Where Queen led a year before hand in their release of Hot Space, David Bowie was probably bound to go for the 1983 album Let’s Dance. However where Queen went arguably and disastrously wrong, The Thin White Duke, the master musical chameleon could only do right and Let’s Dance stands out as, up until the release this year of his album The Next Day, the last great and most adventurous album of a long and prestigious career.
Doctor Who, Cold War. Television Review. B.B.C.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Liam Cunningham, David Warner, Tobias Menzies, Josh O’Connor James Norton, Charlie Anson, Spencer Wilding, Nicholas Briggs.
Mark Gatiss must adore being part of the Doctor Who team. His occasional forays into the writing world of Britain’s longest running science fiction programme employs some of the best characters, some of the highest tension and most of all the dipping of his toe into his beloved horror genre, even if it pays homage with some of the best lines available.
The Crucible, Theatre Review. Static Gallery, Liverpool.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Tony Irwin, Christine Heaney, Sally Fildes-Moss, Kevin Foott, Jack Spencer, Sophie O’Shea, Donna Ray Coleman, Dan Pendleton, Lee Burnitt, Shaun Roberts, Leanne Jones, Paula Stewart, Meera Bala, Alex Clark, Bradley Thompson, Sophie Kirby.
Within 12 months Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, arguably one of the towering stage works of the 20th Century, has been performed in Liverpool by two amateur dramatic companies. In both cases the play that has been seen by audiences has left them spellbound and lost for words. This particular version by Tell-Tale Theatre at the Static Gallery and Directed by Emma Whitley and produced by Leanne Jones is without doubt the finest production possibly seen on either side of the Atlantic in decades and something that the playwright would have salivated over and found disturbingly majestic.
The Midnight Ramble, Sink The Pieces. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
It is easy to miss the greatness of an album, the glowing and fitting tributes that came its way. No matter how hard you try you cannot physically hear every single album released in your life time and beyond, the small matter of occasionally sleeping is a big hindrance in the pursuit of hearing great music, let alone the 8-12 hours a day that are spent working. By picking and choosing what you listen too, you miss out on a nugget, a mind-blowing sliver of gold that others have heard but because you were sleeping you missed. It can be seen as somewhat inexcusable but you do have to sleep sometime.
Isaac Newton: The last Magician, Television Review. B.B.C.2
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
For millions, Sir Isaac Newton is perhaps the most singular reason why humanity moved from the medieval world of myth, superstition and sometimes mind boggling ways of thinking by 21st century standards and into the way of enlightenment, to question what if rather than accepting the so called dogma rationale. In the B.B.C. 2’s Isaac Newton: The last Magician, the man is revealed to be more than the wrongly sum of his work in the Newton’s three Laws of Motion.
Spin Doctors, If The River Was Whiskey. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is something strangely comforting about revisiting a group’s past, even if it over 20 years later. The experience of listening to how songs sounded then to how you know they sound now live can be cathartic, a nod to the nostalgic in us all. It is even more humbling when you put place a new C.D. on, slip the headphones over the ears and wallow in something so majestically cool that you can only check the album over a few times just to make sure that the C.D. isn’t the wrong one, that what you are listening to really is the band a quarter of century later.
Natalie McCool. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Four tracks in to her debut album, Natalie McCool asks in an intense and mesmerizing way, “Have you ever played with fire?” The answer may very possibly be yes, human nature is all about reaching for the unattainable and the desirable, no matter the cost to our soul and sanity. However Natalie McCool doesn’t just play with the fire, she supplies it, stokes the furnace till it gets so hot it positively blows and all the while she does it with every ounce of her being throughout this astonishingly superb album.
Iron Maiden, Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. 25th Anniversary Retrospective.
Can Progressive Rock and Heavy Metal coexist? It may be a question that vexes the purists of either genre, in modern day crossovers everything is nearly acceptable and certainly possible but in the late 1980s two bands from opposite sides of the Atlantic embarked on producing albums that embraced the concept and rich diversity that the amalgamation of two distinct entities could bring them. Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime would come out towards the end of April in 1988, the honour though of bringing out arguably the first Progressive Metal album would belong to Britain’s Iron Maiden with their most ambitious record at the time, the sensational Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.
Big Country, The Journey. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
They say all the best journeys are filled with good memories, the people we meet, the sights we see and the times we live through whilst going there. Some journeys are unexpected; they come around sweeping us off our feet and taking those caught in its wake along for what could be the most important quest of all. Big Country’s first album for the best part of 14 years is The Journey in name and spirit alike and where one chapter regretfully closed with the sad passing of the band’s former frontman and icon Stuart Adamson in 2001, another door opens wide as the group find belief in their conviction of providing excellent rock music once more and in The Journey they take the first tentative steps in reclaiming that ground again.
Joe Brown, The Ukulele Album. Album Review.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
No matter the music you are into, the genres you find falling into line with during your life time, there is always a surprise or two waiting to catch you out along the way. Even the most ardent heavy metal fan can sometimes for no reason at all find themselves whistling along to a half remembered song from their pre-metal days. The songs of innocence sometimes outweigh the experience the listener builds up in their mental reserve and sometimes something creeps through, takes root and even makes you smile as you imagine the musicians having a blast recording the simple pleasurable notes.