Black Sheep

You once declared me to be the unrepentant Black Sheep

and then tried to laugh with damning justification of my actions,

but all I could hear from your woollen mouth

was the constant bleating of the high and mighty wronged.

The black wool is there as a reminder of the mistakes I have regretfully made,

but you never cared to mention the whiteness of my stomach

compared the nasty deep smoke stained, barbeque ready,

yellow belly that hides underneath your disgusting grandeur.

The Black Sheep found another flock in which to keep time with,

Black Sheep full post

(270 words, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

Sex And The Three Day Week, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Catrin Aaron, David Birrell, Natalie Casey, Edward Harrison, Javier Marzan, Robin Morrissey, Eileen O, Brien, Lucy Phelps, Graeme Rooney, Voice of Ken Dodd.

History has a way of repeating itself, what goes round will no doubt come round again. It is the comfort in the despairing knowledge that for every action…the same mistakes will be played out, over and over again and the same fortitude shown in national absurdity relied upon. For those old enough to remember the period in which an inept leader of the country was finally shown the door and the nation stumbled upon the lost ideals of the Sexual Revolution, Stephen Sharkey’s Sex And The Three Day Week is an homage to the strife, internal conflict of repressed sexuality and people making the most of the black-outs.

Sex And The Three Day Week, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(408 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Supertramp, Crime Of The Century. 40th Anniversary Re-issue, Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

The wheels of Time constantly turn but they never seem to move very far from certain seminal points that repeat themselves over and over again. When it comes to nostalgia and thinking back to how much Time has irrevocably altered and magnified certain pieces of art, then the re-master, re-issue or just plain re-discovery of a lost epic is enough to make Time smile and make its heart go a little faster.

Supertramp, Crime Of The Century. 40th Anniversary Re-issue, Album Review. full post

(844 words, estimated 3:23 mins reading time)

Marillion, Gig Review. ABC, Glasgow.

Marillion at the ABC, Glasgow. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The point of the journey, as Rush once said, is not to arrive. By completing the journey, all that you have learned about yourself can turn eventually to dust and atoms. It is perhaps a finer, arguably more noble, pursuit to keep travelling, to keep the finishing line hidden from view, to never have the experience of something ending less it eat away at you and allows the dust which holds the joints and creaking crevices together to inch by delicate inch slowly fade away.

Marillion, Gig Review. ABC, Glasgow. full post

(663 words, 1 image, estimated 2:39 mins reading time)

Peter Gabriel, Gig Review. Echo Arena, Liverpool.

Peter Gabriel at the Echo Arena, Liverpool. December 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

For many, Peter Gabriel is still seen as “The Progfather”, the man who defined a generation and stunning musical narration with a theatrical bent and who still gets talked of lovingly as perhaps being able to capture those moments of outstanding early Genesis releases. To others he is the man who played his part in bringing down a regime so vile and disturbing that it sends a shiver down the spine when images from that time are shown on television.

Peter Gabriel, Gig Review. Echo Arena, Liverpool. full post

(796 words, 1 image, estimated 3:11 mins reading time)

Linnea Olsson And Jennie Abrahamson, Gig Review. Echo Arena, Liverpool.

Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is perhaps beyond the compression or wildest dreams of any fan of music to understand what must go through the minds of the support act when they open up for what is considered a living legend. For many in a crowd just being in the vicinity of the front row of the gig is a claustrophobic and overwhelming prospect.

Linnea Olsson And Jennie Abrahamson, Gig Review. Echo Arena, Liverpool. full post

(447 words, 1 image, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

St. Vincent, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts, Chris O’ Dowd, Terrance Howard, Jaeden Lieberher, Kimberly Quinn, Lenny Venito, Nate Corddry, Dario Barosso, Donna Mitchell, Ann Dowd, Scott Adsit, Reg E. Cathey, Deirdre O’Connell.

Vincent is a man whose life seems to be one of which has gone the way of so many in cities and rural areas in America. The dream that once encapsulated that arguably captured all that was good in the land of the free has soured and gone past its sell-by date, all there is to look forward to for many is the daily existence granted by fate in which the daily struggle is just another excuse to be kicked in the face by a country that has forgotten them.

St. Vincent, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool. full post

(690 words, estimated 2:46 mins reading time)

Remember Me, Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Michael Palin, Mark Addy, Hodie Comer, Julia Sawalha, Jamie-Rooney-West, Tony Pitts, Eileen Davies, Mayuri Boonham, Kate Dobson, Mina Anwar, Noreen Kershaw, Kirsty Hoiles, Ubayd Rehman, Aqib Khan, Sheila Hancock, Rebekah Staton, Rita May, Marcus Garvey, Richard Lumsden, Orla Cottingham, Gary Pillai, Roger Grainger, Tony Monroe, Indra J. Adler, Hilly Barber, Garry Marriott.

Remember Me is the first outing in dramatic role for what seems an interminable age for one of Yorkshire’s favourite sons Michael Palin. It is a role that perhaps offered so much to one of the absolute greats of British comedy but ultimately fell flat with little hope of being considered one of the giant’s great visual feasts.

Remember Me, Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(576 words, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

The Wicked And The Divine, Graphic Novel Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The ancients arguably had a better idea of what makes Humanity tick than the so called enlightened era in which the notion of one deity, in which ever guise you prefer to believe in, sits in judgement or peace loving affection you care to mention. Whether through the inter-changeable Gods of Rome and Greece or the Gods of Norse mythology and British Paganism, there was personal God for everybody and whichever one you believed in surely stoked the fires within you.

The Wicked And The Divine, Graphic Novel Review. full post

(643 words, estimated 2:34 mins reading time)

Stephen Langstaff, Gig Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool.

Stephern Langstaff at the Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. December 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

One of the ways in which to measure a person is how they can be weighed up in a situation not of their making or in the face of impossible insurmountable mounting odds; the quality of a person is not in what they eat, what they wear or how much stuff, gadgets, cost of house, money or seeming how popular they are after they have bought a round of drinks but in how they cope with a new challenge being thrown at them there and then on the spot and the power of how they are viewed.

Stephen Langstaff, Gig Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(562 words, 1 image, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)