em><br /></em></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">As the "lovely afternoon" unfolds </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"Like some kind of magic /Like the light in Italy /Lost its way across the sea," </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">it slowly rises to a crescendo, complete with beautiful pastoral bells, and Kate becoming a bell (so glorious), and then the drums and the rising Chorus all chime in, and people can’t help applauding during this, and in a way that hesitant, almost involuntary applause during the song, mimics the pattern as it too rises from the first ripple to swell into a huge ovation at the invitation to follow the story of </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"the oil and the brush". </span></span></i><br />
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</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">The slow and steady </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">An Architect's Dream</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, opens with Albert McIntosh, ‘the Sun’ on </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Aerial </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">when he was a young boy, now grown up and, somewhat fittingly, cast in the role of the painter, his anger toward his mannequin perhaps illustrating that it is often true that artists can become selfish in the pursuit of their art, neglecting those around them. Like the darkness drifting over the sky, those "</span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">dark accents coming in from the side.", </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">there is also light and darkness in the creator. The percussion here, live, is every bit as delicate and dreamlike as it is on the CD, perhaps more so. It is a world moving in slow motion, as the painter paints on, regardless of that fact that scene has now changed with the changing </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">weather "It's always the same /Whenever he works on a pavement it starts to rain.", </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">his toil a triumph of hope over experience. Another ovation, and no wonder, that was simply stunning. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">With </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Painter's Link</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, Albert McIntosh’s character laments the rain's effect on his work as </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"…all the colours run, all the colours run, see what they have become?" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">but the serendipitous action creates the favourite work of Kate as narrator. All the colours of this brilliant set run into each other too, and the Autumnal shades are reflected in the costumes. It's almost as if a painting, an Impressionist painting, has come to life. I'm reminded of </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Lech Majewski's movie The Mill and the Cross, a beautiful film based on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Francis_Gibson" title="Michael Francis Gibson">Michael Francis Gibson</a>'s book, of the same name, where <i></i> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder" title="Pieter Bruegel the Elder">Pieter Bruegel the Elder</a>'s 1564 painting <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Procession_to_Calvary_(Bruegel)" title="The Procession to Calvary (Bruegel)">The Procession to Calvary</a></i>, seems to have been brought to life. This show is every bit as beautiful.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><i><b>Sunset </b></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">is greeted with immediate applause. Here Kate sings an ode to the blackbird, a creature that features in </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">both The Ninth Wave </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">and </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sky of Honey</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">. This is a beautiful song, iridescent; it shimmers with the reflected sunlight of the </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"sea of honey/ a sky of honey." </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">But </span><span style="font-size: small;">there is a dark-side to this song, it is in many ways elegiac, a Memento mori, a reminder that all life turns, inevitably, back to dust. There’s a hint of Blake’s questioning in the poem </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘Tyger’</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">, from </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘Songs of Experience’ </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">with </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">reflected in Kate’s lyric </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"Who knows who wrote that song of Summer…". </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">The audience applaud as the song pauses, before the tempo change and the Chorus joins the now absolutely joyous flamenco celebration and the applause turns into wild clapping along with the beat as the song goes up, up, up to the top of the sky. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">In many ways the beginning of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Aerial Tal </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">is creepier-sounding than the start of any other song on the set. The ominous beats of the drum and dark percussion continuing even after the birds have begun their game of </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘peek-a-boo, bird in a tree’ </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">with Kate, who speaks back in the language of birds. Even after the birds call to ‘Bertie’ and he responds with laughter, there is an unmistakably sinister quality to the piece, like the best Grimm fairytale. </span></span><br />
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</span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><i><b>Somewhere In Between</b></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">, is a song I love even better now, because in many ways it is the key to both </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">and </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sky of Honey</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">. It binds the two pieces in a similar way to the Timorous Beasties poster on the inside cover of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn’s </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">programme, where the blackbirds singing their song at dusk are in the foreground, while the coastguard searching for the protagonist of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Ninth Wave </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">hover in the distance. Again, it’s a song about climbing up to the highest height, and it’s an incredible celebration of life itself, that space between that first breath in, and that final breath out. </span></span><br />
