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Beauty & The Beast, Theatre Review. The Black-E, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tori Hargreaves, Nick Langmead, Jamie Greer, Adam McCoy, Helen Carter, Alan Stocks, Ciaran Kellgren, Brandon Incles, Libby Fairhurst, Michael Hall, Shannon McFadden.

There is a monster in all of us, a beast to whom only the love of one person can fight hard enough to quell and set on a course to love and to being the person we wish to be seen as by the rest of the world. To find such a person is sometimes all we can hope for, it is the very essence of our time, to have, to hold, to rip off the mask we have put to keep the hurt at bay.

Beauty & The Beast, Theatre Review. The Black-E, Liverpool. full post

(506 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Mother Goose, Theatre Review. The Casa, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Bob Towers, Edmund O’ Hare, Teneye Alvarado, Maggi Green, Charlotte Thomas, George Melling, P.J. Murray, Yahya Baggash, Peter Durr.

 

The song is right, it is the most magical time of the year, one in which we come together to hopefully remember what true message is, one not to be sucked into a world of commercialism, one not to be in the grip of debt, not one to be feel the need to be greedy or over burdened by the selfishness of others. Just one that allows the heart to find forgiveness to others and to yourself, one that in which children and adults alike can find the delight in time together and one which even in the depths of a snow filled scene can lead to a love that might not thought possible.

Mother Goose, Theatre Review. The Casa, Liverpool. full post

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

Arthur Askey’s First Curtain Call.

 

It is all about introducing children

to the delight of theatre,

thrill them with a funny

but beautiful tale at Christmas

when they are young, and in hope,

you will have them for life.

I was seven before I first saw my first panto,

played out for some reason

on my birthday and with Jimmy Edwards

and Arthur Askey on stage,

Hello playmates and bushy moustached Whacko

transferred from my bedside radio

to the grandness of the Birmingham Hippodrome,

my birthday, I needed to visit the toilet

Arthur Askey’s First Curtain Call. full post

(180 words, estimated 43 secs reading time)

Leaves’ Eyes, Sign Of The Dragonhead. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Some genres, some bands, just suit the epic perfectly. Place the right set of songs into the setting that befits them and stories can appear in the listener’s minds without even realising it. The grandeur, the history of the piece discussed, the musical offering becomes a blockbuster which goes beyond the heroic and becomes a symphony to the exploits of humanity, the adventures, the sagas.

Leaves’ Eyes, Sign Of The Dragonhead. Album Review. full post

(385 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

Deinonychus, Ode To Acts Of Murder, Dystopia And Suicide. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

We are fascinated, as a society by the macabre, the acts of the Penny Dreadful and the interest in the disturbing and shocking actions of Government, disaster, horror and the pain received. We eat up these visual and aural stories, we soak in them as Lady Bathory would in the blood of her victims, we seek further information about the grizzly and it becomes a conversation piece when news relayed of the passing of someone in a ghoulish or morbid manner; no matter how refined or undaunted by the ghastly we believe we are, there is nothing quite like an Ode To Acts Of Murder, Dystopia and Suicide to get the blood pumping.

Deinonychus, Ode To Acts Of Murder, Dystopia And Suicide. Album Review. full post

(378 words, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)

Orkestra Del Sol, Gross National Happiness. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

It is funny how a nation’s wealth can be calculated, the national output determining just highly thought of a country is. It must be doing well goes the thought, for the economics say it is, and yet what comes scandalously lower down the list is the contentment in our lot, the thought that at one time we were not as tied to the system as we have shamefully become, that we are not nuts and bolts in a bloated capitalist machine.

Orkestra Del Sol, Gross National Happiness. Album Review. full post

(400 words, 1 image, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Bill Feehely, Money & Love. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The world runs on them both, a hidden clock ticking over and over again in our hearts and in the bills we have to pay. Money & Love, you can live without either but the fun of life is somewhat limited, it is incomplete and hardly worth a jot. We even wish that money was not important, that somehow we could be decent human beings and find a way to devise a system that did not reward some and punish others just for the family or circumstance they were born into.

Bill Feehely, Money & Love. Album Review. full post

(366 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

Witches In High Heeled Shoes.

 

When I was a boy

I believed that witches

were real.

Even good ones.

The Witch in the Wizard of Oz

scared me,

the pointy shoes

and I cheered when Dorothy

and her friends

dropped a house on her

tired withered body.

I reasoned that good witches

could wear high heeled shoes,

all black, stiletto points

and daggers in the stamped down male foot,

when we didn’t behave.

Dorothy, I thought,

you can leave those witches be.

 

Witches In High Heeled Shoes. full post

(85 words, estimated 20 secs reading time)

Hobgoblin Music, 40 Years. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

We are told as children that in the woods live all manner of creatures and furry things with ears, beings that will eat us up if we stray from the path, that they will snatch us, make us disappear and end up in the broth boiling away in the middle of the woods. There are those creatures though that despite the initial fear of what lays beyond, have only your best interests at heart.

Hobgoblin Music, 40 Years. Album Review. full post

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

The Small Faces, There Are But Four Small Faces. Album Re-Issue Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is a task that not even the once King of Ephyra would have considered a viable option in return for rolling a large, round stone ball up a hill and trying to balance it before it fell down the other side and Sisyphus smacked his head in frustration; such punishment is cruel, unusual and points the way to the unwary and the innocent to be aware.

The Small Faces, There Are But Four Small Faces. Album Re-Issue Review. full post

(449 words, 1 image, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)