Mega 2016 Catch-Up: Gigs ( Part One ) - Muse

Okay, I warned you...
Here's the first of my 2016 catch-up posts that I hope to finish by at least 2020. Last year was an absolutely amazing year for gigs and I'm going to start with some of the biggest and most spectacular. And when you're talking spectacular... you're talking Muse...

Sarah and I went to London's O2 Arena last April to catch the mighty Muse on the UK leg of their Drones World Tour. This was the first rock gig we'd ever seen there  -  we first went there when it was known as The Millennium Dome ( can't remember which year... ) and again a few years later to see the Tutankhamen Exhibition, but I'd long wanted to see a band there, just for the experience. And this was definitely an experience...

It was exciting just to be in such an iconic building, among the thousands waiting for the boys from Devon to appear and blast our ears to Kingdom Come. The stage was set up in the centre of the venue so the gig was in the round, allowing as many people as possible to get a good view of the band. And, of course, the stage rotated too  -  I wouldn't expect anything less.
As the overture of the Drones "theme" played out, the band appeared from somewhere under the stage and then launched into the recent single Psycho, its pummeling riffs and crowd-shoutalong chorus setting the tone for the night. The new material such as Dead Inside and Reapers stacked up well alongside classics like Supermassive Black Hole and Starlight  -  the archetypal Muse mix of brutal rhythms, over the top vocals and stratospheric guitar-playing. In keeping with the Drones concept ( drone warfare, people as drones ) the arena was soon invaded by actual drones which were released from gantries high over our heads...

These dozen 6-foot spheres danced with the music, rising and falling above the crowd, pulsing with light  - almost like a scene from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. This was quintessential Muse: fun, exciting, faintly ludicrous and unapologetic in its debt to spectacle-hungry bands from another era like Pink Floyd or Genesis. Luckily all this pomp didn't detract from the music which was fantastic throughout  -  all band members giving their all but frontman Matt Bellamy unsurprisingly captivating the audience with his octave-leaping vocals and blistering guitar-playing. ( I also have it on good authority that he's rather fit into the bargain. )
After the main set ended with a reprise of the Drones theme, the band came back for three encore songs, including my fave, the spaghetti-Western metal of Knights Of Cydonia. Awesomeness! They showered us with human-shaped confetti and then were gone...

Here's Sarah catching confetti:

An absolutely mental gig! We'll definitely have to see them again.

Soundtrack: Loadsa Muse songs of course

Coming soon: more 2016 gigs in Bristol, Coventry... and Amsterdam...

Suddenly I'm not that hungry...

The Woman In Black

Last Monday night Sarah and I went to Cheltenham's Everyman Theatre to watch the stage production of The Woman In Black. I've wanted to see this show for years, well before the rather underwhelming Daniel Radcliffe movie brought the story into the public consciousness, so it was good to get a chance to visit Eel Marsh House, if only for one, haunted night.
This theatrical version of Susan Hill's novel is apparently the second longest-running non-musical in West End history, after The Mousetrap, and I was interested to see how they approached the adaptation. With just a two-man cast ( and possibly a random stage-hand as The Woman? ) how could they present the creaking old house, the fog-bound marshes and the crashing horse and carriage of this grim, Gothic story? Pretty well, actually...

( Spoilers ahead )
The story of course involves a young solicitor called Arthur Kipps who is sent to sort out the affairs of the recently deceased Alice Drablow, a reclusive old woman who lived in the neglected Eel Marsh House in a particularly desolate part of North-East England. Kipps finds that no-one from the neighbouring village of Crythin Gifford will talk about the old lady or go anywhere near the house. When he starts to work on the mountains of papers and correspondence that Drablow left behind, Kipps starts to experience strange noises in the house and out in the marshes, before eventually the Woman In Black herself appears  -  a vengeful spectre who haunts the gloomy landscapes and the tumbledown house. Soon the solitude and the disquieting events start to affect the mind of the homesick solicitor and it seems like the haunting may even follow him when he finally escapes from Eel Marsh House...