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</span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"></span></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><i><b>Tawny Moon </b></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;">is an addition to </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">A Sky of Honey, </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">which increases the role of the artist in the narrative. It’s a song that combines the traditionally female association of the Moon, with very masculine imagery, but retains the Moon’s female aspect with the artist’s love for her. It was written for Albert McIntosh, in a role that was, arguably, tailor-made for him. How could the painter be played by anyone else, considering his associations with the album, and the creator? He’s perfect for the role, but it helps immeasurably that he has the confidence, and the talent to do the song justice. I can’t help thinking about Monty Python’s sketch about what the Romans did for us when I think of Bertie. I mean, apart from helping to make the original </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Aerial </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">album, and booklet, such a delight, and helping make </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">50 Words for Snow </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">so perfect with his work on </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Snowflake</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, keeping his mother happy, encouraging his mother to return to the stage with </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Before the Dawn</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, and performing the task of Creative Advisor on the show, along with his role as ‘the painter’ and as a member of that stonking Chorus – what has Albert McIntosh ever done for us? We Kate Bush fans will be eternally grateful.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Like </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Sunset </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">before it, </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Nocturn </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">is greeted with immediate applause. I am transported when Kate sings </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘…into the Moonlight’ </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">and the song washes over me. I’m paying a lot more attention to the band and the Chorus and cast than you can tell from reading this, and I’m really loving Omar’s drumming, but I’m gone, I’m floating. Even as we metaphorically swim further and further out, diving </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"deeper and deeper…" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">into this dream, I’m touching the sky. The dream takes on dark possibilities as the ‘I’ of this song also becomes the </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘…Blackbird with a stone around her leg’</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">, just as the ‘I’ in </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘Waking the Witch’ </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">did. Are they the same protagonist? Is it the same shared dream? Don’t you just love the many layers in Kate Bush’s work? But the Sun is rising again, over the horizon, creating the sea and the sky of honey, its light shooting up over the buildings, over the windows, over the aerial, and awakening the dreamers of the world. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The crowing cock, the insistent rhythm, and the church bells signal the start of the day, and the start of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Aerial</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">. The dawn has come, and the song of the day has begun, and Kate hits that </span><span style="font-size: small;">top note on the word </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘Sun’ </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">and it takes off. The thumping beat takes us up, up, toward the roof. The band and the cast, look and sound fantastic. They are transforming into birds, as Kate laughs while the birds sing, </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘hurdy, gurdy, Bertie’ </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">crack jokes, and play </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘Peek-boo can’t see me’. </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">We are heading relentlessly toward the glorious climax of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Aerial. </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">The protagonist wants to follow the light up to the rooftops, up to the sky, she is transforming, shape-shifting – </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">"What kind of language is this?" </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">She asks. She has donned her clock of raven wings, </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">‘her beautiful wings’ </span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">to go up there, up on the roof, and join in with the joy of the birds. She is laughing deliriously, as she transforms into a character not unlike The Morrígan (the great goddess) from Irish mythology, who donned her coat of raven wings to transform into a bird, in order to fly above in a search for enlightenment. Oh my god, what a finale. This, you just have to see for yourself. The venue erupts and the ovation, rightly, seems to go on forever.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: yellow;">I've added this (again something people reviewing a show, in print, to a deadline, don't have the luxury of) because I don't want to underplay the importance of the entire band, and </span><a href="http://david-rhodes.