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And here's some photographs from last year's Liverpool Sound City including Hadouken on the opening night at O2 (when it was Carling), Lightspeed Champion at O2, Sons & Daughters at O2, Silver Jews at Zanzibar, Santogold at Alma De Cuba and The Wombats at St.George's Hall!
Dave Pichilingi is the director of Liverpool Sound City, as well as finding time to teach at LIPA and run a record label called Robot Records, and this is a new portrait fir Dave and his 'Sound City'. I've been in on a few Liverpool Sound City conversations of late and with only 3 weeks to go things are starting to get very very exciting with the website are announcing new events almost on a daily basis so click here, check out the listings and book tickets. And for what it's worth my top tip is Black Lips at Barfly along with Clinic at the Victoria Gallery & Museum (an amazing new venue that I was photographing last night), Cage The Elephant at O2 Acdemy, The Zutons at St.George's Hall, the late night gigs at Alma De Cuba and Juliette Lewis & The New Romantics who whether you like her music or not is incredible to watch! Next up will be just a couple of choice phtoos from last year's gigs.
This is another image that never made the final edit of the book and it's a photograph of Marina Van Rooy taken down on the north docks in Liverpool. If it had of gone in the book it would have gone into the G-Lovers section as Marina was produced by Ian Martin Wright, Steve Cummerson and Peter Coyle who were part promoters (along with 3Beat and John Kelly) of the club G-Love which was alegendary monthly Thursday night out at The Mardi Gras Club off Bold Street. As for 'where are they now?', Ian Martin Wright is still working away in music production, ain't seen Steve for a few years, Peter Coyle is still making & performing music as mentioned the other day and Marina is out of the music business and in recent years has worked as a make up artist. The video, I think there was one, for Sly One hasn't appeared on You Tube as of yet so you'll have to make do with The Pale fountains classic 'Jean's Not Happening' that's got Marina dancing away in the background in!
As well as uploading loads of new music work, I'm also going to be showing lots of the images that were scanned for Pop Cultured. Some that were used in the final book and some that weren't such as this one of James Barton, Andy Carroll and Darren Hughes sat looking a little bit too serious in their offices which at the time were on Slater Street. On the back wall you can see the schedules for Cream (Fabi Paras was due to play), Olympic Recordings and K-Klass.
This was taken a couple of years later on from the Lotus Eaters and I'd obviously worked out how to get to the front at gigs. This is The Communards with Jimmy Sommerville and Sarah Jane Morris and it was taken at Mountford Hall in about 1986 but take a moment to check out his website as he looks exactly the same!
This is one of the first ever gigs I ever photographed and it was the kids matinee at Pickwicks which was just off London Road. I remember it being packed and I went down after school, couldn't get near the stage and took this from the back of the club. And at this year's Summer Pops, The Lotus Eaters make a rare return when they play at the Liverpool Phil in July. This must have been taken in about 1984 but I ended up working a lot with The Lotus Eaters' singer Peter Coyle a few years later when he started making dance music in the late 80's/early 90's with Steve Cummerson and Ian Martin Wright and I'll be uploading some of those images over the next few months as this blog will become a mix of new and old music related photography from Liverpool and beyond! Gig details here.
Whilst I shoot on digital media 99.9% of the time, I still have to keep clinging onto to an old film camera or two with the toy like white Diana being my favourite for it's simplistic way of being able to create images like this in camera. Overlapping frames, light leaked photographs and multiple exposures make for interestingness, as they say in Flickr world, whilst heavy colour casts come with using way out of date mistreated colour film! So playing with film is nice though cleaning up dirty negs with drying marks and scratches that happened at the processors is a drag which takes forever. This is the Billy Fury Statue down at The Albert Dock with 'most' of the marks removed!
Bit of change from the recent live stuff and this is a shoot I did last year with Theoretical Girl. The concept for the shoot was by Liz Harry and it was shot in a freezing dirty disused building on Seel Street in December! The rest of the session will be going on my site proper when it's been tinkered with this week!
