Issue 84 / Dec 2017/Jan 2018

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COME TOGETHER – LIVERPOOL, MUSIC CITY? With the blueprint of the city’s music strategy in development, the timely publishing of the findings from our inaugural ‘Liverpool, Music City?’ event gives us the chance to appraise the state our music community is in right now. Craig G Pennington summarises the key conclusions from the report. 12
In late November I was lucky enough to be asked to host a Q&A with the directors of seminal Liverpool music biopic You’ll Never Walk Alone. Filmed in 1992, the film is a portrait of Liverpool at the lowest of ebbs: a grey, decaying, battered city that, somewhat paradoxically, plays host to a buoyant and scintillating music culture. It drips with romance. It drips with pain. It’s the quintessential Liverpool depiction; irrepressible beauty in the face of abject misery. Despite its name (the film’s producers were French so we’ll forgive them the partisan slip up) the film represents essential viewing and the manner in which it has attained a somewhat iconic status in the intervening years is unsurprising. Dig it out on YouTube. Explored through the lens of characters such as Ian McCulloch, Mick Head, Edgar Summertyme and regular contributor to these pink pages Paul Fitzgerald (the film includes a beautiful scene from the Fitzgerald family home featuring a moving vocal performance from Paul’s Nan), the documentary captures a city that – on the face it – is unrecognisable from the resurgent, optimistic place we find today. But, beneath the concrete and glazed veneer of progress we see in our city centre, how much really has changed? The opening sequence to You’ll Never Walk Alone carries a poignant and sobering observation; in 1960, Liverpool was the second largest city in the UK, but, by 1992, half the population had left. It also features a sequence shot at the top of Granby Street with Sheldon Rice, a young black MC, delivering a withering freestyle takedown of police persecution, corruption and forgotten areas of the city being left to their own devices. Somewhat poignantly, this quickly cuts to a Beatles tour bus heading up to Penny Lane. People being driven away from the city? A city that doesn’t work for everyone? Black artists pushed to the margins, a tragic lack of diversity? Swathes of the city forgotten and left behind? The idea that heritage tourism will save us all? Sound familiar? 24 Kitchen Street Meraki OK, so Liverpool isn’t as bleak as it was in 1992. I completely accept and wholeheartedly welcome that. There is opportunity here. There is work. Admittedly much of that work is low paid and irregular, but there is work. Yet, we face many of the same challenges as those grappled with back in 1992. And music is an acute way of demonstrating those challenges. Since 2008 we have lived in a new age of ‘Culture’. Whereas we once ran the docks of empire, Liverpool now positions itself as a global titan of ‘Culture’. Given our history, music should be our prized cargo. But is it? We see music venues and clubs closing around us. We see the influence of developer power and money riding roughshod over our cultural heritage and creative community. We see a vision of Liverpool based on Fab Four cotton candy sold around the world, while, at the same time, a buoyant international music subculture bubbles here away from the Beatles tourist’s gaze. We see an absence of structural support for Liverpool’s embryonic music industry. We see emerging artists, cut adrift by a collapsed music industry, needing help and support to flourish, and an opportunity to embed them here as part of the city’s future. We see a music sector cut-off from our education system. It doesn’t have to be this way. A buoyant Music Cities movement has gathered pace over recent years, a new sphere of thinking that intersects music, urban policy and planning. We see cities across the world – from Groningen to Adelaide – creating innovative new frameworks which place support for and the development of their music sectors and communities at the heart of their city vision. In contrast, we have, until now, witnessed an absence of strategic planning around music policy in Liverpool. As a reaction to this, in April this year we launched Liverpool, Music City?, a project in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University, designed to ask some pretty fundamental, searching questions; is Liverpool a global music city? What does music really mean to Liverpool? How is music valued? How healthy is Liverpool’s music ecology? Is Liverpool’s music tourism offer truly world-class and what role does new music play within it? In terms of its policies around noise, planning and the role of music in the built environment, does Liverpool have a global music city outlook? How good are we at developing the next wave of artists in the city? Is Liverpool an international hub for music business? How joined up is the city’s music industry and music education offer? “Given our history, music should be our prized cargo” Invisible Wind Factory FEATURE 13
Page 1 and 2: ISSUE 84 / DEC 2017/JAN 2018 NEW MU
Page 3 and 4: DJ SET BLUES FUNK DISCO BOXING DAY
Page 5 and 6: Waterstones Liverpool One and more.
Page 7 and 8: CONTENTS New Music + Creative Cultu
Page 9 and 10: EDITORIAL EBGBS (Keith Ainsworth)
Page 11: DANSETTE NICK ELLIS expands on his
Page 15 and 16: WHAT’S ON Liverpool Philharmonic
Page 17 and 18: We Are Online. www.outsidersstore.c
Page 19 and 20: Neil Grant is an affable, down-to-e
Page 22 and 23: Raised in South Wales and now based
Page 24 and 25: NICK POWER The Coral keyboardist ad
Page 26 and 27: ROYAL LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC ORCHES
Page 30 and 31: IT’S A WALT The cinema screen tha
Page 32 and 33: SPOTLIGHT KATIE MAC The Huyton-born
Page 34 and 35: We believe passionately in Liverpoo
Page 36 and 37: PREVIEWS “What I write about, stu
Page 38 and 39: PREVIEWS GIG Michael Head And The R
Page 40 and 41: Box office: theatkinson.co.uk 01704
Page 42 and 43: REVIEWS Chic (Keith Ainsworth / ark
Page 44 and 45: REVIEWS Mac DeMarco (Keith Ainswort
Page 46 and 47: Jane Weaver and IMMIX (Rob Godfrey)
Page 48 and 49: NOV 2017 - MAR 2018 WINTER GARDEN E
Page 50 and 51: FOOD TRADERS / XMAS MOVIES / XMASOK
Page 53 and 54: BREWING Co. Nick Harper The Magnet,
Page 55 and 56: THE SOCIAL MARVIN POWELL +ASTLES 25

Issue 84 / Dec 2017/Jan 2018

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