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: yellow;">David Rhodes</span></a><span style="background-color: yellow;">, </span><span style="background-color: yellow;">in particular, in the latter stages of Act II. Anyone who has seen David perform with Peter Gabriel, and others, will know that he's an eye-catching performer, but I'm sure, like me, they will still have been knocked-out, not just by his playing, but by his role-playing and total immersion in the part of a</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The show is bookended to a close by two encores; the first of which is the beautiful ballad </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Among Angels</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, the final track on the marvellous album </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">50 Words for Snow. </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">It’s worth mentioning now that there is an enormous tree growing right through Kate’s piano, which should give those of you who remember her bone meal joke (I think to John Wilson), when she was promoting </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">50 Words for Snow</span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">, a bit of a kick. This is our opportunity to hear the song exactly as it was recorded, live at the piano, in one take, and it is staggeringly beautiful. It’s a real privilege to be able to hear and see her there at her piano, in her element. I think I might well have paid the entrance fee just to witness her perform this one song. And then, completely unexpectedly, we are all brought together, in perhaps the most surprising move of the evening, to sing along with a stirring, almost marching band-like rendition of </span><b><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Cloudbusting, a </span></span></i></b><span style="font-size: small;">tribute to maverick, single-minded, originality. </span><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Yeyeyo</span></span></i><span style="font-size: small;">, indeed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The world is great, life is great. Kate Bush is smiling at us, God is in his Heaven, and all is right with the world. Strangers are smiling at one another, and patting one another's backs, as we shuffle out of the venue. It strikes me that Kate Bush has encouraged in her audience, love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity - those boundless states.</span><br />
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</span></span>Kate Bush Official on <a href="https://twitter.com/KateBushMusic" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/KateBushMusic" target="_blank">Youtube,</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/katebush">Facebook.</a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">A whole bunch of albums by Kate Bush, can be found here on Amazon:<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kate-Bush/e/B000ARC538/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&linkCode=ur2&tag=rhinocouk-21" target="_blank"> Kate Bush goodies.</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">People who were on Kate Bush's mailing list got an early heads-up for the tickets for Before the Dawn, and their tickets were the beautiful ones pictured at the top of this page. You can sign-up at <a href="http://www.katebush.com/" target="_blank">Kate Bush's Official site. </a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">If you want to keep in touch with fellow Kate Bush fansn you'll find them at through <a href="http://www.katebushnews.com/" target="_blank">Katebush News </a>and their marvellous <a href="http://thehomegroundandkatebushnewsandinfoforum.yuku.com/" target="_blank">Homeground Forum</a>. And on <a href="https://twitter.com/FishPeopleFC" target="_blank">Twitter and Facebook</a> - just ask for <a href="http://thestoryteller1618.com/" target="_blank">Yirry Yanya</a>. </span></span><br />
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There are lots of lyrics by, and in-depth articles on, Kate Bush still up on <a href="http://gaffa.org/">Gaffaweb.</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">The best place on the net for photos of Kate Bush, old and new, is Isabelle Aerial's <a href="http://www.kbarchives.co.uk/" target="_blank">Kate Bush Archives</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><em>Addendum: There are a great number of things to be discussed at a later date: The frequent references to the colours red and gold. The references to precious metals. The possibility that there wasn’t actually a rescue, and the poor soul is still adrift out there, in her life-jacket, in a state of limbo, somewhere in between the two albums, keeping herself occupied by flights of fancy, like imagining she can fly. And, I'm certain, many other things that you noticed, and I did not. Get to it, you Love Hounds.</em></span></span></div>
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<em>The very wonderful <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mccaffree">Robb McCaffree</a> (he's the guy who created the utterly brilliant <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGAkoCRRJvw">Night of the Demon/Hounds</a> of Love Mashup) who I met in London, at the show, which he and Bryan flew all the way over from the US to be at, and I were chatting about the Gayatri Mantra, and Robb brought up the fact that in several places the mantra ends at 'sacred feat'. This is very true, he has a point. I use 'sacred seat' because that was William Quan Judge's wording based on the earlier translation by Sir William Jones, but I believe that the sound and the effect of either will be fine for the purposes of scansion and chanting.</em> <em></em></div>
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-71024331329486605292014-09-09T23:10:00.000+00:002014-09-09T23:10:03.902+00:00The Saga Continues Ha. Well it has been a long time in the making. As my regular reader will know, I began my side project, 'Johnny Morte', as a mini-comic some time back, and it kept developing as I added new themes and ideas and colour. I like to think it has continued to improve, as I became more familiar with my subjects, and I've actually loved the way it has evolved from something good enough for me to experiment with, to something good enough to present to the paying public. As I've mentioned in the past, I tend to grow the story back the way to a period before the action I thought was the beginning, began, and I think that really does help create a story that has more meat, and makes more sense, because rather than relying on flashbacks, the tale runs in a chronological order of events and is therefore easier to follow. So, this new post will be a beginning before the beginnings that have been seen on the blog in the past, if you see what I mean. This is not, however, the beginning of the story, it is about 6 pages in, but I was playing around with my colour schemes so I thought I'd post them.<br />
