Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
The still of the night is such that the attraction of a solo acoustic guitarist will always sound beautiful, mournful and heart stopping no matter the situation they may find themselves in. Yet somehow the attraction is enhanced with the feeling of close August heat parading itself in the shower of loose dripping sweat and the build up of energy being worked up in readiness for the electric section of the evening.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Intimacy can sometimes come as a bit of a surprise when attending a concert, it can be a little daunting to see the performer’s eyes so close up, to be sat within a few feet of the fingers dancing on the strings and catching the reflected light from the stage all around you as if watching a shadow play; it is to be thought of daunting but one surely dispelled quickly and instead thought of as a privilege instead.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
In the comfortable surroundings of one of the City’s less obvious gig venues, the clamour of evening tea and daily tasked conversation rising just as the summer moon makes it’s appearance in the Liverpool sky, the upstairs at Leaf, always the height of serenity and musical appreciation, became an oasis for memory, contemplation and praise, as Revolver, The Beatles 7th studio album was lauded and acclaimed by the packed out audience and as each song was performed by some of the very great talents in the Liverpool music community, there was undoubtedly, beautifully, magic in the Merseyside air.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Verging on the eerily quiet, almost as still and motionless as a field of corn waiting to be reaped for the summer’s harvest; hardly a word passing and only punctuated by the odd yell of excitement from the stalls and the spontaneous applause towards a band that arguably had performed one of the sets of the year. For the Epstein Theatre audience on a sticky and sweat filled August evening, watching Low was going to be a highlight of the year and the band never failed to live up to the enormous expectation.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There is always the novel approach, the unexpected gig to hit the Liverpool streets or the venue in which the audience turn up for a different kind of theatrical experience, the play may well be the thing but it is music after all in which captures the conscious of the audience and there are very few people like one of the Merseyside area’s favourite sons, John O’ Connell, in which to liberate the expanse of music on stage and to give a genuine feeling of love to the classical side of guitar performance.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Life is too short to waste worrying too much about the past, it should be seen as a guide, a tutor, the teacher who educates to the point where the lessons are learned, committed to memory, and then the individual should be able to move on with the next moment where they step out blinking in the sun and putting their next triumph on show for people to take notice. We all have regrets, we all play that same image in our heads over and over again, it is natural to think back to the time when the path became a choice; it is taken and we deal, it just might be that the soundtrack is better, even on the Dead Cassettes.
Choc Electrique in Bootle, July 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
In the shadow of the now abandoned St. Andrews Church, a building that once tried to save souls and dish out compassion, where a modern for sale sign bristles against the thought of commercialism and the ravage of capitalism, a front man of delight of dedication reached out to the assembled and took them on a small journey of groove, a service of musical enlightenment and to one which the pulpit of the stage was not big enough, one in which the superb Choc Electrique powered over the crowd and Greedy Jesus, the front man for the 21st Century led the congregation into musical heaven.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The storming finish, the band that gets people up to dance and forget the finite detail of the week they may have had, the month they have had to scrape through, that band is worth its weight in gold. It may be the one that you turn to when all seems desperate, the loose ended feeling, your all time favourite from decades past, yet a band that can calm the nerves, stop the pressure from boiling over and take you out of your head as a Saturday folds itself away into the past forever, that is the band in which to really be seen with. There are a few of them in Liverpool, in the freshly young bracket that are 21st Century delivered, they all stand out, as too does the final group in the Battle of the Bands, the festival of musical things on the bowling green lawn in Bootle – Hegarty.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It is not just Bootle that can be seen as being forgotten in many ways by the higher powers that be, the area of Huyton, as well as other places in the North West and those beyond the remit of the Westminster village, has also suffered and its people, those who work in the on-going rejuvenation of Liverpool, must at times wonder when is it their turn and who really speaks for them, what weaver of words is their lauded king or queen to make the area stand up for itself.
Interrobang performing in Bootle, July 2016. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The air is punctured, the big bang of the angry, cross and disillusioned comes out across the scene of serenity with truth galloping beside it at such a rate of knots that it is possible to feel the strength of rightful bitterness as if it were a tornado, a hurricane on the verge of demolishing the insidious and the crass, the self serving and the out and out distasteful. This was the cold wind of reality that captured the mood but didn’t spoil it, that enhanced the reasons to which the town of Bootle has felt the pressure of for decades.