Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It could be Rotterdam, Rome or anywhere but as December’s cruel thoughts turn to the end of the year, as the office parties began to stack up and the songs from karaoke machines began to rotate on mass, there is in amongst the freeze to come the knowledge that it is Liverpool that Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott once again find themselves in and producing a night of music in which to dance and reflect the night away.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
Cast: Hayley Atwell, Matthew Macfadyen, Joe Bannister, Bessie Carter, Philippa Coulthard, Alex Lawther, Donna Banya, Tracey Ullman, Joseph Quinn, Rosalind Eleazer, Yolanda Kettle, Sandra Voe, Miles Jupp, Jonah Hauer-King, Julia Ormond.
For all television’s preoccupation with fiction that tries to capture the times in which our great grandparents would have lived through, from the dichotomy of the wonders of invention and adventure in the Victorian era and its more fragile, disgusting more sneering side in which the poor were treated with absolute revulsion and through to the period in which an entire generation were almost wiped out in the horror of the First World War; television in the last few years has done its best to glorify in this time and tried to draw parallels with our own sense of time on the planet.
How Swift
We forget
that there was a time
that satire was preserved
for the throats of the pompous,
the lofty with copper bust
on show
in Halls or outside churches,
seeming pious in their pose
and their place in history texts assured,
satire was preserved for them,
satire, let’s eat the rich,
for in their taste for blood,
the Chingford Iain, teeth bared
pumping fist
now uses the poor for fuel,
the disabled to further his cause
of a bright beautiful future,
Sisters, who’d have them,
I didn’t when I was a young boy,
the thought of being
in the same room as the overuse
of teenage perfume
met with warm air
and ever changing pop star
and film matinee idol crush,
of perceived tattle tale
and can do no wrong with simpering smile
and behind the scenes dirty tricks
and mind games,
filled me with dread.
Now I would love a sister,
but the closest I have is not blood,
but she is the finest woman
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Paul Duckworth, Michael Fletcher, Stephen Fletcher, Hayley Hampson, Lindzi Germain, Andrew Schofield, Keddy Sutton.
Band: Ben Gladwin, Greg Joy, Emily Linden.
Choir: Jay McWinen, Elaine Collins, Dee Spencer, Teresa Loughlie, Joan Pinnington, Rob Liston, Linda Martin, Barbara Davenport, Gretta Southern, Julia Hayes, Paul Davenport, Melanie Robson, Molly Madigan.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It has been a long, often lonely, wait for any sign of a new Shed Seven album to come out. Break ups and the seemingly self decline of the period in which they were born into, placed together with others in the elaborate styling’s of Brit-Pop, an anger and a rage that perhaps didn’t truly reflect their persona or the way they played. Some moments in life though are full to the brim of the immediate and the gratifying; some have the Instant Pleasures woven through them like writing in a never ending stick of rock.
Like a kite…
I never learned properly
how to fly the paper chase and nailed
down wood, I would watch
with awe as others flew so high,
tumbled and rose again
in the swirling winds, their lives made happy
because the kite touched the edge
of the perceived sky, where mine limped
and sagged, scrapped the sands and snagged on rocks,
like a kite destined to flump along as I ran,
making my heart beat out of time,
pushing the kite, willing the kite
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Adam Keast and Francis Tucker in this year’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Panto The Little Mermaid. Photograph by Robert Day, used with kind permission of the Everyman Theatre.
Cast: Danny Burns, Tom Connor, Stephanie Hockley, Adam Keast, Greg Last, Jamie Noar, Elizabeth Robin, Lucy Thatcher, Francis Tucker, Imelda Warren-Green.
Christmas is the time for the Fin-tastic, the spectacle and the promise that the coming year will be an ocean worth swimming in, that the days of floundering will be a dim a distant memory; it is the days when the special, the extraordinary and the beautiful should and must be seen with equal authority, that compassion for all be observed and to every-fin under the sea, a powerful performance and laughter ensured.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Adam Lambert at the Echo Arena, Liverpool. November 2017. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
The entrance tickets would have been smouldering away in the pockets of the audience for months, they would have been hidden in secret draws and in the realms of closets, opened every so often just to make sure they were still there, not squirreled away by jealous borrowers or fanatical fans who had not been able to secure a ticket of their own. On a night which temptation was possible, in which the heat of the performance would have burst into raptures of flames; Queen and Adam Lambert made good on a long standing unspoken promise and came to Liverpool to raise the roof.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Emma Stone, Steve Carrel, Andrea Riseborough, Natalie Morales, Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Alan Cumming, Elizabeth Shue, Eric Christian Olsen, Fred Armisen, Martha MacIsaac, Lauren Kline, Fidan Manashirova, Jessica McNamee, Ashley Weinhold, Austin Stowell, Wallace Langham, Bridey Elliott, Lewis Pullman.