Author Archives: admin

Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Jay Taylor and Patrick Robinson as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson in Baskerville: Photograph by Ellie Kurttz.

Cast: Bessie Carter, Edward Harrison, Ryan Pope, Patrick Robinson, Jay Taylor.

There is a demonic howl that punctures the thick Devonshire Fog and finds the way to install the first wave of fear in a man’s heart, the moors have the air of the unnatural and spectral feeling its way like spindly fingers through a solid, almost impenetrable web, the hand upon the shoulder, the heavy, phantom breathing of the curse that has weaved its way into the family history is close by and the eyes start to glow blood red, evil and death locked in its slavering, hungry teeth.

Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(464 words, 1 image, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Kate Rusby, Angels & Men. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The lofty ideals of Angels & Men often fall short in what a single woman can produce; a job for two men perhaps but every woman is easily worth two of her counterparts and in the voice of the erstwhile Kate Rusby, those same messengers of a god and the men who rejoice in their passion are greeted with a set of songs that are not only heavenly, but are given the very essence of a humanity via a voice that praises with genuine understanding and joy.

Kate Rusby, Angels & Men. Album Review. full post

(354 words, estimated 1:25 mins reading time)

Tom Hingley & The Kar-Pets, May Contain Nuts. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The halls and venues up and down the length and breadth of the country have long either laboured or rejoiced under the weight of the tribute band and sometimes look-alike, if not quite sound-alike homage to some of the nation’s most endearing and popular bands of the last 60 years. It is a weight of expectancy to a night out that carries risks and can bring memories so vibrant flooding back into view, that it is possible to find yourself shedding a tear as a particular line is carried through the air; it is a tear of truth, reminisce and pleasure, or it could be a finer moment of expression, it could be that it May Contain Nuts.

Tom Hingley & The Kar-Pets, May Contain Nuts. Album Review. full post

(391 words, 1 image, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Tenebrous Liar, The Cut. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Boundaries are stifling; they create disorder and chaos in their own particular, demanding, patronising way. Boundaries are the killer of self expression and no matter what the sound of complete structure hammers home into the minds of those who see the auto-tune as a handy guide or instruction to a perfect, yet almost lacking in courage, album; what is needed is articulation without false graces, the slash of the disguised flawless, The Cut of the masquerade and sham from people’s lives.

Tenebrous Liar, The Cut. Album Review. full post

(433 words, 1 image, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Shankara Andy Bole, Red Crow. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Go forth into the world with utter abandon and spontaneity; relish the prospect of finding love in the most unlikely of places, freedom in the impulsive and sometimes allow yourself to be surrounded by madcap and chaotic; for order and structure are the devils in which many drown in, the spontaneity spark put out and left to be a ghost of the possibility.

Shankara Andy Bole, Red Crow. Album Review. full post

(399 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

The Over Critical View Of The School Nativity.

 

Greeted with a glass

of what seemed cheaply made,

home induced, egg nog

at the door of my daughter’s school

by a woman with dust marks on her hair,

and the strange smell of child nerves

upon her weighted down shoulders,

deeper in debt, demoralised

and now having to greet

parents to whom their child is the star

of this off Broadway, local authority show.

 

Small talk surrounds the close fitting

chairs, designed for the uncomfortable

advances of an ice cream pot for child sized hands

The Over Critical View Of The School Nativity. full post

(404 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Peter Pan, Theatre Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Dane Bowers, Claire Simmo, Lewis Pryor, Joanne Harper, Michael Chapman, Georgia Austin, Chris Barton, Eleiyah Navis, Adam Coyne, Alliyah Hennessey, Libby Sunter, Faye Keating, Rachel Heron, Libby Walker, Liv Baccino, Beth Baccino, Jacob Robinson.

Humanity needs more people who see the world through the same eyes, the same clarity of vision that author and playwright J.M. Barrie did when he created the characters of Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Wendy Darling and Tinker Bell, perhaps then it might not be so centred on greed and destruction. Instead, as is always hoped for at this time of year, the pull of being decent, of holding out a hand to a fallen lost boy or fellow darling, is the right way to be. It is an ideal, of being brave in a world of adults, cutlasses and poison, of listening to your heart, of believing and one that Peter Pan flies high.

Peter Pan, Theatre Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(462 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Cary Balsano, Horizon. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Despite it being engrained deeply into our D.N.A., we seem collectively to have lost sight of an ideal to which humanity once aspired to with every breath taken and with beat of pulse that ran through our body. Whether individually it matters is one thing, but as a group, as a society, we seem to have lost the ability in many respects to open up our minds to new adventures, to push back the boundaries in our own lives as well as those around us, we have lost sight of the next Horizon to conquer, to flourish within and make this world just a little nicer for those yet to come.

Cary Balsano, Horizon. Album Review. full post

(425 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Winter At Home.

 

I promised myself

no more cold winters

stuck indoors

as I approached the autumn

years of fifty.

I promised with hand on heart,

a vow to my then hopefully older self

that by then, the words would have meant

something more, that the days

would be long and bright,

not sat under a blanket,

with two pairs of socks, a cardigan, long johns on

trying to keep my nose from freezing

and turning blue, choosing

between heating the house and eating a meal,

Winter At Home. full post

(114 words, estimated 27 secs reading time)

Paul Dunbar & The Black Winter Band, Made My Peace With You. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Winter is upon us, the dark nights have crawled in, the fog of uncertainty has become a more dangerous proposition and the furious and the disenchanted have taken root inside the minds of all who consider scorn and unwarranted cynicism a viable solution to the problems that we face together. It is in that almost unshakable nihilism that the brightness of a single star can be seen as a wonder, that to find a reason to show the sneering and the put down merchants why exactly you should be able to say calmly the words, Made My Peace With You, without stooping to their level.

Paul Dunbar & The Black Winter Band, Made My Peace With You. Album Review. full post

(425 words, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)