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The first pic' here is what I'm using as a background and an overlay, so that I can achieve a look of decayed and decaying opulence. I won't add it until everything is put together, but then I'm not really colouring the pages at the moment, I just got a little excited and raced ahead...as you do.<br />
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-84607512994302812492013-11-18T00:56:00.000+00:002013-11-18T00:56:48.517+00:00Yay! Progress.The fact that I've finally made the cover to issue #1 of Johnny Morte means that I've finished the first comic book. I may make some changes, but it's largely done and those changes won't be huge. I don't know if I'll colour it - I might. It's very freeing because now that everything in Johnny's world is established and most of the main characters are introduced, I can work on other projects at the same time. This may well include drawing some cartoons again for the first time in years. An odd thing happens every so often; I think of a cartoon, so I write the punch line with some notes and file it away. As a result I have some ideas in the vault. Yippee. <br />
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-79030917829333319482013-09-16T19:49:00.000+00:002013-09-16T19:49:42.151+00:00Last Teeny Update Before Resuming Proper PostingI'm going with black gutters in parts of Johnny Morte. Issue #1 of the comic begins with a dream sequence, then a night sequence and then a flashback sequence, so I'm going with black gutters up to the flashback sequence. There will be other pages with black gutters further on in the story, and again there will there will be a point to them.<br />
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-18635070983454675542013-09-13T14:05:00.001+00:002013-09-13T14:05:55.338+00:00Johnny Morte cover #1Well, I'm not sure about this one. I'll know better tomorrow, when I look at it in a more detached way. It will do for now, I suppose. It is kind of comic bookish, which I like:<br />
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-15076953907988302682013-09-11T16:08:00.002+00:002013-09-11T16:08:37.879+00:00Page 1 of Johnny MorteAnyone who has read the posts on Johnny Morte, from his beginnings as a mini-comic, will hardly find the inclusion of the Charon/Grim Reaper character a surprise, but I didn't want anyone unfamiliar with it to see all at once where the story might eventually go. Which is daft really because all the details are on this blog, but I thought it was interesting to see how people reacted to the story without knowing it goes all supernatural. Anyway, I've finished page 1, which obviously comes before the 6 pages in the post below this one, so let's imagine it there rather than have me deleting the previous post and posting again.. I'll put the cover up this week, and maybe another few pages:<br />
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-89587985049314167202013-09-09T23:59:00.000+00:002013-09-09T23:59:08.869+00:00Hello Future Rod, it's Me Again.Still waiting to update, but I'm going to post this and delete the previous post, because the drawings are more up-to-date and there are more of them. Again, I'm holding page 1 back for the time being, as it gives so much away, so these are actually pages 2-7 of Johnny Morte #1. <br />
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I did a nifty thing here on one of the pages (bear with me if it's so bleedin' obvious I should shut up). I had been redrawing an ear and an eye over and over again, erasing the things and trying to get them right. Then I remembered I was drawing on layers on the computer (I'm not kidding), on Manga Studio, so I took the rectangle tool and isolated the area on my "linedrawing" layer that I wanted to change, and increased the brightness on that area turning the black line grey, like pencils. Then I created a new layer called "eareyeam" (injecting a little humour, you see) and drew the ear and the eye on the new layer, using the previous ear and eye as a guide for what not to do. Then I highlighted the "linedrawing" layer and leaving the rectangle tool in place I erased the old ear and eye. After that I right-clicked the "eareyeam" layer and merged it with the "linedrawing" layer. I know it's a pretty obvious way to make corrections but I felt dead-chuffed about it. #EasilyPleased.<br />
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-31611287599092366642013-03-14T01:52:00.000+00:002013-03-14T01:52:32.452+00:00Coming Soon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'll be posting a long-winded blog on the fabulously gory and utterly fantastic manga <em>'Shingeki No Kyojin'</em> (Attack on Titan), by 27 year-old mangaka Hajime Isayama. Attack on Titan has been growing in popularity steadily since the original manga's launch in Kodansha's <em>Bessatu Shonen Magazine</em> in 2009. Nominated for the 16th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2012, the manga features the battles between humans and the man-eating giants who now rule the world.<br />
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An anime adaptation of the manga is scheduled to premiere in Japan this spring (2013), to be directed by Tetsuro Araki (Death Note, High school of the Dead). A live-action film version is also on the way, but film journalist Hiroo Otaka reported recently that Tetsuya Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls, Confessions) had left his position as director. Although a new director for the film isn't in place, the movie is still expected to be released in 2014 or perhaps later.<br />
<a href="http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/news/2012-12-13/director-nakashima-leaves-live-action-attack-on-titan">http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/news/2012-12-13/director-nakashima-leaves-live-action-attack-on-titan</a><br />
<br />Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-20647645615068642052013-01-18T12:00:00.001+00:002013-01-18T12:00:33.266+00:00And So it Goes......tiddely pom. To quote someone else with very little brain. <br />
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I've drawn 26 pages of my comic book, A3-size, and inked them, despite the fact that I don't need to do that because I'll be inking digitally - but I did anyway, it's my way of finalising the pencils and checking continuity (or I'd edit from now until doomsday). So whilst they look like final pages, they aren't, they're really my final pencils, and there's still one stage to go, the digital inking. Which is why I was at the printer's, you see I have to get the drawings onto the computer and at the moment I have no A-3 size scanner, so I was there getting the drawings reduced to A4-size so I scan them in easily and quickly on my A4 scanner, without folding the pages and joining the artwork together on the computer - which is tedious in the extreme. <br />
