The tattooed Crow
and I go way back,
longer than almost anybody I remember,
save for immediate family
and a girl I loved named Jo.
Tattooed Crow, tattooed crow,
once a skinny Birmingham boy
to whom the words of cars,
machines, 50s beat,
and Elvis were the product
of a life I could not imagine,
not giving a damn about how
an engine worked or the days
of music long since past,
or of Rugby, a game that wasn’t
mine to enjoy,
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The sound once came out of the cold swamps, the back beat slow and mystical…or that’s as close an analogy as you would find being perpetrated as a sizeable truth from out of the mind of Jim Morrison. If anything Southern Rock came from the fiery pits of Hell, where the Devil sang with charm and the band were always on fire, the taste in the air was like fine bourbon tickling the throat and that mystical sound, it was there but it pulsed with so much life that it sired grandchildren before each day was over.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The artist is not to be trusted if they don’t listen to the stories that other people tell them, that if they are too wrapped up in their own words and thoughts, then they should be not ignored but at least scolded for their actions. The artist, the harbour of secrets and the keeper of the clandestine, eventually will sing of the tales and make them breathe and one of the finest of these, Anne McCue, is always on the verge of shepherding the story in the right direction and aiming for that distinction of Blue Sky Thinking.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
If the city you lived in was left to rot by the powers that be, if something so catastrophic hit it that the decision to let it bleed to death, let it become a crumbling edifice of humanity’s folly, would you stay behind to try to save it, cower in the darkness and the filth and wait for a hero to turn up, one that could at least bring hope, or would you run, leave the city to die in slow agony and watch from afar, counting down the heartbeats, counting down time to the inevitable last gasp from the shadows.
I want to talk to you,
just like
we did in old times
over a beer, over the background music
in which we catch ourselves smiling
at each other, shyly as children,
hormones unwilling to commit
as adults.
I want that beer to turn to three or four,
a session in a pub garden in the middle
of an Oxfordshire abyss or quiet literary desert;
let that beer sink, dregs drained
another one ready at the bar…
…I miss the gap in the silence
of comfortable reproach, when you
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Jake Abraham, Eithne Browne, Suzanne Collins, Lindzi Germain, Angela Simms, Alan Stocks, Lenny Wood.
The world is a harsh place at times, not everybody plays by the same rules and those who are fair, honest and upright in their morals are the ones forever being treated like dirt, that they have the very will to continue offering the service they do is a measure of their honour, that they refuse to be stitched up by those kicking against them a sign of their trustworthy and good nature.
I need to hold your hand
when the pain hits, when
it comes in waves I need
you to mop my brow and tell me
that it will soon subside,
that it will eventually release
me from its iron grip and the clench
of anguish, the fascist dictator rising up
and telling me that the pain
will set me free, it will consume me
but it is for my own good;
I want nothing more
than to pull the trigger on that
son of a bitch, to make it disappear
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
To evolve is to never stand still and be sucked in by the glories of the past, to not give way to the static and constantly biting inactivity which preludes fading away in the minds of others. Some evolve through necessity, some through choice and some, rare beings of personal truth, do it because it is the right thing to do, to them being fresh is to reject the inevitable stagnation that comes with age and the growing boredom. It is a boredom rejected fully and with acoustic skill by Carl Moorcroft and his reflection of musical evolvement; On The Road.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Never compromise, not where your belief in what your art is trying to say anyway; in other areas of life , concession is the rule of law we must stick to if we are to gain any type of solid ground to which civilisation will flourish but in art, never. If it is provocative then so be it, if it stands out then so much the better and if it has a concept behind it, that magical piece of story-telling to which all art wants to relate to, then let it explode in your ears as if all the thunder that ever raged above the Earth were to reign down in one seismic storm.
Another day, another town,
and life goes on around
as they make you scared, bit by bit
to leave your home, to leave your room
and yet become expectant of another
atrocity, another killing in the name
of a faith, of a devotion to the word
of death, the ultimate cult,
the end justifying the means
of swift negotiation with a bullet,
bomb or sword;
another day, another town
and life goes on around
but it feels more sinister,
both sides want you to be afraid