Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 81/2/10
What would Liverpool be without its social commentary, the opinions of those that arguably matter a lot more than the square mile of gilded refrain and occasional hot air of Westminster? The power house and the bridge between the North of England, Ireland and New York is one that sees music thrive at least in its true form because its audience understands that everybody deserves a voice. This is no less true than the vocal engagements and quietly, stealthy rawness employed by Stuart Todd, also known as Three Minute Hero.
The clandestine never sits well so as in true subversive style, the message he stands and sings of is one that you cannot help but love, the significance not lost on anybody in the audience of The Baltic Social and in true Liverpool style he delivered a sat of songs so strong, so well-pitched that Angels started fearing for their jobs and organised a strike committee. This is not to say that the voice was a heavenly as one the assassins of the abstract but the message he bore throughout was one in which they perhaps feared.
None so more was this set framed for all its worth than in the songs 173 and Blonde Boy Johnson. The first for the note of sarcasm gently employed in just slightly undoing the theory that everybody wants to live for ever, what is the point in living that long if you cannot live completely! The radical nature of a teenager, the comfortable application of subjecting yourself to a noble cause in your 40s and 50s are all undone if a hundred years later all you are doing is wasting away in perpetual boredom; nothing seems to fit in your life anymore but fast-fading memories.
Blonde Boy Johnson was, as should be expected a hearty applauded song in which the subject of the tracks was ridiculed and teased without mercy and rightly so, for again what is the point in carrying an opinion if you aren’t going to deploy it, safer to highlight and scorn than to wage war on a country 3,000 miles away and much more fun to listen to on sunny spring day.
Other tracks performed by Three Minute Hero in his set were Dance Like A Star, Piece of the Action, the beautiful Let My Heart Down and the gentle mocking of Happy Hour Sunrise. This was music in which to wallow amongst, to let images waft over you gently but also to inspire you to think, Three Minute Hero has more than in his Arsenal to make you believe in a different tune.
Ian D. Hall