A message from Pittsburgh
opened tentatively, a friend’s
smiling name searching across Time
and the glittering remains
of the Atlantic Ocean,
one crossed between us
and the bridge of comradeship
forged in a pub by the Avon
so long ago.
A picture of my boys, cheerful
and fledgling optimism bursting
from beyond their early bird uniforms
the headline of his electronic note
and yet underneath it all
I realised that Time has been a beast,
for my eldest boy is now a year older
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Mikyla Jane Durkan.
Imprisonment it seems is not only for the guilty, for those whose crimes against society are numerous and devastating, but in the eyes of some men there are those who should be imprisoned against their will for their own safety.
Society demands imprisonment for those who steal, murder, maim, spread hate and yet society never seems to lift a finger of warning to those who seek to deny women the opportunity to leave the house, to expect them to stay in, who lock the doors and keep them kept but also keep them from those they love and the pastimes they enjoy; it is not so much imprisonment as it is the start of the unravelling of the mind and the cruelty that comes with it.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Maggi Green.
Controlled by the clock, everything to be done by a certain time or else the feelings of guilt and imperfection come steamrolling through, the sense of not having achieved even the most simplest of tasks during the time the clock wakes you and allows you the brief respite of dreams; this is the greatest form of punishment that humanity has bestowed upon itself, the complexity of time reduced down to moments in which life is either behind or ahead of self doubt and the insecurity of being seen as feckless and inadequate.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Artistic freedom is essential in all walks of life, not only for the artist who has the vision of something different in mind when told they must plough a field, but the everyday person, the ones who also see the extraordinary in even the most mundane of tasks or the bitter resentment of working for a conglomerate that doesn’t care. Freedom is fundamental, freedom is a right that should not be seen as one that can be bargained for or relinquished in exchange for control by fiscal bribery; for in doing so you open yourself up to the realms of Slime and Punishment.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Killian Scott, Matthew Lewis, Benjamin O’Mahony, Jonas Armstrong, Joseph Mawle, Mimmi Morton, Anna Burnett, Kahl Murphy, Kye Murphy, Ian Pirie.
There is always the feeling of definitive and upturned world when it is the detective who finds themselves on the run, the officer who has upheld the law in the best way possible for the town and times he lives in, suddenly thrust into the world of dark, of the ignoble and the fear of being hunted. All those times they have chased down a criminal and won, now in the heat of moral decay, counting for nothing as other officers with grudges and jealousy of success running hot through their veins, close in on their quarry.
Deluded misconceptions of what happiness can be.
This guiding light just blinds me, keeps me lost at sea.
We headed for the coastline hoped to reach the shore.
But gained no distance through resistance but my
persistence keeps me warm.
‘Its not what your lookin for,
that makes it difficult to find.
It’s not what your lookin for.
That keeps it on your mind.
Drifting with the current, heading who knows where
Incapable of anything, that shows how much we care.
I sometimes have to remember
all that I have seen
and felt,
touched, experienced
and lost,
for sometimes it feels like a dream,
one that my imagination
has stirred and fired off without warning;
I sometimes have to remember
the hands I have shook,
for in the skin I have
I collect their memories also
and in the end their thoughts bleed
into mine,
an honour to have been part of it all,
but I have forgotten
most of all that ever
happened.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Blue Öyster Cult at the Indigo, London, June 2017. Stone Free Festival 2017.
To have three major music concerts in London on the same day could have been either bad planning or the greatest thought since Woodstock, especially when the heat and potential to sweat ridiculously through the various band T-shirts and cloaked denim, the abundance of merchandise laying everybody’s arms down with expectation and joy all bundled up into one full experience; to have Guns and Roses and The Stone Roses play either side of the Westminster Capital and the legendary Blue Öyster Cult perform at the Indigo inside the O2 Arena, was perhaps, on reflection, a music marketing dream.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown at Indigo, Stone Free Festival 2017.
To be in the presence of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown is to understand what showmanship is truly like, it is like a magic trick that you cannot see unravel or become clear until it has set you in the mood to watch closely at the quick hands and the sharp, intelligent wit; the magic trick is not one to dismiss as flim flam or as the idle workings of those out to fleece the punter of money. In The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the magic is there to thrill you, to make you feel something different from the everyday or the run of the mill; this is Arthur Brown at his finest and long may he continue to be that erudite and sensational showman at the head of a three ringed, awesome, circus
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
In the words of the Beastie Boys, You gotta fight for your right to party, or on the hottest day of the year so far, you have got to take in as much as can and hope that the experience is worth writing home about, that your memories of the music is such as that it rings across the space between the audience and the band with grace and with the heart beating wildly and in tune.