Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
You can have a not half bad band but with a talented drummer on board you will sound so good that people will flock to see you. The drums, for many a group, are the pulse in which Time passes freely, in which sets out the not just rhythm but the reason and without reason, without the passion of the player who never gets the true spotlight, all may be lost in the cacophony of sound and pleasure.
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.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Every outstanding Graphic Novel or superhero requires a back story, there is a law somewhere, probably laid down by story teller supremo Stan Lee on a scrap of paper in a rest room and the flourished signature witnessed by Jack Kirby. The paper, possibly now residing on a wall in Marvel offices just below the enormous Captain America drawing that greets visitors to the building in New York, is surely seen by all aspiring writers and artists, none so more as Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez and in the book Clockworks.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
There is no other way to write it down, a statement, that unless something the internet decides that enough is enough and crawls off to be superseded by pure thought, should stand for all time, the combination between literature and Folk/Rock music in Steeleye Span’s Wintersmith is one of the albums of the year.
Scene: The interior of a bar in the early hours of the morning, there is the sound of laughter; the gentle sound of music floating through the air, a raised voice overwhelms the music briefly and the clatter of a pool ball being struck too hard. On set there are two people to be seen, one a barmaid cleaning glasses and occasionally pouring a drink for someone unseen off stage and to the left of the stage a man sat on a stool, leaning against a wall one hand on a glass the other reading a book. Beside his chair is a rucksack. The sound of the pool ball being smacked again too hard and it bounces once and starts to roll towards the man in the chair who for a moment doesn’t look up from his book until he hears the sound of someone shouting his name. The music dies down as the young man looks at the ball. Carefully he puts down the glass, whilst keeping the book held tightly on the page he is on and walks over to the ball and picks it up, staring at it for a moment as if in quiet contemplation. He walks over to the darkness and hands back the ball.
If anyone thought that Progressive Rock was dead in the water as the 1980s began, then certainly the cowbell that had once proudly rang out was joining the fat lady in beginning to sound decidedly croaky and worn out.
By early 1983 Genesis had moved so far from the Progressive line that they were considered cool in circles they couldn’t have envisioned 10 years earlier when they bought out the pastoral sound of Selling England By the Pound. Yes were going mainstream, Supertramp were going their separate ways, Queen had long since abandoned the genre, Pink Floyd, the standard bearers of the music from 1973 onwards were about to self-destruct with what seemed one final hurrah in the opinion dividing The Final Cut and countless others such as Caravan and Camel were running out of steam.
steve hogarth at St Bride’s Church, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Steve Hogarth and Liverpool are made for each other. In the past few years he has made the pilgrimage-like trek away from the touring with Marillion and delivered shows with just himself, a piano and an array of compositions, much loved songs and the odd story in which to regale and entertain audiences with.
Genesis, especially the classic line up of Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Steve Hackett would become one of the U.K.’s favourite Progressive Rock bands on the strength of the 1972 album Foxtrot.
This eccentric band packed to the rafters with burgeoning talent had already broken parts of Europe with Trespass and the charming Nursery Cryme but as had up to that point failed to break the U.K top 20 album chart. Their first album From Genesis to Revelation had failed to convince the British public that their music was worth listening to, Trespass saw them make inroads and Nursery Cryme make friends, it was however the pastoral feel combined with an abundance of British eccentricity that would convince music listeners that these five performers had something worthwhile to say.
Originally published in Music News.Com. September 15th 2012.
Originally published by L.S. Media. September 17th 2012.
L.S. Media Rating ****
For 30 years Marillion have been proving their new album title wrong, they have surely made every musical note perspire, hum like an angel and make grown men quiver at the knees with ease of their performances. Now the band that some critics have spent their life rubbishing and others extolling the virtues of have released their new album; the exceptional Sounds That Can’t Be Made and like 2004’s Marbles it is an album of genius and sheer quality.