Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The light at the end of the tunnel is always best illuminated by missing the last bus home. The dejection and disappointment of having to walk the miles from the last chance saloon to the cold and unfriendly home is always punctuated by the chance to listen to whatever music infects your ears and take in the natural air that dances sickly in urban abundance as you walk the walk home and keeping the eyes firmly fixed on the way ahead; only your ears press ahead with learning something new.
For John Cee Stannard & Blue Horizon, Bus Depot Blues is a mix of inspiring greatness tinged with the cold harsh reality that life in 21st Century Britain is singed, shattered and broken like a burnt, smashed mirror with the inflexibility imposed upon each of us and the con that somehow we have signed up for.
For John Cee and his travelling players, Mike Baker, Howard Birchmore, Julian Brown, Andy Crowdy, Melissa Lynch, Alex Steer and Alison Rolls, Bus Depot Blues represents a critique on the way life has become in many ways something insidious but delivered with the cunning punch of a genius comedian who knows how to play with words and subtle imagery. Bus Depot Blues should be seen as repository for the affable anger that resides in us all but at times we are just too comfortable to rise above the rage that builds at the stupidity in Government to do anything but give a non committable tut.
Nowhere does this anger hurt more than in the songs Hard Times 83, I’ll Take Care Of Mine, When You Need Them Most and Best I Can For You. Hard Times 83 is a damning indictment to the way that no matter how hard you try to get ahead of it all, someone, somewhere, normally with intellect that inspires Mammon and with the legal jargon in which to hide behind, is able to place you in the position of pauper. The unfairness of it all is astounding and yet this legal robbery, the way in which insurance firms protect themselves against all eventualities, much like the gambling dens that doubled as whore houses and molly shops in 19th Century London were able to do.
If the last bus has made it to the depot, if the Blues have got you wondering just who has won in the wacky world of the Westminster Empire and the conglomerations that whisper slowly in their ears, then John Cee Stannard & Blue Horizon have succeeded in their mission to educate, entertain and inform. Bus Depot Blues should be the first port of call in any thought of departure from the way we have been shuffled around like a badly drawn pack of cards. Tremendously enjoyable!
Ian D. Hall