David Crosby, Croz. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

It seems somewhat odd to believe that someone as exquisite a song writer and musician as David Crosby, a living legend of the American highway and creator of some of the finest music to come out of the Folk/Rock scene has only recorded four solo albums in a career that is as lengthy as the famous Route 66. His work with Graham Nash and Stephen Stills, Buffalo Springfield and Neil Young is inspiring enough; it captures the essence of humanity in all its glory and deep down dirty despair but his solo work, which started in 1971 with the highly rated If I Could Only Remember My Name, has not been prolific. It is a story that has been rectified with his fourth release, the outstanding and beautifully crafted Croz.

David Crosby, Croz. Album Review. full post

(454 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Tonight’s The Night, Theatre Review. Empire Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Ben Heathcote, Jenna Lee-James, Jade Ewen, Michael McKell, Tiffany Groves, Andy Rees, Michael Antrobus, Joshua Dever, Amy Diamond, Rosie Fletcher, Rosie Heath, Sinead Long, Craig Mather, Tom Millen, Darryl Paul, Ricky Rojas, Lindsay Tierney, Spin.

Rod Stewart certainly belongs in the pantheon of all-time greats of performers that have bridged both sides of The Atlantic Ocean. His music is as popular as it perhaps ever was and still gets performed live by a man whose life off stage is as interesting to millions as the music he has helped make musically immortal. That immortality will perhaps continue long after the end of the next decade and beyond with Ben Elton’s latest foray into the world of musical theatre in The Rod Stewart Musical, Tonight’s The Night.

Tonight’s The Night, Theatre Review. Empire Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(515 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)

Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles. The Turing Test. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Paul Darrow, Michael Keating.

With its distinctive theme tune and great stories, it is no wonder that Blake’s 7, like Sapphire and Steel and Space 1999 became interwoven into the fabric of British society in the 1970s. Televised Science Fiction was having its golden era, alongside the only programme of the day to carry on into the 21st Century, Doctor Who. This was a halcyon time for anybody who regarded the genre as essential viewing and who would make time into their busy lives to see what happened next to the likes of Johanna Lumley and David McCallum in Sapphire and Steel,  Space 1999’s Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and Catherine Schell and Blake’s 7, Paul Darrow, Gareth Thomas, Michael Keating and Sally Knyvette.

Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles. The Turing Test. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish. full post

(668 words, estimated 2:40 mins reading time)

The Bletchley Circle. Series Two, Episodes Three And Four. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Julie Graham, Rachael Stirling, Hattie Morahan, Sophie Rundle, Faye Marsey, David Hounslow, Nik Blood, Edyta Budnik, Brana Bajic, Orestes Sophocleous, Ian Stuart Robertson, Rupert Holliday, Michael Wedder.

With Anna Maxwell Martin’s character having departed the confines of London to go abroad with her husband, the team is one woman short but where better to look for a replacement than the colleague the women of The Bletchley Circle saved from hanging in the previous two part story.

The Bletchley Circle. Series Two, Episodes Three And Four. Television Review. full post

(403 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

Villy Raze, De Novo. E.P. Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There have been great musicians, great poets and great song writers that have come out of Ireland. The social eye of Damien Dempsey, the urban mouthpiece of a disenfranchised youth of Bob Geldof whose barbed, razor like quality made him a voice of a generation in Dublin and beyond and north of the border, the legendary Fergal Sharkey’s great way with words and imagery endeared him and The Undertones across the Irish Sea and into the heart of John Peel and beyond. Add now to this these and other intelligent and very special performers, the sound of Villy Raze.

Villy Raze, De Novo. E.P. Review. full post

(481 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

The Musketeers: Sleight Of Hand. Television Review. B.B.C.Television.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Burke, Peter Capaldi, Howard Charles, Luke Pasqualino, Santiago Cabera, Alexandra Dowling, Ryan Cage, Mainie McCoy, Hugo Speer, Jason Flemyng, Bo Poraj, John Poston, Carl McCrystal, Lukas Vychopen, Sean Cernow, Denise Gough, Jan Holik, Ian Barritt.

Two episodes in and B.B.C.’s The Musketeers already looks to be to living up to the ultimate ideal that has promised so much over the last 100 years but has never quite been able to live up to. With the very obvious exception of the set of films starring Michael York and Oliver Reed, all that has gone before this adaptation has been lacklustre, almost afraid to live to its full potential, the taste of an éclair filled with inedible garlic could not have not have left a more sour taste in the mouth of those entranced by Alexandre Dumas’ work.

The Musketeers: Sleight Of Hand. Television Review. B.B.C.Television. full post

(486 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Heath Common,The Dream of Miss Dee. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

If Jack Kerouac were alive today, surely he would have been extolling the virtues of a man from Lancashire, possibly even turning him into a tragic anti-hero with an Americanised pseudonym and an abundance of women or men after him and plying him with whisky and repeatedly asking him to sing one of his songs that typify the road. Heath Common is that man, a character like no other, so unique that Kerouac or Ginsberg could not have captured the real essence of the road, in this case the Great Mancunian Way, he travels.

Heath Common,The Dream of Miss Dee. Album Review. full post

(506 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Eddi Reader, Vagabond. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

To suggest that the phenomenal Eddi Reader has wandered through music since bursting onto the scene with Fairground Attraction would be doing this versatile and exciting musician a massive disservice. This is not a woman who can be accused of strolling through life, drifting from record to record, song to song as with some; the beauty she exudes through her music is enough at times to take your breath away and her latest solo album Vagabond is no exception.

Eddi Reader, Vagabond. Album Review. full post

(450 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

August: Osage County, Film Review. FACT Cinema.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliette Lewis, Margo Martindale, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Nicholson, Sam Shepherd, Misty Upham.

August: Osage County, a beautiful, flat and hot place to visit but you wouldn’t want to be related a particular family that resides there.

When renowned published poet Beverly Weston decides to take his own life, the can of spiteful and mean-spirited worms come flooding out everywhere and into the lives of the family members left behind, chiefly in the viscous tongue of drug addicted cancer patient of his wife Violet Weston. Nobody is immune, and like a disease floating free in the air, multiplies and takes root in the actions of some of those around her until words are said that become too much to bear.

August: Osage County, Film Review. FACT Cinema. full post

(578 words, estimated 2:19 mins reading time)