Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Christopher Timothy, Kelly Hotten, Philip Cairns, Daniel Betts, Robert Perkins.
They say a murder cannot be perfect for somebody will always at least know about it, even if they are the ones who end up dead. However a homicide can be near perfect when presented on stage in the form of Frederick Knott’s outstanding play Dial M For Murder.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
When Rose Greenwood first came into the thoughts and attentions of music lovers in Liverpool, the sound she created for her solo release was one that captivated the ears. Just a little while later, the solo artist has grown and become part of a band named The Broux. From solo artist to a member of a fully-fledged group of talented musicians and through this she will no doubt reap greater rewards, as will the three men who guide her voice on their debut release, The Green E.P.
Liverpool Sound & Vision Rating: * * * *
Cast: Kivan Dene, Leanne Rowley, Rachel O’Hare, James Mountain, Jonah Kensett, Luke Wakeman, Grace Mainon.
It is the early 1950s and the country is still recovering from war. Rock and Roll is making its mark, King George is dead and war torn England is changing. At Great Stony School Essex, young Brian (Jonah Kensett) is waiting for his dad to come and fetch him to take him home, but after watching all of his friends go off to loving new homes, Brian thinks that no one will come, until one day everything changes. Brian says goodbye to his best friends George (Luke Wakeman) and Gladys (Grace Mainon) and heads off to his new life with his sister.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Paul McGann, Nicola Walker, Ruth Bradley, Alex Macqueen, Chris Porter, David Dobson, John Dorney, Nicholas Briggs, Brian Shelley, Ian Brooker, Adrian Mackinder, Andrew Knott, Joseph Radcliffe, David Silby, Jo Castleton, Ian Hallard, Jacqueline King, Natalie Burt, David Shaw-Parker, Frank Skinner.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Tom Burke, Santiago Cabrera, Peter Capaldi, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Amy Nuttall, Tara Fitzgerald, Ryan Gage, Alexandra Dowling, Hugo Speer, Tamla Kari, Ben Adams, David Burke, Michael Kucera, Simon Merrells, Phil Snowden, Curtis Matthew, Madelyn Marcella.
When your biggest enemy is your mother you really have problems. When she is plotting to bring about your downfall and replace you with someone younger, more pliable and easily moulded to her will, then your problems become seemingly insurmountable and terrifying.
The Stranglers at the o2 Academy, Liverpool. 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
This is the Gospel according to the Men In Black, to the musicians who have shaped more than one generation’s musical taste; the men who stuck two fingers up to the doubters, the unbelievers, the down-right miserable and doom laden and who have had the final incredible laugh for the last 40 years. The sermon to the already converted and to those who have come along in the intervening years, the thank you to all who gave The Stranglers room in the heart and who filled the room at The Academy in Liverpool to bursting. The Gospel surely reads, “Thank You.”
Over the past decade or so, music fans and artists alike have found themselves lamenting on the decline of the music industry. With new technologies developing all the time, it is now cheaper and easier for our consumerist society to access music – for free – anytime, anywhere. On the one hand, this modern lifestyle invariably means that more musicians have a much broader fan base. However, on the other hand, it is becoming an increasingly less profitable endeavour to be in a band and the argument remains that this is putting a lot of talented people off.
Originally published by Ace Magazine on-line on 3rd March 2014.
In 1999, just after Manchester City had gained promotion via the playoffs and Manchester United had won the Champions League, there was a suggestion cheekily suggested by some journalists the national papers that there was something in the water to have produced two thrilling moments in football history. For Manchester City it was the start, a true beginning back to the land of redemption after years of lacklustre and almost abject football. Times change, City no longer have the tag of being a big time laughing stock but they don’t half cut it close to becoming so at times.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
No matter how many years go by, nothing ever really ever seems to change at all. No matter how hard you try to see the difference, time has not erased any of the anxiety or difficulties that affect ordinary lives.
However, sometimes you can’t have enough of Too Much Pressure though and with ever graceful Pauline Black and The Selecter making their way to Liverpool to celebrate the bands 35th anniversary, the pressure is absorbed, danced too, sang with great gusto and with an abandon that you would expect as perhaps arguably the greatest Ska band of the period rolled back the years and showed that class is always permanent.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
March may have been blown in the back of the worst set of winter storms in living memory but the thought of sunshine, weather so perfect you could just turn on the radio and dream of Henry Blofeld delivering a perfectly delivered and seamless soliloquy in praise of a six by Curtly Ambrose and strawberries being placed in your mouth by a toga wearing Roman is never too far away. That dream of summer, of the lazy perfect day was bought ever closer by the Leicester band By The Rivers who were support for the legendary Ska band The Selecter on the opening day of March.