Return to the Pete Castle Shop
 |
TAPPING
AT THE BLIND MATS025 Tapping at the Blind Price Including P & P £12
|
“I can't help feeling
that "Tapping At The Blind" might have benefited from the reactions
of a live audience. However, the studio recording does have an undeniable immediacy
and combines with Castle's unedited little fluffs to convey the impression that
the teller is recounting his frequently bizarre tales in your own living room.
"Stories For Grown-ups" is an appropriate subtitle; the casual incest
and ultra violence of The Armless Maiden is certainly not the stuff to play
to the kids at bedtime if horrific nightmares are to be avoided. The little
darlings might also have their sleep disturbed by the concluding brief little
chiller; At Last We're Alone, both title and payoff line. They could take more
kindly to the ursine coprophilia of The Woman Who Married A Bear - "this
woman shits gold", exclaims a bear at one point (no, it would take too
long to explain) - apart from the less-than-happy ending (at least for the bear).
In fact, the endings are much like the stories themselves; little artfulness
and few twists, just a reflection of the ordinary, arbitrary, messy nature of
existence, succinctly encapsulated in the closing lines of The Armless Maiden:
“and I won't pretend that they lived happily ever after - because they
didn't. But they did discuss things and they did apologise for things that had
happened in the past” (So am I forgiven for cutting off your breasts,
daughter dear? No problem, father dear - I grew another pair.) "And they
were reconciled to each other; and they got by for the rest of their lives just
as well or as badly as most families manage to." Goodnight, children -
everywhere.
Dave Tuxford in Living Tradition #53 Nov. 2003
If you arrived at this page via a search engine click HERE to see the full Pete Castle website