This adaptation takes the form of actors rehearsing, and then living out, a play.The elderly Arthur Kipps, still haunted by the events at Eel Marsh house decades before, enlists an unnamed Actor to help him tell his story, in the hopes that this will exorcise the memories and ghosts. The Actor in turn urges Kipps to take part in the play  -  he will play Kipps and Kipps himself will play all the other characters  -  something Kipps is at first reluctant to do and frequently stumbles over his lines before gaining confidence in the telling.
We found this initial setting up of the story at times almost painfully slow as there is much backwards and forwards between the Actor and Kipps over his inability to act. After a while we were whispering to ourselves "Yes, we get it  -  get on with the story"... and I don't think we were alone: the woman sitting next to me actually fell asleep...
When the story finally got going it became more enjoyable as the cast made ingenious use of the intentionally limited stage set and props. The Actor urged the audience to use their imaginations to conjure up the scenes and, aided by some brilliantly designed lighting and sound effects, we were transported to that fog-enshrouded old house at the end of a submerged causeway. At times the stage was plunged into almost total darkness with only lamplight to illuminate the scene... and maybe a ghostly, white face hanging suspended behind the actors...

( I'm cheating slightly here as this image is from the movie, or possibly its sequel, but who saw that anyway? )
The moments when the ghost appeared were certainly effective although mostly heavily signposted, the best and creepiest being the times when she would slowly appear in the background as little more than a moving shadow, unobserved by the main characters. We were seated up in the Circle so at quite a remove from the action and probably didn't benefit from the full impact of the SHOCK! moments. The ground-level seats were mostly taken up by school kids and students ( studying the play at college, I guess ) who screamed their heads off whenever the ghost appeared. We heard the actors talking in the bar afterwards and they loved the fact that the play had such an impact on the kids.
And, yes, the actors did a wonderful job in conveying such a story while working with such minimal aids, particularly David Acton who played Kipps and all the secondary characters. He really convinced as a man haunted by his past who finds the confidence to tell his story on stage. The Actor himself, Matthew Spencer, had a far more showy, necessarily "luvvie" kind of role and also excelled as an actor who found himself literally recreating the hauntings. Both were very impressive and helped rescue the early, stodgy scenes. So, all in all, not quite the scare-fest we'd expected but good fun and well worth seeing. It was also great to be in the lovely Everyman Theatre, a beautiful building which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year:

It's been a long time coming...

...but now I'm back!

Yep, I've at long last sorted out my PC problems and should be back to full blogging strength before you can say "2016? What the hell happened?"
I've really missed blogging and can't wait to get back into it. But, be warned... there's some major catching up to do...

Peace.

Happy New Year from The Glass Walking-Stick

Here's wishing all you lovely people out there in the Blogosphere love, peace and happiness for 2017 and let's hope we can all survive the coming Trumpocalypse ;-)

Merry Christmas from The Glass Walking-Stick

Half a century

Your humble blogger hits the big 5-0 today...
Cue obligatory embarrassing photos ☺

Eight years of inconsequential waffling

Hello blogosphere ( Hello yourself )  -  I've  just dropped by to mark the totally irrelevant occasion of the 8th anniversary of this 'ere blog. It only seems like yesterday etc etc...
Although this has been the Year Of The Great Blog Drought due to boring technical reasons ( not having a working PC being the main one ) I still intend to return to active blogging duty at some point in the future. There's been loads of good stuff going on in 2016 that I should have written about and I've really missed blogging. I've managed to catch up with some of you lovely people via the wonders of Facebook but it isn't quite the same.
Anyway, to any of you out there in blogspace who still visit The Glass Walking-Stick  -  thanks for looking in and hopefully there will be more wafflings to come...
Peace.

I'm still here

Hello. ( Hello yourself... )
There's been precious little in the way of blogging activity around these 'ere parts lately, mostly due to technical difficulties, ie my PC has curled up and died. But I'd just like to reassure everybody who's interested that I'm still here. And  -  look  -  I've even baked you a pie to make up for my lack of blogging. 
Hopefully I will get back to regular posts at some point in the not too distant future  -  I do have loads of stuff I'd like to share with you lovely people. Until then... peace...

So what's been going down in Groove Town lately?

