Thursday 28 August 2014

'Before the Dawn' : Kate Bush What an evening!

Spoilers - DO NOT READ if you are lucky enough to be going.


Well last night was a brilliant evening! Thank you so much to Kate for taking me and looking after me so well and everyone who was so very helpful and kind all evening at the Eventim Apollo in London. A huge thank you to Ian for dialling 148 times to get the last disabled and carer seat and then not being able to get another seat anywhere to join us. To rub salt in the wound, he then drove us there and back!

Poor Ian!

Safe delivery to the Apollo in Hammersmith


Kate Bush's son, Bertie, convinced her to do some live shows. You were not allowed to take photos (rightly so) during the performances, so there are rather a lot of pictures of Kate and I getting a little overexcited!


Tickets


Kate Bush cocktails before - yummy

Official tour poster


The stage


Getting very excited waiting

The show started promptly and had a 20 mins break. Kate Bush had wonderful stamina and kept performing for a very physically demanding 3 hours! There were so many very exciting highlights, but here are some of my favourites. The performance began quite traditionally with a beautifully dressed, bare foot Kate Bush with many old favourites and then her wonderful story telling began. 

It started with the tale of 'The Ninth Wave' - her in a shipwreck including haunting images on a screen of Kate Bush floating and freezing in a life jacket but managing to sing, a nightmare room at home seeing her husband and son, confetti canons firing hand-written Lord Tennyson's poetry (including the inspirational lines 'Wave after wave, each mightier than the last / Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep'), huge billowing sheets as waves, helicopter search and very creepy life size fish skeleton costumes. AMAZING!!


After the break, the next story was 'A Sky of Honey' - During this session we were treated to a wooden mannequin and Kate Bush at the piano. While this happened there were giant projections of flying birds. Also, 16 year old Bertie was an artist with a huge canvas and he also sang a solo. The scene then turns darker and the puppet savages a gull and Kate Bush's arm turned into a wing and she flew! 



How spoilt was I?

The whole evening was fantastic. Especially getting to know our new friends Ann and Ken (sitting next to us). I knew Kate Bush would not disappoint. I had remembered every last detail of my previous experience in 1979 at the then Hammersmith Odeon as a very young 17 year old! It was so good then and I am very happy and privileged to have had the opportunity again. Thank you X X

Kate has written a beautiful blog with some of her drawings. If you would like to see it click here please.



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