One Vision Of Queen

My second consecutive night of tribute acts. But this one was a definite grade above. Just on a wholly different level to the Doors gig the night before. Larger venue - Shepherds Bush Empire. More of a show. Probably a step up in the ability and quality of the performers. Well no, definitely a step up.

This outfit has the specific authorisation of Queen drummer Roger Taylor. And lead singer Marc Martel has every bit of the voice of Freddie Mercury. Quite incredible. They performed in two halve, plus an encore of course. All one's favourites were there. While they sounded like the real thing, they were not playing as Queen (there were five of them rather than four). And as Marc Martel was at pains to point out, there were no drawn on Freddie moustaches or Brian May wigs. They were paying tribute to, not acting as, Queen.

Also clearly this band (all Americans or Canadians) were making a good living from this. They tour the world doing this. In a way sad as Marc Martel had a career with a band of his own, but that didn't catch on the way playing Freddie Mercury has done. As I remarked to my friends, there are people who can play and sing brilliantly, like him and the band, but the real skill is coming up with the songs.

The audience loved every moment of it. And a very varied audience. There was a little old lady in front of me who could easily have been in her eighties. I was with two teenage boys. They sang along lustily, knowing all the songs. But then so did almost everyone in the place. It was one massive singalong.

And the nice thing was I could see how much the boys enjoyed it all. They are far too polite to say otherwise. By the beaming faces said it all. You can't fake that. But I think if you had done an audience satisfaction survey it would have come up five stars from everyone.

 

Doors Alive and Echoes of the Bunnymen at O2 Islington

I experimented at this venue. I have only ever been at the front down below. But I decided to give the balcony a go. Small venue so the balcony is actually pretty close to the band anyway, but a birds eye view! I was still standing, but unrestricted view.

First up were the Bunnymen tribute act. Now some tribute acts attempt to look like the act they are imitating, some eschew that but attempt to sound like them. This lot didn't do either. Bunnymen songs but the vocalist had nothing like Ian McCulloch's voice, neither singing nor speaking. Very not scouse. But that is in no way to denigrate their performance. They did a particularly memorable medley in the middle of Rescue, including some extracts from other bands' songs like Reward by the Teardrop Explodes.

Anyway, I have tickets to see the real thing next year for comparison!

You can see from below both the stage and the front of the audience

The main act was Doors Alive. They did try to sound and look like the Doors. The lead singer, from my viewpoint, was a very passable lookalike for a James Morrison turned podgy. They also sounded very much like the real thing. Including a Jim Morrison high on drugs and alcohol (by which I mean at least acting like he was, not necessarily that he was. He was swigging from a bottle of bourbon, but of course it could have been just brownish liquid. Acting is a thing!)

It was a pretty intense performance. There were clearly a number of middle aged hippies loving the meandering nature of the gig (and the smell of weed suggested they were getting thoroughly into it!). There were a number of proper pensioners from the Doors at their pomp, many of whom had left before the end of the epic encore. And a surprising number of youngsters, maybe having discovered the Doors through their parents. Or even grandparents.

The performance was quite something. It included a truly epic version of Light My Fire, during which "Jim" left the stage and the band just riffed seemingly endlessly until he returned to finish the song. And naturally the encore was "The End" which also seemed interminable, and by the end of it my balcony was almost deserted, perhaps unsurprising as the well exceeded the curfew of 11pm.

 

Eben-Emael and home

So on our last day we needed a break spot for the drive from Trier to the ferry terminal and Thibault suggested a World War II  fort in  Belgium that I had never heard of - Fort Eben-Emael. It was supposed to defend Belgium from German invasion, by guarding the bridges across the Albert Canal which would form a barrier to German tanks crossing from Holland.

Thibault got a guided tour for us, in French. And he translated for me as we went along. We were the only ones on the tour.

Now mostly one thinks of forts as overground structures. This one was built into a solid sandstone hill. It apparently was the size of 150 football pitches, and there were 5000metres of tunnels

Some of the rooms have waxworks and are laid out as they wold have been in the Forties

As you can see, a lot of tunnels

While one can wander around the general tunnels on your own visit, only with a guided tour can you go up the lift shafts to where there were the guns and observation points. And so where one can see the evidence for what happened to the fort. They must have felt they were pretty much impregnable, with everything underground and guns trained on the critical bridges across the canal. But unfortunately they were very quickly undone by a clever bit of manoeuvring . Specifically they were undone by paratroopers arriving by glider at night. They were looking out for aircraft, but not silent gliders landing on top of their hill. The paratroopers got out and laid high explosives on one of the look out turrets and this blew a hole right through, which followed by a further charge essentially took out one of the guns. One can see the blasted remnants of the lifts and the guns. The men there were simply blasted to smithereens.

The fort's guns did manage to nock out one of the three strategic bridges, but not the other two before the men below surrendered, and so the Germans drove across with little hindrance and the invasion proceeded. The massive effort put into building this fortress were in vain. It was as impregnable as the Titanic was unsinkable. Massive amount of work in building it in the Thirties undone in hours. No one had launched an attack by gliders before so they were just not prepared for it.

Half a glider

Brief stop in Liege for lunch (and catherdal)

And onto the ferry to Hull

And back to Hull station for for train back to London. This by the way is a bronze statue of Hull's most famous son, Philip Larkin