war and westlife

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 10:17 AM | add or read comments (0)

My subject is war, and the pity of war.
So said First World War poet and former Birkenhead Institute student Wilfred Owen.
Well, this morning my subject is War Requiem and Westlife. In that order and in yet another rather eclectic weekend in Capital of Culture 2008.

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pipilotti twist

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 3:55 PM | add or read comments (0)

I spent lunchtime lying on the carpet at FACT with some of the nation's foremost arts critics.
And no, we weren't ill or paralytic - we were just looking at the new Pipilotti Rist exhibition which opens on Friday.
In the ground floor gallery is an installation which is created by layering the softest, softest floor coverings into contoured hills of carpet colour.
You have to take off your shoes to walk on it.
On the ceiling are screens with images of water, rustling leaves and so on - and the idea is you lie or sit on the Ordnance Survey-style carpet hills, chill out and let it all wash over you.
It's soporific and groovy at the same time and I recommend everyone goes and gives it a try.

half way through

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 10:22 AM | add or read comments (0)

Can you believe we're half way through Capital of Culture already? Where has the year gone?
We at the Echo have launched a very quick, easy to fill out, survey on the internet to see what people think about the year so far and what they are looking forward to from July to December.
It's a way of people having their say, so I hope everyone takes a minute or two to fill it out.
Just log on to the Echo website and click on the 08 Have Your Say logo.
Easy!

city of media

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 8:29 AM | add or read comments (0)

You can't move for Liverpool sons and daughters either making programmes about or returning to the city this year.
The last of Alexei Sayle's series on Liverpool will be screened on BBC2 tonight, with Les Dennis's paean waiting in the TV wings.
Yesterday teatime it was the turn of Peter Sissons who gave the latest in JMU's series of 2008 Roscoe Lectures - entitled City of Media.
Or rather, as Sissons decided, it was a look at how Liverpool was served by and portrayed in the media.

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less than super response to superlambananas

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 2:30 PM | add or read comments (2)

What is WRONG with people?
Three days after the Go Superlambananas project went live around the city, one model has been stolen (you can just hear the sniggers and the tired old jokes from the rest of the country).
And I just heard today that another of the fibreglass statues has had a big boot-sized hole put in the side of it.
What makes the latter even more annoying is that it is one of the SLBs out in the community - on Townsend Lane according to my source.
It's all very well for people to moan about Capital of Culture having nothing to do with communities, but if loser vandals or light-fingered Scallies carry on like this then anything that IS out in the city suburbs will just end up being removed.
And it's such a shame because the majority of Liverpudlians and visitors who have seen the Superlambananas out in the streets love them and are treating them with respect.

dockers umbrella

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 9:46 AM | add or read comments (0)

I spent yesterday morning sitting in a 110-year-old train carriage.
Well, I say train but actually it was the last surviving motor coach from the Liverpool Overhead Railway - third class. I know my place!

(Lizzy Rodgers from NML and yours truly in the "Ovee")

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i voted, did you?

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 9:24 AM | add or read comments (0)

News comes today that Liverpool has been voted the most musical city in the UK.
So tell us something we don't know?!
Ten cities have been competing over six weeks for the title, organised by the Arts Council and voted for by the public - and yes, I was one of them.
Apparently Liverpool took a storming 49% of the total vote.
We were followed by Sheffield, birth place of Arctic Monkeys and Pulp, and then in third place by Manchester.
Leicester and Birmingham made up the top five.

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fellas talk and tunnel walk

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 1:40 PM | add or read comments (0)

Another busy weekend in the European Capital of Culture.
Last night I joined about 6-7,000 others at the ECHO Arena to see the "Three Fellas" - Ardal O'Hanlon, Dylan Moran and Tommy Tiernan.
And this morning I walked under the Mersey with 6-7,000 other people, and a marching band, in the Under and Over the Mersey event.

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liver art

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 8:59 AM | add or read comments (0)

The Royal Liver Building atrium has been turned into a temporary art gallery.
I popped along last night for the opening of the New Middle Kingdom exhibition of contemporary Chinese art.
There is some interesting work in there. My favourite bits of the exhibition were the photographs by Wange Ningde (especially one of a cycling man on a rise with clouds behind him) and by Beijing-based Liu Bolin who took striking images of himself "camouflaged" against backdrops such as the cenotaph and a red phone box by the Town Hall when he visited Liverpool earlier in the year.

