Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Richard Dormer, Jodi Balfour, Paterson Joseph, Laerke Winther, Shannon Tarbet, Ray Stevenson, Kieran Bew, Michael Wildman, Joseph Macnab, Peter Coe, Alex Gillson, Tuncay Gunes, Susan Hughes, Faye Castelow, Mimi Ndiweni, Annabel Bates, Rosalind Eleazar, Paul Rhys, Tanya Reynolds, Clive Russell, Charlotte Dylan, Michael Shaeffer, Clare Holman, Rebecca Lacey, Reece Ritchie.
The back yard was covered
in the miniature jungle
of moss, earth bound mold,
secret fortress for the Viet-Cong
and hiding holes
for the alien Predator, casually
smoking Park Drive cigarettes
as it polished the remains
of a once scurrying beetle
late for work no more.
I have had no reason to venture out there,
like my childhood, when wet
or not allowed to go near my father’s
guinea pigs for fear of upsetting them
as I crashed a decaying
Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 9/10
The bar has been placed so high by Albert Castiglia that there is surely little room to wriggle through the space that is left, and when the bar refuses point blank to give way, to be seen as conceding even an inch in today resurgence of the well performed Blues, the only thing you can do is take a sledgehammer to it and rebuild or show it just who is in command with the biggest confident strut and musical stride and make the bar realise it hasn’t seen anything yet.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Those alone periods, the times in which to read whatever takes our fancy without someone looking at us with suspicion, with the glare of accusation that somehow you are wasting time just by making sure your brain is doing what it is supposed to, appreciating art in any form and not being told by a supposed authority that by doing so you are not being productive.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
They say New York City never sleeps, that it must be suffering from a kind of metropolis induced insomnia, the bright lights of Broadway constantly ablaze with show information, Time Square pumping out electricity, eye catching news and the simple off 77th Street and 3rd Avenue bar which stays open all night, all the collected lights and glow of the neighbourhood, and yet it can still be to the lonely, the thoughtful and the heartbroken, a place where songs are written about the Big Dark City.
I still live
for Music, milk and Mars Bars,
never finding a replacement for them all,
the speed of the thirty three
and a third, always fulfilling
and fuelling the memory of fifty
pence in my pocket, a morning token
in which the early Walkman knock off
would play me the music of choice
on the way to school, passing by
the odd discarded milk bottle, a victim
of thirst and now drained
and allowed to stand erect, proud,
devoid of culture and parading the remains
Has anyone seen my Get up & Go
I seemed to have misplaced it
Hmm now where did I have it last?
I know I had it at Gulliver’s World at The Rainbows 30th birthday bash
Maybe I lost it on the teacup ride that was a bit of a rocky ride
Or could it be at the swimming pool I definitely had it there
It helped me do my fifteen lengths.
Is there a Helpline for a missing Getting up and Go
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Away from a night surrounded by folk musicians and the odd nervous poet in attendance, everybody from the high end diva tagged performer to the watcher in the wings wants nothing more than the spectacular on stage. The crowd may feel as they have got their money’s worth, the fawned over photograph a hit on social media, a certain kind of artist knowing that if the crowd goes wild then the sales of DVD and all its associated regalia projected to be sellers for the Christmas market; the bigger, the better, the brasher; to be talked about for weeks and have the lights be more vivid than a night in Blackpool.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It only seems like yesterday, such a short time ago, that the fashion to take the popular songs of the artist and scale them back from the more rock/pop dominated sound, then giving them a different history all together was almost everywhere, it sidled into the conscious and left its mark. The only issue being when something is fashionable it can leave the feeling of too much, everybody trying the same relentless thing. It perhaps came too much, too identical, the uniform of consistency the audience didn’t even know they needed and when they figured it out, it was too late; like ivy creeping up a wall, it was soon everywhere.
Liverpool Sound and Vision * *
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Chloe Sevigny, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Charlotte Gainbourg, Jamie Clayton, James D’Arcy, David Dencik, Toby Jones, Sofia Helin, Jacob Oftebro, Anna Reid, Jonas Karlsson.
It could be deemed our own fault, the height of expectation drawn from the Nordic Noir television and film dramas has been of such good quality, that as an audience we perhaps think that any drama set in the north of Europe is going to reap the same beneficial advantages of story-telling, that the quality bench mark cannot falter. An expectation sadly not realised when it comes to The Snowman.