 Alien sex!
No, not really. I just needed an internet-ready, clickbait phrase to grab your attention. It's shameless I know. ( Plus, I've been having that dream about Gamora, Nebula and a bath full of warm custard again. When will it ever end? )
Ahem! Now that we're all here ( who am I kidding? ) I thought I'd just zip through some random rubbish from recent months to hopefully atone for the pathetic lack of blogging activity around these parts lately. I'm going to start with

Oscar Bait: Recent Movies
 The last two films I saw at the cinema are, on the face of it, very different but on closer inspection have much in common. The main thing they share is an obvious hunger for awards, specifically Academy Awards. And nothing wins Oscars so much as suffering  -  something these two films have in abundance...

 For those who've been off-planet in recent months, The Revenant is the latest movie from Birdman director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Based on a true story / tall tale ( delete where applicable ) of the 1820s it stars Leonardo De Caprio as frontiersman Hugh Glass, who is attacked by a bear while on a fur-trapping expedition, then betrayed and left for dead by his colleagues. The film is mostly concerned with his fight for survival in the wilderness of the American north and his quest for vengeance. And snow. Lots of snow.
After the almost claustrophobic, limited theatre-set environment of Birdman, Inarritu goes in the opposite direction and films the majority of this movie in the open air. Characters are dwarfed by vast landscapes, half-drowned in rapids, frozen by snow, warmed by steaming animal carcasses, fall off cliffs, and all the while are followed by the camera which twists, turns, ducks and dives to keep up with them. It's a gruelling enough experience just to watch so it's hard to imagine how much proper thespian suffering Leo went through on the path to his well-deserved first Oscar. Tom Hardy, Will Poulter and Domnhall Gleeson also give fine performances underneath all the whiskers and frost. Although overlong The Revenant is a truly epic movie with a surprisingly emotional core and lashings of testosterone... something that's in shorter supply in my other recent movie experience...

The Danish Girl is another loosely-based-on-a-true-story film with added, Academy-approved suffering. As I'm sure most of you know, Dear Readers, Eddie Redmane plays transgender Danish artist Einar who struggles with his / her art and identity, while his wife Gerda struggles with loving a man who is changing and growing apart from her. There's a lot of struggling going on here. It's all very tasteful and sensitive but probably could have done with a bit more verve and transgression. Redmayne is perfectly fine as both Einar and his alter ego Lili but I have to admit I'm never totally convinced by the actor. I found him to be a bit of a wet fish in My Week With Marilyn and he was hopelessly miscast in the BBC's version of Birdsong. Maybe that one great role which will justify all the hype is just around the corner? Alicia Vikander, however, is a revelation. Her bruised, loving, steadfast Gerda is the most fully-rounded character here and is the warm, beating heart of the film.She more than deserved her Oscar here... but for Supporting Actress? Surely it should have been Leading Actress? Anyway, I hope to see far more of her in the future.
So, the lesson here is Suffering = Oscars  -  tune in next year for more misery :-)

PunkSkaFolk: Recent Gigs

 What better way to cure the Winter blues than to see The Beat bring a taste of the Caribbean to grey old Gloucester? ( Specifically my home-from-home, the wonderful Guildhall Arts Centre where I also saw The Danish Girl ) I've seen The Beat about half-a-dozen times and they never fail to entertain or get me to move my feet and shake my arse. ( Not a pretty sight! ) After some fairly underwhelming reggae from locals King Solomon's Band, the Brummie ska heroes bounded onto the stage to a hero's reception and promptly raised the Guildhall's temperature to 1000 degrees. Approximately.

Their music was as exciting and infectious as ever, with Ranking Roger and Ranking Junior clearly having a ball as they raced around the stage and bounced up and down like hyperactive toddlers, bringing us their good vibes and messages of unity. ( Although some in the crowd were disappointed that Roger didn't take his top off this time... ) They played all their hits  -  you know the ones!  -  and other live favourites like Two Swords, Monkey Murders and their skankin' cover of Rock The Casbah. And we loved it! All too soon, after the familiar closing rave-up of Jackpot, they were gone and we stumbled, steaming, out into the freezing February night.
 Here are me and my gig buddy and great friend Caz, down the front  -  where else?