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litter louts

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 1:57 PM | add or read comments (0)

It's not the first time Rod Holmes of Liverpool 1 developers Grosvenor has sounded off about the litter epidemic in Liverpool.
And knowing how flagrantly people seem to treat their own city streets I'm sure it won't be the last.
But oh, how I agree with him and how I wish we had the guts to bring in some really punitive hit-them-where-it-hurts reprisals for the ignorant, useless losers who deliberately drop their rubbish all over the place.
I even found chewing gum on the base of our new Sheppard-Worlock statue in Hope Street the other day.

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archbishop of york

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 10:02 AM | add or read comments (0)

I went to see the Archbishop of York give his Roscoe Lecture last night.
I say see, because I couldn't actually hear what he was saying much of the time.
I felt very sorry for the sound system technician (the same lad who who did a sterling job for our Sheppard-Worlock statue launch) as he fought a losing battle with errant speakers, the unhelpful acoustics in St George's Hall and an increasingly frustrated Archbishop.
In fact, fuelled I suspect by that frustration, the churchman got really quite bossy telling the sound guy "less bass. turn down the sound. don't touch it."
For once, people who had only been able to get a seat at the back benefited because apparently the sound was perfect there.
Anyway, I was reviewing in the evening so when it became clear things were running terribly late, I had to sneak out and missed most of what the Archbishop wanted to say.

kim in the city

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 1:55 PM | add or read comments (0)

I hope everyone enjoyed reading my colleague Tina's interview with Kim Cattrall in today's Echo.
I didn't realise the Sex and the City sexpot had an auntie who lived in Aigburth or who worked in M&S in Church Street.
The 51-year-old speaks about how she'd love to do something in Liverpool.
Well, it could have been sooner than we thought because I understand that when the Royal Court was looking at the casting for its latest show - Misery - which opens next week, it considered Cattrall for the role of pyscho ex-nurse Annie Wilkes.
In fact, the theatre actually opened tentative talks with Cattrall's agents, but they came to nothing....this time at least.
Cattrall has done dowdy(ish) before - in last year's My Boy Jack on TV. But the role in Misery, made famous by Kathy Bates, would have taken her about as far from Sex and the City's Samantha as you can imagine.
As it is, the marvellous Joan Kempson will be playing psycho opposite Drew Schofield when Misery opens at the Royal Court on Saturday.

robin at the royal court

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 11:56 AM | add or read comments (0)

As you know from my previous entry, I was due to review Frankie Boyle last night until his people decided otherwise.
But every cloud has a silver lining and being banned from Boyle did free me up to pop downstairs at the Royal Court to see Robin Ince's new show.
It was sweltering down there but I really like the laid back, friendly atmosphere and the fact you can only really get about 100 people into the room.
Robin meanwhile was trying out his new stream of 100-mile-an-hour consciousness on us.

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the frankie and jimmy (no) shows

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 10:08 AM | add or read comments (0)

Have you been to any of the Liverpool Comedy Festival gigs yet this year?
I saw Simon Amstell last Saturday (a little birthday treat to myself) and Gina Yashere a couple of days earlier.
Maybe you can't get to someone you really want to see and therefore might flick through a review myself or one of my colleagues has done to see if it was any good?
Well, don't rely on us this weekend because Echo reviewers have been banned from two of the festival's biggest gigs.
I kid you not.

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liverpool sound

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 12:40 AM | add or read comments (0)

Tired but happy......what a fantastic evening Macca and friends put on for Capital of Culture year.
As I've said in my story for Monday's Liverpool Echo - if Anfield had had a roof, the Liverpool Sound gig would have blown it right off.
Macca was in fine voice, Dave Grohl looked like all his Christmases had come at once, the Zutons and Kaiser Chiefs were excellent and it was simply the fantastic party we'd all been hoping for.
And there were fireworks!
What more could you want.

all together now

• Posted by Catherine Jones at 3:04 PM | add or read comments (0)

YOKO Ono and Olivia Harrison were both at FACT on Friday night for the UK premiere of All Together Now, the film about the making of Cirque du Soleil's Beatle show Love.

A twinkly-eyed Giles Martin, who worked on the reworking of Fab Four tracks with dad Sir George Martin, the film's Canadian director Adrian Wills, Mike McCartney and 60s popster Joe Brown were also there, and there was rumour Roy Orbison's widow Barbara was due but I didn't spot her.

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