Once upon
a Birmingham day, St Andrew’s
called the three of us together,
my Grandfather’s hand on one side
my father’s on the other,
two larger than life men
and a child, barely able to reason,
once upon a Birmingham day,
I peered through the gap
created by the outline stance
of two men and saw a game commence,
squeezed and pushed
with the flow of rhetoric,
community singing and language
unheard even in the finest
of hours, the colours,
displayed, rejoiced, groaned at
If you’re looking for answers,
Me,
I like my steak blue, under the heat for no time at all,
my eggs runny,
my haggis with mayonnaise dolloped on the side,
my bacon with a rind,
my Shakespeare riveting,
my football with City on top,
but never forgetting the days in which we were damned awful,
sometimes my poetry…whimsical,
my rock heavy, my jazz boundless and my pop with a smile
and the kiss in a women’s eyes,
I used to like my Whisky at least older than me,
It was a black and white photograph that drew me back to this town, one that had seen better days, mirroring the photograph taken at random on a night out with friends, who some became lovers, of all now, except for me, are either dead, or long since found out the hard way that we are the children whose parents were the product of meaningless catchphrases or suffocating intoxicants designed to blot out us of their forged, forgotten dreams.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Lisa Dwyer Hogg, Michael Balogun, Trevor Fox, Susan Lawson-Reynolds, Ekow Quartry, Andrew Sheridan, Imogen Slaughter, George Somner, Aimee Lou Wood, Matilda Ziegler, Ellen Warwick, Natalie Ann Boyd, Emily Jane McNeill.
To beat addiction you need to stay away from the triggers that send you off the rails, to recognise those People, Places & Things which can harm you and your self belief and then start by being honest, more than you have been before in your life. Addiction is such that you don’t recognise it for what it is and to watch someone go through it, in which ever form it takes, is to understand the depths that a human being can sink to when nobody listens to them silently scream.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Everything comes full circle and in some cases it is with anger, the rage and resentment that what you first fought and rallied against in your younger days, somehow becomes the very political ideal that you have to fight and lyrically wrestle with once again; to see in your life time the hatred that others wear like lounge suits and serious ties return is to know that the battle against tyranny and vile fascism is an ongoing struggle but one that must always, with the keen eye of vigilance, be waged.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Port cities have this unnerving ability in which to produce musicians which captivate the love of vocabulary and language; perhaps it comes down to the use of words on the docks, the different ways of having a conversation between two people from places which have nothing in common but the sea that breathes between them. Whatever the answer may be, some who hear the words somehow manage to make new worlds out of it and spread that verbal onslaught towards those willing to listen and take heed.
It was a song
played on a piano in a bar,
that reminded me of you,
slightly out of key,
the wrong notes at times
grating on the ear,
but it was a song we shared
as we belted it out
when we were drunk
and wearing younger skin
staggering down Sheep Street.
It was a song that reminded me
of you and for a while
I mourned that I would never
be off key with anyone else again.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Ricky Ross at the Capstone Theatre, Liverpool. November 2017. Photograph used with kind permission by David Munn Photography.
It seems a strange departure when you first see the piano on the stage at the Capstone Theatre, the audience knows full well it is not going to be a performance in which the roof of the Echo Arena would shake and feel the storming pull of wave after wave of pop hits and the shake of expectation of Deacon Blue favourites that have become a staple on the Liverpool calendar since the venue opened. However, when it comes to Ricky Ross, almost anything is possible and the Capstone Theatre roof must have been concerned for the future of its position.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Anthony D’ Amato at the Capstone Theatre, Liverpool. November 2017. Photograph used with kind permission by David Munn Photography.
Even today in the ease of travelling across oceans and different time zones, there is something distinctly admirable about letting go of the comfortable and the secure and opening yourself up to the possibility of the unknown and possibly uncharted. To leave one’s home town behind, to venture into the space between love and acceptance is a challenge, no matter how old, no matter how experienced; it is still one that marks you out as having the chops to spread your word far and wide.
Albert Camus,
poor man that you are,
forgetting a glimmer of truth
in your melancholic good times;
tea may always be a substitute
but it has a bitter taste
for those left to stew the pot
Ian D. Hall 2017