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So, after scanning the reduced A4-size pages in, I went to work on them using a combination of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Manga Studio. I used Photoshop to increase the A4 drawings back up to A3, reduced the levels so that the drawings look like feint pencil, and established a new layer before I opened the drawings in Illustrator, where they were inked. In Illustrator, I imported the drawings with layers converted to objects, and started to draw, using Sherm Cohen's cartooning brushes. After finishing, I imported the drawings into Manga Studio, where I ruled the pages, placed word balloons and laid-down a layer of text. I then exported the finished drawings as PSD files, and then I discovered the mistake. <br />
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When I exported the drawings from Manga Studio I took my eye off the ball, and halved the size of the pages when I reduced the resolution from 600dpi to 300dpi. So what I now had were A4 size drawings, again. Oh, it's possible that it wouldn't have mattered that much. Certainly, if I'd kept them at 600dpi, I'd have no problem increasing them to A3 at 300dpi, but I just feel that increasing A4 to A3 at a resolution of 300dpi, is pushing your luck. So I've started again, only this time I'm doing everything, drawing, balloons, lettering, in Manga Studio, because I think that will allow me to finish inking all the pages by the end of the weekend. Said he hopefully.<br />
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So this was the page all faded and I was building it a little at a time. Having finished the panels and the balloons in MS, I was back in PS joining the balloons together in panel 2 and making the eye-hole for the door in panel 3 and I thought it was all coming along okay. But the following day I discovered my sizes were all to pot.<br />
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(As always, if you want a good look at the pics (checking pen settings etc) right-click and open in a new window.)<br />
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So this time I need to speed things up and I've straight in with the inking in MS, using the Maru pen, and since I do the panels and balloons in there I might as well do the lot in that programme.<br />
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Back to Photoshop for that spy-hole though because it's easier for me to do that there. Just a case of using the shape tool and setting the transparency. If anyone wants to tell me how to do it in MS, I'm willing to learn.</div>
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So it's not so bad, if it's a page that's got few straight lines and hardly any balloons. When that's the case it's a little like tracing and it's a pretty quick job, but only because the pencil work is fully finished. Otherwise it would be driving me up the wall..Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-49806230337216611882012-11-13T11:25:00.002+00:002012-11-13T11:25:12.922+00:00The Moebius LoopSo I began working on Johnny Morte maybe two years ago? It has taken this long to get it just the way I want it, and the story has evolved over the period and the look of it has changed. Visually, it hasn't changed a great deal, but the story is a lot better, I think. It is a comic, and I do view it as a 'pop project' to fund the other stuff, but it isn't a throwaway project, and I hope the length of time it has taken me to finalise the script and the artwork illustrates that. I do take it seriously, and I won't let it go until I know it's the best I can do.<br />
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Letting it go is the problem really. For decades now I have had a problem letting things go. In fact, on several occasions I have supplied magazine publishers and card companies with "second drawings" along with the finished approved work. This "second drawing" is a "really finished" drawing that I think is an improvement on the one requested. At no stage, has any publisher used the "second drawing". But quite recently, I took this obsession with getting things just right, to a whole new level. I was looking at some old artwork I did in the 1980s, which was in a comic so it's a matter of record somewhere - it's an historical fact in some dusty collection somewhere, and I was going to put it online, and I actually found myself thinking about redrawing it.<br />
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Can you believe that? I mean to say, in what way would that have been authentic? I was going to post a thirty year old drawing that I drew yesterday. It wasn't as if I was going to re-imagine it, or contemporise it, or make it the way I always imagined it would be - all much more valid reasons for doing it. No, what I wanted to do was remove the "mistakes" I made back then. I knew right there and then that I had a problem, and knew what the problem was; I hate anything by me. I was in danger of being caught up in a moebius loop where I would spend the rest of my life redrawing everything I've ever done every what? Every 6 months, every year, every decade? It suddenly became apparent to me that I have been doing this for some time. Now, a version of this behaviour does have its place in the work I do. In cartooning one often looks back over the old rejects and even the accepted cartoons for new ideas, for a new spin, but that's different, that's re-interrupting the work, making it more contemporary. What can't be healthy, surely, is being stuck in the frame of mind where one endlessly redraws the same exact idea over and over again, in a futile search for perfection - especially when that time would be better spent moving on and coming up with new ideas.<br />
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So here we go. I'm on page 9 of JM Comic book #1 and very soon I'll have the entire 26 or so pages finished.and it'll wing its way away and it will be "the best I could do at the time" and that is what it will remain. It's very freeing to set aside a compulsion, it's like stepping outside a moebius strip.<br />
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-36238049771729996792012-10-22T00:47:00.001+00:002012-10-22T00:58:54.296+00:00A Very Happy Lovecraftian Halloween<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