I'm not usually one for tribute bands, even though some of them do out on incredible performances, but in the last couple of weeks I've seen two whilst being at the same venue for different bands. Last Saturday, during the Hillsborough gig, I went downstairs to Academy 2 and caught the end of The Smiths Indeed set and saw 'Morrissey' chucking tons of gladioli into the audience (I felt sorry for the cleaners) during This Charming Man and they did sound quite amazing and fair play to the singer as he did have all of the mannerisms, glasses and a deaf aid and everything. And this week it was the turn of The Doors Indeed who I decided to photograph after the Gary Numan gig. I don't suppose Jim Morrisson's the hardset look to pull off, pair of leather kecks, don't cut your hair and don't worry too much about what you eat, but that's not the point and this lot sound amazing and if I was going to start frequenting trbute band gigs then I reckon they'd be on the list.
This is the new public sculpture, called Dream, which stands 20 metres high on the top of Sutton Manor in St.Helens. The artist who created the piece is Jaume Plensa and the work is incredible though there's still some work to be done around the base but it's going to be an amazing place to visit when it is finished. It's no doubt also going to rival Another Place in Crosby as the piece of public art that everybody goes and photographs.
Back to 'sort of' normailty and first three songs no flash after last week's Hillsborough event and I managed to cover gigs in both Academys' last night and they couldn't have ben more different. Upstairs was the turn of the dark and industrial sounds of Gary Numan whilst the smaller venue downstairs was playing host to the tribute act Doors Alive. I'll leave it up to you to work out which one this is.
And finally I'm back to the end of the gig again and a few last photographs from the finale including James Walsh, John Power, Ian McNabb, Western Promise's John McGlone and like loads of others. It's been a long week of blogging this gig but then it was a long gig itself and now it's back to first three songs no flash and first up is Gary Numan tonight at O2. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Tony Griffith's set on Saturday wasn't the normal version of The Real People, as Chris was booked elsewhere, and it was down to Digsy to fill in on guitar. I've been making a point of making sure that all bands are linked from this page which over the course of the last week has found me getting sidetracked by loads of old music and the old Realies tracks play a large part as I worked with the band back in the early 90's when I photographed them for I-D magazine before going on to do their press pics. When I was putting Pop Cultured together, I listened to the first Realies album and after years of listening to Oasis, I'd forgotten how much the sounds of the town bands were so similar which is only to be expected as Oasis probably owe as much to The Real People as they do to The Beatles. And if you don't now that story then go and check it out on Wikipedia! Meanwhile, keep an eye on their page as Tony was very very very excited about the material they've been recording recently!
Digsy might be known across the world for being the subject of an Oasis song but more importantly, he's been making music out of the city for way over 20 years with The Sums, his former band Smaller and way back in the 80's with Cook Da Books. I liked Smaller, I like The Sums (Who Cares is a great song) but after the gig I ended up looking for Cook Da Books stuff on You Tube and found loads including this French TV appearance from when they were number 1 in the country with their song 'Your Eyes' which was featured on the soundtrack to the film La Boum 2. Like a lot of stuff in the 80's, the sound ends up sounding very dated but not everything was as soft pop as their Euro number 1. Their first single 'Piggie In The Middle 8' was about the Toxteth riots and their video for their amazing cover of Stevie Wonder's 'Living For The City' (video is cut short) has got some great 80's footage of Liverpool in it. Whilst I'm all for seeing music moving forward, judging by the comments on You Tube, there's also a lot of people out there who'd well appreciate a digital reease of the old stuff.
A brief break from the Kop Of The Pops photos as I just came across this photo from last year's Stella McCartney show at LIPA and it made me laugh. Sir Paul McCartney checks his texts and Yoko's having a nose.
We're getting close to the end of this lot of photos from the Hillsborough gig last weekend and now it's the turn of The Bluetone's Mark Morriss and former Cast frontman and La's original John Power and their solo acoustic sets. In fact all that's left after this is Digsy's band The Sums and Tony Griffiths of The Real People. Last but in no way least!
