Tag Archives: Bootle

Keith Lally, Gig Review. Johnsons’ Pavilion, Bootle.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

To find Keith Lally in the area is to feel the calm reassurance that one might expect if you came across a local map of the surroundings and with a signpost to safety, past the storms, through the complexities of harm and the routes of dead end obliteration, it is the finding in which you know the music will guide you, in which the point of the day becomes meaningful and the endeavour of spiritual exhaustion is relieved and completely and neatly folded away.

Pod Cousins, Gig Review. Johnsons’ Pavilion, Bootle.

Pod Cousins performing in Bootle, July 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Pod Cousins performing in Bootle, July 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is always something new to learn, someone else’s voice that must be heard, appreciated and perhaps loved, life without learning is to become stilted, stuck forever in the machine that is designed to grind you down to a place of acceptance and interminable arrogance.

Ste Neildsy, Gig Review. Johnsons’ Pavilion, Bootle.

Ste Neildsy performing in Bootle. July 2016.

Ste Neildsy performing in Bootle. July 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Acoustic is what acoustic does; in the scheme of things, it might get lost in the clamour of the fast paced and often absurd world we find ourselves inhabiting. It might be passed by and only thought of as something you might find at a wedding or in the confines of a smaller sized venue, one in which is often passed by for the big brash experience, the pounding of the beat.

Alan Triggs, Gig Review. Johnsons’ Pavilion, Bootle.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Alan Triggs is a model of calm as he steps on the stage at the Battle of Bands in Bootle’s Community Hub, no beads of sweat massing in numbers upon his lyrical brow, no sign of nerves in his fingers as he plays the guitar; after all this is a man who is seemingly content in his life and his the delivery of his muse; after all why should the man worry when the muse is singing his favourite songs and making him one of the most enjoyed performers in the area.

The JJohns, Gig Review. Johnsons’ Pavilion, Bootle.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Everything happens for a reason, everything is connected in some way and whilst the event in Bootle, the Battle of the Bands would have produced a worthy winner, in actual facts, the big winners on the day were the people of Bootle, the paying crowd who made their way to the ground of the Johnson’s Pavilion and who relished a day in which music in the area was absolute king.

Cal Ruddy, Gig Review. Johnsons’ Pavilion, Bootle.

Cal Ruddy in Bootle, July 2016.

Cal Ruddy in Bootle, July 2016. Photograph By Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Amongst the bright young things of Liverpool’s all encompassing music box is the spirited and genuinely skilful Cal Ruddy, a man to whom a song holds only mystery, the suspense of glory and to whom obscurity is just a word destined for those who will not try, who give in before they have even started. The song is in the D.N.A. of Cal Ruddy, he presents it to the audience as if holding aloft a laurel made of silk and gold, the pleasure of the sensuous mixed with the desire for beauty and it is one to relish being amongst.

Red Winter, Gig Review. Johnsons’ Pavilion, Bootle.

Red Winter in Bootle, July 2016.

Red Winter in Bootle, July 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

 

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Life will always throw a curve ball, you don’t need to find yourself at any American Baseball park to understand that, you just need to know that at times what the day may have held in store, can turn out to be infinitely more interesting and filled with more passion than a 21st century television version of Wuthering Heights or Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Billy Kelly, Gig Review. Johnsons’ Pavilion, Bootle.

Billy Kelly performing in Bootle, July 2016.

Billy Kelly performing in Bootle, July 2016. Photograph By Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

There is genius at work in the world, there is courage and there is simplicity wrapped up in so much talent that sometimes as you sit back and take the view of artistry in, it can leave you feeling a little scared, not worried, not anxious but scared that one day it might not be around to be held by.

Last Reserves, Gig Review. Johnsons’ Pavilions, Bootle.

Last Reserves performing in Bootle, July 2016.

Last Reserves performing in Bootle, July 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

You cannot help but feel that Charles Dickens missed a trick by being born a hundred odd years too early, for surely had the literary genius been around today, instead of getting Oliver Twist to ask for more gruel and thereby setting a tone on all that is be seen as insidious in the Victorian era, he instead would have had the young urchin say of the great Punk era that died in many ways too soon, “Please sir, can I have more of this terrific display of out and out rebellion and scintillating and controlled riot”.

Mia Wakefield, Gig Review. Johnsons’ Pavilion, Bootle.

Mia Wakefield performing in Bootle, July 2016.

Mia Wakefield performing in Bootle, July 2016.  Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The art of putting on a festival, especially for the first time is one that is shrouded in mystery, known to so few it seems and yet when you come across one that knows instinctively how to keep a crowd entertained during a changeover of rock acts, then it is one to praise and make sure it doesn’t run away in the distance, like too many others in these days of arts cuts and some people using the genre as if it should be a free commodity.