School Sports Day 1977-1986.

 

The school sports day,

a yearly ritual in which evolved

over the years from spoons and eggs,

hard boiled, once glued, often dropped

on the dangerous gravel or if fortunate perhaps

 dog littered grass,

sometimes obliterated

and tears and tantrums flowing soon after

 as someone never finished the course, to

complex games

 of hierarchical displays of ever growing

hormone driven adulthood.

If wet, held indoors

or simply delayed a day or two,

to frustrated parents dismay

and then the crushing pain of unprepared running,

School Sports Day 1977-1986. full post

(674 words, estimated 2:42 mins reading time)

Curtain: Poirot’s Final Case. Television Review. I.T.V.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: David Suchet, Hugh Fraser, Helen Baxendale, Anne Reid, Matthew McNulty, Shaun Dingwall, Philip Glenister, Anna Madeley, Claire Keelen, John Standing, Alice Orr-Ewing, Aiden McArdle, Adam Englander, Gregory Cox.

The last post is played, Poirot has died. Not before though the Belgian solves his last murder before it has even happened as the pace of this special, Curtain: Poirot’s Final Case goes deeper and darker than has been alluded to before, with the greatest of exceptions to the Poirot story of them all, Murder On The Orient Express.

Curtain: Poirot’s Final Case. Television Review. I.T.V. full post

(536 words, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

Roger Taylor, Fun On Earth. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Fun On Earth has been years in the making so many years in fact, that if it was a musician from almost any other band who had forged a respectable solo career, the fans might have drifted on and found a new hero to relish in. This though is Roger Taylor, a man who has been at the heart of British Rock for 40 years, a man who can turn up at Foo Fighters gig, a group not known for their shortage of drumming talent, and give a blistering display and who also arguably had the more prolonged success away from Queen than the three other members of the iconic group.

Roger Taylor, Fun On Earth. Album Review. full post

(614 words, estimated 2:27 mins reading time)

Sixties Gold, Gig Review. The Lighthouse, Poole.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

If you look back with fond memories of music from the 1960s, then this is the concert for you. With an average age of 60 plus both on stage and off, fans were treated to an evening of nostalgia, which from start to finish stirred the emotions of those heady days long ago.

Sixties Gold, Gig Review. The Lighthouse, Poole. full post

(617 words, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)

Protest The Hero, Volition. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

There always seems to be debate on the links between Metal and the art of Progressive Rock. There are many bands that have perfected the lofty ideal that criss-crosses two outwardly disparate genres, the blurring and adding to of the ability to tell a story over the course of an album to the hard edge, the absolute limit of Metal technical adeptness.

Protest The Hero, Volition. Album Review. full post

(371 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

The Grand Gesture, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Cast: Michael Hugo, Samantha Robinson, Angela Bain, Howard Chadwick, Claire Storey, Paul Barnhill, Alan McMahon, Robert Pickavance, Dyfig Morris, Sophie Hatfield, Hester Arden.

Whilst the overall central theme of The Grand Gesture may be worrying to some and have others wondering how you can have a comedy set around the premise of a man wanting to end his life, it shouldn’t though detract from the very superb way that Northern Broadsides, perhaps one of the keenly anticipated companies that makes its way on regular basis to the Liverpool Playhouse Theatre, took on Nikolai Erdman’s brilliant work The Suicide.

The Grand Gesture, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool. full post

(467 words, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)

Ripper Street, Become Man. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Neve McIntosh, Leanne Best, Gillian Saker, Charlene McKenna, David Wilmot, Damien Molony, David Dawson, Frank Harper, Robert O’ Mahoney, Alexis Forbes, Amber Rowan, Ciaran O’ Brien.

Ripper Street not only focuses its twitching nose and beady eye at the life of Detective Inspector Reid and the men who he surrounds himself with in the cause of his duty in Whitechapel but also of those who had more to fear than anybody else in the dark days of Queen Victoria’s reign – the women themselves. Become Man looks at the complex relationship between men and women the year after the brutal and senseless murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel and it’s streets.

Ripper Street, Become Man. Television Review. full post

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

Under The Dome, Television Review. Channel 5.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast Mike Vogel, Rachelle Lefevre, Dean Norris, Natalie Martinez, Britt Robertson, Alexander Koch, Colin Ford, Mackenzie Lintz, Nicholas Strong, Aisha Hands, Jolene Purdy, John Elvis, Samantha Mathis, Leon Rippy, Natalie Zea, Jeff Fahey.

It takes supreme endeavour to take one of Stephen King’s novels or short stories and turn them into something worth either taking a couple of hours out of your day to go to the cinema and seeing someone else’s view of much loved characters or investing several months of your life to and watching a series from start to finish in the hope that what you see will ever match up to the very high expectation of immersing yourself in one of the many books.

Under The Dome, Television Review. Channel 5. full post

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

B.J. Cole, The New Hovering Dog. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is an indescribable pleasure to be derived from listening to a classic album for the first ever time. Such is the fate for anyone who ventures from their perceived comfort zone and takes in the re-mastered album by B.J. Cole, The New Hovering Dog.

First released over 40 years ago, it is an album that urges the listener to follow the proverbial yellow brick road and go on a journey that at times will open the imagination to its fullest achievable end and at others will have the younger listener, even the music lovers of the era, astounded by the complexity of the tracks on the C.D. and the incredible sound that B.J. Cole produces throughout.

B.J. Cole, The New Hovering Dog. Album Review. full post

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

Doctor Who: 1963: The Space Race. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish 179.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Karen Henson, David Shaw-Parker, Tom Alexander, Stuart Denman, Samantha Beart.

If the end of the 1960s was the supposed era of free love, enlightened thinking, ugly military intervention and the culmination of the space race between the Soviet Union and The United States then the beginning of the decade could be viewed as calculated insanity, a planet being taken to the absolute brink, musical genius, a steel nerve by undoubtedly the finest President in 20th Century America and the start of the sprint to be on the moon first.

Doctor Who: 1963: The Space Race. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish 179. full post

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