American author<strong>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft" target="_blank">Howard Phillips Lovecraft's</a></strong> (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) stories and his literary philosophy of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism" target="_blank">"cosmicism"</a> , the belief that life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally hostile to the interests of humankind, exert a tremendous influence on modern fiction, and have had, and continue to have, a profound impact on the world of comicbooks. It is an influence that began during the author's lifetime. In his essay, "H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos",<a href="http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/ficlist.htm" target="_blank"> Robert M. Price</a> identifies the "Cthulhu Mythos proper", a sharing of Lovecraftian-lore by Lovecraft's contemporaries, formulated during his lifetime, and subject to his guidance. The second stage identified by Price, is the stage guided by the person who coined the term the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos" title="Cthulhu Mythos">Cthulhu Mythos</a> , <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Derleth" target="_blank">August Derleth</a>, who published Lovecraft's stories after his death, and attempted to catalouge and expand the Lovecraftian Mythos. The second stage, the expansion of the Cthulu Mythos after Lovecraft's death, in stories, films, and comicbooks, has been so successful that librarians and booksellers still have to turn away would-be occultists who search in vain for the <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon" title="Necronomicon">Necronomicon</a></i>, Lovecraft's fictional <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimoire" title="Grimoire">grimoire</a> of magical rites and forbidden lore. The <strong><em>Necronomicon</em></strong>, as a shared element in fiction has surfaced in both the Cthulu Mythos Proper, and the later Cthulu Mythos. In his short story, <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0607961h.html" target="_blank">"The Children of the Night"</a> (1931), <strong><em>Conan the Barbarian</em></strong> author, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Howard" target="_blank">Robert E. Howard</a> (a member of the "Lovecraft Circle" along with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Ashton_Smith" target="_blank">Clark Ashton Smith</a>, the author of <em><strong>Psycho</strong></em>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bloch" target="_blank">Robert Bloch</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Belknap_Long" target="_blank">Frank Belknap Long</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kuttner" target="_blank">Henry Kuttner</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Leiber" target="_blank">Fritz Lieber</a>), had his character Friedrich Von Junzt read Lovecraft's <em>Necronomicon</em>. In his four-issue comicbook series <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonomicon" target="_blank"><strong><em>Neonomicon</em></strong></a><strong><em>,</em></strong> writer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Moore" title="Alan Moore">Alan Moore</a> both expanded and subverted the Cthulu Mythos, by foregrounding, naming, and showing, graphically, the unameable terrors that lurk in the deep structure beneath the surface of Lovecraft's Mythos. Lovecraft's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkham_Asylum" target="_blank">Arkham Sanatorium</a> found its way into the DC universe in the 1970s courtesy of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_O'Neil" target="_blank">Dennis O'Neil</a> and during its time it has housed The Joker, the Riddler, Bane, and others and has featured in Alan Moore's <em><strong>Swamp Thing</strong></em>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman" target="_blank">Neil Gaiman's</a> <strong><em>Sandman</em></strong>, and in a number of DC's mini-series.</div>
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The magazine <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tal_Hurlant" target="_blank"><em>Metal Hurlant</em></a>, was created by "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Humano%C3%AFdes_Associ%C3%A9s" title="Les Humanoïdes Associés">Les Humanoïdes Associés</a>" ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud" title="Jean Giraud">Jean Giraud</a> (<em>Mœbius),</em> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Druillet" target="_blank">Philippe Druillet</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Dionnet" title="Jean-Pierre Dionnet">Jean-Pierre Dionnet</a> and <a class="new" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bernard_Farkas&action=edit&redlink=1" title="Bernard Farkas (page does not exist)">Bernard Farkas</a>) in 1974. During its hugely influential run, which ended in 1987, it featured work by, amongst others, <span class="credit_value"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Forest" target="_blank">Jean-Claude Forest</a> (Barbarella),</span> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Corben" title="Richard Corben">Richard Corben</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Jodorowsky" title="Alejandro Jodorowsky">Alejandro Jodorowsky</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enki_Bilal" title="Enki Bilal">Enki Bilal</a> (Immortal), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caza" title="Caza">Caza</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_Clerc" title="Serge Clerc">Serge Clerc</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Voss" title="Alain Voss">Alain Voss</a>, <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berni_Wrightson" title="Berni Wrightson">Berni Wrightson</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Manara" title="Milo Manara">Milo Manara</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Margerin" title="Frank Margerin">Frank Margerin</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_McKie" target="_blank">Angus McKie,</a> and many others. The Lovecraft edition in the US, where it was published as <em>Heavy Metal</em>, features a beautiful cover of Mister Lovecraft, by the fabulous <a href="http://www.jkpotter.com/" target="_blank">J.K. Potter</a>, which was markedly different to the equally beautiful <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Giger" target="_blank">H.R. Giger</a> cover that graced the French edition. All art is copyright the respective copyright holders.</div>
