Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

It always remains a constant surprise to see just how much a person can fit into their lives that they take the day on with such a broad grin and with a fist clenched ready to fight back just in case Time should get other ideas, such people, such souls can only be admired.

An undoubted hero of the previous year’s event at the Community Hub, Billy Kelly is a Bootle man who has seen it all come and go, who has taken on the bottleneck of London’s past and come back to spread the word, it is only right therefore that he should have been invited to once again take part in this year’s Party in the Park, a day of Bootle music in which love and hope were the order of the day.

There is poetry in every soul, some feel it, perhaps too much and get sucked down by the quagmire of life and the burden of responsibility, others may seek to drown it in the pursuit of global domination, of the inert Capitalism and money that bleeds a person dry. Poetry is in Billy Kelly’s very fibre, the jolly of the word play and the experience to back it up and as he took to the stage, the memory of a man who strode through the valley of a power cut the previous year and came out of it a colossus to the audience, and proceeded to make the adjoining streets in Bootle rattle in their government raised inertia and have people remembering just what local community means.

In the songs Gods and Monsters, Blue Skies, Blue Eyes, Thunderstorm and the dedicated love song By The Time I Get To Bootle, Billy Kelly weaved magic, conjured the sense of life affirming lyric and sent a message out that this type of day, no matter the area, no matter the size or how many great things are happening elsewhere, is vitally important, that local get togethers in a common cause are not only needed but essential to the well being of the community.

For a man who does so much, there always seems to be more he wants to do, to show that towns such as Bootle can be more than a statistic on the chart in every Government office. Hats raised and a big thank you to artists such as Billy Kelly, people who make the Party in the Park a success.

Ian D. Hall