The Paris sunshine stretched out the morning
as though sheets of puff pastry
had been laid out and baked under a blasting
furnace and the fluffy flakes had found
time to build a type of intimate imitation
that the day
would be memorable.
The hotel was not the type of place
in which to soak up culture
and the talk of visiting Sacré- Cœur Basilica, success,
and finding the remains of Jim Morrison’s past, failure,
so the local French Arabia café became the pit stop
It was a secret,
one of those places you
were not aware of
until you were properly ready
to understand the significance of the change
it would bring
into your life and the preparation
into the adult that would stand bare naked one night
thirty years later
as the world became a more lonely place.
I found myself recalling the piece
that landed me my first part
inside the hallowed halls of the most exciting building
in the whole of Bicester and started to hum it,
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
You can have a not half bad band but with a talented drummer on board you will sound so good that people will flock to see you. The drums, for many a group, are the pulse in which Time passes freely, in which sets out the not just rhythm but the reason and without reason, without the passion of the player who never gets the true spotlight, all may be lost in the cacophony of sound and pleasure.
Marillion at the ABC, Glasgow. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The point of the journey, as Rush once said, is not to arrive. By completing the journey, all that you have learned about yourself can turn eventually to dust and atoms. It is perhaps a finer, arguably more noble, pursuit to keep travelling, to keep the finishing line hidden from view, to never have the experience of something ending less it eat away at you and allows the dust which holds the joints and creaking crevices together to inch by delicate inch slowly fade away.
For the past 18 months the University of Liverpool’s Guild building has lain seemingly asleep. Its shell under wraps in much the same way as the Everyman Theatre just a short walk down the road had been before its grand reopening earlier in the year. These two monuments to creativity and ingenuity, to freedom of expression and the desire for change, whether through anger or gentle reasoned discourse, share the same reasons for being, to protect, serve and nurture.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Every outstanding Graphic Novel or superhero requires a back story, there is a law somewhere, probably laid down by story teller supremo Stan Lee on a scrap of paper in a rest room and the flourished signature witnessed by Jack Kirby. The paper, possibly now residing on a wall in Marvel offices just below the enormous Captain America drawing that greets visitors to the building in New York, is surely seen by all aspiring writers and artists, none so more as Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez and in the book Clockworks.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
There is no other way to write it down, a statement, that unless something the internet decides that enough is enough and crawls off to be superseded by pure thought, should stand for all time, the combination between literature and Folk/Rock music in Steeleye Span’s Wintersmith is one of the albums of the year.
Scene: The interior of a bar in the early hours of the morning, there is the sound of laughter; the gentle sound of music floating through the air, a raised voice overwhelms the music briefly and the clatter of a pool ball being struck too hard. On set there are two people to be seen, one a barmaid cleaning glasses and occasionally pouring a drink for someone unseen off stage and to the left of the stage a man sat on a stool, leaning against a wall one hand on a glass the other reading a book. Beside his chair is a rucksack. The sound of the pool ball being smacked again too hard and it bounces once and starts to roll towards the man in the chair who for a moment doesn’t look up from his book until he hears the sound of someone shouting his name. The music dies down as the young man looks at the ball. Carefully he puts down the glass, whilst keeping the book held tightly on the page he is on and walks over to the ball and picks it up, staring at it for a moment as if in quiet contemplation. He walks over to the darkness and hands back the ball.
If anyone thought that Progressive Rock was dead in the water as the 1980s began, then certainly the cowbell that had once proudly rang out was joining the fat lady in beginning to sound decidedly croaky and worn out.
By early 1983 Genesis had moved so far from the Progressive line that they were considered cool in circles they couldn’t have envisioned 10 years earlier when they bought out the pastoral sound of Selling England By the Pound. Yes were going mainstream, Supertramp were going their separate ways, Queen had long since abandoned the genre, Pink Floyd, the standard bearers of the music from 1973 onwards were about to self-destruct with what seemed one final hurrah in the opinion dividing The Final Cut and countless others such as Caravan and Camel were running out of steam.
steve hogarth at St Bride’s Church, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Steve Hogarth and Liverpool are made for each other. In the past few years he has made the pilgrimage-like trek away from the touring with Marillion and delivered shows with just himself, a piano and an array of compositions, much loved songs and the odd story in which to regale and entertain audiences with.