Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is nothing Middle of the Road about Eric Gales, if anything the music is a highway, an expressway with only the best eateries along the way, the dust cleaned and given to flights of fancy instead of dirt in the eyes and the speedometer happily cruising just above the limit; after all if you are going to break hearts with your music, you may as well break a few rules also.
A fence is a wall by any other name,
keep
them out, sign their names,
put them in one place,
in a home, make everybody scared
to show their compassion, ridicule them when they do
and when someone speaks up,
when the tiny voice of reason
finds that they can stand it no more,
take them out also and shoot them
against a bullet riddled wall.
Makes no difference to me
what religion you are,
just because I do not believe what you believe
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The breathing quickens, the feeling of gravitas and surprise once more is palpable under the skin and the pulse, once steady, a continual motion of fixed security, now, with elegance injected into the nearest vein, doubles in speed, it magnifies the feeling of drought that has been inexplicable in the heart as you come to realise that whilst music is truly global, you can only see so much of it live due to fiscal responsibilities and distance.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
What is under the bed, who really hides away with their fur showing and a pair of eyes looking out from in between the crack in the closet and what really lives in the fertile imagination of a child; monsters are real, parent’s reactions to them are unfeigned and yet for one small boy, monsters are the finest things in the world; they also deserve love and respect.
B.B. Taylor’s Murphy and The Monsters is an explosion of colour and deep thought all wrapped up in a wonderful children’s tale; a tale in which the monsters are there to be loved.
Today
we mourn the loss
of our dear
friend.
Although he was unashamedly odd,
89
was a trooper,
and whilst
many of us only knew him in late life,
I just wish
you could have known him
in his prime.
Ian D. Hall 2017
I am an altered fact,
so are you,
we only exist in a state of comfortable
despair because the very rich,
the very stupid
and the unfathomably popular
allow us to be there to be struck off,
one by one, in a crowd, sniper guns
pounding coins
whilst they hoard pounds,
guarding the brain cells that give them power
but dementia like poise and dying cells
they release the ones that guide
compassion, hope and love
and they somehow infect us with promises
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There has always been so much to take in with pleasure when in the company of John Hall, (Herringbone John), an acoustic night here, a full band session there, this is what John Hall brings to the area, the sound of the Blues, much neglected in some quarters but one delivered with appreciation and enjoyment in Liverpool by the man who makes the guitar ache with beauty. This is not a man who shows off or lets the occasion spoil him, this is no grand master to whom people will part with extortionate amounts of money for, this is a man of honour and his music respectfully shows that.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is a moment, a long and lengthy process in which it might take a music lover to fall for somebody, not the normal instant attraction in which club land offers with its steady rhythmic beat and fuelled by cheap alcohol, the smell of testosterone hanging in the air and mixing freely with the pungency of liberally dosed perfume, not in the circles of Folk or the acoustic nights offered throughout the city do those rules apply; here is the normality not energised by desire but by aural sensibility, to fall for one person and their guitar is to know love and in Christy Myers, it is one that gave with passion and joy immediately.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Life is too short, even if you take the care to go out as much as possible, to see the world, to throw yourself into the arena everyday and take Life out to spank every so often to show that it cannot dominate you, that it must not try to subject to its whim, you will still won’t be able to do all the things you believe are worthy of your time and effort. Time is cruel, there is so much to see, so much to listen too; however if you do one thing this year, of Time fights back and you can only make certain of doing one thing, then being in attendance at a gig involving Chris Callander is surely one to hang on.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Liverpool Acoustics’ new home of the Courtroom Café not only suits the requirements of the musicians who pass through the heavy wooden door and up past the six once grand steps befitting the buildings former occupants and Liverpool’s heritage, it sounds great as well, the fabric of the building, the history of the area in and around the older parts of the city somehow adding a weight of mystery and enthusiasm to the proceedings.