Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Life is not quite a race against time, the hours will go past at their usual speed and the clock will recognise every hour with its usual exuberance and maddening, almost happy like sophistication. It is the time you cannot see, the tick between tock that you have to use wisely and gain the spirit and wherewithal to make a difference to life and to the quality of your performance.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There can be nothing more that can make you suffer as if your ex-partner has run away with the one you left them for, or make you feel so elated in the same breath as if they had left behind their credit cards and a hastily scribbled note with their pin number on than feeling the dichotomy of watching a young band give such a performance and be so well appreciated that you cannot help but feel somehow you have wasted your life.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
A runaway train hurtling along the track, its metal shell gleaming in the radiant sunlight and with the band members from Metallica flying above in a stolen helicopter but somehow managing to play their greatest hits as in homage to the train’s pursuit has more chance of developing a sluggish demeanour than you could ever slow down They’re Coming To Get You Barbara once they have warmed up. Not that the band need much time but it gives the train a deluded self- confidence that nothing can match that type of speeding Metal.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There are groups, sets of musicians that are captured so well on stage, their huge sound overwhelming and intense that when they finally bring together their growing catalogue of songs to an E.P. or album it can on the whole seem slightly muted, the voice, the growl and the thrill of the vocal chase, surrendered for the smoothness offered in the vacuum of sterility.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Fiona O’ Shaughnessy, Neil Maskell, Adel Akhtar, Paul Higgins, Alexandra Roach, Nathan Stewart-Jarratt, Oliver Woollford, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Ian McDiarmid, Paul Ready, Ruth Gemmel, Emilia Jones, Steven Robertson, Sacha Dhawan, Jennifer Hennersey, Emil Hostina, David Calder, Ansu Kabin, Bill Nash, John Voce.
It might take Channel 4 a decade or more to get involved with another story-line as riveting as Utopia has been for the last two series, if it does it will be well worth the wait, for Utopia has been so powerful, so seismic in its delivery that it stands shoulder to shoulder with other titans that went before it, such as Black Mirror and A Very British Coup. .
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Stephanie Cole, Mandi Symonds, Andy Snowball, Nigel Fairs.
Imagination is the strongest, most potent weapon that humanity possesses. The ability to imagine the best and prepare for the worst, sometimes of our own species making and volition; to see the innate beauty in a single word, to have the ability to conjure up an imaginary best friend that sees you through the loneliness of childhood or to take the inventiveness, the sheer creative splendour, and turn into something that last for hundreds of years. Sometimes though imagination can, as to paraphrase Julius Robert Oppenheimer, can be the destroyer of worlds.
First published on Ace Magazine Online. August 2014.
It seems strange to think that only once before have Arsenal and Manchester City have met in the Charity/Community Shield. That game also ended up with the men from Manchester being taught a lesson in humility. Whilst this defeat won’t hurt many of the fans that travelled all the way down the M6 as much as it did in the utter ignominy that faced them in the workplace after their team lost to Wigan Athletic in the 2013 F.A. Cup Final, it will still send a few nervous nights to those who go to Eastlands this season that those charged with carrying on the success if the likes of Pablo Zabaleta, Sergio Aguero and Joey Hart should face lengthy lay-offs, are not exactly the thrilling machine that has carried Manchester City to so much success in the last four years.
Michael Sutton, St. Luke’s Church, Liverpool. Augist 2014.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Imagine playing in your first professional football match and it being the F.A Cup Final, you score a Hat-Trick, clear the ball off the line saving a certain equaliser in the last minute and being told by the Manager that Barcelona have put in an offer for you. Or if that sounds too far-fetched, being elected to Parliament on the wave of popular opinion, keeping all your promises, being hailed a World-Statesperson and somehow being someone of such high moral value that you only take a salary in keeping with the lowest earners in your constituency; none of that possibly compares to playing your debut gig in the open air venue of St. Luke’s and being sensational. Surely the latter is the hardest to believe.
Greedy Jesus, St. Luke’s Church, Liverpool. August 2014.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
In Jesus some trust, if you hear Greedy Jesus perform then all musical worship is usually conviction in faith is expected and delivered. Faith is what you make of it, it is what gets you through the small hours, the darkness and the negative damning thoughts that creep into your psyche like a rampaging vampiric worm bent on eating out on your soul and asking for a doggy bag for the leftovers; faith is what stands between you and oblivion.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Revolutions come and Revolutions go, commitment to change over and over again, to grow and transform, to iron out the wrinkles of the life and acquire new habits, perhaps even destructive ones that will get up the nose of some that once preyed upon your mind can be a good thing as long as you are true to yourself and central core beliefs. Revolution is desirable; revulsion should be rejected as quickly as an uninvited guest at your wake, for Sinéad O’ Connor and her blistering new album, I’m Not Busy, I’m The Boss, Revolution is once more hand and at times there is not person you should rather have by your side fighting your corner.