James Walsh came onstage and thanked the Liverpool audience at the Kop Of The Pops event for accepting a man from Lancashire into the fold and with being born in Chorley and Starsailor claiming to be from Wigan, he most certainly is a woollyback. However, he's also a massive Liverpool fan and has supported the Hillsborough cause a hell of a lot over the years and is looked upon tonight as just another local hero. And after an acoustic solo set of Starsailor songs, he led the rest of the performers in a version of Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire before sticking around to sing You'll Never Walk Alone and The Fields Of Anfield Road, a song which he has recorded a 'Sunday morning' version of which is released on the charity single which you can buy here.
With a name like Scarface & the Pigs, you don't exactly expect them to sound like Peter, Paul & Mary, whilst one of the promoters described them as The Stooges of Lark Lane. An event like a Hillsborough memorial is going to be full of emotion and sentimental performances, and it was in a great way, but The Pigs played the other side of the coin and performed it loud with passion, power and absolute furious furious anger.
Aside from a silly amount of bands playing, there was also DJ support from local legend Billy Cox along with The Farm's Peter Hooton who played at both the gig and the aftershow party which for Billy, who'd been playing since 5pm, was going to be a long stint. I haven't got photographic proof of Peter the DJ but he did get up and sing The Fields Of Anfield Road along with John Power and the rest during the finale.
The two Ians, messrs Prose and McNabb, started their set together before Amsterdam's Ian Prowse left the stage leave McNabb doing the most incredible version of his old band The Icicle Work's hit 'Understanding Jane'. Previous to that Ian Prowse had done incredible versions of his own songs Nostalgia and Home before giving one of the best performances of the night when he sang his Hillsborough tribute song Does This Train Stop On Merseyside which has now apparently been picked up by Christy Moore who has recorded a version for his next album, a true mark of respect for any song! However, the surprise of the set was seeing the shock on the faces of the two Ians when they did a version of The Clash's London Calling and Steve Diggle ran onstage to join them.
More to follow!
It was funny seeing Rain after something like 16 years of doing nothing or at least not collectively. Ned Murphy carried on in Proper and then again with something else but I don't know what happened to Colin Clarke though he does seem to be recording again and has a great version of the band's classic Lemonstone Desired on his My Space page.
And the first photos here are of The Buzzcocks' Steve Diggle who was, without doubt, the best dressed there and yes he did sing Ever Fallen In Love. More photos to come of Mr.Diggle from when he ran on to join Ians' Prowse and McNabb in a great version of The Clash's London Calling.
With a name like The Mojave Collective and shirts like that you know that the Gram Parsons influence is going to feature in there somewhere and it certainly does in a late 60's when Gram meet Keith Richards sort of way. I should have known that
by the name alone and made the effort to check them out before but I didn't so this was the nice surprise at Saturday's Hillsborough Justice concert for me.
There's still a lot more from Saturday to go up so I'll put some more up later on today.
According to the man himself, Western Promise's John McGlone was once 'an angry young man but now a moaning old git' though the performance on Saturday night was still very much the sound of angry young men! They just look a bit older that's all.
The very last song of the night at the Kop Of The Pops event was when John Power did the rare thing of playing a Cast song he hadn't played in years and on the first photo here is John shouting things like 'F now G' at Ian McNabb who'd decided to join in! Next up is the first band on of the day, The Mission Babies, and then it's the turn of Luke from Book. Ain't got a link for Luke's music as Googling 'Book Liverpool band' surprisingly ain't too successful. Setting the name for your band by how well it it'll be picked up by the search engines isn't very rock'n'roll but it does help which is why it's well easy to find out about a band called Sparrow In The Workshop (who are well worth checking out by the way) but not a band called Book! If anyone's got a link then feel free to forward it to me.
And last, but by no means last, is another finale photo which features James Walsh leading whoever fancied joining him in a version of Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire. On the right are John McGlone and Barry Sutton who, along with the venue itself, were the promoters of the event.
More to follow!
Last night was the Hillsborough memorial concert Kop Of The Pops at the O2 Academy and it was, as expected, a highly charged night with everyone putting in their biggest and best effort. Throughout the week I'll be uploading more photos from the night but I'll start with what was the beginning of the finale when just about everybody piled back onstage to sing You'll Never Walk Alone and this first photo of Starsailor's James Walsh, an unknown singer and a very emotional Phil Haye's from The Picket is probably my favourite of the night.
