Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Iain Glen, Siobhan O’ Kelly, Jack Monaghan, Christopher Fulford, Laura Aikman, Sean Mahon, David Herlihy, Sarah Jane Seymour, Peter Campion, Erin Gilgen, Roy Fleck Byrne, Conor Quinlan, Eva Jane Gaffney, Cian Kelly, James O’ Sullivan, Patrick O’ Brien, Cathal Pendred, Jack Walsh, Leah McNamara.
You will happily pay for likes,
on your not so smart phone,
that is after all your prerogative,
your reason for twenty-first living,
abandoned by reason,
ashamed of shame,
but you cannot bear
to part with cash
for someone to truly despise you,
such is life, pay in
or pay out, me
well I have a credit card holder
always standing by,
for the multitude who silently seethe
under their breath
when they picture me.
Ian D. Hall 2016
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Danny Burns, Tom Connor, Stephanie Hockley, Adam Keast, Greg Last, Raj Paul, Lauren Silver, Emmy Stonelake, Lucy Thatcher, Francis Tucker.
Christmas only truly begins once the pantomime season starts in earnest, the faithful chime of the yearly bell in which many furry creatures, the beasts of the imagination come hurtling out of the writer’s pen and prove above anything that the media or consumerism can dole out in response, that the family and friends you spend time inside the theatre with are the best days you will have.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Jake Abraham, Michael Fletcher, Lindzi Germain, Hayley Hampson, Michael Ledwich, Andrew Schofield, Alan Stocks, Keddy Sutton.
Musicians: Ben Gladwin, Greg Joy, Emily Linden, Howard Gray.
There may be a house in New Orleans in which many a poor lad has lost his way, but they never quite lose their way, or regain the right path, as a Liverpool lad fighting the evil intentions of a maniac hell bent on destroying the city, not even a hero of a popular 60s song could match the heroics of the Scouse of the Rising Sun.
You couldn’t know
just how relieved I was
when I found out you were not going to be there,
a weight off my mind,
too say the least,
for your bulky shadow
is forever stalking me,
and yet
your physical self
is insubstantial
and ghost like.
Ian D. Hall 2016
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
There are places on the planet in which Time and tradition suggests with a firm but pleasing hand that you should be on any given date. Marillion had already perhaps and with wonderful particular mischief, performed in the United States of America during the run up to the 2016 American Presidential election and their new album F.E.A.R. being an almost perfect backdrop to the constant drip feeding of reports and special analysis of what was happening across the water, across the great divide.
The sinister sound of the deafeningly quiet
fills the frightened, leaden black skies
and as the border draws closer,
the rat bags cowl and skulk
in their misbegotten dens and Waterloo Station
is a million miles away,
London is a million steps distant and the channel,
the long sleeve that separates us from absolved culture is dry,
spent and full of wondrous starving starfish
hell bent on retribution;
we cross the border
in our rag tag finery, our mockingbird feathers and brutal denim,
half peeled, half stitched jackets…
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
The myth of it all, the subtle web weaved that creates illusion and the wonder of the creative, all is alive and well inside the superb minds of The Loch Ness Mouse, a band of stirring quality wrapped up inside the cool and the believed; it is to their self titled album that the myths are made real and the illusion filled in with facts and truths, one of which just how good they are when the music starts to play and where they can take you in their imagination.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is a difference, perhaps not so obvious at first glance or thought, between the daylight and the Night Hours, it is one in which many who dwell in the light, who cannot see the darkness as anything but a hindrance to enjoyment and the feeling of warmth on the skin, don’t see and that is only because they don’t witness the shadows on the souls, the pain that the night can bring and the sheer excellence of the art that dwells within. It is that kind of difference that Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith bring very much to the fore in their Folk driven album Night Hours.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Ellie Bamber, Armie Hammer, Karl Glusman, Robert Aramayo, Laura Linney, Andrea Riseborough, Michael Sheen, India Menuez.