Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Liverpool and the vast majority of the United States of America don’t have that much in common, take out New York City and its melting pot of institutions and flavoursome watering holes with the nights of poetry, music and lively debate aside, there really is not a lot to tie the city beside the Mersey say with Texas, Georgia or the Mid West States where cowboys still roam and the talk is of oil, current incumbents of the White House and rattlesnakes.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The age old question of how to warm up an audience to the point where the inner thermostat is making the mercury rise to the occasion, but not peaking too soon so that it blows out any possible enjoyment as the night progresses, is one that always makes for great debate on a night out. You want someone with class, with poise, great demeanour and content but someone who also knows exactly where to take the audience too, the cup of perfect tea surrounded by those would overfill the saucer is always more enjoyable.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It could be argued that the pulse of the Universe runs through the veins of what we feel, the mood we inhabit and the longing we have deep inside of us for the comfortable and unnerving in equal measure; such is that pulse, such is beauty in a single note that the art and the artist are entwined, that even hearing it performed by another is enough to raise the goosebumps to a point where they can be seen from space.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There are venues strewn throughout this land that somehow on the surface don’t seem from the outset, from the first eyes upon it, to be the type of place in which anything other than a grand piano in the corner and lady with an impressive gown and gentle manners performing on it for the tea and smoked salmon brigade could be construed out of place.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
North London’s rich cultural landscape has never felt as though it has anything to hide, it stands in the shadow of two of football’s great football teams, it has the gentility running through its veins and like its neighbour to the south-east, the area around Whitechapel and the East End, it has the blood of expression oozing from every pore, sweat of young aspiration clambering to be noticed. Like Liverpool, it delivers with delicate but hard fought battle, music that has the muscle to wedge itself between you and a place of comfort; a comfort that has no right to be anywhere in sight but far too often gets involved in the day to day listening of the nation.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
The auditorium inside the Capstone Theatre has been one which has opened its extensive arms to the world of Jazz beyond its normally perceived conceptions, it has enlightened in such a way that to think of an International Jazz Festival in Liverpool without the Capstone’s involvement is to commit an act of musical treachery.
It is in its offerings that the music has flowed, it has been greatly received and has been enhanced by the surprise packages that make up the early Saturday afternoon, the tantalising glimpses into a realm of fusion, of discovery, of Jazz but in not in a sense of the normal but in the glowing sphere of breathtaking blend and union.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Jazz might get its detractors, the sneering or the snide remarks in which it has taken with grace and humour over the decades, a medium which really does not get the support it fully deserves or the appreciation of the skill involved. It is perhaps easy to be critical of something which on the face of it offers only a sense of imagination, it is though in the very heart of that sincere vision that Jazz truly gets under the skin in such a way that it ripples with intellect and meaning.
Maddie, Zanzibar, Liverpool. February 2017. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The Romans used to be so dismissive of winter, so trivial was the meaning of the darkness, of what we might think of as the blues without the thought of sunshine and spring to warm our bones, their attitude was to lump January and February together, one big long dull month, one exceedingly long and bitter month with nothing to do but sit and grow listless.
Mountain Face, Zanzibar, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It seems implausible to the ear and yet sometimes a band that has a strength, a sublime sound and oodles of personality, is not able to get to Liverpool and perform for an audience; not for the want of trying, just that they have not been able to find the right place or perhaps the right thought in a venue’s bosses in which hosting them would be the right and the most excellent of moves.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It is the genre for which most arguably feel the stirrings of blood heading towards the heart as if it was on fire, the hose full of water and the draining of the reservoir not enough to quench the undying inferno which rages with passion and excitement. Classic Rock is a genre that might have its detractors but for those the drum kick hunts and the guitar follows like a wolf in the night, insatiable hunger wanting to be sated, it is more than just a type of music, it is the point of existence.