Journey To The Centre of The Earth

Back in Manchester again tonight. The logical thing to have done would have been to find a hotel last night then spend the day around Manchester before the concert. But I couldn’t find one under £120 for the night within a fifty mile radius! As it’s only 70 miles from Kendal anyway, it made economic sense to make two trips, despite it being a more tiring way of doing things.
Tonight’s entertainment is a complete contrast to last night’s guitar based blues concert. We are seeing Rick Wakeman in what he calls his “Return of the Caped Crusader” tour. I never really got the whole OTT prog rock thing of Yes back in the day, though I’ve always liked Rick and admired his playing. We had the great pleasure of seeing him perform “Morning Has Broken” with Cat Stevens in March 2020 - the first time they’d performed it together in fifty odd years - just before lockdown put an end to live music for a while. Since then, we’ve seen him do a couple of his Christmas shows - anecdotes, carols and selected tunes, etc - but this evening was something different.
Set in the superb auditorium of the Bridgewater Hall, we were treated to a short first set of some of his favourite Yes numbers, albeit with a bit of reworking. After the interval we then had the main event of the “full fat” one hour version of “Journey to the Centre of the Earth” - the original release fifty years ago was only 36 minutes due to the constraints of what you could fit on one vinyl LP!
Absolutely superb performance by Mr Wakeman and his band, the English Rock Ensemble. The chap at the back of the photo is Rick’s son Adam. The evening finished with a brilliant encore which gave every member a chance to show off, including Rick and Adam playing face to face with keyboards slung over their shoulders!
Possibly due to Mr Wakeman’s advanced years (along with most of his audience!) the concert was over by 10pm, so it wasn’t a late night. Had it not been for a delay on the tram going back to the park and ride, we’d probably have been home earlier than last night!
A great end to the weekend and I’ll be grateful of a few days of calm now to recharge the batteries before next weekend’s activity.