Tori Amos Live at Warsaw Sała Kongresowa 12th June 2014

Strange (but nonetheless interesting) concert at the massively peculiar Sała Kongresowa, last night.  First, no matter how I tried, I just got blurred surrealist (but nonetheless, for me, interesting) pictures of the gig:

What I like about these pictures is that they almost deify Ms. Amos in her long white gown-type outfit, especially the one below:

Just exploring possibilities with the camera of a new mobile at the moment, and I guess the results clearly show this:

Now, what about the concert itself?  Well, out of curiosity, I'd been intending to see her for years, and last night, I finally got round to doing this.  Really glad that some good person videod 'A Sorta Fairytale' as some pleb stopped me doing this (not that mine would've turned out okay, anyway).  Yes, you can see that Tori nailed this tune:

However, what was perhaps the most anthropologically interesting part of the evening's entertainment came when Ms. Amos gave a kind of passionate speech about the need to nurture 'gay pride' in of all places, Warsaw itself.  From here, she then took an expletive swipe at the patriots who burnt the rainbow-coloured arch at Plac Zbawiciela about a year or so ago. This all kind of fed into her own take/version of 'Nights in White Satin':

Really well done to whoever has caught this, as it's a real golden moment of ethnography:  on one hand, from the recording itself, someone seems to be weeping with emotion, so the leftist-type ideological message may be deeply felt and meaningful for him/her (or maybe it's the song itself that prompts this response).  However, on another hand, Plac Zbawiciela translates as something like the 'Square of the Saviour', and the rainbow arch (with all its politically 'correct' gay fashion symbolism) is incredibly insulting for many Poles, especially as it faces one of Warsaw's most beautiful churches in the 'Saviour's Square'.  Thus, in view of the fact that many Poles still profess to be Catholic and associate this with their national identity, poor Ms. Amos may've been (hopefully unwittingly) engaging in what is commonly referred to as cultural imperialism while preaching her Western politically 'correct' ideology to an Eastern (maybe Central) European audience.  Still, I guess that some of the young Poles were there for this kind of thing, and it's maybe this kind of thing that makes Ms. Amos a bit of a character as well as being an incredibly talented musician.

Back with the music, what was my favourite tune of the night?  Well, that would have to be 'Pretty Good Year':

Again, well done to whoever filmed this, helping others to remember an interesting evening's entertainment, although Tori Amos is not exactly my cup of tea (but well worth seeing all the same).