The text below was taken from Yahoo Group about Peter Hammill / Van der Graaf Generator. Many thanks to Mikayel for permission to use it here.

>I would like a very personal review from Mikayel.... 
>I guess not even the US-boys-and-girls would have 
>felt like him... so Mikayel... hurry up.... time for outing!!!! :-)

First of all, I want to thank You, LX, for insisting (encouraging, in fact) me on writing this review, which turns out to be something different. In most cases, we need somebody to push, besides the music in my headphones :-)

Definitely, I won't review the RFH gig song by song - much better examples were posted here within the last 5+ weeks. What I want to do now is to describe what was/is the Van der Graaf Generator Reunion for me and for those like me. And, of course, in order not to make a burden of my post I'll try not to write here too much. :-)

Existence, which many of people call subsistence, is the stage on which we pass, sometimes living a worthless life, even hopeless, as people around me do believe. Probably, for most of them life is hopeless, no doubt, but not for me. As I reached this point, where I am now, onward I must go and help my friends to see that life is something more than day to day survival - in the end we will all die in body, indeed. But if I believed that this is what I came here for.... I won't dare to even think of going to London in May 2005.

What had happened in the Universe when the four men - The Necromancer, The Lungs, The Quiet One, and The Brain - said "Yes" to each other? Nothing special or extraordinary, I would say, simply Magic was there and the number of impossible things in the world decreased by one unit. This Magic still was there when they tried to play music together again, when they thought about recording it (just in case, maybe), when they improvised. But it is nearly impossible to keep this magic power and not to share it with those who also needs this charge.

Now, dear Friends, we come to the moment when everybody here felt The Magic. Do You remember what You felt when You first learned about May 6, 2005? Of course You do! So do I. I was sitting here and doing my job. It was an ordinary day, when I read the words from The Necromancer....

But it took more than two months for me to decide that I have to play my part and that I need to be there, it may never come again and I have, at least, to try. But since The Magic ruled everything and guided me through every step I did turned out to be another successful one on my Path to the Dream. Probably because of this Magic I was not thinking about the material aspects of my doings. Money are not magical - people and events are! How many people became dear to me and how much have I learned while preparing for the trip, while being in London, and after that! For the rest of my friends, workmates, relatives I became a "crazy millionaire" who spent so much money just to go to London for a concert of an unknown (to their ears) band of four old men. "But HOW DID THE EMBASSY let you go out???". "Magic is here", I replied. After these words my status as a crazy millionaire became even more sturdy.

There's no need to tell everything that I did to see these shows and how I got there. The vainglory of the Killer inside me suggested me to compare myself - a foreigner from a far-far-away-from-the-magic-of-the-music-of-vdgg country - with those people who came there from the rest of the world. "Yes, Killer, I will tell them some, but not as much as You want me to". My country is tired of day to day problems inside and outside itself. Hence, people around become black inside, corruption rules almost everywhere, children grow up and cannot find their Path to go and Part to play. But... Magic works even here and I won't keep on describing the influence of Killers inside us. EVERYONE of us who was at RFH that night did so much to be there - exactly as much as The Magic required from him/her/it (at least my t-shirt).

When people asked me to describe both Curly's and Magicians' gigs I could not answer properly because I hadn't have yet realized what had happened (Sean, You was absolutely right!). "It's impossible to play This music in The Way they did" were the only words I could say through the tears (I cried once and twice I sobbed). From the moment I sat down on my seat [and the number of those who were waiting for the Incarnation of The Magic for 28 years (plus half an hour of waiting inside the building)] and until the last seconds of the Event [when everything depended on how long would The Lungs keep breathing through the flute] I was wondering if it's all come true.

Then I came back to my Friends, to life, and then to Motherland. And now, though the way to go forward seems dark and the way to peak is too long and hard, and I can only hope to see it there - this is the only direction to go and I will keep on playing my part. I am (in fact we are all) in Present. The Past is accumulated within us and is in memory, on records, e-mails... and in Nutter Alert photo album ;-)

Thank You, my Friends!

P.S. The Magic came true. So no more Wondering for encores?

Mikayel Abazyan mikayelabazyan@yahoo.com