Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The world has not just gone mad, it is barely holding on to its fragile sanity, the cracks have well and truly appeared and there are many to whom the natural symbiosis of humanity and compassion has taken leave, they shout as all tyrants do of conquer and borders but they have no idea of the history in which they dismantle, of the destruction wrought in their name and yet they keep demanding to have the country or their planet back.
We are caught between two rising,
resurrected and revived Mammoths,
what chance did we,
the children of the atomic clock,
have against the generation of the
Baby Boomer and the Millennial
who look down upon Generation X
as if we caused all the problems in the world
we inherited it from the Victorians
and we could not get a word in edge ways
as children, suffer the silence,
suffer the disdain, suffer the attacks of personality
that Generation X are feckless, that we
were the generation of the cultural shift
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Adam Mohoney, Kerry Wells, Emily Darley, John Rand, Ben Small, Dawn Geary, George Goetzee, Sue Fawkes, Glyn Edwards.
It is not always about what is perceived to go on within the confines of a stage that makes a particular stand out memory for those honoured enough to see it or take time out of their lives to watch it, it is the knowledge of how deeply personal it is to the cast and how incredibly hard they have worked in overwhelming circumstances to make it happen, the sheer will, the graft and the pleasure, it can only be a case of Our Will against those who fight against such positivity.
Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory at the Liverpool 02 Academy, October 2016.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Any genre of music requires its founding fathers, its elder statesmen and women, the ones who made the dream of a generation and the bane of a previous one, to stand up, take control and be magnificent in the face of possible adversity and obliging redemption.
My bartering skills are out of touch,
Twenty-First Century purchasing power
revealed in an empty wallet,
save an out of date Blood Donor Card
that I carry to remind of a Time
when I might have been useful.
The papers are full of brinksmanship
of the nuclear button kind
as ships from the other side
forget the day
that Nagasaki fell
in dust and radioactive bites
and I scour the antiques
in search of something I cannot own,
leave in the dust of my memory
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Clare Bowles, Helen Carter, Paul Duckworth, Alan Stocks, Keddy Sutton.
An outpouring of respect should be shown to an actor who puts their life in the hands of an audience to the extent that their own inner thoughts, their own passionate affair with the boards and with language become so consuming that they write a play off their own back and present it to a crowd, ever hungry, ever in need of a new production to hold close to their hearts, and feel the sweat and possible damnation coming off the rehearsal floor for.
Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * * * *
To look into the Vortex is perhaps to either suffer the ensuing madness of the Universe or to see the pattern of the daring, the beautiful and the artful. Either state of mind is to know that there are forces out there that can be manipulated, can be staged and controlled but they can never be as celebrated or admired in the same way, they are swirls of artistry and beauty and ones that capture the imagination to its fullest.
Tiny pricks,
the numb feeling
spreading from my early morning
face and down my left arm,
already embroiled in the memory
of a similar sensation
many years before,
and oh how that brought me down,
now I find that friends have rallied round
with good wishes, unlike before
where She told me
in no uncertain terms
that I was a waste of space,
the numbness echoing and dying,
so she maintained,
in her heart was enough
to wish me dead.
These tiny pricks
My parents
Lived
through the Cuban Missile Crisis
and breathed their desire
for a
Nuclear free world
down to me.
I lived,
as did my friends
and teenage crushes
through the spectre
of the
war of words
and sabre rattling
by America
and Russia
until a decent man called Gorbachev
took a step back from the brink..
I
Lived through 80s insanity.
I worry now
that my sons
who would not hurt a fly
are now facing
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Combine the very best of every attraction, art form and moment that you spend locked in your head daydreaming of songs that would have thrilled the music hall, an English Operetta or the down and dirty night in the basement of a Soho club taking in the wine, whisky and the soda, mix them with a sense of the triumphant and the heavily costumed and the hedonistic swagger and the result still won’t be a touch on the gargantuan new album by Birdeatsbaby, Tanta Furia.