The next night, Caz and I were out again, this time to see local Punk superstars Borrowed Time at Gloucester's grotty Lower George pub. Rob, Glenn and the other BT boys get better each time I see them, writing new songs and always pushing their sound forward. They seem to be giging constantly and, with the addition of human drum-machine Marcus, only sound tighter and tighter. Here they are at the Lower George ( formerly known as The Pig Inn The City... ) giving it some welly. ( Or not in Rob's case as he's always barefoot... )

Headliners that night were Eastfield, a strange Punk band with an Anarcho sound whose songs are all about trains. Yep, trains. Although I think one was about Burt Reynolds but I couldn't swear to it. Anyway, it was all good fun. Here are Eastfield in all their glory...

( These last two photos aren't mine  -  I nicked them from the Facebook page of local photographer John Plane. I'm sure he won't mind as the back of my head features in many of his shots and I haven't asked for any royalties... )
Following this gig I headed up to the lovely Cafe Rene with various other people who should know better ( Caz, Mark, Sam, Nicky ) to see a band with the unpromising name Johnny Kowalski & The Sexy Weirdos...

 This is a band who describe their music as "ska / balkan / punk / rock 'n' roll / mariachi / carnival"  -  phew!
  -  which pretty much sums them up. They were fantastic! An absolutely insane mash-up of genres and styles played with infectious glee and boasting some superb musicianship. But, most of all, fun! The Rene was completely rammed with punters and became an inferno, everyone was dancing, spinning round, spilling drinks, girls were taking their tops off, somebody grabbed the mike to start a debate about Jeremy Corbyn, it was chaos! In a good way. Definitely the most fun I've had at a gig for a long time, I'd highly recommend Johnny & Co. for anyone who wants to dance the night away while grinning insanely. And who wouldn't?

 Two nights, three gigs, five bands! Phew! That's enough for one catch-up post...

Soundtrack: Complete Surrender by Slow Club
( I'm going to see them again in May with my good friend Tom. Yay! Also lined up for this year are Muse in London, Bruce Springsteen in Coventry and  -  get this!  -  the Dandy Warhols in Amsterdam! So excited! )

Save the NHS

Three years ago this week I was finishing my last week of radiotherapy at Cheltenham General Hospital.Today I marched through Cheltenham in support of the NHS in general and junior doctors in particular. The NHS has helped all of us*, has touched all our lives, whether we realise it or not. Don't let the Tory profiteers degrade and dismantle this wonderful British institution. Stand up and be counted!

*Obviously this applies to UK readers of this 'ere blog :-)

Check out the links below for more info on the people who are trying to destroy OUR national health service and the people who are trying to preserve it:

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/kepp-nhs-public-not-private
http://cheltenham-gloucesteragainstcuts.org/
http://www.stroudagainstcuts.co.uk/

It's black and white...

True Believers Comic Festival 2016

Yesterday, James and I went to the second annual True Believers Comic Festival at the Cheltenham racecourse. After braving some horrendous weather and a chaotic entry "system" we found ourselves in The Centaur, usually the home of horse and jockey-related events but, on this Saturday, given over to artists, writers, comic peddlers and cosplayers.

We had a great day, wandering around all the stalls, marvelling or sniggering at the cosplayers and meeting with loads of cool people. We chatted with veteran comic artists Mike Collins and Lee Sullivan  -  mostly about their stellar Doctor Who work  -   and also with the up-and-coming artist Emma Vieceli who is currently producing some sterling work for Titan's Eighth Doctor comic. And, keeping up the Doctor Who connection, we also chatted with the wonderful Paul Cornell who was very welcoming and happily signed a couple of his books for us. ( A copy of Human Nature we bought from Paul for £3! and my old and well-thumbed edition of The Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide. )

We also talked with the lovely guys from Big Punch Studios about their exciting new multiverse of science fiction comics. Check out the link  -  they've got some great stuff on the go and loads more planned.
As I said, we had a great day and found the whole thing very relaxed and welcoming. Here's James, posing in front of the inevitable Tardis...

Same time next year?