Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There is always gold to be found in the use and employment of the rubber chicken, and yet that reliable comedy prop has at its disposal the power to disarm and relax a situation, to ask the question in the mind of those on the receiving end, just how serious can the message be if they are prepared to make you laugh first.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
You can write as much as you want about the world, but if you cannot describe your own backyard and make people visualise every crack in the stone work, every weed doing its damnedest to poke its head up through the drains that run underneath, then perhaps the world that you believe is your oyster doesn’t deserve your casual eye cast over it.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Stock up nuts, make sure the spirit is overflowing and perhaps pull a cracker or two, the time of year in which inhibitions go out the window, emotions are high and we all hope for that special something, some wish for peace on Earth, some the prospect of just a day to themselves and the quiet abandon afforded with solitude, for some the vision of Santa Claus dangling with his legs akimbo in thin air as he comes down the chimney is enough to put a smile on their red rose faces and chocolate spread delighted lips.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The added bonus extra is sometimes a piece of information that really doesn’t do or give additional benefit to the enjoyment of the main piece under consideration, it would be like seeing the treasured Benjamin West painting, The Death of Nelson, in all its glory at The Walker Art Gallery and saying, well I enjoyed the painting but for added emotional pleasure it would be better if the blood was more realistic and the sound of battle could be heard in the background; some things do not need the extra added bonus.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
They always promise Better Times, they will tell you that on the horizon there is a gigantic slab of jam, several spoons and enough Cornish clotted cream to go with it; that those times are always worth waiting for. The trouble is with better times, somehow they end up like a routine from The Morecombe and Wise Show, one shoe never fits, is often not the right shoe in a pair and that collection of spoons is really knives ready to be plunged in the back and the clotted cream is anything but Cornish.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There is a significant anniversary due, one that really changed the way Liverpool thought about its four favourite sons, in the way perhaps the British music was thought of, and as bands such Pink Floyd, who would emerge from the studio with the debut album later that summer, The Who, the epitome at the time of Mod culture would soon release the Rock Opera Tommy and arguably one of the most underrated bands of the time, The Small Faces, begun their journey that would lead to the beguiling Odgen’s Nut Gone Flake.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
History rarely makes itself known, it just appears. The signs may be there, the historian may point to certain moments in which the realisation of what is occurring is shaped and polished, whatever the reason for history, in whatever shape or form, whether it is of enormous consequence or of the subtlety of change, the change will arguably not register world-wide but to whom the earthquake tremor reaches the sensitive and the symbol chaser.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Christmas comes but once a year…though it seems to hang around forever and like some over used decoration that twinkles with the drive of an over eager beagle grabbing at its lead, soon finds its way to get on your nerves long before the main event actually arrives. To not enjoy the time of year leads to labels of being a scrooge, of being curmudgeonly or just plain mean and can lead to being ostracised by those who complain of life being empty when the tinsel falls down and who never mind pine needles being stuck in their big toe at three in the morning. Thank heavens for Rob Clarke and the Wooltones who offer with great sincerity Another Wooltones Xmas Record to let the passing of time have at least one heroic cheer.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
If you can remember the 60s then as saying goes, you can’t have been there. You can’t have seduced by the sound that ensnared a generation and made the smallest hairs on their arms spring to attention as if a thousand watts of electricity had been pumped through every individual strand. Of course if you were born after the 60s and have had to make do with the stories of those who professed to having been at Candlestick Park, the Isle of Wight and the other hundreds of magic moments in which the 60s music hung round and the highlighted sores on society they captured.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Sometimes to appreciate what music from a city offered you, you have to delve fully into its past. You have to find out what worked and turned the population’s heads and captured the spirit of the time, the elusive zeitgeist that pops its being round at the seemingly most opportune times and captures the soul of the city.