Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There are performance poets, there are whirlwinds of poetic infusion but rarely do the two ever meet, Allen Ginsberg aside, none really have the pulling power that the modern world and medium fully deserves with the exception of the very positive and wonderfully punk, the gracious Dr. John Cooper Clarke.
To open up a night of music offered by Squeeze with the whirlwind persona that resides in John Cooper Clarke, a selection of poems beaten out of thin air and which magically entranced and threatened to spill out and dominate, not just the night ahead, but the thoughts of the audience for a good few weeks, was one in which should be applauded with great nods of enthusiasm to see a poetry master at work.
The pairing of poetry and good old fashioned music from one of Britain’s finest might not be the most natural of bed-mates in some audience members eyes, the thought of sitting through a selection of odes and rhymes, the odd epic bordering on the outrageously cool and the small but beautifully formed limerick which only catches the ear more and more when you realise just how good it has to be to be memorable and repeated at work or down the pub in the days that follow. Yet for the huge swathes of the crowd who forwent the opportunity to drown a couple of more ales and fancy drinks, this was the hurricane, the on-coming prosaic abuser to whom poetry is all consuming and who inspires you to beat your own drum with much thought, this was the perfect match.
Engaging, thoughtful, restless and bountiful poems such as Guest List, Get Back On Drugs You Fat F***, Beasley Street, Beasley Boulevard, Evidently Chickentown and the outstanding I’ve Fallen In Love With My Wife all grabbed the audience by the hand and asked them to dance to a different, more honest and gratefully enhanced verbal beat.
To witness the hurricane at work and enjoy the devastating feeling of cool dressed in the thin black shadow is to know you have arguably seen one of Britain’s finest at work, poetry matters always, Dr. John Cooper Clarke makes it significant.
A support act with a difference but one that worked so well it was in danger of over taking the main event, not that Squeeze would have minded one bit.
Ian D. Hall