Tag: Muse

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Hysteria

My summer of great live music continued this weekend, with a trip to the 65,000 capacity Milton Keynes Bowl to see Muse.

I’ve been a fan of the globetrotting Devon trio for many years, but until now have been put off going to see them live by the fact they only ever play enormous venues. However, with the current Will of the People Tour and album being another massive critical and commercial success, I decided that this was going to be the only way I would ever see them play. So, last autumn I took the plunge and decided to join the Ticketmaster online queue to buy tickets.

Muse are known for putting on a spectacular live show, and this one lived up to those expectations. The stage production was dramatic, exciting and high quality, with burning fire on stage, streamers and confetti spraying out over the arena, and searchlights beaming across the night sky.

Huge screens relay scenes from the band’s own post-apocalyptic science fiction movie, in which masked and hooded freedom fighters rebel against a towering, horned tyrant. The backdrop to the stage is a huge, animated model of one such fighter, the mask of which acts as a prism through which constantly changing lights and colours are emitted. The band members are intense and energetic, and the whole production high octane.

Ironically, I read a recent interview with singer/guitarist Matt Bellamy, in which he said the band had decided to make their current stage show less complicated than previous tours!

While the stage show is amazing to watch, it is ultimately the music that counts, and the band were on top form. They played for 2 hours and featured tracks from right across their career, from early songs like Plug-In Baby and Hysteria, to new songs from Will of the People. I’m pleased to say they took in lots of my favourite tracks, such as Starlight, Supermassive Black Hole, Undisclosed Desires, Madness and Psycho.

I have only ever been to Milton Keynes twice before, and each time to see a concert at the Bowl. The first time was David Bowie on his Serious Moonlight Tour, and the second time for Simple Minds on their Once Upon a Time tour. Both of those were quite a while ago, so it is good to see that the Bowl is once again hosting top quality bands like Muse.

It is something of a trek for me to get to Milton Keynes and back, but I am really glad I made the effort on this occasion. Next up on my exciting summer of live music will be Billy Joel in London.

Wow! A few days’ rest and recovery are in order, and I’ll be back at the weekend with some food-related stuff. In the meantime, here are Muse at their hi-energy best, with Hysteria.

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My Halloween Party

So the ADK Halloween Party was in full swing, all my dream (or should that be nightmare?) guests having arrived.

I asked Jamie Lee Curtis to be in charge of jack o’lantern carving. She told me she’d first done this over 40 years ago, while babysitting. Clearly she’d been quite successful at it, having been asked by her employers to take it up again every few years since. I was very pleased with the results – see my main photo. She can come again.

Edward Scissorhands was sat at the kitchen table, doing his best to turn the carrots and celery into crudites. Opposite him sat Freddy Krueger, his nimble fingers at work on the party dips. I don’t want to carp, but they were both quite messy workers, and the ingredients weren’t as carefully or evenly chopped as I would have liked. But hey – it saved me having to get out the food processor.

Jack Skellington is a lovely chap, if mildly irritating. Every job I tried to give him, he just kept asking What’s this? What’s this? Eventually I put him in charge of sorting out the music.

Everyone seemed to be having a lovely time. I received a nice note from Michael Myers, saying how much he had enjoyed it, and that he would like to come again. At least, I think that’s what he meant – his actual note was left on the kitchen table, with the words on it, scrawled in blood, I’ll be Back!

What’s more, he had pinned the note to the table using one of my best Sabatier carving knives, damaging the tip in the process. I wasn’t best pleased with this, as you can imagine. Why the lad can’t just use a post-it note like anyone else, I don’t know.

All this really did happen, I swear. At least I think it did. The last thing I remember, we were all sitting round the table having a slice of the special Halloween Cake I’d baked, using those strange new mushrooms I picked down in the woods. It all went a bit hazy after that.

Jack’s selection for musical accompaniment is You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween by Muse. I think Matt Bellamy’s falsetto chorus reminds him of This is Halloween from The Nightmare Before Christmas, although the track is still unmistakably Muse.

I’m sharing the video here as it is a lot of fun. The setting looks like a cross between Disney’s Haunted Mansion and The Shining’s Overlook Hotel. Not a place you would want to be alone. After dark. At Halloween.

Whatever you are doing this Halloween weekend, I hope you are having as spooktacular a time as me.

Happy Halloween, everyone!


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Soup-ermassive

Today’s crop from the local community farm had soup written all over it – turnip, swede, carrots, potatoes and a handful of flatleaf parsley. I added onion and celery, and defrosted 1 litre of chicken stock from a previous Sunday roast. Throw in around 100g of pea and barley soup mix and simmer for 40 mins. Plunge in the handheld blender for a few blitzes to give it just the right consistency. Served with a loaf of sourdough for dipping, and eaten (again) al fresco.

This harvest of fresh, natural ingredients made enough for two hearty servings, with about 3 – 4 left over. Soup-ermassive! Earlier in the day I had been lying in the warm sun listening to Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations album on my headphones, so it seems apt to add this latest track to the ADK Playlist. Take it away, Muse.