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Let me just warn you in advance that I've left some stuff out and avoided scanning entire stories in order to make sure we don't inadvertently put anyone's hard work into the public domain. What is left, I hope, gives you a feel of the collection. I haven't randomly omitted things, but I have chosen the stuff I think works very well, either as faithful adaptations of Lovecraft's work or in expanding the Cthulu Mythos. One of my favourite's is the first story, <strong><em>Final Justice</em></strong>, by Chateau. The artwork reminds a little of some <strong><em>Weird Stories</em></strong> and even some <strong><em>Sandman</em></strong> episodes. Whilst I like most of the stories, attempts at expanding the Lovecraft Mythos, like <strong><em>KTULU</em></strong> by Moebius, could have done with a little more thought, I think. I love the look of <strong><em>Xeno meets Dr. Fear and is Consumed</em></strong>, by Terance Lindall and Chris Adames, <strong><em>The Man from Blackhole</em></strong> by Clerc, <em><strong>Dewsbury's Masterpiece</strong></em> by Charland and Cornillion and Druillet's <strong><em>Excerpts from the Necronomicon</em></strong>. I could have done with a little more Randolph Carter and the Cats of Ulthar in <strong><em>The Language of Cats</em></strong> by Claveloux, but it is what it is and it all goes to show that whether you adapt Lovecraft faithfully or just drop a little Lovecraftian Mythos into your text or a little sodden Lovecraftian love into your drawings, you end up with an interesting outcome.<br />
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I have quite a bit of Breccia's Lovecraft work here at McKie Towers. It is all very beautiful to look at. If I had to imagine a perfect artist for Lovecraft's <strong><em>The Dunwich Horror</em></strong>, or any Lovecraft story it would be him.<br />
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Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-42817571199997607562012-05-04T12:04:00.001+00:002012-05-04T12:04:44.789+00:00Wonderful Copenhagen, Allan Haverholm's Sort-MundI was obsessed with comicbooks when I was a schoolboy, American comicbooks. During some lessons I sat daydreaming, especially when the lesson involved the teacher talking about her time in Dar es Salaam - which she did a lot. I tried to imagine what comicbooks they had there, and then I was off, staring over at the globe in the corner of the room and imagining what comicboks were like in India, in Holland, in Italy, in Denmark. <br />
<br />It's still a real treat for me to get my grubby little mitts on these treasures, and I love seeing them in their native language, rather than in English translation. That's why I was delighted when Allan Haverholm let me have a copy of his graphic novel, <em>Sort-Mund</em>, and had no problems with the fact that I cannot understand a word of Danish. I spoke with Allan about blogging on <em>Sort-Mund</em>, and making a stab at what is going on in it, using only the drawings to feel my way through the story, and he decided it would be an interesting experiment. Besides, I figured that even if I was way off target with the story, I would still be able to share Allan's wonderful drawings with you.<br />
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A good place to start when you're reading a book is the title. A lot of thought goes into titles. Somewhere in the house here I have a copy of the sheet of paper Dickens used when he was struggling to name <em>Hard Times</em>; he went through a lot of ideas before settling on that title. But I wanted to avoid looking at Babelfish and decided that Sort-Mund was a place. It's not, I now know, <em>Sort-Mund</em> means Black Mouth, but I've avoided trying to translate chunks of dialogue because whether I've understood the text or not, I've been able to fashion some sort of story, in my head,<br />
from Allan's drawings.<br />
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I love the opening page, our entry into the story, i's a stark, noirish, Dr Caligari-type cityscape, with Triffid-like tentacles breaking through the surface and blocking the path of a loan figure. He turns and races back the way, through a park, and then it becomes clear that the protagonist has been dreaming. The scene then switches to a domestic setting, but there are one or two visual clues that this sunny morning may retain something of the strangeness of last night's dream. The shadow of the window frame on his face forms the shape of the cross, outside his charming cottage, there's a black crow watching him collect his mail, the whistling kettle, the first real sound we hear screams across the page. We're pretty confident something is going to happen and there's a hint or two that it might involve religion of some sort, death, and maybe even something Lovecraftian. <br />
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The letter causing our protagonist, Manne Svarts, to go collect something from a counter or teller or collection point 665 (almost 666 and just one of the numerical and symbolic hints and clues laced through the text), and there may again be an interruption from a dream or from an imagined war-time scene. This worrying thread, that suggests a fracture of some sort in our hero's thinking or even in his mind, continues as we move from the protagonist's reality of modern-day Denmark, of coffee houses and bus trips, back into his violent dream scape where he dreams within the dream and morphs into the violent perpetrator. It's becoming clear that reality and fantasy are becoming problematic for our hero.<br />
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There are really nice shifts in POV as Allan introduces different characters, like the trendy young researchers, into the story, and the noir mood lights even the most cozy, domestic, scenes, warning us that there is a dark shadow hovering over the text. That dark shadow belongs to Satan, and the introduction of a diabolical book is very well handled by the artist, with a nice change of lettering to establish the text of the book as separate from the text of the story itself and the angular drawing establish the book's illustrations as different from the reality-based illustrations of the story. The pace moves on and the story carries us into some exciting visual areas as a modern computer-driven reality, and a dream scape melded to chessboard, swirl around the pages and remind us of the famous scene in that old movie where the Gods summon the Titans and play chess with human lives. <br />
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It soon becomes clear that the violent dreams have some basis in reality, and that people in Copenhagen are being killed. And our protagonist's vivid nightmares, his day dreams, and the voices he is hearing in his head, have to lead us to wonder if he maybe isn't actually polishing people off himself. But he is just one of the suspects in this tale that jumps time zones and hints at macabre doings and arcane knowledge, and I'm now suddenly conscious that I might accidentally stumble onto the truth of the story and produce spoilers, so I'm going to stop now. <br />
