Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is a special place reserved for the soul of David Crosby, for the gentleness he portrays in his music, for the sense of persuasive mellow he captures as the songs ring out with tender heart and peace, that special place just seems to become more appreciative, more becoming, and as the Sky Trails, as the words become ethereal and powerfully cool, so the more music fans have an elder statesman in which to look for guidance.
I have a silver knife,
an antique picked up
from a market stall
in South London, a depiction
of a car, old as the time that
the Hallmark suggests,
I wrote a snappy poem
and put the picture up
on social media,
it wouldn’t load,
I only asked
if friends knew where they
would plunge it in me.
Ian D. Hall 2017
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Epics come and epics go, some will stand the test of time and others fall into the trap of becoming side-lined, browning with age, bleached in part by the weather streaming against the frames and forgotten, a dusty reminder of what they once stood for in the pantheon of music.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The whole world is at it, even the virtuous and those who claim the moral high ground, from politicians down to all of us who increasingly reply, I’m fine to the question How are you?, it seems as though that Everyone Is Lying; we all know it, we cannot help it but the world would probably see revolution everywhere if we suddenly decided to tell the truth.
I don’t know how to respond,
perhaps you are having
one of those bad days
in which the world can go to Hell,
or is it just a portion, a half,
fifty percent
that you would see burn, break it down
to the man
you despise
and the assertion
that no man is capable of true emotion;
I don’t know how to respond,
not because I am devoid of feeling
or lack empathy, I just don’t
want the argument to escalate
further as you march
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Graham Gouldman at the Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. October 2017. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Graham Gouldman always comes across as that kindly uncle who also happens to double up as the most interesting man in the room and finds time to have one of the sharpest song writing minds of the last 50 years. It is a moment of pleasure in your own life when you realise just how exquisite the songs that he has been involved in, across his own solo career, with one of the biggest bands of their time or for others, luminaries such as The Yardbirds or for The Hollies, nothing comes close to that feeling, nothing prepares you for the delights to come.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
You can hear all the songs in the world, you can find a way to lose your soul along the way, sell it for a pocket full of gold and exchange it all to listen to the songs of every artist for the rest of your life. However, there will come a time when a song that is hugely influential on the shape of the conscious of so many, suddenly becomes something more, more dramatic, mixing patience and urgency in the same breath, then for all the songs and renditions that have gone before, you cannot help but feel sorry for anyone who tries to top them.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Timothy Spall, Tuppence Middleton, Anthony Boyle, Rudi Dharmalingam, Rebecca Manley, Anna Reid, Hayley Squires, Tom Brooke.
We are all just passengers here, a short lived journey through Time, a fleeting preoccupation with the memories we create, the interaction we subject ourselves too in the search for happiness; sometimes it is all just too much and the lies and the truth of what have become jumbled, we wish for a time when being content is all consuming.
Every night
I say sweet dreams, I check
the room for spiders
and walking beasts that might scare
you, I wipe gently
the crusts from your eye
and tickle your nose
and it is that holds me
together, for a while
but then I see the papers,
and I know I fight my own
losing battle each night,
a small war, a territory
lost in the middle of screams,
silent and rubble
built back over night
to show a smile to the world;
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Justin Hayward at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, September 2017. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
If music doesn’t move you enough to feel the cold truth of tears that run down your face, that if the art doesn’t make your heart feel the kindness, the brutality, the sensation and the despair that makes life such a gift to have in the palm of the hand; then perhaps it could be argued that you just haven’t found it yet, you haven’t found the moment which makes the tears of joy and pain of love mingle and gently swim from your eyes.