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.
Billy Kelly performing in Bootle, July 2016. Photograph By Ian D. Hall.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There is genius at work in the world, there is courage and there is simplicity wrapped up in so much talent that sometimes as you sit back and take the view of artistry in, it can leave you feeling a little scared, not worried, not anxious but scared that one day it might not be around to be held by.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
You have only to listen to Three Minute Hero to know that inside the man sits the heart of socially aware human being, a person of intrigue and one who knows the intricate nature of penning a song which is both catchy, to any genre lover, and one that has a huge point riding along just underneath the sense of sound, one that asks a question of the listeners.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
The humble compilation album can take many forms. In now what seems at times the dim and distant past, as distant to the younger generation coming through now as Sir Edmund Hilary’s and Tenzing Norgay’s ascent of Everest to those growing up in the 1970s, the past when to have your say in music meant taking the pick of the songs you may have proudly bought or even embarrassingly hidden away due to the absurdity of the song and placed onto a C90 tape and perhaps even then handed over with much ceremony to the person you perhaps fancied, the compilation stood for something pure.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
They say there is strength in unity; it can, however that strength can be a double edged sword for in a lot of places the pride in which the artistic scene clubs together is all well and good but it doesn’t flourish because the nature of the sprawling city is not geared up to recognise the distinctiveness that resides at its heart.
Billy Kelly at St. Luke’s Church, Liverpool. August 2014.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There aren’t too many towns and cities in the U.K. that are as close physically, geographically and tangibly as Bootle and Liverpool. Many are the people that don’t know much about the town on the Mersey, just over three miles north from the Capital of music culture and the struggles it faces on a daily basis. There are those that even think that Bootle is just another off-shoot, an estate, within the borders of Liverpool. Yet despite a certain lack of understanding that resides in the minds of many, Bootle shares a common thread with its younger but much bigger sister, its ability to turn out musicians who adhere to the way of social conscious and who aren’t afraid to say so. One such musician opened up the substantial afternoon of acoustic music at St Luke’s Church, Bootle’s own Billy Kelly.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
A life through a cold mechanical lens; caught on the bright lights of an intrusive camera with no contract to sign or even a say in how your image is used and for what purpose. Footballers, media representatives, even some that make the notes and songs we hum along to when the mood invariably takes us have an image to protect, but for the ordinary person, the individual on the street casually walking along minding their own business, a million trained eyes are watching, scrutinising and wondering if you are going to commit an act of behaviour so shocking that it might just be on a television programme for mass entertainment at some point.