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I think Allan has produced a pretty impressive graphic novel with <em>Sort-Mund</em>, and I wish I'd got it years ago when it was first published. The sheer amount of experimentation with lighting, with the lettering, with the panel structure, puts me in mind of the sort of experiments that Joyce dabbled with in Ulysses. In many ways, Allan has made some very bold decisions in Sort Mund, and it's a book that should be studied by other graphic novelists because it has some pretty fancy pen work and some great ideas.<br />
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<br /></div>Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-67908178476113554562012-04-28T00:23:00.002+00:002012-04-28T00:23:58.291+00:00Picking Over Eric Orchard's MarrowBones<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I like Eric Orchard. I like Eric's work too, he has a lightness of touch, and can invoke a genuine sense of creepiness that is almost in the same league as the feeling of Unheimliche that Renee French captures with her drawings. But his talent doesn't end there, dammit, he can also write well, as his latest comicbook, <strong>MarrowBones</strong>, clearly shows. <br />
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It's a difficult thing to do, introducing your imagined world to the reader for the first time; in any medium. But I think it is especially difficult in a graphic story, as it often requires a degree of verbosity that limits the area that can be used to illustrate exactly what is going on. In a Gothic poem or story, the scene can be set quickly, and effectively, and economically, with very little need for the reader to do any work: <em>"Once upon a midnight dreary..."</em> immediately sets the scene for the reader, and the rhythm and cadence drives Drearily Down as the mood is hammered home. Within seconds we are partners in the bleakness. In a comicbook the dreariness has to be illustrated, literally, and you can't cheat, you can't just draw a darkened sky and have one character blurt out "what a dreary place". Well you can, I suppose, but the reader will see through that approach soon enough. The reason Eric Orchard succeeds in quickly imparting information about the world the reader of <strong>MarrowBones</strong> will inhabit, quickly, is because all the visual clues are there from the very first moment the reader interacts with the book. Everything, from the fetid, dripping, Marrowbones logo, with its cleverly incorporated skull, to the cover design, to the muted palette, and the choice of lettering, all works toward one end, establishing the Gothic tone that is both uncomfortably strange and because of our experience of other Gothic tales, uncomfortably familiar. It is, a fully imagines world and we have every reason to believe the author when he claims that the project has been gestating for some time.<br />
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<br />The cleverness of the tale is in using a crypt-keeper-type of character as a narrator. This is a nod to comicbook history, as it invokes memories of the old 1950s EC comic <strong>Tales from the Crypt</strong>, and many a horror comic and TV series and movie since, and it is also an extremely effective way of establishing the history of the imagined universe as economically as possible.<br />
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<strong>MarrowBones</strong> also succeeds in bridging the gap between a cute vampire tale like <strong>Hipira</strong>, by Katsuhiro Otomo and Shinji Kimura, and the outright horror of Junji Ito's vision. Somewhere between both these extremes, lies Marrowbones and it is a very welcome addition indeed. <br />
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<strong>MarrowBones</strong> Issue One can be downloaded for around $2 from Eric Orchard's blog at <a href="http://ericorchard.blogspot.co.uk/">http://ericorchard.blogspot.co.uk/</a> .Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-82148696991594724892012-03-28T00:08:00.002+00:002012-03-28T00:08:57.028+00:00Imagine a Noise like Blerp.Hi. I hope this means I'll shortly be back at the, ahem, grind. I still have to be scanned in a giant cigar-tube and have more blood tests, but I'm hoping it will be the last round of that stuff and I can put it behind me. Thanks for asking after me; I'll be in touch very soon.<br />
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All of a sudden, earlier today, I got a little interested in things again. It came out of the blue, and I think it had a sort of "blerp" sound to it. Suddenly, I started picking things up and looking at them. I even turned the Wacom on and I could draw with it; which was a little shocking because I thought I might have fogotten how to. <br />
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I also became interested in looking at comics again. This time round I haven't been, but I have been reading, Mapp and Lucia, and Berlin Stories and Tales of the City and The Woman in White, and others, but no comics. And I've been looking at manga again; which has been great. It has been fun catching up with Kurosagi Shitai Takuhaibin and with the Tenpai series and I'm looking forward to blogging about them; soonish. Meanwhile, here's a little look ahead at KCDS #15:<br />
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By the way; Blogger is a nightmare to type with just now. Is it all java now? Not very user friendly at all. Hopefully that will change.Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-64202411134458002092011-12-16T15:11:00.002+00:002011-12-16T15:17:19.919+00:00Sorry, been ill<div>May be a repeat of the 2009 stuff. Yucky, but back soon.</div><div> </div>Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12581147.post-51713775887617551272011-09-26T11:13:00.004+00:002011-09-26T11:23:50.935+00:00Of Death and MusicSo I'll be posting some drawings soon. I'm writing a story about a DJ in Edinburgh, in the 1970s, which has some actual people in it and some fictional ones, and lots of real places- and its skeleton is the legend of Orpheus.<br /><br /><br /><strong>The legend of Orpheus is well-known. In Greek mythology, Orpheus was a troubadour from Thrace. He charmed even the animals. His songs diverted his attention from his wife Eurydice. Death took her away from him. He descended to the netherworld, and used his charm to win permission to return with Eurydice to the world of the living on the condition that he never look at her. But he looked at her-</strong><br /><br /><br /><em>Hello.<br />Hello.<br />- Do you know who I am?<br />- I do. - Say it.<br />- My death.<br />Good.<br />From now on you will serve me.<br />I will serve you.</em>Rod McKiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322224888246015883noreply@blogger.com0